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ronya posted:Hot take: biggest shock for the neoconservative perspective in Beijing (as indicated in, say, People's Daily editorials since the war broke out) is the failure to predict the European inclination to supply Ukraine with weapons; there's a distinct absence of a 2003-style (or even 1999-style) wave of disaffection against America or NATO expansion as the culprit of tensions and as responsible for dialogue breaking down. Even as Macron continues to channel l'autonomie strategique, there is no enthusiasm to autonomously decide to yield to Russian "legitimate security concerns", even in the face of Russian gas ties and possible impacts to European growth; electoral prospects for pro-Russian leaders in Western Europe continue to be slim a year on. Alchenar posted:Also for consideration: if Europe is willing to accept a long term embargo of Russian oil and gas as the price of supporting Ukraine, what might it be willing to accept vis-a-vis China and for how long? And while Oil and Gas stay where they are in the ground no matter what, manufacturing supply chains can permanently shift if there's a will and a way. These are super interesting posts and seem way more helpful in deciphering Beijing's approach to geopolitics than the stream of Clancychat posts. I've always thought that a literal invasion of Taiwan seemed too belligerent for China, and that they'd pursue political meddling towards weakening the islands democracy as a means of regime change. That's probably the greatest lesson they've learned from Russia regarding the worlds tolerance of a bullshit excuse for invading a neighboring country. lol america and iraq lol
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Aug 31, 2023 20:16
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Kchama posted:I think the main thing is that China will actually take the time to make sure their ducks are actually in a row before they commit to anything, as they have a very very good example of what happens if you get overly confidence even against a foe you are certain you can casually crush. Probably fewer drunken senior officers. ronya posted:I am not a War Nerd but I would be interested in any informed opinion on whether anti-missile capabilities deployed in Ukraine have shaped any thinking, esp given Taiwan's preference for advanced technology and survivability, rather than accepting a high loss of lives as given and turning to asymmetric warfare Here's a short read from RUSI. It's about the lessons non-US NATO airforces are learning so I don't know if it will address you question w/r/t Taiwanese doctrine. The way it's working in UKR is that both sides have to fly very low to avoid the big SAMs, which makes them more vulnerable to MANPADs and other short and medium range anti-air systems. quote:The majority of the 19 confirmed Russian and 11 Ukrainian fast jet losses have likely been caused by MANPADS and ground fire. However, this is not because those threats are more dangerous than radar-guided SAMs, but because the inability to conduct effective SEAD/DEAD against the latter has forced both sides’ fast jets down low into range of the former. MANPADs and small arms destroying fast jets is an insurgent's dream, but you have to have the high tech stuff to force the planes lower. If the PLAAF is actually good at SEAD, it would necessarily require asymmetric warfare, but most Chinese fast jets would be flying way to high for guerilla tactics. zoux fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 20:18
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My very vague understanding is that the way modern A2/AD works is that the big SAM sites rely heavily on anti-missile defences themselves. If it goes, then then there no big SAM sites, and then the jets can just ignore the MANPADs with impunity. Also there are no big C2 sites and no big logistical staging sites and etc., so the nature of warfare changes drastically depending on whether missile defence holds up. And Russia has allegedly been keeping its missile technology up to date, even if it underinvested in everything else. So perhaps there is something there to illuminate on modern warfare.
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Aug 31, 2023 20:35
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The problem with saying 'China won't repeat Russia's obvious mistakes' is that even if the extent to which Russia had hosed it didn't become fully apparently until about a month in, on a strategic level it was obvious to everyone on the planet including most Russians that invading Ukraine would be a terrible idea. They did it anyway. If the elderly President-for-life gets it into his head that his personal legacy is to Reunify The People and the system is rotten enough that there's nobody who can tell him what a terrible idea that is then nations can make huge strategic misjudgements (not limited to authoritarian regimes, for flawed foreign policy concepts leading to obviously unwinnable wars also ref: US foreign policy 2001-2021).
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Aug 31, 2023 20:35
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I agree that the biggest implications of the Ukraine war for China/Taiwan is that it showed the western democracies aren't just going to grumble in diplomatic cables while letting the aggressor nation run rampant.
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Aug 31, 2023 20:42
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Does anyone know what training for PLA units is like? Do they have anything like the Combat Training Centers that US brigade combat teams go through every other year?
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Aug 31, 2023 20:48
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I don't think that the SEAD/DEAD situation in the Ukraine war is relevant to a Taiwan scenario, given the amount of heavy fires the Chinese possess and keep churning out at ridiculous amounts. Combined with the almost perfect information they a priori have on ROCA (thousands of HUMINT, ELINT, SIGINT, IMINT etc etc sources). Alchenar posted:If the elderly President-for-life gets it into his head that his personal legacy is to Reunify The People and the system is rotten enough that there's nobody who can tell him what a terrible idea that is then nations can make huge strategic misjudgements (not limited to authoritarian regimes, for flawed foreign policy concepts leading to obviously unwinnable wars also ref: US foreign policy 2001-2021). Yeah..I don't think that is the way China works. They are certainly playing the long game on this one.
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Aug 31, 2023 20:50
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Dante80 posted:Yeah..I don't think that is the way China works. They are certainly playing the long game on this one. China is not some inscrutable political enigma. Xi has consolidated power around him in a way that no Chinese leader since Deng has, and he made that clear with the public humiliation of Jiang Zemin. This is a recipe for major problems as without checks and balances from other factions it's very easy to lose perspective and engage in grand personal projects. It's all dependent on Xi's personal thoughts and the problem is no one knows them.
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Aug 31, 2023 20:56
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Well...at least I sincerely hope they do. I don't want to die in WWIII after all...
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Aug 31, 2023 20:57
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Alchenar posted:The problem with saying 'China won't repeat Russia's obvious mistakes' is that even if the extent to which Russia had hosed it didn't become fully apparently until about a month in, on a strategic level it was obvious to everyone on the planet including most Russians that invading Ukraine would be a terrible idea. They did it anyway. I don't think this is quite the same thing, real life isn't a Tom Clancy novel, the ways in which it's a bad idea for the PRC to invade Taiwan isn't really the same as to how it was obviously a bad idea for Russia to invade Ukraine. For one thing Russia had only mobilized something like 120,000 or was it 240,000? Soldiers while Ukraines army was on paper much larger. China has something like 9 million people in uniform between the pla and pap. Taiwan is just a vastly much smaller country, while Ukraine is a significant fraction of the size of Russia. Where Russia lost a significant fraction of its economy in the collapse and a chunk of that went to Ukraine, china hasn't had that problem. The reasons why it's a bad idea for the PRC to invade Taiwan is a relatively much smaller overlap of the economic and trade ramifications and of course the risk of a direct conflict with the US, but Russia which is a vastly smaller economy comparable to Italy, while China is vastly much larger economy. If the war in Ukraine ended tomorrow one way or another I don't think the sanctions on Russia would vast for much longer and the EU is still buying a lot of natgas. Basically the two larger issues for China is the uncertainty of the USs policy of strategic ambiguity and whether their military is actually ready and well equipped enough to take on both. I would be nervous if we're largely relying on the military balance of power to maintain deterrence.
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Aug 31, 2023 21:01
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Dante80 posted:Yeah..I don't think that is the way China works. They are certainly playing the long game on this one. I don't think this is the way China works today, but there's all the elements there for it to be China in 10 years time. If Xi decides he's never going to retire then it's entirely plausible that he starts thinking of legacy in terms of his own lifetime, in which case the long game suddenly gets a lot shorter.
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Aug 31, 2023 21:02
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Morrow posted:China is not some inscrutable political enigma. Xi has consolidated power around him in a way that no Chinese leader since Deng has, and he made that clear with the public humiliation of Jiang Zemin. This is a recipe for major problems as without checks and balances from other factions it's very easy to lose perspective and engage in grand personal projects. Xi expounds on his political thoughts ad nauseam all the time though (albeit only in Chinese)
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Aug 31, 2023 21:07
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Southeast Asia still contains the largest Chinese diasporic population, and long before China's rise anti-Chinese pogroms occur with some periodic regularity, they still do today, and contemporary Chinese nationalism in the Wolf Warrior/Operation Red Sea movie sense is intensely based on a pledge to project force to protect overseas Chinese worldwide. Jiang's admin struggled in 1998 to suppress domestic pressure to Do Something about Indonesia. I would doubt a future Chinese administration would be able to ignore any future pogrom of similar magnitude. So anyway I've said this before, but I would rate an intervention on a weaker target somewhere in Southeast Asia as far more likely than Taiwan as modern China's first adventure. For Taiwan, it's just going to be incremental intimidation until the first military plane/ship collision happens, probably, not landing the PLAN marines in force. ronya fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 21:08
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Xi isn't like Mao, and still somewhat answers to the party at large, the scary issue isn't Xi consolidating power it's that the ultra nationalism the ccp has been encouraging as the long March generation of leaders retire or die out makes controlling this sentiment of the population impossible. (See Susan Shirks "China: Fragile Superpower") which is what actually forms the catalyst of a conflict. We can see an earlier version of this play out back in I think it was 2012 under Hu jintao? Because of the elections in Taiwan and due to previous comments along like Kennedy's "well never accept nuclear missiles in cuba" talk, the prcs think tanks scrambled to figure out a face saving response that would mollify the ultranatiinalists. Hence the anti secession bill which was their effort to thread the needle. China is like 10x worse now in this regard.
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Aug 31, 2023 21:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:If the war in Ukraine ended tomorrow one way or another I don't think the sanctions on Russia would vast for much longer and the EU is still buying a lot of natgas. https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/european-natural-gas-imports I'm not sure where you came to some other conclusions, but literally Russia is down to a trickle. With a range between 1700 to a maximum of 4000 million cubic meters to averaging 500 today. The EU has even been rapidly accelerating looking at alternatives (Azerbaijan), and Russia is not likely going to be considered as a major gas exporter for Europe ever again.
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Aug 31, 2023 21:16
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Raenir Salazar posted:I don't think this is quite the same thing, real life isn't a Tom Clancy novel, the ways in which it's a bad idea for the PRC to invade Taiwan isn't really the same as to how it was obviously a bad idea for Russia to invade Ukraine. Russia's sent in about 200k of its 1.5m army, and then mobilized an extra 200k later. This is largely because having a massive army and being able to mobilize it are two different stories. And Russia actually has it a lot easier than China does, since Russia was about to send all of its forces in by ground. Sending in that many forces by air and sea is a lot more fraught and dangerous, so leveraging even as many soldiers as Russia has sent into Ukraine would be quite a task. Ukraine's own army was only 200k at the time of the invasion, but has grown to about 700k for reasons you can probably surmise.
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Aug 31, 2023 21:23
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Kchama posted:Russia's sent in about 200k of its 1.5m army, and then mobilized an extra 200k later. This is largely because having a massive army and being able to mobilize it are two different stories. And Russia actually has it a lot easier than China does, since Russia was about to send all of its forces in by ground. Sending in that many forces by air and sea is a lot more fraught and dangerous, so leveraging even as many soldiers as Russia has sent into Ukraine would be quite a task. That 200k is basically the entirety of Russia's professional military force, the additional forces it mobilized were definitely not the same quality and they had massive issues doing so, heck they had massive issues even mobilizing that initial 200k given how badly maintained all of their equipment was. I don't think we can remotely compare the two militaries in this regard, China's professional active armed forces is vastly larger and better funded. So a larger force can be mobilized with much less relative effort. The disruptions that eroded and hollowed out the capability and readiness of the Russian armed forces never happened in China, the opposite as China has been continuously reforming and working on improving their military to fight western militaries on a peer level and not repeat the worst aspects of the Korean War. China also mostly relies on train to move its forces around, its actually one of the advantages it has vis a vis the US because it means its artillery is longer ranged and can throw heavier ordinance than US artillery which needs to be moved by sea and by air. For a hypothetical invasion of Taiwan you'd see presumably China vastly deploy a lot more sea lift capability, but it has been deploying a lot of new classes of amphibious landing warfare ships for this purpose, both to be able to project forces regionally but also for a possible conflict with Taiwan. Mobilizing a significant number of its reserves for a regional conflict wouldn't likely be as difficult for China as it was for Russia, and not require cannibalizing their best formations, but instead rely on the forces and reserves allocated for the local (Eastern and Southern) theater command(s). The War on the Rocks podcast has more: https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/mind-the-gap-part-2-the-cross-strait-potential-of-chinas-civilian-shipping-has-grown/ estimates that the PRC could soon have the capability of delivering around 300,000 troops over a period of 10 days for a potential invasion. My argument and position here is that we shouldn't breath a sigh of relief that because of Russia's experiences in Ukraine that Taiwan is safe and secure, far from it. That if we instead assume based on the readily available evidence and publicly available information that China's military is vastly more capable military force than Russia's on a base level, then the conflict going badly for Russia revealing many of its flaws and weaknesses, plus all of the information now available about the shape and future of warfare in the 21st century should instead be cause for alarm. You seem to be like, I dunno, making a lot of assumptions about China's military that I don't think are reasonable. notwithoutmyanus posted:The EU dropped their natgas buying by close to 85% and a minimum of 60% if you're only relying on early 2022. I thought I saw a thing in the other thread about Russia's LNG exports increasing posted by Dante80 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4028717&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=284#post534263377 but I guess I interpreted it wrong. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 22:56
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Raenir Salazar posted:That 200k is basically the entirety of Russia's professional military force, the additional forces it mobilized were definitely not the same quality and they had massive issues doing so, heck they had massive issues even mobilizing that initial 200k given how badly maintained all of their equipment was. I'm actually cautioning AGAINST making assumptions like "They can easily sea-lift millions of soldiers" and "their stuff is exactly as they claim it is on paper" until we can actually see that. Like the US military will likely just assume everyone on paper is true and they can because it doesn't pay to underestimate your opponent, but it doesn't mean that we should just assume that their forces are exactly what they say they are. We had lots of evidence that Russia was easily the second best army in the world with super advanced tanks and jets, but it turned out to not really be true. Is that the case for China? Who knows, but I'd be surprised if they could handle a massive sea invasion right now.
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Aug 31, 2023 23:19
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Kchama posted:I'm actually cautioning AGAINST making assumptions like "They can easily sea-lift millions of soldiers" and "their stuff is exactly as they claim it is on paper" until we can actually see that. Like the US military will likely just assume everyone on paper is true and they can because it doesn't pay to underestimate your opponent, but it doesn't mean that we should just assume that their forces are exactly what they say they are. We had lots of evidence that Russia was easily the second best army in the world with super advanced tanks and jets, but it turned out to not really be true. Is that the case for China? Who knows, but I'd be surprised if they could handle a massive sea invasion right now. No one is saying they can sea-lift millions of soldiers? Anyways to repeat my basic argument; China is not Russia. There's nuance here that anyone can dig into and looking at that nuance we can see the ways that the Russian military's failings can be reasonably and easily concluded to be specific to Russia and the collapse of the USSR. They have completely different historical and material circumstances. I don't think you're appropriately interpreting the argument being made, and you keep saying or asserting things that I don't think are really reasonable things to assert. No one is assuming that everything that China claims on paper will operate and perform as-intended, only that it isn't reasonable to assume that it'll basically be as bad based on the Russian experience, and it is more reasonable to assume that China's capabilities are much closer to their ideal than Russia's were to theirs and this has massive ramifications because they're such a larger wealthier country with a larger and more capable military.
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Aug 31, 2023 23:57
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Raenir Salazar posted:I thought I saw a thing in the other thread about Russia's LNG exports increasing posted by Dante80 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4028717&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=284#post534263377 but I guess I interpreted it wrong. If you look down approximately the next post someone summarizes what I showed with data. It increased from like 480 to 540 or something. It was somewhere between deliberately or unintentionally misleading data in the article (not Dante necessarily). People missed that it's still down from *4000. Proof again of totally garbage journalism, really. Go to my link and change it from all eu import to Russia and/or the other charts have similar/further breakdowns into (which pipeline), etc.
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Sep 1, 2023 00:02
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notwithoutmyanus posted:If you look down approximately the next post someone summarizes what I showed with data. It increased from like 480 to 540 or something. It was somewhere between deliberately or unintentionally misleading data in the article (not Dante necessarily). People missed that it's still down from *4000. Proof again of totally garbage journalism, really. Yeah I kept on scrolling and didn't notice the subsequent discussion that gave additional context to those numbers 
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Sep 1, 2023 00:06
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Raenir Salazar posted:No one is saying they can sea-lift millions of soldiers? Anyways to repeat my basic argument; China is not Russia. There's nuance here that anyone can dig into and looking at that nuance we can see the ways that the Russian military's failings can be reasonably and easily concluded to be specific to Russia and the collapse of the USSR. They have completely different historical and material circumstances. I don't think you're appropriately interpreting the argument being made, and you keep saying or asserting things that I don't think are really reasonable things to assert. No one is assuming that everything that China claims on paper will operate and perform as-intended, only that it isn't reasonable to assume that it'll basically be as bad based on the Russian experience, and it is more reasonable to assume that China's capabilities are much closer to their ideal than Russia's were to theirs and this has massive ramifications because they're such a larger wealthier country with a larger and more capable military. I was responding to your assertion that China's fine because unlike Russia, they have millions of professional soldiers. All those soldiers don't particularly matter if they can't make it to Taiwan. That's my point. You talked up those millions of soldiers, therefore Taiwan is greatly outnumbered and in danger just from that. But the question is not 'how many soldiers does China have at home?', but 'how many soldiers and how much materiel can China successfully get to Taiwan?' That has nothing to do with Russia. That's the question that matters for the invasion. Just how good is China's force projection? Taiwan isn't far away, but that much water is a serious obstacle. I never said they'd be as bad. Just that Russia is a good example of why we shouldn't believe that China has all the capabilities they declare they have until they are shown. Again, the people who will be planning surely will take them at their word, but we don't have to. We can use that as the upper bounds of what they could possibly do. So I think you're misunderstanding me. Kchama fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 00:46
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Kchama posted:I was responding to your assertion that China's fine because unlike Russia, they have millions of professional soldiers. All those soldiers don't particularly matter if they can't make it to Taiwan. That's my point. You talked up those millions of soldiers, therefore Taiwan is greatly outnumbered and in danger just from that. But the question is not 'how many soldiers does China have at home?', but 'how many soldiers and how much materiel can China successfully get to Taiwan?' That has nothing to do with Russia. That's the question that matters for the invasion. Just how good is China's force projection? Taiwan isn't far away, but that much water is a serious obstacle. I'm mainly pointing out that China's position is more likely than not to be probably significantly better than Russia's. I think you've misunderstood the point of my post in reply to Alchenar about the size of the Russian invasion force and the sizes of the Chinese army; the point was that Russia's mobilization required scrapping the bottom of the proverbial barrel to do so without hoping to rely on further mobilization; this was a fact that was obvious to many outside observers but doesn't apply to China due to its vastly larger and better funded military, and thus the ways it was "obviously" a bad idea for Russia to invade Ukraine aren't the same for China regarding Taiwan. In any case the questions you raised aren't questions we need to accept China's say so regarding, the podcast I linked doesn't afaik, it's the job of a lot of experts to try to verify things about what we would like to know about our adversaries and are paid to do so. There's a lot of people who spend a lot of their time researching and trying their best to answer these questions, one of them even posts on these forums and published a paper on the subject, you can read it here. Estimates I posted earlier like 60,000 troops & their equipment in an initial wave and then something like 300,000 over the next couple of weeks of a hypothetical invasion is an estimate presumably based off of what China is verified or extrapolated to have, because we can see that these ships physically exist; although yes we don't know how effective China would be at utilizing such capabilities, but there isn't really any reason to doubt that it exists in some rudimentary baseline fashion. So to be clear, I don't think anyone is suggesting believing anything the PRC or the PLA is saying uncritically, as I don't think any of the claims I've put forward or seen posted by anyone else is doing so. And if you think that's just a good upper bound good, sure that's fine but I don't think that changes or otherwise affects the claims being discussed. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 02:38
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Raenir Salazar posted:I thought I saw a thing in the other thread about Russia's LNG exports increasing posted by Dante80 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4028717&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=284#post534263377 but I guess I interpreted it wrong. That is LNG. LNG went up by 40%, but most of the gas that Europe was getting from Russia came by pipelines, so in the end consumption and trade vastly deteriorated. Kchama posted:I'm actually cautioning AGAINST making assumptions like "They can easily sea-lift millions of soldiers" and "their stuff is exactly as they claim it is on paper" until we can actually see that. I'd prefer we never see that. Kchama posted:I never said they'd be as bad. Just that Russia is a good example of why we shouldn't believe that China has all the capabilities they declare they have until they are shown. We can use that as the upper bounds of what they could possibly do. So I think you're misunderstanding me. I think that China is actually "declaring" a lot less than it is capable of (a prime example is the practice of officially showing assets in public only after they come in full production and service in numbers). Also, I think that some posters are actively underestimating for some reason the forces at hand, China's work on re-arming in the last decade and the rate things are changing, as we speak. A look at Huludao alone would suffice. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 05:02
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A forecast in that vein: https://twitter.com/dylanleviking/status/1697504796616667466 where Duterte presumably marks the transition point from populism morphing from anti-Americanism to anti-Sinicism. Chinese conduct reasserting an R2P over said diaspora have been de-escalated with the cooperation of regional governments, but said de-escalation may be less forthcoming if Chinese BRI funding is too grudging
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Sep 1, 2023 08:20
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Dante80 posted:I'd prefer we never see that. I'd prefer we'd never see it, either, and I don't know why you think I actually would want to see it. I'd be shocked if China was underreporting numbers, and I'd be doubly shocked if they were underreporting capabilities, if only because China's absolutely wants to make itself seem strong like any other nation. Sure, they'd probably want to wait until they had a fair amount to announce that something is there, if only to avoid announcing that they only have 10 modern planes or something like that. Since downplaying your numbers doesn't really help you, the practice of waiting until they had a bunch made actually points to the fact that they probably aren't underreporting. Raenir Salazar posted:I'm mainly pointing out that China's position is more likely than not to be probably significantly better than Russia's. I think you've misunderstood the point of my post in reply to Alchenar about the size of the Russian invasion force and the sizes of the Chinese army; the point was that Russia's mobilization required scrapping the bottom of the proverbial barrel to do so without hoping to rely on further mobilization; this was a fact that was obvious to many outside observers but doesn't apply to China due to its vastly larger and better funded military, and thus the ways it was "obviously" a bad idea for Russia to invade Ukraine aren't the same for China regarding Taiwan. The reason why people thought Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine was that 200k was absolutely not enough to be able to take and hold a country with as many people as Ukraine. At the time of the invasion, very few people had any belief that Russia's army was, as you put it, 'scraping the bottom of the barrel' or that they would have any trouble at all. After all, Russia is a vastly bigger country than Ukraine, and has a much bigger military. Surely that 200k was just to intimidate them into rolling over, and if they DID invade, well, they'd still win quickly and easily. Russia even spent the third most on their military in the world, and while it was a third the amount that China spent on their military, they also had 10% the amount of soldiers, so in theory they could spend more on each individual soldier and weapon. Reminder that Ukraine's yearly military budget until 2022 was only 5 million, and then it jumped to 44 million for obvious reasons. We saw how it turned out. We just can't see the issues in a nation's military until it is actually used in war. So with that in mind that 200k was considered so absurdly low a number to handle a country not quite twice as big population-wise as Ukraine that an invasion was literally unthinkable by most of the world... that's 60k initially assuming completely ideal, with 300k taking weeks, if completely ideal. Taiwan's military isn't any smaller than Ukraine's, and the defenses would be a lot tougher due to the nature of the attack. Now, Taiwan's military isn't super amazing itself, but we can see how much that can change in just a few years, and Taiwan has recently realized the position they're in and are attempting to fix its issues. After Russia's failures in Ukraine, I could see China having second thoughts about their ability to pull off such an invasion, especially with the US saying very explicitly that they would defend Taiwan if China attempted such an invasion. ronya posted:A forecast in that vein: Tweet already dead.
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Sep 1, 2023 09:26
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Kchama posted:I'd prefer we'd never see it, either, and I don't know why you think I actually would want to see it. I didn't really imply that you wanted (to see) a war, I'm sorry if it sounded that way. Kchama posted:I'd be shocked if China was underreporting numbers, and I'd be doubly shocked if they were underreporting capabilities, if only because China's absolutely wants to make itself seem strong like any other nation. Sure, they'd probably want to wait until they had a fair amount to announce that something is there, if only to avoid announcing that they only have 10 modern planes or something like that. Since downplaying your numbers doesn't really help you, the practice of waiting until they had a bunch made actually points to the fact that they probably aren't underreporting. Here is the thing. They are absolutely underreporting both numbers and capabilities. To a hilarious point I might add. I think that there is a pretty big, fundamental misunderstanding as far as China military reporting is concerned. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 11:20
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Dante80 posted:I didn't really imply that you wanted (to see) a war, I'm sorry if it sounded that way. Okay. Based on what precisely?
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Sep 1, 2023 12:00
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Captain Oblivious posted:Okay. Based on what precisely? Based on what we are seeing that is not announced. This is a good starter for anyone interested in PLA watching (it's a hobby of mine)..rick joe is a great guy btw. https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/pla-watching-a-beginners-guide-to-analyzing-chinas-military-tech/ Dante80 fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 12:16
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ronya posted:So anyway I've said this before, but I would rate an intervention on a weaker target somewhere in Southeast Asia as far more likely than Taiwan as modern China's first adventure. This is how bullies work: you pick on the weak guys, not your biggeat threats. This is why China makes bigger and bolder moves on countries like Canada and New Zealand and their citizens. see: Anne-Marie Brady https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/world/asia/new-zealand-academic-harassment-china.html see: Michaels https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_and_Michael_Kovrig
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Sep 1, 2023 12:48
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Dante80 posted:I didn't really imply that you wanted (to see) a war, I'm sorry if it sounded that way. Can you quantify, then? Do they have double, triple, quadruple the items in each system, or just many more weapon systems than they say? Since it largely just sounds like they just don't report publicly they built something until they have a decent amount of units rolled out.
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Sep 1, 2023 13:19
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Kchama posted:The reason why people thought Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine was that 200k was absolutely not enough to be able to take and hold a country with as many people as Ukraine. At the time of the invasion, very few people had any belief that Russia's army was, as you put it, 'scraping the bottom of the barrel' or that they would have any trouble at all. After all, Russia is a vastly bigger country than Ukraine, and has a much bigger military. Surely that 200k was just to intimidate them into rolling over, and if they DID invade, well, they'd still win quickly and easily. Russia even spent the third most on their military in the world, and while it was a third the amount that China spent on their military, they also had 10% the amount of soldiers, so in theory they could spend more on each individual soldier and weapon. Reminder that Ukraine's yearly military budget until 2022 was only 5 million, and then it jumped to 44 million for obvious reasons. I don't think your argument follows. Russia's military underperforming is an independent variable regarding the hypothetical performance of the Chinese military. I don't know why you keep saying "everyone (who?) thought that Russia would overrun Ukraine (when?) because they're the second strongest military" (paraphrasing) and then you use this as your grounds to suggest we shouldn't trust or assume anything actually useful or constructive about the Chinese military, and again I am saying this isn't a reasonable thought process. By this logic we likewise can't know how well the US military would do against China either, we likewise can't know if the Australian, Japanese, or Taiwanese mitaries would perform as well as they claim either, they might just completely collapse because Russia underperformed? Why can't we apply this same argument to similarly untested western militaries that might enter into a conflict with China? You just asserted "Taiwan is obviously trying to fix its issues" why is this reasonable for you to trust but not "China is obviously trying to develop its SEAD capabilities"? Also the numbers for the *naval invasion* are a different scenario from a land invasion, because as long as China maintains its sea lift capability and can maintain and extend/breakout from its beach head, then obviously they're going to move over more troops, and unlike Russia which struggled to mobilize its troops, China has no such issue.
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Sep 1, 2023 13:56
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Kchama posted:Can you quantify, then? Do they have double, triple, quadruple the items in each system, or just many more weapon systems than they say? Since it largely just sounds like they just don't report publicly they built something until they have a decent amount of units rolled out. There are whole parts of their military that are completely opaque and they simply report nothing. Like for example, nuclear submarines or warheads. There are other parts where you get official statements like "hey guys, Unit 96719 was commissioned in base 62, and its mission is to protect the motherland" and you have no idea what it has or how many people are in it etc. And then you string together photos and secondary data and find out that this unit that suddenly materialized from thin air carries a fake MUCD, and its true name is brigade 623 and it carries 48 长剑-10 TELs but you don't know if 长剑-10 is actually 红鸟-3 or what the warhead is or in whose rear end were they hiding them for fucks sake. There are other parts where you can actually see the lag between long lead item contracts, manufacturing, induction into service and announcement of existence, and the lag is pretty big for a number of assets (take for example J-16 strike aircraft, where you can actually see them coming out of the oven in Liaoning and you know that in 2021 you got a contract for 750 additional 涡扇-10(b) engines for them in a different but the last update we had on actual units in total was "something more than 240 man, what do you want?" and you cannot get your ducks in a row and are starting to think that first grade arithmetic is actually a relative science or sth... These are some indicative examples, poo poo in China is seriously very, very opaque.
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Sep 1, 2023 13:57
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Raenir Salazar posted:I don't think your argument follows. Everyone being basically... everyone. It was not a very common opinion that Russia was going to invade Ukraine because of the reasons I gave. Effectively the only people who DID think Russia was going to invade was the US intelligence agencies, and they were largely accused to stirring up trouble. Even Ukraine didn't think they were going to invade, which is why things came very close to disastrous for Ukraine, as they only made the bare minimum preparations to stop Russia, because why bet on the long shot? And if you notice, I didn't suggest we shouldn't assume anything useful or constructive. Just that what we see of a nation's military/claims isn't necessarily the exact truth. And yes, this goes for America and basically any other nation. Don't forget that, for example, the US was expected to have a very difficult fight with Iraq in the first Gulf War. Even the American commanders believed they'd take 20%-40% of 500000 troops as casualties. But that proved to be completely not the case, as the 4th best military in the world turned out to be a paper tiger and the US to actually be as good as people believed at the time. That's what I mean by 'we can't be certain of how good each military is until they get into an actual war'. Also I brought up Taiwan putting together plans to try and improve their not particularly impressive current military is that it means time may not be on China's side. Russia, in fact, just learned this lesson! They easily crushed Ukraine during their 2014 invasion, and Ukraine was genuinely one of the worst militaries in the world. But with 8 years and some American assistance, they turned things around to a military that was able to fend off another, much bigger invasion even before outside equipment really started to come in. And Taiwan already HAS that outside assistance, especially in the form of Biden just plain saying "We'll protect Taiwan with American forces". So Taiwan is probably not looking so much of easy pickings even if they can't turn themselves around. Dante80 posted:There are whole parts of their military that are completely opaque and they simply report nothing. Like for example, nuclear submarines or warheads. I get that it's opaque, but I wonder if it's all because they have secret amount of planes or if they have good practices regarding spare parts that'd throw off that first grade arithmetic.
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Sep 1, 2023 17:43
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Kchama posted:
To an extent - regarding some of those examples - ....who knows?!?! That is part of my argument in the first place.
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Sep 1, 2023 17:51
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This argument also works just as well in the opposite. I could just as easily make an argument that China wants to overreport their military capacity so that they don't get harassed by everyone else. Paper tiger phrase doesn't just simply exist for nothing. which also shows that the argument in either direction when there's incomplete data is entirely futile.
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Sep 1, 2023 18:14
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Except lots of people did reasonable figure Russia was going to invade Ukraine, I was there early in the thread, the build up wouldve been disastrous on Russia's military readiness to *not* be serious! I don't think this argument is resting on a credible set of facts but on vague recollections and vague impressions of vague nebulous collections of people. None of this is good argumentation for the extremely vague largely off base and non falsifiable argument being made! No one can readily dispute "no one can really know for sure!" but we do have hard evidence of that they can shift 60,000 troops. At some point you need to accept the facts you have.
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Sep 1, 2023 19:15
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notwithoutmyanus posted:This argument also works just as well in the opposite. No it does not. I sincerely cannot understand how someone could take what I am trying to explain and use it to support an argument that China is actually overreporting its military capacity. quote:- "Hey guys, China is very opaque with their military poo poo, what they announce is almost always late, vague or too generic, and what incomplete data and facts we do get from our own analysis and non official sources points to them working on a lot of stuff behind closed doors and having a lot more thingys than they announce". I will leave it at that though, maybe my bad english are not helping to get my point across. Sorry for this.
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Sep 1, 2023 19:43
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Dante80 posted:No it does not. No I agree with you that it's a bit absurd to assume a massive country to just playing 10D chess just to screw with people. Not there isn't *some* precedent with the USSR and the "bomber gap" but this actually proves the point, the US could *verify* the actual numbers with spy planes. We can likewise verify generally what china's capabilities are. Like the flipside of all of this is maybe china's mitary is actually super effective and will destroy the US navy in a pitch battle, it wouldn't be unprecedented after all, the Chinese volunteer army ruined MacArthur day, achieved strategic surprise and recaptured Seoul and might've won if the US didn't play their hand right. No one expected France to topple over as fast as they did when the Germans invaded for real, and so on. This is a fruitless thought exersize that can reinforce literally any argument anyone wished to make.
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Sep 1, 2023 19:52
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How easily can the US help defend Taiwan without becoming vulnerable to anti-ship missiles? Or is there an assumption that China sinking/attempting to sink a carrier would be too significant of an escalation? I know there are ways to stop missiles but my understanding is those defenses are limited by either the total # of missiles they can stop or the # of missiles they can stop in a unit time.
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Sep 1, 2023 20:07
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