PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

Zhejiang said:

It definitely will be annoying but my point is in Taiwan there isn’t much distance to hide and they can’t get new ammo or systems during war but definitely every single one will be annoying and a threat to China, what is why the 84 HIMARS their getting worries me the most as they would now have 111

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high urbanization provides HIMARS with numerous hiding places, such as underground parking lots.

Judging from historical lessons and ROCA's exercises, they show no concern for civilian casualties resulting from PLA counterattacks and may even deliberately seek such outcomes to gain international sympathy.

Any building with broken wall is a suitable hiding place.
So are mountain forests, caves, tunnels... everywhere with some roof/disguise v space really.
Himars is a small truck. The only real downside is again limitations of main ammo type, which only barely reaches into Fujian.

But that's the point, too, selling direct means of countervalue to Taiwan will lead to extreme detoriation of US relationship with PRC.

Ukrainian himars are regularly used v civilian targets, there's very obvious stigma on them and what they can be sold for.

Gloire_bb said:

Any building with broken wall is a suitable hiding place.
So are mountain forests, caves, tunnels... everywhere with some roof/disguise v space really.
Himars is a small truck. The only real downside is again limitations of main ammo type, which only barely reaches into Fujian.

But that's the point, too, selling direct means of countervalue to Taiwan will lead to extreme detoriation of US relationship with PRC.

Ukrainian himars are regularly used v civilian targets, there's very obvious stigma on them and what they can be sold for.

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HIMARS is just MLRS. Even Pakistan can produce its own ultra long range MLRS that has ATACMS ranges. It should be piece of Cake for highly industrialized Taiwan to produce it themselves.

China cannot rely on a military strategy against Taiwan that is reliant on Taiwan not having access such widely availble weapons. Things like Drones, Tactical Ballistic Missiles and Anti-Ship Missiles are now very mature technologies and can be easily produced by Taiwan if they get serious about it.

So, its actually better that US is providing these things to Taiwan at a huge mark up price rather than Taiwan being forced to produce it by themselves, which they will be able to do at a much cheaper per unit price and likely can produce hundreds if not thousands of launchers if needed.

As I have said before in this thread, China's strategy of defeating Taiwan must be overwhelming dominance. Brute force Taiwan out.

There should be overwhelming defence such that, If Taiwan is launching 100 ATACMS, China should have 500 interceptor launchers on standby to intercept them.

Overwhelming offense: China should saturate Taiwan with enough drones and satellite surveillence that every meter is under inspection and every concealed launcher gets detected after firing their first shot and then gets destroyed in minutes.

China should be infiltrating Taiwan in such a way that Mossad attack on Iran should look tame in comparison and these agents should be sabotaging Taiwanese offense and defense before day 1.

If China cannot even overwhelmingly defeat 22 million population Taiwan with 1.4 billion people, they should be ashamed of their weakness. If there is indeed a war, they should utterly wipe the floor against Taiwan in such a way that Desert Storm looks tough in comparison. China should not even try to initiate the war until they get that level of dominance.

China should have enough dominance even if US bankrupts itself by providing Taiwan its entire stockpile, Taiwan will still lose.

RoastGooseHKer said:

Doesn’t Taiwan already have 500-1000 HF-2E and Yun Feng cruise missiles capable of hitting targets deep inside China? The 420 ATACMS’ <300 km range only seem to threaten China’s coastal regions, but they will surely buy time for Taiwan since they will prevent the PLA from amassing/concentrating troops in ports and beaches across the Taiwan Strait. In other words, PLA would only start loading troops onto ferries once Taiwan run out of ATACMS, Yin Feng, HF-2E, and loiter drones. So it seems like the strategy for China would be to triple and quadruple its missiles and rocket artillery arsenal size until it is capable to engaging in sustained fire support until Taiwan run out (and still have enough munitions to fight off a subsequent U.S. intervention). So the PLARF and PLAGF’s long range artillery brigades will now have be dramatically enlarged and increased in numbers? You also have to take account into Japan’ upcoming deployment of its own land attack cruise missiles.

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If Taiwan loses control over its airspace in the opening days of a PLA strike campaign then their strike assets would be suppressed by constant and relentless aerial surveillance. Having strike assets isn’t very meaningful if you can’t keep them alive long enough to get your payload off. This is how Israel was able to blunt Iran’s total strike capacity. China has far more capacity to flood Taiwan’s air space for fire suppression operations than Israel did against Iran, and Taiwan doesn’t have nearly the same volume of strike assets that Iran had. Taiwan also won’t have the ability to do target acquisition if it loses the ability to fly its own aerial assets and if it loses all its radars.

Hundreds of HIMARS and various types of anti-aircraft missiles would likely force the PLA to completely destroy cities along the route, resulting in a severe humanitarian disaster. However, such actions would be necessary to eliminate these long-range precision strike weapons.

Nevermore said:

Hundreds of HIMARS and various types of anti-aircraft missiles would likely force the PLA to completely destroy cities along the route, resulting in a severe humanitarian disaster. However, such actions would be necessary to eliminate these long-range precision strike weapons.

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LMAO no, what happened to the litany of PGMs and suicide drones that the PLA has in their inventory across all of the branches? Hundreds of targets means hundreds of PGMs to destroy them, not flattening the cities around them. We're not in the 70s or earlier lol

latenlazy said:

If Taiwan loses control over its airspace in the opening days of a PLA strike campaign then their strike assets would be suppressed by constant and relentless aerial surveillance. Having strike assets isn’t very meaningful if you can’t keep them alive long enough to get your payload off. This is how Israel was able to blunt Iran’s total strike capacity. China has far more capacity to flood Taiwan’s air space for fire suppression operations than Israel did against Iran, and Taiwan doesn’t have nearly the same volume of strike assets that Iran had. Taiwan also won’t have the ability to do target acquisition if it loses the ability to fly its own aerial assets and if it loses all its radars.

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This is basically my thinking: HIMARS might employ a bunker deployment-sprint launch approach, similar to ICBM TELs. It would be extremely difficult to detect and destroy before launch unless there is extensive aerial surveillance by numerous drones. Amphibious operations and coastal cities would face significant casualties until decisive air superiority is achieved.

Therefore, in the previously envisioned escalation of gray warfare (blockade) – amphibious operations on outer islands – amphibious operations on the main island, airspace control operations might occur earlier and more intensely. The contest for airspace (not merely aerial combat) will serve as a localized engagement phase between gray warfare and full-scale war. Such as establishing no-fly zones during the blockade phase, declaring the destruction of any retaliatory equipment, and attempting of forced airspace takeover using drones. Complete air superiority might even be a prerequisite for amphibious operations.

Furthermore, the recent indiscriminate bombing by Israel and the US, primarily using their air forces, has somewhat desensitized the world to these actions.

JimmyMcFoob said:

LMAO no, what happened to the litany of PGMs and suicide drones that the PLA has in their inventory across all of the branches? Hundreds of targets means hundreds of PGMs to destroy them, not flattening the cities around them. We're not in the 70s or earlier lol

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Thank you for your response. You're right—I had indeed been fixated on imagining the ruins left behind by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Faced with hundreds of HIMARS systems, China could indeed employ systematic air superiority control and electronic suppression to precisely target and neutralize Taiwan's concealed weaponry. The large number of advanced reconnaissance-strike drones currently in China's arsenal are exceptionally well-suited for executing such missions.

bsdnf said:

This is basically my thinking: HIMARS might employ a bunker deployment-sprint launch approach, similar to ICBM TELs. It would be extremely difficult to detect and destroy before launch unless there is extensive aerial surveillance by numerous drones. Amphibious operations and coastal cities would face significant casualties until decisive air superiority is achieved.

Therefore, in the previously envisioned escalation of gray warfare (blockade) – amphibious operations on outer islands – amphibious operations on the main island, airspace control operations might occur earlier and more intensely. The contest for airspace (not merely aerial combat) will serve as a localized engagement phase between gray warfare and full-scale war. Such as establishing no-fly zones during the blockade phase, declaring the destruction of any retaliatory equipment, and attempting of forced airspace takeover using drones. Complete air superiority might even be a prerequisite for amphibious operations.

Furthermore, the recent indiscriminate bombing by Israel and the US, primarily using their air forces, has somewhat desensitized the world to these actions.

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1) Does the ROCA have the training and coordination to pull off such a tactic while still getting sufficient salvo intensity to make a difference.

2) How survivable is such an employment of rocket artillery if you don’t have control over your airspace.

But yes, total air dominance is in fact a prerequisite to any uncontested landing scenario. People should assume by default that any Taiwan invasion scenario has that as a nonnegotiable precondition to a landing. There was never going to be a situation where the PLA would proceed to landing without it, and this is in fact the capabilities the PLA has intentionally developed. Any meaningful ROCAF presence or USAF/JSDAF assistance is going to be cleared before the PLA initiates a landing campaign.

latenlazy said:

If Taiwan loses control over its airspace in the opening days of a PLA strike campaign then their strike assets would be suppressed by constant and relentless aerial surveillance. Having strike assets isn’t very meaningful if you can’t keep them alive long enough to get your payload off. This is how Israel was able to blunt Iran’s total strike capacity. China has far more capacity to flood Taiwan’s air space for fire suppression operations than Israel did against Iran, and Taiwan doesn’t have nearly the same volume of strike assets that Iran had. Taiwan also won’t have the ability to do target acquisition if it loses the ability to fly its own aerial assets and if it loses all its radars.

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Taiwan does have enough caves and underground facilities to hides its SAMs and artilleries and wait until PLA actually lands (but before being able to set up something permanent for logistics) to pull off a Iwo Jima type beach massacre. Image such beach massacre happens whilst the oceans surround Taiwan still have US and Japanese submarines. That would be the worse nightmare for the PLA.

In other words, any amphibious assaults on Taiwan would not be viable until the ROC military assets plus foreign militaries in the region were completely neutralised. And that would require the PLA to have a much larger missile and long-range artillery plus air-launch standoff weapon/loiter drone inventory than it has right now.