There's also independent destroyer squadrons commanded separately, as well as far advanced deployed subs under air cover.
PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC
- Thread starter SEAD
- Start date
PLAN should combine the two CV-16 & CV-17 based Carrier Strike Groups into a Carrier Task Force. There are a few disabilities inherent in Single-Carrier Strike Groups, principal being that they're incapable of sustained 24x7 air operations because: (1) crew need rest (2) Carrier has to refuel, rearm & replenish (3) aircrafts need to be serviced. Single-Carrier Strike Groups are also an uneconomical use of precious resource (AAW & ASW escorts) and can never provide the 'Iron Fortress' kind of protection that a multiple-Carrier Task Force provides.
I'm not sure why Lyle gives so much credence to magazine articles and diagrams.
They don't provide any sort of exclusive insight into PLA thinking, and more often than not they are just a result of informed estimates and common sense conclusions.
Especially so, when fighting in China's home turf!
I think the number of Type-055 is fine, but I'd put an extra 1-2 Frigates in for ASW duty
What seems obvious to us is eye opening for the "expert OSINT" twitter crowd. I see this as Lyle warning the experts who think China is going to do the 1million men across the straits maneuvers which US military can counter by flying over unopposed (I know, but that's what people).
They are also shocked to find out China has enough ground attack capabilities to knock out all of Taiwan's air defense and Ryuku bases. Or that China has a large MPA fleet.
Each fleet they show in there would probably suffice as a CSG on long deployment. But it wouldn't work like that in reality.
Realistically, if they had 3 carriers in service, they can at most surge 2 carriers in operation. They'd probably put the more capable carrier east of Taiwan and the less capable in SCS. The escorts will depend on which surface combatants are available, but I would imagine they need at 4 055s (and more if they have more than 8 in service), 1 075, 10 052C/Ds, 10 054As, half of their active 093s/Yuan. I'd expect an airwing of 24 to 30 J-35s, about 15 J-15/Ds + 4 KJ-600 and 6 to 10 helicopters for CV-18 in wartime. And it's proximity to China means they can swap out aircraft if it needs heavy maintenance, so they can keep up high availability among on board aircraft. It will also be so close to mainland that replenishment is never an issue.
They are also shocked to find out China has enough ground attack capabilities to knock out all of Taiwan's air defense and Ryuku bases. Or that China has a large MPA fleet.
Each fleet they show in there would probably suffice as a CSG on long deployment. But it wouldn't work like that in reality.
Realistically, if they had 3 carriers in service, they can at most surge 2 carriers in operation. They'd probably put the more capable carrier east of Taiwan and the less capable in SCS. The escorts will depend on which surface combatants are available, but I would imagine they need at 4 055s (and more if they have more than 8 in service), 1 075, 10 052C/Ds, 10 054As, half of their active 093s/Yuan. I'd expect an airwing of 24 to 30 J-35s, about 15 J-15/Ds + 4 KJ-600 and 6 to 10 helicopters for CV-18 in wartime. And it's proximity to China means they can swap out aircraft if it needs heavy maintenance, so they can keep up high availability among on board aircraft. It will also be so close to mainland that replenishment is never an issue.
I would presume the Chinese groups would be positioned such that for the US carriers to get within range the carriers would be in range of land based ASBMs.
It would a Modern day midway epic air sea battle.
Somehow I think that it's not the best use of 2 Chinese CSGs and (at that time, ~2035?) very limited J35 assets as they will be potentially facing up to 3 US CSGs in a pitched battle, with the potential draw/defeat allowing US stragglers to hit troop ferries going towards Taiwan with long range fire/air power, in this timeframe even the US would've been able to procure some number of HGVs. Unless China is able to completely overwhelm Taiwanese forces both rural and urban within 2 weeks to deter further action, a giant slugfest in the west pacific would be a risky move. Would a 'fleet in being' strategy work better here? Although if the US is determined enough a pitched battle would be inevitable anyhow, so it may be unavoidable after all.
I'm also not really convinced that the PLA would be able to plan and execute a attack completely by surprise, it would have gone way beyond normal sable rattling/probing before any hostile actions will have enough political capital to be executed, during which Japanese and US forces will no doubt surge in response. While the PLA is probably able to pick an exact time of attack that's not known by the US/Japan, they will not be able to control their preparedness level.
I can help with SQL stuff, optimizing joins/queries etc. if u guys need. If your DB is gonna have a public API, I'm definitely gonna be hooking into it with python and throwing it into my SQL server anyway lolz.
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Look at the distances shown.
It's about 600km from Taiwan, or 900km from the Chinese mainland to the Chinese CSGs. That is close enough for land-based aircraft to support.
The 2 carrier groups would be about 200-300 km from each other. That is close enough for both the carriers to support each other.