PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

tphuang

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
But that was your proposal dude!! lolz

Let me remind you:

>> You started by saying that a "missile strategy doesn't make sense for the US" and they'd want "more runways" instead

>> I told you that runways are also used to send missiles via aircraft

>> Then you started talking about Carriers

>> I said Carrier aircraft will also be used to send missiles

>> Now you're arguing against land based runways (which was your original proposal in the first place !!!)

.... like, what in the actual f--k is happening here?! lolz




No, let me give you a hint: Take a break and think about what you're actually saying.

There is no alternative to a "missile strategy" in this theater, in one form or another. Period.

p.s. who proposed "stand alone barrage of hypersonic missiles" like you claimed??
I thought I was clear in talking about ground launched missiles (which was what I thought was not possible back in earlier part of the thread) vs missiles from aircraft. @Blitzo explained it pretty well.

Ground launched attacks against fixed target is easier to plan and carry out vs air launched raid.
 

Mohsin77

Senior Member
Registered Member
... alright... copy that. Let's move on.

The good news is that the US doesn't seem to be making any serious efforts to front-load anything in this theater right now.

Hopefully it stays that way, otherwise we'd be heading straight towards WWIII and right quick.
 

tphuang

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
I get the impression from previous messages that @Patchwork_Chimera is in touch with Lyle. Would love to be able to communicate with him myself. Anyhow, I like his look at how china perceives different us military actions. Most recently discussed one is ace. One part of that is Tinian.

So there is plans to build quite the large bomber and refueling facility there as I previously talked about. The refuelers are huge force multipliers for the naval fleet. Without them, you are left to using super hornets to do buddy refueling. That takes away serious striking power. On top of that, a large bomber fleet (even with low availability) could maybe double the striking power posed by super hornets from multiple csg. As such, one would think pla would want to at minimum to take Tinian out of action at the start of any conflict. I would say that since supporting personnel are not going to be as available in Tinian as around Anderson air base, plaaf probably do not have to make as many repeat strikes to keep it offline.

Also interesting that they are thinking about using Papua new guinea as another location. Imo, the threat posed by a base over 4000 km away is just much less than one that's 3000 km away. That additional 1000 km really makes things exponentially harder to generate quality sorties.
 

tphuang

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
I saw some really interesting thoughts by patchwork on Reddit. Up to this point, my assumption has been that china will attack and wait for us military to cross some kind of red line before attacking us positions. And even if they do attack us military position, they will try to use threats to keep Japan out of the conflict. The idea here is that keeping both countries out of a war is the best way for a conflict to end early and quickly.

Patchwork discussed something that I haven't thought about, which is a lightning surprise attack on American, Japanese and taiwanese bases across the region. This would involve basically priming the military to be at most available at the desired attack time while American and Japanese military are still in peace time posture. This would not involve a major build up of forces for an amphibious landing, but would involve moving some aircraft closer to action area or doing early maintenance on ships so they can be available. These stealth surge or build up may take a week to 10 days and would be hard to get noticed by western intelligence.

First of all, I think they are still a long way from ready to do this, since they have to normalize certain naval or aircraft movements in order to make them look like routine exercise movements. Secondly, I think they still need do a lot more long range deployment to west Pacific and to Japanese adiz to train air force and navy. Finally, I think we are still a couple of years away from the recent round of naval construction and more adequate number of j20s to join service.

In this surprise attack scenario, china would launch pre-emptive attack against all Taiwan, us and Japan assets at the same time. The initial wave will probably be df26 against Guam, df16/17 against ryushu, the 7th fleet and jmsdf. They may be able to get some easy kills if the Japanese and American ships are stationary and not on high alert. I would also expect them to be targeting Taiwan and try to sink all of its navy and military targets with pcl191, df16, air launched stand off missiles, yj83s and yj62s. After the initial hypersonic and ballistic missiles damage many targets and weaken air defense, you will see h6s, j16s, jh7a conducting land attack and anti ship missions. You will also see 055s and 052ds launch their asbm and lacms against standing targets. The goal is to deliver a decisive blow on day 1 to sink most if not all the capital ships in the region as well as disabling all the naval ports and air bases in the first and second island chain. With no runway to take off from, plaaf would have free reign to launch bombs and stand off missiles to keep runways out of commission. Drones will be a huge part of targeting any first island chain bases where repair works are done. I would assume they also want to target strategic reserve so that they can cripple Japanese and taiwanese economy and force the former out of war and deflate the morale of the latter.

At this point, they can talk to countries like Philippines to convince them to use their air bases for the duration of the war and for countries like Palau and Papua new guinea to stay neutral.

If they can and won't suffer nuclear retaliation, they can also try to take over Guam, so that us military will not have any operating base within 4000 km of Chinese mainland.

Obviously, this would be extremely egregious and outrage all of the western world. It would also require that they have enough nukes to not risk immediate nuclear attack. The advantage of such a move is that they have a better chance of destroying all possible bases within second island chain. In most likelihood, they would be facing at most 3 usn csg with very long supply line where replenishment ships could be targeted with hypersonic missiles. The closest USAF would be able to take off from would be Alaska or Australia.

This would seem like a strategy for them to take only if they can deal a fatal first blow. I would have to take sometime to look at how many major Japanese assets they would attack. Patchwork seems to think this is a very possible scenario.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Patchwork discussed something that I haven't thought about, which is a lightning surprise attack on American, Japanese and taiwanese bases across the region. This would involve basically priming the military to be at most available at the desired attack time while American and Japanese military are still in peace time posture. This would not involve a major build up of forces for an amphibious landing, but would involve moving some aircraft closer to action area or doing early maintenance on ships so they can be available. These stealth surge or build up may take a week to 10 days and would be hard to get noticed by western intelligence.

In such a scenario, even the units involved wouldn't realise beforehand that anything was happening.


This would seem like a strategy for them to take only if they can deal a fatal first blow. I would have to take sometime to look at how many major Japanese assets they would attack. Patchwork seems to think this is a very possible scenario.

That could be possible today.

But personally, I think that once China's nuclear deterrent has grown enough (circa 5years), then there's no need for a Chinese surprise attack against Japan and the USA.

Because of Chinese nuclear parity, the US will not get directly involved in a China-Taiwan conflict, like we see with Ukraine.
 

tphuang

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
What would China be interested in attacking in Japan at start of a conflict?
I see the follow large, capable modern surface combatants
4 Kongo class (90 MK-41s each)
2 Atago class (96 MK-41s each)
2 Maya class (96 MK-41s each)

2 Hyuga class ASW carriers (16 MK-41 + 4 large helicopters)
2 Izumi class helo carrier (can carry F-35Bs and/or helicopters)

So, 8 very loaded AAW ships + 4 capital ships that would be on top of their target list in any initial attack. ships that they would target with their best hypersonic and supersonic AShMs.

The main naval base are at.
Yokosuka
Sasebo
Maizuru
Kure
The 7th fleet is also based in Yokosuka and Sasebo. So I would imagine they would target all 4 bases, but especially the first 2.

These are small surface combatants they have:
2 Asahi class (32 MK-41s each)
4 Akizuki class (32 MK-41s each)
5 Takanami class (32 MK-41s each)
9 Murasame class (16 MK-41 + 16 MK-48)
So about 20 medium sized ships that have adequate air defense capabilities. Without those 8 capital AAW ships, these medium sized destroyers are a lot more vulnerable. I would not think they would be on top of an initial attack list.

In general, JMSDF is a very capable fleet. Even PLA would be stretched to its limit to target both USN 7th fleet and JMSDF at the same time. Interesting enough, 1 USN 7th fleet is probably as capable in air defense as the entire JMSDF, This just shows the huge gap between USN and everyone else in just sheer quantity of large and capable air defense ships.

In terms of air bases, I got the following from wikipedia. I'm just assuming these are relatively accurate
Misawa, Aomori (located in the northern tips of Honshu)-> F-15J + F-35A (2 squadrons of each), 1 E-2C/D squadron
Iruma, Saitama (close to Tokyo) -> 2 F-15J squadrons + 1 F-2 Squadron
Kasuga, Fukuoka -> 1 F-15J squadron, 2 F-2 squadrons
Naha, Okinawa -> 2 F-15 squadrons, 1 E-2C/D squadron

there are also other training, support and helicopter, EW squadrons that would be juicy targets.

I think in this case, they'd target the Okinawa air base and Misawa air base for sure. And possibly also Iruma and Kasuga.
As impressive as JMSDF is, JASDF is comparatively smaller. They have under 30 F-35s and 155 F-1Js as the backbone of their Air Force. They also have relatively small number of air bases that can carefully targeted.

In terms of air defense, it's said that Japan has patriot batteries deployed widely across the country, so any Chinese missile attacks against major air bases like Misawa/Okinawa or Yokosuka will have to overcome the PAC-3 batteries.

Japan also has a very large and capable diesel submarine fleet. However, it would seem to that the diesel fleets are in trouble if it has no air or surface support. If they fleet their port after an initial attack, they would only be able to move so much in 2 days before they need to snorkel to ventilate. If enough Chinese MPAs can operate with relative impunity after 4 main air bases get neutralized, they'd be able to catch submarines and hunt them down when they snorkel or surface.
 
Last edited:

Tempest

New Member
Registered Member
Not entirely sure if this is the right place to put this, so if not, mods feel free to let me know.

At the behest of a thoroughly overworked @Patchwork_Chimera, if anybody here has interest in helping put together an initial ORBAT for both PLA and US/TW/JP/SK/PH/AU/UK (Of course, not all of which are considered likely belligerents), as well as putting together an open source database of these units and military installations (Patchwork already has most of it, but I'm sort of burning him out in search of publicly available source material for it all, which is necessary for putting together unclass intelligence product when one of the team members has access to not so unclass intelligence material hah) for these nations - primarily PLA, US, TW, JP, SK - feel free to shoot either of us a DM. As part of that big project he keeps teasing, one of the main components will be an interactive map, SQL database (complete with API for nerds!), and overview of all military formations and facilities in the region, hence why so much effort is going into compiling and sourcing it.

Thanks y'all.
 

hundredyears

New Member
Registered Member
Not entirely sure if this is the right place to put this, so if not, mods feel free to let me know.

At the behest of a thoroughly overworked @Patchwork_Chimera, if anybody here has interest in helping put together an initial ORBAT for both PLA and US/TW/JP/SK/PH/AU/UK (Of course, not all of which are considered likely belligerents), as well as putting together an open source database of these units and military installations (Patchwork already has most of it, but I'm sort of burning him out in search of publicly available source material for it all, which is necessary for putting together unclass intelligence product when one of the team members has access to not so unclass intelligence material hah) for these nations - primarily PLA, US, TW, JP, SK - feel free to shoot either of us a DM. As part of that big project he keeps teasing, one of the main components will be an interactive map, SQL database (complete with API for nerds!), and overview of all military formations and facilities in the region, hence why so much effort is going into compiling and sourcing it.

Thanks y'all.

This sounds way too exciting to miss out, are you guys still in need of extra hands?

I am fairly well-read on both of your writings at this forum and hence have some basic understanding of what you are trying to accomplish. I take the subject-matter with immense interest and have profound appreciation of all your efforts on it.
Even if I am not an domain expert in any sense, what I do have currently is plenty of time (in middle of long vacation), so would happily contribute however small I can.

P.S. With apologies to Mods, it would have been more appropriate for me to DM you about this... but it appears an account needs to be at a certain level first to start conversations. Perhaps I can be on the receiving end of one?
 

tphuang

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
Lyle continues to discover some interesting stuff on Chinese magazines.


This one photographs 2 Chinese CSGs stationed on the East of Taiwan. The interesting part is what they put in each carrier group.

It has air wing of
16x J35
16x J15
6x J15D
4 KJ500
6 Z20
2 055
3 052D
2 054A
2 next generation SSN

Imo, that is too few 055s and I'd also expect more J35s and fewer J15s than this breakdown. But even with what they have here, it would be a pretty formidable fleet.
 

ACuriousPLAFan

Colonel
Registered Member
This one photographs 2 Chinese CSGs stationed on the East of Taiwan. The interesting part is what they put in each carrier group.

It has air wing of
16x J35
16x J15
6x J15D
4 KJ500
6 Z20
2 055
3 052D
2 054A
2 next generation SSN

Imo, that is too few 055s and I'd also expect more J35s and fewer J15s than this breakdown. But even with what they have here, it would be a pretty formidable fleet.
Could it be that the number of 055s allocated to CV-18 and CV-19 CSGs (carrier strike groups) is based on the assumption that China would only has 8 055s in service by the time this hypothetical war happens in the Western Pacific?

Realistically speaking, we don't really know when China's next-generation destroyer (as alleged by pop3) would be entering service, or that whether China is really building the 2nd batch of 055s at all at this point.

Therefore I bet the author assumes that China would have 4 CSGs forming around Liaoning, Shandong, Fujian and CV-19 when this hypothetical war breaks out. 8 055s divided over 4 CSGs would give 2 055s to every CSG.

However, I am kind of doubtful regarding the number of allocated 052Ds for every CSG. How are they going to cover all 360 degrees with only 3 052Ds, while the 054As are focused on anti-submarine role? They should bump that number up to 4 052Ds per CSG, in my opinion.
 
Last edited:
Top