Hammerbolt
Donor
Not to mention man them. Considering Japan's problems with it's birth rate, in another 20 years it may actually find problems to man even a "normal" fleet...
Could a defeat against Taiwan trigger the fall of communist China?
- Thread starter Gancio The Ranter
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- china communism pacific rim taiwan war
Not to mention man them. Considering Japan's problems with it's birth rate, in another 20 years it may actually find problems to man even a "normal" fleet...
BlondieBC
Banned
As to the second point, my scenario specifically had Taiwan having great days on the first few days.
As to the second point, I doubt 2000 pound bombs do much against the main body of the dam. I was talking about a strike against the ship locks that bypass the dam. That combined with outer secondary damage such as busting a couple flood gates open would probably make river transport impossible but still not destroy the dam. We did this to a couple of Nazi dams by accident if my memory serves me right.
Anyway these were not my main points. If we assume Taiwan is winning in the air and Taiwan has some deep strike ability into China, then the Taiwanese will likely systematically go after some target to try to break China. Electric grid, rivers based shipping, RR network. Something. And it will be the cumulative effect of a system failing that is much more likely to break the back of the communist party than losing a couple hundred thousand troops, a few dozen ships and a few hundred airplanes. If all Taiwan does is inflict military losses on China, China will have a few bad years then be back, stronger than ever.
BlondieBC
Banned
Because 250 planes over 150 days would seem capable of 4500 sorties. It is a rate of like one attack every 8 days per F-16.
BlondieBC
Banned
USA did it twice on December 7th, 1941 (PI and Pearl). We did it again on September 11th. Our Air Force is considered pretty good. Egypt did it in 1967. Syria did it in 1983 or so. Seems like Pakistan did it in one war with India. Soviets did it over a week in 1941. Whole theater size Air Forces just fall apart over a day or a few days.
ITTL, more battles are lost than won. We accept this easily. But when we get to ATL, we assume only battles are won. Or we at least do that in our analysis. We are talking about a hypothetical war sometime over a 50 year period. It just might well be true that the head of the Taiwanese Air Force is the 95th percentile type guy and the most senior Chinese general is the 10th percentile type guy who got their because he is good at communist party politics.
BlondieBC
Banned
No, I am assuming max effort on first day, and good luck/planning. After that, for the deep strike, I am assuming well under 10% of assets used for these missions.
Air Forces really should view their planes like Capital Ships. Just like a BB could not be replaced during a short war, neither can air losses. Neither really can SAM batteries. If things start going badly for one side, they can just snowball since losses can't be replaced in time frames measured in less than years. At least not significant replacements.
Hammerbolt
Donor
There was proper radar cover (or at least no one that could use it) in 1941, in those areas. There certainly were no AWACS. To compare this with modern conditions is... well...
As for Israel vs the rest, again no AWACs or a radar network capable of detecting high speed low level targets. This is agravated in the north, by the ability to use the Golan Heights for cover, in either direction.
Same with Pakistan vs India: no AWACs, mountains.
This is 2018: China has 3 diferent models of AEW aircraft, plus multiple airborne EW posts. I'll bet good money some of these are flying directly opposite Taiwan 24/7. Add gods-know-how many ground radar stations, as well as whatever ships sailing between the 2 shores. There is no way such an air armada could go undetected on launch.
And again, why won't the PLAAF have great days on the first few days instead? They're part of a combined strike force (that includes things like the PLARF bombing Taiwan airfield around the clock) with stand off weapons, while the ROCAF has to pretty much come within short range SAM range to bomb Mainland targets, and then dodge various PLAAF SAMs on the way out (and in).
Even if the ROCAF looses only 2 planes a day (even if nothing gets shoot down, fighter aircraft develop technical problems and crash), they're totally screwed by 150 day of the Mainland Blitz.
Isn't it an open secret that the ROC military is hopelessly compromised my the PRC espionage agencies?
Pages 31-51 of this RAND study shows that a barrage of sub-munition equipped SRBMs can at the very least temporarily shutdown the ROCAF's airfields, giving other PLAAF/PLARF/PLANAF assets enough time to blast the airbases.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG888.pdf
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG888.pdf
Getting back to this.
No outside interference obviously means the US fleet is off somewhere else and cannot respond, which covers a lot of territory. Is there a major war started in Europe, or south western Asia? I also assume the US or others take no economic actions either. this is borderline ASB, but I'll accept it for this post. However
The actual question here is if a military defeat of the invasion causes the fall of the CCCP. The answer for the present is in the lack of any other viable political group to replace the CCCP. As was pointed out the CCCP in China is divided into multiple groups, but any that would gain leading power over a group pushing a failed invasion, would still be CCCP. It would in most scenarios be in their best interest to continue using that name, and to continue using the present beurocracy, internal security organization, .. that is nothing significant changes. It is not impossible, tho not probable that extreme economic consequences, or perhaps some unrelated economic crisis causes the CCCP and the buerocracy to fall apart, leading to a splintered China, another sort of warlord era, that may end quickly, or drag on a decade before some new different titled political group takes control of everything.
The fall of the CCCP may not occur right away in the above case. It took repeated crisis before the Qing dynasty was decapitated. Even with that the administrative apparatus remained more or less intact for a time, & it fell apart slowly. So, unless there are other powerful crisis at work I don't see the CCCP 'falling' right away. Even were there some sort of deep economic shock I'd predict the 'replacement' of the CCCP to be a relatively slow affair, covering a decade or more.
Difficult to judge. The KMT made such claims to justify rigorous police activity. Such internal security was used by the KMT to suppress Communits, and other political opposition. No doubt today there are many CCCP agents or sympathizes on Taiwan, but exactly how many would be actively aiding a Chinese invasion is a tough question.
Actually, it's been stated US policy since the Second Bush Administration that the US will not intervene if Taiwan goes off and declares independence or starts some other wacky hijinks.
This thread doesn't assume that the invasion is caused by Taiwan declaring independence. As others posters have stated the PRC will probably attack the ROC as soon as practicable.
RousseauX
Donor
Assume attrition loss of 10-15% (basically the rate of USAAF bombers in 1942-43) how many sorties can you mount before attacks become ineffective?
So first attack let's assume cumulative loss is 30 or so, then you are down to 220 for the second strike.
If you carry this forward you are down to 50% strength within the first 4-5 air strikes. And as your air strength is attrition, you can expect higher casualty rates since you are losing "mass" in each of your strikes. So your air strikes are losing strength and making it easier for enemies to pick off the smaller air strikes.
This isn't as much a problem in WWII with the US when the allies were bombing Germany because US has enormous capacity to replace losses, the same isn't true of Taiwan, once a fighter goes down it's staying down. Not even the US today could re-supply them at rate fast enough to replace those losses.
4,500 sorties over southern China is way, way off base.
RousseauX
Donor
So you are assuming on day 1 the Taiwanese air force can....take out all air defenses in southern China, even though Chinese AA missles currently blanket the entirely of the Taiwanese island and China's modern airplanes outnumber and probably out quality the F-16s?
Which is insane, you have to assume there's no Chinese air force/AA defense in operation then, because a couple of squadrons of F-16s flying over southern China are easy pickings for operational Chinese air groups/AA defenses.
yeah in theory you are losing less planes if you assume it's always 10-15% attrition rate, but sending out small piecemeal attacks like that also risk you lose the entire squadron or two.
Your assessment is actually not too bad if this was 2003 or so, but the PLAF is -a lot- stronger in 2018 than 2003
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RousseauX
Donor
1) The problem is that in none of those cases did the defending side have AA missiles/surface to surface Missiles blanketing the attacking side's air assets
2) China is a lot larger than the examples you give, even if you wipe out the southern air bases, China can always shift air groups based in the north which are outside the range of F-16s
The OP did not specify that it had to happen today.
When was the point of maximum ROC strength vs the PRC?
What events could force the PRC in that context to attempt an invasion of Taiwan?? Obviously the more people who have to be drinking lead paint the less likely it is but then have you seen some of the unlikely events that have happened in OTL......