PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

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RoastGooseHKer

Junior Member
Registered Member
Phead128 said:
You contradict yourself immediately:

So you agree US will run out of missiles quickly....

Yea, and US will run out of missiles quickly no matter where they put it. You can put it on China's doorsteps but if you don't have a enough quantity and rate to suppress Chinese targets, it's good as useless in the long-term.

The logical inconsistency is evident.
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I do have a question about this. If you look at the DF-15/16/17 batteries deployed against Taiwan and Okinawa and the DF-26s against Guam and the 2nd Island Chain, the number of missiles is in the low thousands. There are also only 200+ DF-26s that could be launched in one salvo (don’t know how many is storage and ready to reload). Wouldn’t China also be a huge risk of running out of missiles critical in sustaining fire after the initial few waves of strikes? This is not countering how many BMs would be lost to interceptors and malfunction under realistic scenarios. But if you look at Iranian strikes against Israel, most SRBMs simply don’t make it to their targets. MRBMs and BMs with penetration aid have higher chances, but only higher chances. That is to say most older BMs like DF-15s and DF-11s will likely be intercepted.

Sorry no expert here on missile salvos, but the Iranian strikes against Israel and Russian strikes against Ukraine seem pretty futile when. The defending side has advanced air defense.
 
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siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

Field Marshall
Staff member
Super Moderator
RoastGooseHKer said:
I do have a question about this. If you look at the DF-15/16/17 batteries deployed against Taiwan and Okinawa and the DF-26s against Guam and the 2nd Island Chain, the number of missiles is in the low thousands. There are also only 200+ DF-26s that could be launched in one salvo (don’t know how many is storage and ready to reload). Wouldn’t China also be a huge risk of running out of missiles critical in sustaining fire after the initial few waves of strikes? This is not countering how many BMs would be lost to interceptors and malfunction under realistic scenarios. But if you look at Iranian strikes against Israel, most SRBMs simply don’t make it to their targets. MRBMs and BMs with penetration aid have higher chances, but only higher chances. That is to say most older BMs like DF-15s and DF-11s will likely be intercepted.

Sorry no expert here on missile salvos, but the Iranian strikes against Israel and Russian strikes against Ukraine seem pretty futile when. The defending side has advanced air defense.
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Your mistake is not accounting for cruise missiles and guided rockets.
 
L

latenlazy

Brigadier
RoastGooseHKer said:
I do have a question about this. If you look at the DF-15/16/17 batteries deployed against Taiwan and Okinawa and the DF-26s against Guam and the 2nd Island Chain, the number of missiles is in the low thousands. There are also only 200+ DF-26s that could be launched in one salvo (don’t know how many is storage and ready to reload). Wouldn’t China also be a huge risk of running out of missiles critical in sustaining fire after the initial few waves of strikes? This is not countering how many BMs would be lost to interceptors and malfunction under realistic scenarios. But if you look at Iranian strikes against Israel, most SRBMs simply don’t make it to their targets. MRBMs and BMs with penetration aid have higher chances, but only higher chances. That is to say most older BMs like DF-15s and DF-11s will likely be intercepted.

Sorry no expert here on missile salvos, but the Iranian strikes against Israel and Russian strikes against Ukraine seem pretty futile when. The defending side has advanced air defense.
Click to expand...
You don’t only launch salvos of high value missiles when you do your strike campaigns. You start with low value missiles first to exhaust interceptor capacity, and then when you launch your high value salvos you include more complementary lower value missiles to exhaust simultaneous engagement bandwidths. Lower value missiles being intercepted is the whole point because interceptor volumes are not infinite.

Iran’s salvo volumes were suppressed by Israeli air superiority and Iran still managed to both erase Israel’s air defenses into a nub in a week as well as deplete a notable share of the US’s own interceptor stock. That’s why the US had to step in when they did, because if they didn’t Iran was about to go open season on Israel, even with maybe half to 2/3rd of their strike complex being disabled or suppressed.

Russia meanwhile doesn’t have the same volume strike complex that Iran has (or at least they didn’t at the start of the war), and are actually not as well trained for mass strike warfare (though that might be changing), and has to expend their strike capacity across a much wider geography, while Ukraine can get constant replenishment of air defense capacity via its western land link with the rest of Europe.

China has a significantly larger and more diverse strike complex than either Iran or Russia, that are far better protected and thus less exposed to suppression or attrition, all concentrated on a significantly smaller set of target areas than Ukraine. Meanwhile, neither the US nor Taiwan can replenish their interceptor capacity at rates that can resist rapid attrition like Ukraine can because their air defense positions are all either stuck on islands or floating at sea.

In short, there is a hard math between defensive salvo volumes vs offensive salvo volumes. That’s what determines the results of engagements in modern strike warfare.
 
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R

RoastGooseHKer

Junior Member
Registered Member
siegecrossbow said:
Your mistake is not accounting for cruise missiles and guided rockets.
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Well China can definitely try to exhaust adversary interceptors with loiter drones and those unmanned J-6s and J-7s. Still, China’s adversaries could also hide and reserve a portion of PAC-3s, SM-6s, and THAAD just to intercept “high-value” missiles like DF-26, knowing DF-26s will only go after their own high-value targets.
 
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T

tokenanalyst

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
RoastGooseHKer said:
I do have a question about this. If you look at the DF-15/16/17 batteries deployed against Taiwan and Okinawa and the DF-26s against Guam and the 2nd Island Chain, the number of missiles is in the low thousands. There are also only 200+ DF-26s that could be launched in one salvo (don’t know how many is storage and ready to reload). Wouldn’t China also be a huge risk of running out of missiles critical in sustaining fire after the initial few waves of strikes? This is not countering how many BMs would be lost to interceptors and malfunction under realistic scenarios. But if you look at Iranian strikes against Israel, most SRBMs simply don’t make it to their targets. MRBMs and BMs with penetration aid have higher chances, but only higher chances. That is to say most older BMs like DF-15s and DF-11s will likely be intercepted.

Sorry no expert here on missile salvos, but the Iranian strikes against Israel and Russian strikes against Ukraine seem pretty futile when. The defending side has advanced air defense.
Click to expand...
Nobody knows how many missiles China have. Probably in the dozen of thousands, who knows and after seeing ballistic missiles in action they are extremely difficult to intercept even the older ones like DF-11. Is probably US military's planers undercounting will probably lead to a early depleting of air defenses and everything in becoming sitting ducks. It could be worse than "the Russians are running out missiles" years ago.
 
R

RoastGooseHKer

Junior Member
Registered Member
latenlazy said:
You don’t only launch salvos of high value missiles when you do your strike campaigns. You start with low value missiles first to exhaust interceptor capacity, and then when you launch your high value salvos you include more complementary lower value missiles to exhaust simultaneous engagement bandwidths. Lower value missiles being intercepted is the whole point because interceptor volumes are not infinite.

Iran’s salvo volumes were suppressed by Israeli air superiority and Iran still managed to both erase Israel’s air defenses into a nub in a week as well as deplete a notable share of the US’s own interceptor stock. That’s why the US had to step in when they did, because if they didn’t Iran was about to go open season on Israel, even with maybe half to 2/3rd of their strike complex being disabled or suppressed.

Russia meanwhile doesn’t have the same volume strike complex that Iran has (or at least they didn’t at the start of the war), and are actually not as well trained for mass strike warfare (though that might be changing), and has to expend their strike capacity across a much wider geography, while Ukraine can get constant replenishment of air defense capacity via its western land link with the rest of Europe.

China has a significantly larger and more diverse strike complex than either Iran or Russia, that are far better protected and thus less exposed to suppression or attrition, all concentrated on a significantly smaller set of target areas than Ukraine. Meanwhile, neither the US nor Taiwan can replenish their interceptor capacity at rates that can resist rapid attrition like Ukraine can because their air defense positions are all either stuck on islands or floating at sea.

In short, there is a hard math between defensive salvo volumes vs offensive salvo volumes. That’s what determines the results of engagements in modern strike warfare.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation. Now another challenge would then be to hide those large numbers of DF-26/17/16 TELs (which are easily seen via satellite) long enough to avoid detection before launch. Otherwise, you have a massive use or lose dilemma.
 
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tokenanalyst

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
RoastGooseHKer said:
Thanks for the explanation. Now another challenge would then be to hide those large numbers of DF-26/17/16 TELs (which are easily seen via satellite) long enough to avoid detection before launch. Otherwise, you have a massive use or lose dilemma.
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TELs move, so using cruise missiles to hit them is no effective. So it will have to be fighter jets that most would not survive. Drones are not as effective. There is also the issue of decoys, like the Iranians did with the Israelis. Sending troops into China to take them out is a one way ticket to a life in the middle of the Gobi desert with luck.
There is the option of using anti-satellite weapons against spy satellites or blind them which is less escalatory.
 
L

latenlazy

Brigadier
RoastGooseHKer said:
Thanks for the explanation. Now another challenge would then be to hide those large numbers of DF-26/17/16 TELs (which are easily seen via satellite) long enough to avoid detection before launch. Otherwise, you have a massive use or lose dilemma.
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Realistically speaking China’s long range TELs are so deeply nested into China’s geography and have so many layers of air defenses in front of them that they are about as unreachable as the 3 Gorges Dam.

RoastGooseHKer said:
Well China can definitely try to exhaust adversary interceptors with loiter drones and those unmanned J-6s and J-7s. Still, China’s adversaries could also hide and reserve a portion of PAC-3s, SM-6s, and THAAD just to intercept “high-value” missiles like DF-26, knowing DF-26s will only go after their own high-value targets.
Click to expand...
If you’re hiding interceptors in reserve against a saturation strike that you can’t defend there won’t be anything to defend by the time you’re ready to reveal your reserve. It’s not like DF-26s will be launched without other lower value missiles, and just because those other missiles are lower value doesn’t mean they won’t be devastating when they land. If the DF-26s draw interceptors away from cruise missiles that’s just as bad for the defending party as cruise missiles drawing interceptors away from the DF-26s. The key issue for the US is an insurmountable mass difference.
 
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vincent

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
RoastGooseHKer said:
I do have a question about this. If you look at the DF-15/16/17 batteries deployed against Taiwan and Okinawa and the DF-26s against Guam and the 2nd Island Chain, the number of missiles is in the low thousands. There are also only 200+ DF-26s that could be launched in one salvo (don’t know how many is storage and ready to reload). Wouldn’t China also be a huge risk of running out of missiles critical in sustaining fire after the initial few waves of strikes? This is not countering how many BMs would be lost to interceptors and malfunction under realistic scenarios. But if you look at Iranian strikes against Israel, most SRBMs simply don’t make it to their targets. MRBMs and BMs with penetration aid have higher chances, but only higher chances. That is to say most older BMs like DF-15s and DF-11s will likely be intercepted.

Sorry no expert here on missile salvos, but the Iranian strikes against Israel and Russian strikes against Ukraine seem pretty futile when. The defending side has advanced air defense.
Click to expand...
PLAAF planes will just sit in their hangars and do nothing?
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
RoastGooseHKer said:
I do have a question about this. If you look at the DF-15/16/17 batteries deployed against Taiwan and Okinawa and the DF-26s against Guam and the 2nd Island Chain, the number of missiles is in the low thousands. There are also only 200+ DF-26s that could be launched in one salvo (don’t know how many is storage and ready to reload). Wouldn’t China also be a huge risk of running out of missiles critical in sustaining fire after the initial few waves of strikes? This is not countering how many BMs would be lost to interceptors and malfunction under realistic scenarios. But if you look at Iranian strikes against Israel, most SRBMs simply don’t make it to their targets. MRBMs and BMs with penetration aid have higher chances, but only higher chances. That is to say most older BMs like DF-15s and DF-11s will likely be intercepted.

Sorry no expert here on missile salvos, but the Iranian strikes against Israel and Russian strikes against Ukraine seem pretty futile when. The defending side has advanced air defense.
Click to expand...

In addition to what others have said, at this stage I don't think the PLARF will have much of a role against Taiwan except in unique minor roles. Bulk of ground to ground fires versus Taiwan could be achieved by PLAGF with PCH-191/PHL-191 with a combination of 750mm ballistic missiles (dual tube) or 370mm long range rockets (8 tube).

Overall, the answer to your question is broadly along these lines:
- You somewhat underestimate the size of PLARF fires (both TELs and reloads)
- You misconstrue the manner in which they would be used (in any sort of contingency they would be part of a joint domain fires campaign including aircraft launched weapons, naval weapons, as well as supporting EW/ECM, decoys, and finally the role of followup strikes/re-attack after initial higher performance weapons target perishable HVTs)
- Part of this question depends on density of salvos versus density of defenses (linking back to the first point)
- At a system of systems level, you have to balance the totality (quality and quantity) of each sides offensive fires, defensive capabilities, available aerial forces and basing and survivability, naval forces, EW/ECM, ISR, in context of the geography that they're based in (which determines their mobility, ability to evade), and availability to resupply. Then tie all of that together with how jointly they are able to prosecute the mission.
 
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