Interesting. The grey radome is something new. New type of radar perhaps? Either a different one from what is used on the PT 04 and 06, either a new model of a Chinese made one, or they went ahead and used a foreign system like the Grifo.

I wonder how are they able to “give” the plane to Pakistan if those are RD-93s.

Could just be that this is a ‘production’ model that will be delivered to the PAF or PLAAF. It would be a bit late and wasteful to try and intergrate a new radar when so much time and resources have just so recently been expended intergrating the original.

The tail of that bird is bothering me slightly. looks a little smudged. :confused:

Going into the strait would necessitate locating the following targets: aircraft, SAM sites, missile sites, and naval units. We can track aircraft with AWACS. SAM sites can be located using RC-135 or U-2 ELINT collectors. Missile sites can be located using JSTARS or U-2 imagery. Naval units can be tracked using other naval systems, or by using U-2 imagery or ELINT collection at longer range. Satellties don’t have to come into play for a limited-scale localized conflict like this.

And all those plateforms are vonerable to PLA assets. The PLA have shot down U2s decades ago and RC135s are unlikely to fair much better. Same goes with AWACS. The biggest problem the US would face is timing. The PLA knows that it will loose if it sits back and let the US propare and come at them in its own time. So its primary strategy is to suprise the US and force them to respond quickly by developing the ability to take Taiwan quickly. That way the US will not have the time to deploy a dozen carriers before it decides to fight. Nor will it have the time to get all those specialised gear in place.

Without going into too many details and getting us all arrested, my job would be just as easy as it is now if the satellites disappeared.

Don’t you think it is a little narrow minded to assume that everyone will all be able to get on just as well as you with or without sats?

A few hours, all you do on the U-2 is switch out the mission pods and the nose section for the most part. That’s standard procedure, the U-2 has a number of different sensor fits for various types of collection.

And acting as a data relay platform is already a functional role for the U2? As in that there is kit ready to be plugged into it right this minute? Also, what are the numbers available and how much data can they handle (roughly)?

Any large wave conditions like that will also interfere with radars scanning at that low a level as well.

Radars can aford to scan lower then cruise missiles can fly in any weather condition.

True, but you are looking at the views of the American public, which would be mostly irrelevant after the US military gets involved. Once that happens, if the politicians stick with it, then the military goes to work with full force to accomplish whatever goal is set before it. The determination and drive of the US military has little to do with the public opinion.

The US polititions who are in charge of the military will have to consider the public response before giving the green light for military action.

Because they still need to plan for a possible US Navy intervention. Heading out to sea with just a bunch of landing craft will get them nowhere when a carrier group or two rolls into town.

The sovs, maybe, but the 051C, 052Cs and even to an extent, the 052Bs would be unless against a US carrier battlegroup. If carriers show up, it is the air force and sub fleet who would be the ones tasked with sinking it. Any PLAN surface ships trying to get within missile range is just asking to be sunk.

They need support craft, and given their lack of real desire to invade Formosa anyway, they are also working towards a credible blue water navy to deal with other issues that are far more likely to necessitate a military action, such as the issue of the Spratly Islands which crops up every now and again.

I personally think that the Diaoyutai islands and Japan are the more likely true immediate purpose for these ships, with true blue water credentials and securing China’s long shipping lanes as the ultimate goal, but since you also agree that the PLA does not seem to be gearing up in prep to attack Taiwan, what the hell are we arguing about here?:p

Given the current status quo it would almost seem sensible for the Formosan separatists to give up the ghost and just reunite with the mainland and stop the charade.

Agreed. It was feared a few years back that Chen might gamble and declear independence in 2008 just before or during the Olympics, that would be the last, most likely case where war might break out. While it is still a possibility, politics on the Island and the ever increase evidence of PLA power should be enough to stop him and other separetists from doing anything truly stupid.

And as it grows, it will become inevitably more entangled with that of America, further lessening the chances of any sort of military confrontation.

Also true, and more reason why Taiwan independence would be less likely to occur and trigger war, as China and America become increasingly vital to each other’s continued prosperity, the forces in the US who support going to war over Taiwan would lessen.

And here we are in total agreement 😀

Lol.

But I have been in similar situations where SATCOM, for example, has gone down and you have to adapt and move on. Do we use satellites a lot? Yeah. But we also have backup systems and alternatives and train with them as well, so I still do not believe, based on my personal experiences, that the loss is going to be as bad as you think.

And how long were SATCOM out for? It is one thing to be able to make do with something else for short periods while a technical issue on a small scale is delt with, it is quite another to switch completely (as in the entire organisation) from one form of operation to another for the duration of a war and be able to function to the same level of effectiveness. It is true that there will be backups and I have no doubt that strategy and training has been developed. But truthfully, when looking at the scope and depth of the backup doctorin, is it really a comprehansive document that is as detailed and reliable as the primary training tool and combat strategies being used? Are your training on backup equipment even a tenth as long as you did with the primary? Are there even enough backups to equip your whole force?

Throughout history, armies had been caught out when a new development changes the entire playing field they are used to operating on, and like evolution, those at the very top who are most specialised to operating under the old rules will find the changes most detremental to their combat effectiveness and usually are the ones slowest to implement the changes needed to adapt to the new environment. You see, it is as much a change in philosophy as it is a material change, people are what win wars, and people tend to be less willing/able to the change the more successful/higher placed they are.

Your attitute is almost an examplification of the obsticals that stand in the way of highly successful organisations quickly adapting to new changes. You are supremely self confident of your own (as in the US military, not you personally) infalibility. That self beleif may be justified, but the odds aren’t good if we go by historical trends. So, just for laughs, when you are going about your daily duties, just try and think how things would work if there were no space assets to call upon. See if your backups are really as effective and comprehansive as you seem to think.

Fly a U-2 in the area with a SLAR fit and then you’ve got near real-time imagery. Same goes for a JSTAR, they can communicate via radio and datalink directly.

And how long would it take to rig all this up? Not to meantion ironing out all the bugs that might pop up. Even then there are likely to be any number of technical limitations like bandwidth, interferance, range etc.

The point was to bring up an alternative method. We have about as many of them in the real world as the Chinese do S-300Vs.

And how many are actionable within a matter of days? Because that would be the timeframe you would have to work to in the event of a PLA suprise attack. Any longer and the war would be over before you are ready to deploy your new toys.

Depends on the missile and the environment. This is not a blanket statement you can make by any means.

The missile’s flight path will have to be adjusted to take into account the different weather conditions as flying at 10 feet above sea level is not going to be all that smart when 10m waves. Search radars and IR/Thermal gear is always going to have a better chance of picking up the same bogey over water then over land.

Modern cruise missiles are not programmed with straight flight paths, that is just asking for them to be located and shot down.

There seems to have been a slight misunderstanding, and that is partly my fault for not wording my last response more clearly. I was speaking in engagement terms, as in that cruise missiles will not have the sense to start taking evasive manuovers onces a radar has locked onto it, and will still be on a strait course to the next waypoint. A perfect target for AAA once it has been detected.

A preemptive maneuver wouldn’t be out of the question in some scenarios.

Highly unlikely given the difference in capabilities between the two and the well demonstrated American attitude towards sneak attacks before formal hostilities have been decleared. Right now and for many decades to come, China could not hope to beat the US in any fight if the US is totally determined in winning it. However, the key to the Taiwan issue is that Americans do not see it as a fundermental principle that they absolutely must fight and die to defend, unlike the Chinese. It is said victory goes to he who wants victory the most, he who beleive in it the fiercest, and there are fewer better examples then here.

Impossible? No. Likely? Also no.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree there and hope we don’t find out for sure.

Then why plan for one in the first place if it isn’t your ultimate goal?

Because it is a means to an end, and also to act as an insurance. Face it, if China did not have a credible military, those who dream of independence on Taiwan would have decleared independence already. Most in the west only remember the missiles China shot over Taiwan in 95 and point to that as evidence of the evilness of the commies. Few realise that that impotent guesture was out of desperation after the realisation that the PLA could do little more to stop Taiwan’s formal secession (it was also then that the possibility of Taiwan independence really hit home amounts China’s top leaders), examplified by Clinton ordering a US carrier to sail through the straits as a show of force. It was the 91 gulf war that started the PLA modernisation process, but it was this incident that really injected purpose and momentum into it, in effect, this was the defining fulcrum on which the pace and purpose of modernisation of the PLA shifted to what we see today.

What? Build one vessel and then a whole mess of them? I don’t see why not.

The timing and quantity likely to be ordered. If the PLA was really working towards an invasion countdown, why would the much more expensive and complicated, yet mostly redundent 051C, 052C etc take precedent over far more useful assault and beach bombardment ships?

The rhetoric that comes out of both camps when the Formosan separatists talk about independance?

There was an aweful lot of rhetoric from both the US and France before the invasion of Iraq. Did you think the two might come to blows?

Everyone says what they precieve will yeild them the most benefit at the time, only interest and power are fixed. It is not in China’s interest to fight a war to gain something it see as will one day be its anyways, and it is not in the power of those seeking independence on Taiwan to gain it by force, as such, there is going to be peace unless something really unexpected and pivital happens.

Or, the US will alter its defensive strategies. You can’t expect them to sit still and do nothing either.

If China’s economy continues to grow at its current (or even a much more modest) rate, then there is little the US can do to maintain the size of its current military edge. It might well be able to maintain a military superiority over China for many decades to come, but with each passing year, that edge will become smaller, and thus the direct costs from a military confrontation with China will grow larger for the US, making it less likely that America would be willing to fight China over something few Americans truely give a damn about.

Zero. Example a JDAM is an inertial navigation kit that is GPS assisted. If it doesn’t aquire the GPS signals after release the INS still takes it to the target. GPS refreshes the INS periodically. Longer bomb flight times without GPS means a larger CEP. With a GBU-31 series ( 2000lb weight ) for many targets this is less of an issue. Most drops from 30k-40k ft are a minute or less. Where with most INS systems that don’t receive an update, you can be off as much as a mile per hour of flight depending on the platform and other outside influence. So a minute of flight isn’t so bad. GPS with one update on the way down for JDAM helps give it the sub 4 meter CEP it is now known for.
On targets that will tollerate it, radar assisted JDAM bombing from the likes of B-1, B-2, F-18E/F etc give better CEP on shorter bomb flight times than GPS assist. Where before release the radar painted targets INS position is pumped into the JDAM before release, this radar aquired cord. is much more accurate than the one generated by some mission planning software back at base or many times a cord from other NCW sources. GPS denial on JDAM/SDB for the most part, means shorter fly times if one wants to be accurate with the smaller weapons like SDB. SDB II with imaging, JSOW with the unitery warhead, JASSM with the imaging nose, SLAM-ER with the same imaging seeker also won’t be put out of the game completely by an unavailability of GPS.
Cruise missiles. Their primary guidance is always what it has been before the GPS era: INS with radar mapping assist. ( example: Desert Storm, sending TLAMs into the Iranian mountains for a radar mapping update before going into Iran. ) GPS on these now only acts as a backup that has to be confirmed within a reasonable range of the radar mapping update.
CBU-105_SFW_BLU-108b_WCMD is INS only, no GPS.
So the risk management on GPS for PGMs is not so bad. Our land forces would suffer more from GPS denial…initially.

All that means getting closer to the target to achieve comparible levels of accuracy. This isn’t Iraq you are talking about, where the worst you might expect is some decades old, poorly maintained MANPAD to be shot at you. Need I spell out the implications for you?

T-LAM or CALCM will work perfectly fine regardless of the weather or other conditions.

And the percentage these weapons take up in US munitions stock is?

No satellites=no problem. Or at least nowhere near the problem you’re trying to make it sound like. Like I said before, we can use other means to gather intelligence, and we can use other weapons to hit targets. Navigation will not be affected, and neither will a lot of other things.

You seriously expect the US military to be able to operate to the same or even a similar level of effectiveness regardless of the presence of sats or not? :rolleyes:

Come on mate, if sats are really that redundent, why does the US have 400+ of them up there at all?

Also, having a backup does not mean that that backup will work just as well as the primary or that your troops will be able to use it effectively. Go ask any US commander in Iraq or Afgansitan to go a week without using any space assets and he’ll tell you where to stick it as it will cost him lives. And that is fighting a gurilla force with no central leadership or much in the way of advanced weapons.

Also, there’s always this type of system if replacements are needed quickly: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1753076/posts

Do you really think it will come anywhere close to that? China doesn’t have the means to take out all US sats yet, nor is it likely to even try to develop such a capacity. Besides, when it comes to the point where the US needs to start putting up new sats in a hurry, chances are CEO would already be too chocked with spacejunk for sats to operate in anyways.

Basically an Ohio-class SSGN is the real counter to this. A cruise missile platform you can’t find, with over 100 missiles ready to fly using TERCOM guidance. What you really need in that case is a submersible launcher that detaches from the SSGN and lies on the ocean floor in the straits between China and Formosa. When missiles are needed, tell it to open up and fire.

If you put an Ohio in the straits, then the PLAN top brass would be the first to come shake your hand for giving them such a handsome prize. The PLAN has enough deseils to dominate that stretch of water, and the geography of the area means that deseils will enjoy major advanatges over nuke subs in the shallow waters of the strait and being so close to PLAN land based ASuW assets.

The Ohio might be able to sneak in and stay hidden, but as soon as it start shooting tomahawks, its going to bring every lurking Kilo, Song and Yuan on its head.

Cruise missiles are also not that stealthy over water, and it will be a hard ask for many of those missiles to get past the layed SAM and AAA defences the PLA has in that area.

Turn off the public? The public is turned off on Iraq, yet we show no sign of leaving…and in this scenario, China would be committing a valid act of war by downing a US satellite. All the media has to do is paint the Chinese leadership as a bunch of Kim Jong-il crazy types to turn public opinion towards the idea.

Ha, I love it twisted ‘logic’ here. :rolleyes: The US sends its carriers and bombers to fight in someone else’s civil war and it is the other side that is committing an act of war by daring to shoot down a few sats? :rolleyes:

The US public is opposed to the war in Iraq despite every effort to link it to the war on terror and implications that airliners will start raining on their heads if the US pull out. It has cost the republicans both houses and very likely the white house as well. And all that is from 3,000 deaths in 4 years. Do you think thousands dead in the first days or weeks with project worse case scenario American deaths reaching the 100 million+ would generate the same level of public opposition?

As I said before, Americans can be indifferent to killing others for dubious causes, but when American lives are lost and their own safety are directly threatened by the misadvantures of the administration in fighting far away wars, the US public start to fight to put a stop to it. It has happened during Vietnam, and if it will ever happen again, it will be at the prospect of fighting Russia or China.

No more optimistic than someone who thinks an ASAT that downed a target in LEO around 500km up will be able to take out the GPS constellation orbiting around 35,000km up.

Come on, the distances are nowhere near as big a factor as the pure numbers might suggest to those with little knowledge of the physics. The key to direct asscent ASAT weapons in the targeting. In space, where there is no air resistance and where gravity forces start to become less of a factor, it would not take much of an improvement to go from 500km to 50,000km range, and I seriously doubt you wouldn’t know that.

Besides, the key to Chinese occupation of Formosa is an amphibious landing capability that can get an occupation force across the water and onto the island very rapidly. Take care of that and you won’t need to bother with firing off an ASAT.

The key to a successful invasion of Taiwan is non-US interferance. Take possible US intervention out of the equation and the PLA can send its troops over in fishing boats for all it would matter.

The PLA can take Taiwan and most likely could have done it for quite a few years now. But such an operation would likely take months to complete with its current forces. That would be more then enough time for the US to redeploy enough forces to be able to have the overwhelming advanatge it needs to have the confidence to get involved.

One way around that is to develop a fast attack method as you have suggested, whereby the PLA take the island within a matter of weeks. That means that the US would be forced to choose to respond with the forces it have in region and risk a humilating and costly defeat, or to try and launch an amphibious invasion of Taiwan months later after the PLA has taken it. Which, if anything, its going to be a far more costly and risky endever. Thus it is hoped that the US would weigh up the risks and costs and decide Taiwan is better off being governed by Beijing. But the fundermental driving force for a quick invasion is to try and force the US to not get involved directly.

If China was pursueing such a strategy, it would be building a dozen new assault ships instead on one, frigates instead of destroyers.

What China is doing instead is trying to develop a force that can stand up to the US in a square fight and at least be able to inflict unacceptable losses on the US. That way, everyong, including those with dreams of independence will see how unlikely US intervention is, and thus would take a more consolitory stance and help to work out terms for unification that would be acceptable for all instead of fighting tooth and nail to scupper any hopes of peaceful intergration.

Because China does not want a war in the straits if there is any way to avoid it, dispite what some with alterior motives might say.

There won’t be any satellites taken out. Reason? Any such act, required in our plans, means we spool up for a nuclear response. China isn’t that dumb.

And the US is willing to go to a full blown nuclear war with a garenteed US death toll in the tens to hundred million+ over a few sats? :rolleyes: Get real. China is not some helpless none-nuclear country that the US can nuke with impunity.

China start taking out US sats, US starts taking out Chinese sats and maybe a B2 flight or two to take out major Chinese spaceports and related factories. Much more beyound that would bring an unacceptably high chance of escalation into something no-one in their right minds would want.

But this is mostly a deterant weapon. It exponentially increases the costs and vastly reduces the likely success rate of US military intervention in Taiwan, thus reducing the likihood of direct US military intervention. That is the real goal with the test.

Not unless they want to try to carry the bomb onto a passenger jet. Or were you going to use an ICBM and nuke a city to get the factory? :rolleyes:

Cruise missiles fired from a sub near the US coast could do it, or a number of other scenarios I can think of ottomh.

Taiwan would disagree.

And Iran would disagree with the ‘illegality’ of China selling them ASAT weapons. The difference being Iran is a formal member of the UN and undisputed soverign nation while not even the USA recognises Taiwan’s formal existance as a bonafide country.