Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Gloire_bb said:

SPG is useful before the landing, during the attempt to contain/destroy the beachhead(s), and in follow-up fighting afterward. If everything went that far, and they're still somehow around - howitzers are useful in ambushes and/or in city fights in a direct fire role.

SPGs, among other long-ranged assets, ensure the utility of minefields. Unlike many others - SPGs won't really be countered by EW and AA umbrella, and can be annoying even through smokescreens; the only means of silencing them is suppression/destruction. Which they're designed to evade.
SPG, as the most survivable form of heavy artillery, are a pain in the (***) just because they exist somewhere: they're one of the factors informing deployment points(how far out in the sea are they). You don't want to float your landing craft/amphibs and form attack waves under sustained fire. The longer attackers are in the sea, the worse, but it has to be this way.
SPG can engage landing craft when they're performing their landing runs - full of dismounts and unable to fight back - and when it'll be especially hard to counter them(least amount of available fire, highest need of suppression). Guided projectiles make them particularly nasty.
SPG can attack marines after landing, when they're at their most vulnerable. At this point, Defender still enjoys fire superiority over 122mm amphibious howitzers of first waves - and, arguably, at the last moment when defender actually has a chance to contain the landing.
SPG will simply perform normal high-intensity land combat afterward. They're still annoying to counter, and the land army absolutely can't fight without artillery support.

Yes, guns will be suffering losses, probably quite fast, at all stages. It's kinda normal for them, as it was for many centuries.
ASMs, air defense systems, and coastal ASMs perform completely different roles.

All in all: no, this is a serious purchase with serious implications. And it has to be taken as such.

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BoraTas said:

I can see your reasoning but I don't agree. Taiwan doesn't have a high-end defense industry and its economic size is around 4% of China's. It should be learning from Iran instead and focus on asymmetric capabilities. Buying export grade American hardware won't do any good for it. It is very likely that we will watch another Azerbaijan-Armenia or Turkey-Syria if Taiwan keeps its spending this way.

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another Azerbaijan-Armenia or Turkey-Syria if Taiwan keeps its spending this way

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steel21 said:

What da fuck are Paladins going to do in a Taiwan scenario?

I doubt the M109s, converted or otherwise can get fueled, basic combat load and roll out of the motorpool before getting slammed by whatever long range munition PLA has.

That's $750m down the drain and not being used to buy more expedient weapons/munitions. It's almost like they are doing China a favor.

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Gloire_bb said:

Comparing it to China is one way of looking at things.
Another one is that Taiwan has an economy of Turkey for a fraction of its territory, no land borders, significant geographical buffer, and one and only opponent. This is...convenient? Taiwanese problems are both insurmountable and... straightforward and relatively simple(compared, for example, to China itself), which leads to the possibility of setting reasonable(and thus - achievable) goals.

+while Taiwan by itself has almost negligible chances to win - there is a possible US - and, as of recently, Japanese - intervention. I don't really want to dive into this topic too much, because there is a separate topic for that; but its still important to mention, that dragging things out as much as possible does make a lot of sense from the Taiwanese perspective.

one big detail, though, since it's unavoidable:

Azerbaijan-Armenia was a 1.5 month long, hard, tooth-and-nail fighting, which was stopped by a direct intervention of a 3rd power.
Just check the orders of battle of forces actually engaged(and combat units within them) - both sides lost very sizeable amounts of their combat capacity.
It's a big problem with the Karabakh war: thanks to drone videos, it's often understood as a funny drone shooter game with human targets on black&white screens.
It really wasn't. It was a bloody mess, where drones played a significant role.


Turkey-Syria ... ergh, drone videos be drone videos again, but it's quite difficult to even figure out who really won there. At least from the point of gained ground - it certainly wasn't the "drone side". Again, in the end, 3rd party intervened.

It's worth noting, that 3rd party intervention is exactly the last thing Mainland China needs.

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ohan_qwe said:

3rd party could intervene because of their size and power in those conflicts. Not as easy of a calculation if the 3rd parties have less or same local firepower compared to China.

Russia-Ukraine is a better analogy strength wise.

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ohan_qwe said:

3rd party could intervene because of their size and power in those conflicts. Not as easy of a calculation if the 3rd parties have less or same local firepower compared to China.

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ohan_qwe said:

3rd party could intervene because of their size and power in those conflicts. Not as easy of a calculation if the 3rd parties have less or same local firepower compared to China.

Russia-Ukraine is a better analogy strength wise.

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plawolf said:

GPS guidance kits does fuck all against landing ships at sea. These are not meant to try to take pop shots at landing ships but to hit the beachheads.

The problem with SPG or any artillery is that counter battery radars are a thing.

You fire off rounds towards a beachhead during an invasion and PLAN escort warships will immediately have counter battery fire coordinates to send shells right back at you. Being mobile does fuck all when return fire can hit you before you can see pack up and go.

And all of that is assuming any of these SPGs gets anywhere close to firing range of a PLA invasion beachhead.

Drones are a thing these days, and the PLA can and will saturate any landing zone with UCAVs before, during and after a landing such that anything remotely military will get hit the moment it does anything.

The few shells that might be lobbed towards the landing will be easily handled by CIWS of the escorts fleet.

This is just another American cash grab from Taiwan with some political brinkmanship thrown in. In terms of actual military value, it’s pretty minimal and will probably end up actively detracting from Taiwan’s overall combat potential by eating away funds that could and would have been used on far more impactful domestic systems like AShMs and SAMs.

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Gatekeeper said:

The possibilities of 3rd party intervening is as remote as me winning the lottery. Someone need to get real about this.

If the U.S. has such vast superior navy fleet (which they have). That they think they can overcome China's home turf advantage. Then why don't they just get us out of our misery, and make a catogory unambiguous statement that they WILL defend Taiwan come what may.

And in doing so, they don't have to keep telling China and the world, that they are coming from "the position of strength"! Lol



On reflection. I think we should take a leaf out of Napoleon's playbook:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

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SPG is useful before the landing, during the attempt to contain/destroy the beachhead(s), and in follow-up fighting afterward. If everything went that far, and they're still somehow around - howitzers are useful in ambushes and/or in city fights in a direct fire role.

SPGs, among other long-ranged assets, ensure the utility of minefields. Unlike many others - SPGs won't really be countered by EW and AA umbrella, and can be annoying even through smokescreens; the only means of silencing them is suppression/destruction. Which they're designed to evade.
SPG, as the most survivable form of heavy artillery, are a pain in the (***) just because they exist somewhere: they're one of the factors informing deployment points(how far out in the sea are they). You don't want to float your landing craft/amphibs and form attack waves under sustained fire. The longer attackers are in the sea, the worse, but it has to be this way.
SPG can engage landing craft when they're performing their landing runs - full of dismounts and unable to fight back - and when it'll be especially hard to counter them(least amount of available fire, highest need of suppression). Guided projectiles make them particularly nasty.
SPG can attack marines after landing, when they're at their most vulnerable. At this point, Defender still enjoys fire superiority over 122mm amphibious howitzers of first waves - and, arguably, at the last moment when defender actually has a chance to contain the landing.
SPG will simply perform normal high-intensity land combat afterward. They're still annoying to counter, and the land army absolutely can't fight without artillery support.

Yes, guns will be suffering losses, probably quite fast, at all stages. It's kinda normal for them, as it was for many centuries.
ASMs, air defense systems, and coastal ASMs perform completely different roles.

All in all: no, this is a serious purchase with serious implications. And it has to be taken as such.

Click to expand...

drowingfish said:

because doing so will prompt taiwan to move on independence then force America's hand. even if america does intend on fighing china over taiwan it will not do that until it wants to.

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