YourFatherThey’d have warnings from multiple sources – American-sourced info etc as well as HUMINT to confirm China’s intent. Besides, those exercises you mention; were all the manpower and equipment that was required for an invasion mobilized? All the invasion equipment loaded aboard ships, the fleets mobilised for war? You have deliberately avoided answering my question, because you know the answer.
YourFatherWhich you can mobilize, and still call back.
And do you know how many times tensions were high in the last ten years or so? How many large scale exercises China pulled in the vicinity? Exercises that included mock invasion attempts? What did Taiwan do exactly, given that Taiwan has a pretty jaded attitude even the PLA’s large scale exercises?
And were any of them on the scale needed for an invasion? HUMINT sources could have given them insight into the exercise’s true intent and thus they didn’t need to prepare a minefield.
And do all that without being tracked by vessels from the other side?
Now tell me how many mines and minelaying vessels the ROCN has? Don’t tell me about commercial vessels laying mines. Anyone who has the will to invest in a large inventory of mines and a mine laying strategy is going to have minelayers as a sign of it.
Well yes, mining can be done, even if China can track every small vessel, every one of them could possibly be a minelayer. And no, stop that lame attempt to deny Taiwan’s ability to use mines by insisting that minelaying requires minelayers. Iraq certainly didn’t use minelayers to lay their mines.
That vulnerability only assumes if you choose to arm the other side, which you may not if you have decided to deploy more defensive assets on the west side.
No, the landing fleet’s vulnerability increases due to the longer transit time a landing on Taiwan’s east requires. That means more exposure to Taiwan’s major vessels and airpower.
YourFatherDoesn’t work. China could mobilize forces under the guise of an exercise, and at the same time, having already gradually build up forces in the adjoining provinces.
So you’re saying that China would one day wake up in an ‘let’s go invade Taiwan!’ mood and fake an exercise and all of a sudden invade Taiwan?! ROTFLOL. One, tensions will already be high should China consider invasion. Taiwan will already be at alert status. Two, trying to fake an ‘exercise’ with the true intention to invade still means having to recall and mobilise the troops required for an invasion. A recall of that scale means nothing less than an invasion. If that’s not enough, third, HUMINT sources would confirm an impending invasion. So sorry to bust your wonder bubble.
How fast can you seed the minefields? How much? Does the ROCN have usch a minelaying capability? How much inventory of mines do they have? Once you deployed the mines, and its a false alarm, can you still get them back?
With mines able to be seeded from even commercial vessels, very very fast. And the location of mines can be determined accurately with GPS since the Taiwanese are the ones laying them. Yes, they can be retrieved, its not a light effort, but compared to the cost of getting invaded? Better to seed a minefield.
You have to consider that the west coast may also be invasion options. You can’t assume that they would be east coast only. Strategists will always do the unexpected and to counter them, you have to prepare for the unthinkable.
Yes, the Taiwanese strategists would likely have planned for such a possibility. But that doesn’t mean it is practical. Landing on Taiwan’s east coast means increasing the vulnerability of the amphib fleet many fold, which has so many implications to the success of the mission that one wonders if it is a viable consideration at all.
YourFatherThe problem of mines, is that you have to lay them ahead in anticipation of war. The problem is, how do you anticipate war? You want to lay mines and it turns out you don’t have a war at all? Mines is a weapon that cuts both ways; laying mines in the seas around Taiwan also means putting them in one of the most traffic sea lanes around the world, which means it will not only hurt their own merchant shipping—their own lifeline—but the collateral effects of the minelaying would spill to the shipping of other countries like S. Korea, Japan, and South East Asia.
First, war doesn’t occur all of a sudden – there will be a build-up of hostilities, and China will have to mobilise its troops if it does intend to invade. All of which take time, and that will be all the time needed to seed the minefields.
Second, international sea lanes do not go through the Taiwan Straits. It passes Taiwan’s east.
Finally, Taiwan won’t suffocate just because its ports are closed. Besides, there are ports on Taiwan’s east that allows critical supplies to be brought in.
YourFatherIf everyone envisoned a Taiwan invasion force on the behalf of the USMC model when applied via PLA, then I see no point in continuing the disscussion. When has PLA engaged in any war using anything similar to western tactics? Most, if not all current analysis of PLA is still based on western view of how PLA would fight the war had it been the US armed forces, and yet we forget that PLA thinks differently and act according to what tactical solution it can achieve and not what PLA hopes to gain if it was the US army.
The reason why the West do Amphib Warfare the way they do is because the lessons which led to such methods were learnt and paid for in blood. Oh of course, you could claim that the Chinese has the Chinese way of doing it… but logistics (and logistics is the whole problem in Amphib warfare) applies equally to China as it does to the West.
Most analysis also overestimates the advantages and equipement superiority of RoC forces. For one the latest deployment of the new amphibous light assult tanks an IFVs based on the universal chasis we can see that PLA does not want to attempt a WWII style beach head invasion with LST and such but with armour assult assets that crosses that last few KM on its own and thus not expose most of the transport to direct line of fire.
Doesn’t matter. Unless they can be launched over the horizon like the USMC’s AAAVs, amphib vessels are still subject to land-based attacks. In fact, even if they’re launched from over the horizon, Taiwan’s E-2Ts still can direct attacks onto China’s amphib assets.
You also didn’t address the need for the PLAMC to build up a beachhead – which would necessitate the LSTs coming in onto the beach. Can the PLA assure that its beachhead stay unscathed?
You also didn’t address how the amphibs would handle the problem of mines when the PLAN’s minesweeping capability is so low. That, and the fact that PLAN’s minesweeping would have to be done PRIOR to any amphib invasion, which would in turn give away at which point would the invasion come from, and allow for redeployment of ROC forces to repel the invasion.
Which brings us to the point that will PLAAF be supporting CAS roles during the assult and/or if ROCAF has enough assets after the first wave of missile attack to maintain sorties for CAP,CAS and wild weasel missions? My guess is that if we are discoulting Taiwan offensive weapons (i.e. a PLA initiative with no disruption to PLAAF operations and airfields), we can see that PLA may deploy most of its advanced assets and still maintain sortie rate while Taiwan has significantly reduced assets and sortie rate. What that means is Taiwan absolutely can not afford too lose air superiority in Taiwan air space and in order to achieve that it must focus all efforts on maintaining sorties for CAP missions and forgo all air support for ground forces.
Assuming away problems is not a good way to evaluate the chances of a successful invasion. Taiwan has had more than enough time to take precautions and build system redundencies against missile attacks. Can you be certain of their ineffectiveness?
By the way PLA have been focusing a lot on EW warfare and not only lately too. The latest military exercise included an blue opfor EW brigade that was situated only a few KM from red force warzone command to test close range high output disruption to command, communications and thus familiarize troops with these conditions. This implies the importance of EW that PLA envisioned with future opponents such as the US which have some of the best EW suit.
Uh, familiarizing PLA forces to running arond the beach like headless chickens?
The question could PLA win the war is relatively irralevant since it depend on too much factors with which we have no way of determining, much less measure its effects. But does PLA enjoy the advantage in such an engagement? I believe so.
You have no way of determining, but you believe PLA enjoys the advantage? The Faith is strong in you, young noo-b wan.
YourFatherAt first the expectations from UCAVs were for them to be expendable, since they were expected to be small and cheap. Now they are expected to be just as large as any manned plane, and not any cheaper. If one looks at the X-45/47, you see that every iteration got bigger in size. The quality now expected from UCAVs is persistence. And they are not expected to be expendable at all, considering the cost they are expected to come in at.
YourFatherConsidering how much trouble the aussies had over the Collins that could be attributed to poor swedish workmanship, I’d shut it if i were you.
YourFatherYou might want to check out the tech going on the SSGN, as well as USN’s PlusNet consept before going ‘bla bla’. Sweden has experience in brown water ASW, certainly among the best in the world, but the Gotland was not chosen because it was the best SSK, so stop being delusional. :rolleyes: The Collins and the Oyashios are better than the Gotland anyday. Other countries with better SSKs just happen to need their subs.
YourFatherThe USN has a whole bevy of technologies coming up that are targeted at SSK detection. Naturally they’d want an SSK to try out those techologies on to evaluate their effectiveness and feasibility.
YourFather$250~300 million includes R&D costs. That is the figure that Raptor critics like to use, of course, since it inflates the figures, but that’s really stupid considering R&D costs are already sunken costs.
YourFatherWe already keeps our old 209 at war condition for a decade….
Im more concern about wasting money on everexpensive Sigma then thse subs… a pair of corvette wont replace the decommisioned ahmad yani frigates
Unfortunately that’s a bit hard to believe with an Indonesian admiral claiming atrocious serviceability rates for Indonesia’s vessels just a few years back. (I cannot remember the numbers, but it was horrible enough to leave an impression in me) The problem is that subs are high maintenance items – they need care to maintain their acoustic stealth. If even the surface fleet was in that bad a condition, I don’t think the subs would have been any better at all.
BUT what happened is a pair of overexpensive corvette (that cost the same with 3 Talwar frigates) replacing 6 ex Van-Speijk
This is a problem in requirements specification and project management – it does not negate the requirement to patrol its waters. As I recall, both Indonesia and Malaysia were the most vocal in their opposition to USN patroling of the straits. IMO, that’s natural when one talks of sovereignty issues, but that means having to pull its weight in policing the straits and suppressing the piracy problem. Indonesia’s purchase of subs does not inspire confidence that it is placing much priority to the piracy problem.
Frankly, if not for that ‘incident’ btw Malaysia and Indonesia I think that getting those Malaysian manufactured Mekos might have been a good idea.
YourFatherOr they could be getting really serious on piracy… like blowing pirate boats out of the water with torpedoes, lol. Death from below!
YourFatherTheir incident with Malaysian warships some time back might have something to do with this. But I agree, this is a total waste of money. More patrol boats to put a lid on their piracy problem would make so much more sense…. Not as if they could maintain subs in warfighting condition anyway.
YourFatherIf the CV was only for protection of its oil supply lines. If. But China has used force a couple of times since WW2 to enforce its claims over disputed territory. Hardly a benign power it likes to portray itself to be. Which is why force projection platforms like CVs won’t go down too well with China’s neighbours.
YourFatherAdd the whole of the South China Sea to that too.
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