PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

HighGround said:

Sorry if it seem stupid, I'm asking because I don't know.

I understand that convoys and resupply ships will have specific routes, that will be patrolled regularly by ASW planes and ships. But can't submarines just hit convoys, then sail back out into the expanse of the ocean and sit quietly and then hit again, or return to base? What am I missing?

There is a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean between CONUS/Hawaii and the SIC.

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Getting past the island chains with useful payload and underwater endurance/speed means it has to be an SSN and those are quite expensive. Even the US with its budget only has 68 active (according to Wiki). They'll need to past through SOSUS-like networks throughout the island chains to get to these convoys too.


The US managed to sink 1392 Japanese ships over 1474 war patrols through the entire WW2 period. That was about half of the Japanese pre-war capacity. But this happened in an environment where the Japanese seldom ran escorts/convoys and had subpar ASW. The US also had 288 submarines to conduct these interdiction missions with. So in a situation with vastly more submarines and almost no opposition, the US only sank 1392 out of what was likely 3000 ships total pre-war. These numbers don't include ships below 500 tons which would be fishing trawlers and the like.

Germany had a difference of 55kton (convoy) vs 350kton (unescorted) in sunk tonnage from before the fall of France and after the fall of France. The fall of France enabled Germany to bypass detection in the Channel / north of the UK and venture into the Altantic and target the unescorted ships. So if we assume naively that a somewhat similar ratio holds, if the Japanese were able to escort their ships and form a convoy system, the US might have only sunk some 220 ships which would have been less than 1 ship per submarine in the fleet.

For reference, Panama canal sees about 14,000 ships per year and Malacca Straits sees about 100,000 per year nowadays. Then there's also the ships that don't need to pass through those straits (China-Japan, China-US, etc. etc.) as well as the smaller ships that can still carry a useful load. If the US is able to enlist a sizeable fraction of it or it's ally affiliated MM to transport, that's going to be too many targets for a small SSN fleet. It's not like most of those shipping companies won't be dying for government money (and so enlist) when global trade collapses due to a Sino-American war. We also don't expect the main effort of such a war (mainly air/naval) to last multiple years.

To be clear, I don't expect those ratios etc. to be the same in a modern war. But it shows a useful reference of what sort of scale is necessary to make a significant impact.


In short, the submarines can sink supply ships, but I don't think it'll have a significant impact on the war due to the scale of the shipping involved. It would be more useful to use the limited number of submarines to expend their payloads on things like the fixed aggregation sites: ports, depots, airfields, factories, etc.

Staedler said:

The US managed to sink 1392 Japanese ships over 1474 war patrols through the entire WW2 period. That was about half of the Japanese pre-war capacity. But this happened in an environment where the Japanese seldom ran escorts/convoys and had subpar ASW. The US also had 288 submarines to conduct these interdiction missions with. So in a situation with vastly more submarines and almost no opposition, the US only sank 1392 out of what was likely 3000 ships total pre-war. These numbers don't include ships below 500 tons which would be fishing trawlers and the like.

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This definitely puts it in perspective thank you.

Staedler said:

In short, the submarines can sink supply ships, but I don't think it'll have a significant impact on the war due to the scale of the shipping involved. It would be more useful to use the limited number of submarines to expend their payloads on things like the fixed aggregation sites: ports, depots, airfields, factories, etc.

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So does this mean, that should the USN figure out the technical challenges with re-arming at sea (as mentioned in the article), that USN will have essentially figured out a large part of their logistics issues, and can now re-arm empty VLS cells with PLAN having no options to stop them?

This would severely reduce USN dependence on Guam and allied bases for resupply.

HighGround said:

This definitely puts it in perspective thank you.

So does this mean, that should the USN figure out the technical challenges with re-arming at sea (as mentioned in the article), that USN will have essentially figured out a large part of their logistics issues, and can now re-arm empty VLS cells with PLAN having no options to stop them?

This would severely reduce USN dependence on Guam and allied bases for resupply.

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HighGround said:

Ah I see, so the chokepoints acting as a tripwire alert for US forces is one of the issues. Is there any potential for China to open up a submarine base in Kamchatka?

Hypothetically, if cooperation with Solomon Islands blossoms into a full size naval base. Can China's submarine fleet threaten US supply lines at that point?

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Sea of Okhotsk is also being watched by ASW planes from Aleutian Islands, thanks to the old Cold War era legacy.

There's no easy solution. There's a reason that PLAN focused on SSKs in the past and did not pursue mass SSN/SSBN like Russia. Russia has the great blessing/curse of a natural bastion in the Arctic Ocean where the natural chokepoints of the Bering Strait and North Sea are easy to defend, and SSNs/SSBNs solve their problems of Arctic endurance. There are very few problems that PLAN of the past could solve with SSNs and even today it requires being able to just outright overpower enemies with mass surface and air based fires to punch a hole in enemy surveillance.

China has the curse of only a small natural bastion in Bohai and Gulf of Tonkin thanks to the relationship with Vietnam. China does not even fully control the Yellow Sea because of South Korea. If China lost North Korea in 1950, China would have literally no safe harbors. This is why whenever I see idiots talk about China abandoning North Korea I have to laugh. That's why the PLAN has to be relatively far stronger than the Soviet Navy or Royal Navy to exert the same maritime influence. Only the German Navy is more cursed.

Worse, China's geography also has no simple fixes other than 1. Even getting a base in North Korea just means putting toes in the Lake of Japan. Getting a base in Solomon Islands means that base is isolated. Getting a base in Thailand or even Singapore doesn't help, as there's still Diego Garcia and Andaman Islands on the other side of the strait, and Australia lurking nearby.

The 1 simple fix, of course, is getting Taiwan. It's open ocean out from Hualian. That's why Taiwan is a huge flashpoint despite having the characteristics of what would otherwise be a minor civil war.

Paradigm said:

Sorry, some China "successes" come at a cost. What was stopping the CPC from enacting the NSL in HK much earlier? Why was such wanton damage needed before they bring in the NSL? Could it not been done right after the rioters destroyed the legislative council? Answer: not assertive enough.

Pelosi is not a good example. Will US shoot down Li Keqiang's plane if he was visiting Hawaiian independence figures? China was never going to shoot down Pelosi's plane.

The west are run by overgrown children. They do childish provocative moves. China has been responding with language like, "we oppose, we protest, the west should correct their mistakes". How is that working out so far? Have the tempo of US provocations increased, or decreased? You tell me.

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Well first of all, if you think there's anything China can do to stop the provocations from the US, you're seriously reading the situation wrong. US provocations and attempts to undermine China will only continue and increase in frequency and intensity, and the only thing China can do is to neutralize them as best as it can.

As for HK, do you have such a short memory as to forget the massive protests against the extradition law? By allowing the riots to go on, the Central Government achieved the following objectives:

1. Successfully converted millions of HK residents who would otherwise still have believed Western propaganda.
2. Exposed the hypocrisy of Western media to both Mainland citizens and overseas diaspora.
3. Uncovered CIA funding networks and destroyed them.
4. Uprooted NED-funded HK media corporations such as Apple Daily and dismantled their operations.

HK was truly a masterful stroke of Taichi, turning the US attempt at color revolution into an opportunity to severely degrade US influence in HK and turn HK residents into patriots almost overnight.

HighGround said:

So does this mean, that should the USN figure out the technical challenges with re-arming at sea (as mentioned in the article), that USN will have essentially figured out a large part of their logistics issues, and can now re-arm empty VLS cells with PLAN having no options to stop them?

This would severely reduce USN dependence on Guam and allied bases for resupply.

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Maybe? I think not though.

The number of ships with VLS cells is much lower than the number of supply ships. There's only around 90? VLS cruisers/destroyers around combined which is a vast difference from the thousands of civilian ships that can handle resupply at port.
The number of ships with these specialized VLS cranes for UNREP are going to be even lower. The article mentions one option being to retrofit RO/RO ships, but that crane is going to change CoG/CoB, trim, etc. by quite a bit. It's likely not going to be a simple slap on job. More like a few months per ship retrofitted.

Crucially, with a large enough number of supply ships, you could potentially play a shell game or even just send each ship with just a handful of VLS reloads. That makes each individual target unappealing.
Compare that with the two ships that are going to be side-by-side for a while doing UNREP. They're likely going to be moving slowly too. That's a big juicy target. Not only are you getting rid of a large number of missiles if you sunk them, you're also sinking a launch platform - one of those roughly 90. Those launch platforms aren't going to be simple to replace unlike a ship from the merchant marine.

Even if you trade 1-for-1 with your SSNs vs these launch platforms, that might actually be worth it due to the low numbers.

So I think the concepts going to be very useful to the USN especially as Guam and allied bases are degraded in such a war, but it's not going to be a like-for-like replacement. It'll be like using a machine gun for combat and then getting that replaced with a bolt-action rifle. It'll still put fire down the range, but not nearly as effectively.

FairAndUnbiased said:

Sea of Okhotsk is also being watched by ASW planes from Aleutian Islands, thanks to the old Cold War era legacy.

There's no easy solution. There's a reason that PLAN focused on SSKs in the past and did not pursue mass SSN/SSBN like Russia. Russia has the great blessing/curse of a natural bastion in the Arctic Ocean where the natural chokepoints of the Bering Strait and North Sea are easy to defend, and SSNs/SSBNs solve their problems of Arctic endurance. There are very few problems that PLAN of the past could solve with SSNs and even today it requires being able to just outright overpower enemies with mass surface and air based fires to punch a hole in enemy surveillance.

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The Pacific Fleet does have a major naval base located at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a medium-sized city that is close to the southern end of the Kamchatsky Peninsula.



The mouth of the Avancha Bay which borders Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is located opens directly into the vast Northern Pacific. The westernmost Aluetian Island that is under American control is the Attu Island, located around 950 kilometers to the east.

In fact, there is literally nothing situated between Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the major islands of Hawaii.

Of course, American forces stationed in Japan, the Aleutians and Alaska are definitely going to sniff around the base for any submarines coming in and out of the base, especially so during wartime. Therefore, significant Russian (and Chinese) naval and aerial presence should be held in and around the region to thwart any attempts by American forces to track Russian (and Chinese) submarine movements around Avancha Bay before they have sufficient time and space to "vanish" within the vast Pacific.

Besides, there a number of runways in the region. However, other than the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Airport, all others are either a small airport/airfield with one short runway, or just a tiny landing strip that is made of dirt. Therefore, signficant expansions and upgrades needs to be done for at least some of these runways and facilities in order to support any significant military presence there.

solarz said:

Well first of all, if you think there's anything China can do to stop the provocations from the US, you're seriously reading the situation wrong. US provocations and attempts to undermine China will only continue and increase in frequency and intensity, and the only thing China can do is to neutralize them as best as it can.

As for HK, do you have such a short memory as to forget the massive protests against the extradition law? By allowing the riots to go on, the Central Government achieved the following objectives:

1. Successfully converted millions of HK residents who would otherwise still have believed Western propaganda.
2. Exposed the hypocrisy of Western media to both Mainland citizens and overseas diaspora.
3. Uncovered CIA funding networks and destroyed them.
4. Uprooted NED-funded HK media corporations such as Apple Daily and dismantled their operations.

HK was truly a masterful stroke of Taichi, turning the US attempt at color revolution into an opportunity to severely degrade US influence in HK and turn HK residents into patriots almost overnight.

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HK is definitely off topic and the mods will be stepping in soon. So this is the last time I'm mentioning HK. I humbly disagree it needed that much chaos and destruction to bring in the NSL. If anything, a much delayed masterstroke.

Hypothetically, if China gets Taiwan back, should Beijing wait for a year of chaos before signing a Taiwan NSL? Or should they do it immediately?

If US instigations will keep increasing, then you're not doing the right moves slowing or reversing the trend. Exactly my point, before you chimed in.

FairAndUnbiased said:

there's no way out into the open Pacific without taking Taiwan, as there's already a hydrophone network located in Philippines and Japanese islands to detect subs trying to exit from ECS or SCS, while eastern Indian Ocean will be crawling with ASW planes so you can't even send PLAN SSNs down through Indonesia, and circumnavigate the world to hit them from behind.

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Does it matter if subs get detected? As long as there's no enemy ship waiting on the other side of the first island chain, then the sub will just disappear a little later than when it left the harbour. It might also be possible to trick the hydrophone network by escorting the submarine with a noisy surface warship or just dropping noise emitters on the ocean floor to mask the subs. And in case of Japan entering the war, there won't be much left standing on the southern islands of Okinawa, they might even be occupied by the PLA.

ACuriousPLAFan said:

That is, what if they aren't actually meant to hold ground, but to do island-hopping-style guerilla warfare instead?

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

Meanwhile, the Ryukyu Island Chain alone has more than one hundred islands, many of which do have sufficient size, topology and ecology to station missile launchers. Even if they are exposed, their numbers alone can make up for that deficiency. Furthermore, the closest populated island in the Ryukyu Island Chain to the Chinese coastline is at least 350 kilometers away, while many of the islands are around 600-800 kilometers away. At those ranges, other than Chinese warships and warplanes, only PHL-191-launched TBMs and Dongfeng SRBMs can reach them.

We aren't yet talking about the major Japanese islands of Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu, all of which have huge and intertwined mountain ranges, plus plenty of tunnels, valleys and forest cover. For instance, the future variants of the Type 12 SSMs can reach as far as Tianjin and even Beijing from northern Kyushu and the western end of Honshu.

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If you are arguing that US can do guerilla warfare with TEL, sure they can.

But the problem is how much damage this guerilla warfare can inflict and would it be meaningful amount to help win the war. Answer is no.

Think about PLARF's massive organization, training facilities maintenance falicities and pre-calibrated launching sites, that is how meaningful fire can be generated towards targets in westpac.

Some one-off TEL without proper support, like you suggested, can at best general some piecemeal fire to harass PLA targets, not to decisively destroy them.

ACuriousPLAFan said:

So unless China can:
1. Declare and maintain an exclusion zone spanning the entire Ryukyu Island Chain;
2. Maintain strict and comprehensive 24/7 ISR over the entire island chain and the surrounding waters (which is going to be difficult because Chinese warships and warplanes are much needed elsewhere);
3. Take over the role of resupplying the civilian population on those islands;
4. Stop and check every single civilian boats and ships that are heading to those islands that isn't coming from China, if such permission/allowance is given by Beijing; and
5. Without getting shot at by the Japanese and American forces -
There is bound to be holes and gaps where Japanese and American military aircrafts, boats and ships can slip through and attempt resupply and transport of military troops and aircraft around the island chain.

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this seems to be the recipe of avoiding being shot at altogether, which i dont think is the objective of PLA in the first place

Paradigm said:

HK is definitely off topic and the mods will be stepping in soon. So this is the last time I'm mentioning HK. I humbly disagree it needed that much chaos and destruction to bring in the NSL. If anything, a much delayed masterstroke.

Hypothetically, if China gets Taiwan back, should Beijing wait for a year of chaos before signing a Taiwan NSL? Or should they do it immediately?

If US instigations will keep increasing, then you're not doing the right moves slowing or reversing the trend. Exactly my point, before you chimed in.

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Now you're just doing wishful thinking. In a game of chess, you can't stop your opponent from playing. There's no "right move" to stop US instigation other than complete submission, and if you can't understand that, then there's nothing further to discuss.

As for the necessity of delayed action in HK, there's no question it was necessary. The people of HK needed to experience for themselves what the result of a color revolution was like. Nothing else could have reversed decades of Western conditioning as effectively.

The same principle was applied to covid. The government waited until the people got sick and tired of zero covid restrictions before removing them. 80% of the country got infected afterwards, but nobody blamed the government for it. Had the government ended the restrictions sooner, we would have seen a flood of complaints about the infections and deaths.