Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura The idiot

Jura The idiot

General
delft said:
I am well aware of them. I remember were I was, baby sitting, when the Egyptian navy sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967. That was, after the use of guided missiles by the Luftwaffe in WWII in sinking a.o. the Italian battleship Roma, the first use of guided missiles against a warship. Two Komars fired four Styx missiles of which one came too late to hit Eilat.
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I remembered the year correctly, but the events more like those described at
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I add I read just one article on this topic, so I don't claim anything ... in fact until now I wrongly thought this action had been part of
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I speculate the use of FACs by the Taiwanese would be the part of a "reversed hedgehog" strategy which, if used, should mean to harass the less protected units of the sailing Opfor and, once the Opfor landed, again only harass it (by howitzers fire etc.), to mount a massive counter-strike later, against the Opfor trying to develop in the interior ... just my armchair-admiraling and -generalling ... I think I said it before, it's an interesting problem of "how to be defending indefensible"
 
D

delft

Brigadier
Jura said:
I speculate the use of FACs by the Taiwanese would be the part of a "reversed hedgehog" strategy which, if used, should mean to harass the less protected units of the sailing Opfor and, once the Opfor landed, again only harass it (by howitzers fire etc.), to mount a massive counter-strike later, against the Opfor trying to develop in the interior ... just my armchair-admiraling and -generalling ... I think I said it before, it's an interesting problem of "how to be defending indefensible"
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China wouldn't want to invade Taiwan. It should be enough to close the ports and airports of the island which, as the sovereign power, China has the authority to do. It can also destroy naval vessels at sea and attack naval ports. Damaging air bases might be unnecessary.
 
Jura The idiot

Jura The idiot

General
delft said:
China wouldn't want to invade Taiwan.
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I note I said 'Opfor' Today at 12:20 PM

in your scenario:
delft said:
It should be enough to close the ports and airports of the island which, as the sovereign power, China has the authority to do. It can also destroy naval vessels at sea and attack naval ports. Damaging air bases might be unnecessary.
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I think those FACs would be sent to engage the blockading warships and hoped to survive, go back to the coast to spots for refueling, rearming (I mean outside of ports)

the bottom line is any commercial traffic would be stopped anyway
 
D

delft

Brigadier
Jura said:
I note I said 'Opfor' Today at 12:20 PM

in your scenario:
I think those FACs would be sent to engage the blockading warships and hoped to survive, go back to the coast to spots for refueling, rearming (I mean outside of ports)

the bottom line is any commercial traffic would be stopped anyway
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There cannot be another Opfor as that would be hit by Chinese countermeasures.
There will not be any blockading warships as declaring a blockade is tantamount to recognizing the other party as an independent state. The main blocking factor will be that no ship or aircraft going to the island would be insured. The sea around the island and the air above it could be declared No Go areas and the few ships and aircraft entering can be intercepted and forced to go to China.
 
Jura The idiot

Jura The idiot

General
delft said:
There will not be any blockading warships as declaring a blockade is tantamount to recognizing the other party as an independent state. The main blocking factor will be that no ship or aircraft going to the island would be insured. The sea around the island and the air above it could be declared No Go areas and the few ships and aircraft entering can be intercepted and forced to go to China.
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that easy?
I think Taiwan would go for your 'interceptors', so I think the Opfor would need to take out the airfields, too (in addition to the ports you already mentioned Today at 12:46 PM), and there would be a struggle for the air dominance ... I think it's not allowed here to be more specific so delft if you want, send me a Private Message
(but since I'm not going to either a landing craft to sail toward Taiwan beach or to a machine gun nest to shoot at said landing craft, I may just leave it :)
 
S

Skywatcher

Captain
Jeff Head said:
They invested money into a high tech vessel. It is a stealthy catamaran, that carries 16 ASMs and was more of a tech demonstrator.

Now they have decided what they want to do with it, and that means they are going to make it a little bigger and decent AAW capabilities to it and a decent radar system and battle management suite.

Having twelve of them will be a good thing for Taiwan.

Any time you try and step up to higher tech...you have to spend money...particularly a small nation like Taiwan that is never going to build larger ships in any great numbers...so that means the ones they do build are expensive.

Here's how that first one looks:

View attachment 37912

View attachment 37913

View attachment 37914

Now, Taiwan has a much smaller, true FAC class, that has four ASMs and is pretty stealthy too.

View attachment 37915

View attachment 37916

They built thirty of these.

So, having one of those larger corvette/frigate sized vessel accompany a small flotilla of these smaller vessels and provide air coverage to them, plus 16 more missiles, would make for a decent surface group...all of which would be fairly stealthy, and carry a large bang for their buck.

Fuur of the small one plus grouped wth one of the larger ones means 32 ASMs Something any potential adversary would have to respect.
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Buying 12 FACs for $2 billion isn't a very good choice of investment. A smaller, but more numerous amounts of FACs would be far more survivable (since a 300 ton or 600 ton FAC is equally dead if hit by any OTH AShM).

The Taipei Times noted that the original Tuo FAC had severe problems with overloading from the missiles (presumably 16 HF-III loadout) and adding on a MRSAM capability on a catamaran hull won't help with that department, even with a 100 ton increase in displacement. It's trying to do too much on too little real estate (a 1,000-1,500 ton monohull would have been more realistic, and you could reasonably push it up to very fast speeds).

The Tuo River concept would have worked, if they'd cut the size of those bloody things in half. Given that apparently the prototype was supposed to have been less heavily armed (according to the Taipei Times article, I'll have to go dig a link up) but some higher up decided it needed 16 missiles, my guess is that for reasons of face, they decided to stick with the catamaran hull, inside of switching to a proper corvette hull for the TC-2 add on.
 
D

delft

Brigadier
Jura said:
that easy?
I think Taiwan would go for your 'interceptors', so I think the Opfor would need to take out the airfields, too (in addition to the ports you already mentioned Today at 12:46 PM), and there would be a struggle for the air dominance ... I think it's not allowed here to be more specific so delft if you want, send me a Private Message
(but since I'm not going to either a landing craft to sail toward Taiwan beach or to a machine gun nest to shoot at said landing craft, I may just leave it :)
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The qualitative and quantitative differences between the parties are too large
 
MwRYum

MwRYum

Major
In any case it'll require a significant investment to even meet the deadline, and definitely not with the current budget that's below 2% GDP.
 
Jeff Head

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Skywatcher said:
Buying 12 FACs for $2 billion isn't a very good choice of investment. A smaller, but more numerous amounts of FACs would be far more survivable (since a 300 ton or 600 ton FAC is equally dead if hit by any OTH AShM). .
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Well,,, that's your opinion.

Have you ever worked wth the engineers and researchers in Taiwan?

I have. IN the mid to late 1990s.

They are smart people and know what they are about.

If they feel they need these upgraded vessels with more heavy air defense along with their powerful anti-surface weaponry, to go along with the numerous modern FACs (actual small missile boats) they have already built, then they have plenty of good reason to.

Whether you think they should or not.

...and I think the cost for twelve of them will end up being appreciably less than 2 billion US dollars.

Time will tell.
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Jeff Head said:
Well,,, that's your opinion.

Have you ever worked wth the engineers and researchers in Taiwan?

I have. IN the mid to late 1990s.

They are smart people and know what they are about.

If they feel they need these upgraded vessels with more heavy air defense along with their powerful anti-surface weaponry, to go along with the numerous modern FACs (actual small missile boats) they have already built, then they have plenty of good reason to.

Whether you think they should or not.

...and I think the cost for twelve of them will end up being appreciably less than 2 billion US dollars.

Time will tell.
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I think the onus on the procurement decision rests on the politicians and the military/naval brass rather than engineers and researchers.

I'm sure their engineers and researchers are all very competent, but there are many nation's with military programmes which have been poorly thought out or poorly executed from the outset due to unrealistic requirements or illogical conops from the military and/or due to political factors.


In the case of this plan of the ROC Navy to develop an air defence capable variant of the Tuo Chiang corvette, every bone in my body suggests to me that a ship with that kind of conops, for their defence posture seems poorly thought out. I'm sure their engineers will be able to develop such a ship and their shipbuilders will be able to build it and I'm sure it'll work the way the navy wants it to. But the last part is the problem -- does having such a ship work in the way the navy wants it to make sense?
 
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