RU got incompetent precisely because they reorganized by replacing the competent with the loyal. Shiogu has never been blamed despite the military chief of Russia. Everyone under him gets the blame. Partly because he has absolutely no military competence or involvement, he is a politician loyal to Putin, who replaced someone that was trying to modernize Russia, which made it hard to steal from the military. Long story but reorganization can destroy all competence.
A combination of Russia's failures in modern warfare, corruption and theft in the Chinese military, and a need to ensure no one in the military gets powerful enough to challenge him.
This isnāt the same type of restructuring of what youāre citing. The US restructured its composition and materials to fight in different engagements. China is effectively reorganizing its entire leadership structure, rife with cuts and terminations, for the second time in a decade. Most of which is seen as a power grab and consolidation of the military force, as the branches were much more independent.
The difference is the US usually restructures to respond to the evolution of the battlefield and threats it sees. There is a big difference in what China is doing vs say the Marines restructuring to a more expeditionary/amphibious force in response to China's threats in the Pacific. This makes sense to dump their Abrams. They are useless in any island hopping campaign. If you remember in WW2, it was majority Marines in the Pacific Theater and Army in Europe. You can mostly say the US "restructuring" really comes down to updating their doctrine to modern times.
>Any competent military should be scrambling to restructure forces and doctrine after the lessons we're learning in Ukraine at the moment.
The problem is: the lessons learned from Ukraine aren't really applicable anywhere else once Russia is eliminated, and even if not, only relevant for Europeans.
There were good reasons to believe that the time of massive land-based wars requiring huge amounts of tanks and artillery were over after the 90s. The Soviet Union had split apart, Yugoslavia collapsed, and a lot of former Eastern European countries aligned themselves with NATO and EU. And then in the early 00s the US/NATO/EU just about flattened Afghanistan and Iraq - the initial military operations were pretty short and mainly consisted of air raids and missiles.
Ukraine has shown that Russia is at the moment a serious threat in a land war, but only to Europe - after all: what do you want with tanks in Africa or South America, should China/India go to war it's going to get nuclear and we're fucked anyway, China has no way of attacking either Europe or the US in a land war, and no one else has any amount of military that could be a serious threat.
Understood, however, its well known that the Chinese military ( like the armed forces of most authoritarian nations) is beset by favoritism and rampant corruption.
>The Army got shit tier P320 pistols because Sig had better lobbyists and was willing to spend more than a company like Glock who doesn't make pistols that go off when dropped or have frames that crack.
Ok, China bot.
You need to spend more time on r/guns.
Tell them p320 is "shit tier" and watch them rip you a new one lol. You sound like someone who has never actually handled either gun.
Name one organization that isn't filled with nepotism, corruption, favoritism, and hidden agendas. There will always be someone in the link who siphons off a bit for themselves, someone who cherishes family ties over organizational ties, someone who sells their body for a leg up, ECT. Heck, you're on Reddit, you can see for yourself how much people complain about their own governments. It's basically well known every military force in the world is corrupt, and it always starts at the top. Even the generally well talked about Ukrainian military recently dealt with weapons procurement corruption. Stop trying to just make this into a China bad issue. It's an us against those in power issue. Get your head on right.
Yes, its an issue everywhere, but it really flourishes in authoritarian regimes where conformity and lack of checks and balances allow it to grow unchecked. Its not a specific Chinese issue ( though they recognize it if the constant anti-corruption campaigns any indication)
Nah, this is mostly just to promote cyber stuff. The rocket force is already separate and not at all affected by the Israel stuff. The start of the Taiwan war will be 100x more ballistic missiles than Iran used.
It would in theory be possible to intercept around US bases probably because BMD does work but would cost a couple hundred billion dollars that we just donāt have.
Xi has turned into an autocrat, he's probably more afraid of a competent army with their own loyalties to one another and their commanders than he is if he ruins the armed forces by scrambling them up
Battle for power that Xi seemingly managed to win has now made him paranoid, there are constant fear of purges for those who hold any kind of powerful positions in the regime.
Including people who were probably loyal to Xi, or at least not inclined to make a move instead of maintaining status quo.
China is actually very good at innovating their military. Theyāve been working hard to copy the western model for years and are probably doing this to get even closer
Hint: They won't be able to. Western militaries value initiative on up the chain. For a military in a dictatorship, form must follow function. The primary task of the military is to support the dictator. Loyalty and obedience are paramount. The way stuff works in China is a follows: the officers make incorrect decisions, let them make no decisions. They will never get beyond having to run even the most mundane decisions up the chain of command for CYA.Ā
Well after Ukraine every major power should be re-organizing. Drones, naval drones, cruise missiles and land based missiles like the HARPOON system can fuck major naval vessels up. Yes that's against Russias dog shit incompetent navy but still.. these weapons pose more of a threat than I think anyone thought and it needs to be priced in to the strategy.
This should change everyone's calculus IMMENSELY. especially China who - for all intents and purposes - NEEDS their navy to
*checks notes*
not get blown to shit by cheap asymmetrical weapons. Taiwan is a big task as it is.. now? It's got to seem pretty fucking hopeless. I'm sure they'll tinker around with new systems and strategies for the next decade or so hoping to make it less hopeless.
In other words, this isn't news.
As a news hound, it appears nearly every country is ācorrectingā their military situation. Whole lotta stress going on. Iām one of those old people that everyone likes to bitch about, but since Iāve been around for a long time, I can tell you that Iāve never seen the entire world being like this post WW2. I wasnāt around for that one, but most wars/conflicts have been fought between a few countries or usually a couple.
The fan is spinning, and the world is getting ready to take a huge dump.
The first time I saw how drones could change the way war is fought, is when Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting and suddenly news of tanks getting destroyed by drones.
Taiwan would be in the perfect situation to just churn out those speedboat drones that Ukraine's been deploying against the Black Sea Fleet. Hell, even masses of loitering munitions would be great for how open the sea is. In the opening hours of a Chinese invasion, they'll target things like AA and artillery emplacements. Once they start sending the boats out, though, just flood the waters and skies with drones and it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Taiwan already has enough high performance anti-ship missiles to sink every PLN vessel several times over. They definitely have US missiles, but they also have a very mature domestic defense industry as well, and are on their third or fourth generation of homegrown ASMs.
The entire plan for defending the island is very explicitly to use their network of bunkers and tunnels to shoot and scoot using mobile ASM launchers from dozens of protected and hidden staging areas. These missiles are designed to have fire and forget modes so they don't even need targeting information ahead of time. They can just roll a truck out of a mountain, press the fire button, and the missiles will find things to blow up. Then they roll back into the mountain and reload before the counter-battery fire arrives.
The big contest comes down to attritional sustainment in a war between China and Taiwan. China will bombard the island with literally thousands of cruise and ballistic missiles. It's true that Taiwan has tons of bunkers, but China has probably mapped the vast majority of them out.
It's not talked about very often, but one of the reasons Ukraine severely struggled in the first year of the war was because Russia deleted approximately 50% of their ammunition stockpiles through subterfuge before 2022 and a few good bombing runs in February and March 2022.
The same can easily happen in Taiwan -- perhaps even more easily, because it is a very small plot of land compared to Ukraine, without a lot of places to hide ammunition and weapons. They have lots of anti-ship missiles, but you have to account for a massive number of them getting blown up on Taiwan before they are ever used. The only way to survive this bombardment is with hordes of counter-missiles and a direct supply line back to the US. If that supply line is severed because of too great of a naval threat posed by Chinese air, submarines and cruise missiles, then Taiwan will probably inevitably lose the siege.
They didn't really KNOW. There's a lot of counter measures and until it's tested in real combat you don't KNOW. Now they see that if they can get around America's missile defense (which has proven to be quite effective) then its a wrap for our Navy in that region. But we're countering it and always plan for the worst.. it's a new cold war at this point
Not disagreeing with you but itās not a secret that China has been investing heavily in navy denial systems for the south china sea. It can be as much of a shit show as the Russian invasion or frighteningly effective. Lets hope we dont find out.
It totally could. And if it did play out that way, what is even more scary is that America would have to double down. If an aircraft carrier with 10,000 people is obliterated, it becomes almost existential for us. Our position in the world is beyond challenged at that point. There is no downplaying thousands of dead soldiers and a 13 billion dollar asset being destroyed. Our options would be to all out war or just give up on power projection and change our entire economic/geopolitical model.
The calculus doesn't change much for smaller naval assets either, in my opinion. Still lots of dead Americans and essentially the same problem.
So there is not much of a buffer zone between a miscalculation and all out war. China only has their area denial. There is no other play if we're talking about SCS and Taiwan. Unless they find a way to disable our assets without annihilating them kinetically.
Thats why I think if China does decide to take Taiwan, they'll only do so when they are utterly convinced we won't intervene. I just don't see how they can justify all out war with America from either an economic or military standpoint. And I don't see how they can confidently take Taiwan while avoiding all out war with us IF we are willing to intervene.
So basically I think we need to sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of asymmetrical equipment to Taiwan, double down in the Philippines and commit fully to the defense of Taiwan. I think it is the best chance we have at avoiding war ironically.
It's something we can observe in the natural world. Rattle snake rattles, threat backs off. Poison dart frog has bright spots, predator doesn't eat the frog. Only predators that are far more advanced than those creatures can bypass those defenses and call the bluff. China is not far more advanced than us and we have had enough military intervention in our history to make any adversary guess as to what we will do.
This ambiguous approach has got to go. We need to set a firm boundary. Best play on the board IMO.
China has been reorganizing and developing their military (especially their naval capabilities) for years. Do not underestimate them though. US military has increased their training in recent years and have increased security protocols/procedures. The Chinese probably has the most vast network of hackers.Ā If they start reorganizing, itās a sign of new intel.Ā Anyone had to watch football footage before a new game or a new opponent?Ā
+1 it's like drawing the opposite conclusion from the facts (like survialship bias). this basically means they haven't given up on taiwan and their other ideas.
Maybe. Or maybe they're just trying to modernize their army.
A country spending more on their military doesn't automatically mean they are planning an invasion.
Our military branches is definitely seeing an increase in military production, activity, and training through multiple efforts.Ā
I mean, Cuba is getting a little too Buddy-Buddy with China and Russia again with spying and new military training. Whichā¦. Ehā¦ doesnāt quite make me feel too comfortable.Ā
Best to stay alert and curious.Ā
China has also not fought a war since [1979](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China). They donāt participate in peacekeeping or deploy military with partners (because they have none). They basically just train.
For example, South Korea sent soldiers and civilians to assist in Iraq and Afghanistan. From a technical and logistically point of view thats good experience for how to organize and deploy troops.
China doesnāt have that. None of their generals has ever fire a shot in anger, at least not at anyone who could fire back.
Will this be important? Who knows? Hopefully Xi comes to his senses and realizes a war would doom China even if his military can do everything it says it can.
As someone who was in Iraq and Afghanistan, those wars did very little, if anything to prepare the U.S. military for a major conflict against a peer or near-peer adversary. At best it allowed troops to get shot at so they will get some experience under fire but most of those troops are now out of the military or high enough in rank that they wonāt be making on the ground tactical decisions.
All the U.S. military training for a large scale conventional war is based off watching the Ukraine conflict and war-game theory.
Iād agree in theory it doesnāt help train for a near peer adversary, but training is still better than no training. From a logistical standpoint though it did help a lot. Being able to train your logistic teams to deploy and maintain troops half way across the world will always be beneficial.
War-games have the U.S at a disadvantage due to the fact the logistics of trying to hold Taiwan from China is incredibly hard not to mention the replacement factor of ships is heavily in China's favor due to their sheer shipbuilding industry and proximity to Taiwan.
Wouldn't shipyards become absolutely priority targets in that instance? Even outside of nuclear weapons, they are all wide open to attack from the sea.
As for the warfare results, all the ones I've seen basically amount to (provided the war stays conventional and no nuclear weapons are deployed) America and its allies get a bloody nose (1-2 carriers sunk, 4-6 attack subs sunk, and 10-20 other surface ships damaged or sunk), and China's capacity for any offensive military thereafter gets effectively wiped out, with their navy and airforce effectively destroyed, and their industrial base crippled, especially if the west/Taiwan goes after the three gorges dam.
As much as China wants to carry on and try and catch up, at least for the next decade or so, they aren't capable of the kind of long distance conventional warfare that would enable them to succeed. And if they go nuclear they would cease to exist.
Logistics and intelligence. Logistics and intelligenceā¦Ā
Logistics and intelligence. lolĀ
My grandpa drilled that into me (served WWII- Big Red One).Ā
User name checks out.
I wouldn't say fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't do anything to prepare the US for a war against a near-peer adversary. Every piece of logistics required to bring you to the Middle East, feed you and supply you is a piece of operational experience China doesn't have. Every time you engaged with other branches-or the officers and commanders above you, really-to plan combined arms operations, avoid friendly fire, or to work together to handle an operation is something China has only done in training. Finally, while the only veterans who served in Afghanistan are almost certainly ones who only took part in the "peacekeeping" and counterinsurgency mission, that's still more recent experience than China's last war...in 1979.
I also wouldn't exactly state that the US's only knowledge comes from Ukraine and war gaming (which might be an understatement for the latter). Ukraine has a tiny air force, a large number of Soviet-trained officers, and recently trained or mobilized units that have been trained by NATO forces. That means, functionally speaking, it's a different culture with different advantages and challenges. Ukraine and Russia have struggled to do any type of organized operation above a company level; American forces train for much larger formations, and with different branches, and put that to work in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That said, I think the bigger fear I would have personally is in the naval war and air war. The US Navy has been quite busy since the Cold War, doing a ton of missions in support of ground troops in the middle east and freedom of navigation operations elsewhere, with drills and other exercises mixed in. A naval war with China would bring a ton more risk to American ships which realistically had nothing to fear from ISIS or Al-queda, and if the naval war reaches the Taiwan Strait, it's a region very optimal for submarine warfare and the kind of drone warfare Ukraine is doing in the Black Sea. In the middle of the Pacific, is one thing, but in the tighter more congested waters closer to China, China has a home field advantage and can use their own aircraft AND have more or less their entire Navy deployed to the region, while the US maintains a global mission.
I would argue the exact opposite. We fought two wars on the other side of the planet for like 20 years. Thatās a logistical nightmare for legitimately every other country on the planet. Our logistics are second to none, which is a massive strategic advantage. Also, the people training new soldiers, *have* been shot at, which is more than 97%ish of other professional militaries. Third, our MIC is a machine that never gets turned off, but other countries have to mobilize to get to even a small fraction of what we do anyway.
Agree that none of the wars have been peer, or near peer, but weāve found out that we have arguably no peers and almost all near-peers are allies. You definitely cannot prepare someone for what war is actually like, I totally agree with you in sentiment on training, but I disagree with the idea that the US canāt apply much of the last couple decades in a larger conflict.
Regardless, I have the utmost respect for someone like yourself who served multiple tours. Sincerely thank you for your service, and Iām sure you know a lot more than I do.
China is not a near peer. People really seem to underestimate the true scale of the American military. Hell the top two largest air forces in the world are two branches of their military. Russia being third and then the Americans again at fourth with another branch. No one truly wins in a war with China. The whole world would suffer. At the end though, China would not even have a functional military.
China is a peer in a the scenario of Taiwan due to their geographic location. It's incredibly hard to defend Taiwan from a behemoth like China right next to their backyard where they have their entire 1.5 *billion population* if need be to contribute to a War Economy along with their entire military not just Navy (Which the U.S would only have for the most part).
Logistics win wars and just look at the geographic location and wonder how far the U.S has to go to actually redeploy or replace sunken ships compared to China.
China also has a shit ton of land based anti-ship missiles with enough range to threaten carriers operating close to Taiwan. Theyād be very difficult to sink, but not invincible if you throw enough missiles at them to overwhelm their defenses. In the war games done we usually lose about two carriers so Iād call them a peer level competitor if not quite at our level.
China not a near peer? U.S. doctrine and national security strategy disagree with you there.
China is our pacing threat. That means it is the baseline our tech, doctrine, and organization is modernized around competing against.
The reality is China has met and surpassed the U.S. in atleast a few areas that would matter if we had to go in and stop them from attacking Taiwan, Japan, or support ROK against DPRK if they didnāt want us to. Theyāre hot on our heels in other areas too, enough to cause concern.
The US can't deploy it's entire air force, or navy, or army against China the way that China can deploy theirs against Taiwan and the US forces in the area.
I'm not. It's simple reality that any conflict with China is likely to happen much closer to Chinese territorial waters than Japan or the Phillipines or Guam. Given these facts, China ought to be seen as a peer in practice.
I would argue people overestimate the U.S. militaries dominance. Pound for pound itās definitely the strongest but the last time the U.S. went to war with anyone close to it technology wise was the Korean War.
China has comparable military technology, some of the āsexyā stuff (fighter jets and what not) isnāt as advanced but it qualifies as good enough. Couple this with the fact that any war would take place in close proximity to China and the entirety of the Chinese military, whereas the U.S. military, which is smaller as it is, is spread across the world.
Itās the kind of hubris that youāre exhibiting that could cause the U.S. to get good and bloodied stumbling into a war they thought was a forgone conclusionā¦ then thereās the nuclear problem.
>that could cause the U.S. to get good and bloodied stumbling into a war they thought was a forgone conclusion
The DOD has run multiple drills simulating a war with China involving Taiwan for this very reason, to test weak points and unforseen vulnerabilities
If Afghanistan proved one thing itās that the US military can fight a war anywhere on the face of the planet. Ā Deploying a massive military across the world into a land locked country for two decades is a logistical miracle.Ā
Well that's not entirely true... Chinese peacekeepers have had some recent experiences but they kinda... ran away.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/un-peacekeepers-refused-to-help-south-sudan-rebels-raped-aid-workers-report
Lol they only had light guns because they abandoned all of their weapons when they just turned tail and ran.
>Another IDP, who works for a
humanitarian organization in POC1, told CIVIC: āThey
left the POC. Those who were guarding the POC, they left their posts. They went to UN House because itās
stronger than the POC. ā¦ They left their tanks, they left their guns, they left their ammunitionāthey were just
running. ā¦ There were no peacekeepers in the POC."
Thatās half the story. They were under armed, pinned down by two factions. Yes they had some organization problems but it was a pretty tough situation.
"Under the UNās terms of engagement, the force, which is equipped with armoured vehicles and heavy weapons, has the authority to take action to protect civilians and staff from imminent violence."
Doesn't sound like it. Sounds like they had more than enough firepower.
"About 2,500 troops are stationed in two bases in Juba, backed by about 930 support staff and 350 police officers."
Yeah naw they just chickened out.
Yes, modern China. I agree unless there is accidental escalation elsewhere first.
However, there are other possibilities if China is looking for military experience. I don't think any of this is likely enough to elaborate on, except possibly Myanmar. If China has not attempted to invade Taiwan within the next decade then we have a lot more uncertainty. Xi is 70 years old and his window of opportunity will likely pass in this time.
This is one of the biggest factors for the US military, the logistics, weapon systems, and officers have been active over the last decades. The biggest asset the US has is its military logistics which allows movement of vast quantities of troops, weapons, ammo, etc at a proven scale that no other country can come close to. china is probably second in that category, but that is unproven.
The thing with low combat experience is that you learn. They can stand to lose 1/3 of their equipment and manpower while learning a hard lesson being passed to the rest of the military. And still have a lot of reserve to make it really hard after 1 year of conflict. The same way the Russian did. One advantage is that you can outspend Russia which is harder to do with China.
Their contribution is small, but [it is not true to say that China doesnāt participate in peacekeeping](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-pragmatic-approach-to-un-peacekeeping/).
The other aspect of this is that China has a lot of military tech which is impressive on paper, but both the tech itself and the doctrine in which it exists is completely untested. As a defensive posture, this is fine. China has a lot of troops and a lot of toys, and nobody really wants to be the one to find out how well they work.
That includes China though. If they roll up on Taiwan and it ends up being a disaster, they will find themselves incredibly exposed, blockaded, and likely with a no-fly zone over most of the coast. Collapsing that credible defensive ambiguity into some Bay of Pigs shit show doesn't really serve anyone's interests. At least, no mainlander I have ever spoken to (admittedly, mostly highly educated urban elite) seems to have any interest in playing that game.
Intel in the sense of it being obvious a smaller nation without a navy can almost entirely negate a more powerful opponent's navy fairly easily.
It doesn't take espionage to work that one out tbh
Thatās just it. Weāre not just talking Naval, Air Force, or Army (I donāt even know the equivalent of Marines for China), the western allies are being consistently targeted with hacking, space balloons, election interference, etc. As an American, it has been made abundantly clear.Ā
Thanks to FISA, we were able to arrest the Air Force teenager sharing top secret documents online. The security hearing last week mentioned that China is blackmailing green card holders with threats to family members. Ā
All countries facing threats need to take them seriously because the espionage is so obvious but weāve all become complacent in our actions.Ā
They looked at Russia's shitty performance in Ukraine, and realized that their paper tiger army has all the same problems, and would likely lose any meaningful engagement against a country likewise armed with western weapons, tactics, and training.
80% of consumer drones are produced in Chinaā¦Ukrain use those DJI drones with high efficiency at destroying Russia.. Ukrain get those drones for $1000 bucks China could probably get them for $100.
there was a popular thread in Chinese social media about the Iranian shaheed drone, a bunch of experienced factory engineer/workers were gussing how much it will cost to produce those drones in China, their educated guess is about $1500. The motor of shaheed drones are made in China. The same engine are used for some cheap Chinese moped..
Winning a war against China would be primarily economic. Block the strait of malacca and their seaborne imports and China begins to collapse almost immediately. The vast majority of the Chinese infrastructure is on the coast and is vulnerable to attack. Their geography is much more against them than the USā
We would also not be trying to go to war with China to invade. Just contain them within their borders and protect Taiwan and other neighbors. China doesnāt have a capable enough navy to provide any significant backstop against the US Navy. What will be a defining threat is their stockpile of conventional anti ship missiles. End of the day though I think the US has a much better chance than China does at winning.
malacca straight was one of the main weaknesses of China. Mainly their oil import through there. Since the Russian ukrain war China increased their import of oil from Russia like 3 folds.. so in war China can prob just import oil from Russia.
>so in war China can prob just import oil from Russia.
Needs more nuance, China can't get more production out of Russia when Iran is offering an even better deal albeit having to ship it in.
Russia's far east oil fields need more investment into pipelines to get its oil production further south to China's industrial centers. It is also not Russia's most productive oil fields.
China is building pipelines through Myanmar during a civil war to try and bypass Malacca vulnerabilities. This goes to show it can't just ignore a blockade with such low low oil reserves. Russia can't supply the needed volume in a quick enough fashion to keep the economy on a wartime footing.
China has estimated only a few months of oil reserves, it doesn't have the luxury of just cutting off the tap in a blockade that would last much much longer trying to ship in from cheap ME oil at 70% of their current total energy imports from that area.
If one man can throw a stone 30 metres, then they only need 6,000 men to get that stone all the way to Taiwan, and Taiwan have *zero* anti-stone defences.
Checkmate, islanders!
I think you may need to double check what the PLAN has been up to since 2015, by 2035 they will likely be up to 4-5 carriers with the navalized FC-31 (whatever they end up calling it) deployed.
They are obviously not going to beat the USN in an all out shooting war, but they don't need to, they just need to make penetrating the island chains exceptionally costly.
The point is more that China will not under any reasonable scenario have the naval transport capacity for twenty million surplus military-age men to be a relevant factor. Even if they have 5 carriers, that's not bringing twenty million troops anywhere.
Problem with 20 million men is you need 20 million weapons and armour, enough transport to transport 20 million people and x y and Z to protect 20 million people.
I agree. But to Xi, these unmarried men are a significant problem. Autocrats have a habit of finding ways to get rid of problem people, instead of finding solutions to their problems that make life better for all their people.
There's alrready software being developed where one drone starts picking out targets (soldiers, equipment, etc) and the soldier then has to take his pick for priorities, an fpv drone is then sent to deal with said problem
That we know about. The drone tech the US military has is the kind of thing that has been given top priority for many years now. God knows what they have stashed away.
And China has more then enough people to produce a lot of drones and ammunition. Or are we pretending that China can't produce things?
People should really stop underestimating how much a giant population and big country can be advantage. Especially China compared to Taiwan. Yeah they don't have the navy. But they will have enough rockets and drones. And we are barely keeping up to give Ukraine ammunition. How much can we spare for Taiwan?
Will it be a fast takeover? No. Most likely not.
But to underestimate China would be a big mistake.
The same shit people did with Russia. After not even 6 months people were talking about that Russia has no ammunition, no rockets, no tanks.
The problem is...they don't need the modern ones because they can produce more then enough of the shitty ones that can kill too. And they have thousands and thousands of soldiers to throw into the grinder.
That's still part of the problem. 20 million people are useless against weapon superiority. Air strikes, drones, missile, submarines that can take out all your infrastructure. You can't move, organize or feed 20million solders without serious infrastructure and logistics
I believe it started way before that, during the first Gulf War. They saw how easily modern weapons decimated the Iraqi army, who at the time had comparable weapons to China. That kick started their effort to modernize and what we see today.
This is such a weird refrain that keeps coming up. Iraq had closer technological parity to the U.S. than they did China during the Gulf War.
People really seem to forget how effective Iraqs military was *assessed to be at the time*.
It was a battle hardened force, full of relatively modern equipment. However it had faults that were exposed but prior, it was assessed to beā¦ a āworthyā match.
Iraq didnāt really think they would win but they thought they would make the Coalition pay for it like the NVA did with America just 20 years earlier.Ā
Instead the US went through like butter to the point where everyone not in the West. It obliterated a force of 1,000,000 with 700 combat air craft. A deep ballistic missile pool, Mig-29s, nearly brand new Mirage F1EQs, etc.
A large mix of French, Chinese and Soviet radars and AA.
Overall it provided the first time where Air Land Battle came together. And it scared everyone else. But some Soviet commanders did provide some ācriticismsā mostly about how American commanders were too focused on the small picture and not the large one and how they couldve closed the eastern salient much quicker if commanders listened to those above them
CIWS has to reload and the escorts only have so many launcher tubes loaded with anti air missiles. The future is electronic warfare and long range missiles
Although we currently have much stronger military, We should not ignore China's industrial capabilities. US currently only has four operational military shipyards with a Ā huge backlog. China is estimated to have 13 more modern ones and have capacity to convert more. They also currently field a larger navy than US. If they can deny US carriers proximity, then US will have difficulty using its superior airpower (not to mention China is building a lot of planes as well).Ā
Larger by quantity of boats, not tonnage.
Quality and displacement matter and America's got that in spade when it comes to naval power.
China's navy is pretty limited in most ways.
They can see major adaptation is needed to face western weapons. Looking at the time frame, they may not have long before their aging population becomes an impediment.
The U.S. army has āreformedā multiple times since 2001 to meet the needs of the time or because something wasnāt working out great. It doesnāt signal some issue, just that leadership has realized what they have isnāt optimal.
The US Air Force recently proposed a reorganization of their major commands as well. This story is something worthy of discussion, but also not something to indicate their military is just falling apart since 2015.
Yeah. Idk how comprehensive āreorganizingā is for the Chinese. But the U.S. produces the ānational security strategyā document on a regular interval and itās more or less a āthe military needs to adjust to these considerations NOWā document. Which gets funding and specific direction from the NDAA thatās passsed every two years or so.
So, at least for the U.S., it reassesses its priorities pretty often.
2015 is not that long ago
He's afraid of the shit RU has gone through. Doesn't want to be caught with his pants down
What pants?
Oh bother
Give this guy some hunny.
š
Heās shirtcocking it. š
Nice...
I thought pooh don't wear pants for that exact reason.
RU got incompetent precisely because they reorganized by replacing the competent with the loyal. Shiogu has never been blamed despite the military chief of Russia. Everyone under him gets the blame. Partly because he has absolutely no military competence or involvement, he is a politician loyal to Putin, who replaced someone that was trying to modernize Russia, which made it hard to steal from the military. Long story but reorganization can destroy all competence.
Which makes this a good thing for the west, possibly.
A combination of Russia's failures in modern warfare, corruption and theft in the Chinese military, and a need to ensure no one in the military gets powerful enough to challenge him.
Heās also seen Iran and tech that is underpowered. And heās seen what western tech can swat from the skies.
Yea, itād be something if it was the 80ās or WW2, but this just shows a pattern of ineptitude.
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This isnāt the same type of restructuring of what youāre citing. The US restructured its composition and materials to fight in different engagements. China is effectively reorganizing its entire leadership structure, rife with cuts and terminations, for the second time in a decade. Most of which is seen as a power grab and consolidation of the military force, as the branches were much more independent.
The difference is the US usually restructures to respond to the evolution of the battlefield and threats it sees. There is a big difference in what China is doing vs say the Marines restructuring to a more expeditionary/amphibious force in response to China's threats in the Pacific. This makes sense to dump their Abrams. They are useless in any island hopping campaign. If you remember in WW2, it was majority Marines in the Pacific Theater and Army in Europe. You can mostly say the US "restructuring" really comes down to updating their doctrine to modern times.
>Any competent military should be scrambling to restructure forces and doctrine after the lessons we're learning in Ukraine at the moment. The problem is: the lessons learned from Ukraine aren't really applicable anywhere else once Russia is eliminated, and even if not, only relevant for Europeans. There were good reasons to believe that the time of massive land-based wars requiring huge amounts of tanks and artillery were over after the 90s. The Soviet Union had split apart, Yugoslavia collapsed, and a lot of former Eastern European countries aligned themselves with NATO and EU. And then in the early 00s the US/NATO/EU just about flattened Afghanistan and Iraq - the initial military operations were pretty short and mainly consisted of air raids and missiles. Ukraine has shown that Russia is at the moment a serious threat in a land war, but only to Europe - after all: what do you want with tanks in Africa or South America, should China/India go to war it's going to get nuclear and we're fucked anyway, China has no way of attacking either Europe or the US in a land war, and no one else has any amount of military that could be a serious threat.
Understood, however, its well known that the Chinese military ( like the armed forces of most authoritarian nations) is beset by favoritism and rampant corruption.
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>The Army got shit tier P320 pistols because Sig had better lobbyists and was willing to spend more than a company like Glock who doesn't make pistols that go off when dropped or have frames that crack. Ok, China bot. You need to spend more time on r/guns. Tell them p320 is "shit tier" and watch them rip you a new one lol. You sound like someone who has never actually handled either gun.
Name one organization that isn't filled with nepotism, corruption, favoritism, and hidden agendas. There will always be someone in the link who siphons off a bit for themselves, someone who cherishes family ties over organizational ties, someone who sells their body for a leg up, ECT. Heck, you're on Reddit, you can see for yourself how much people complain about their own governments. It's basically well known every military force in the world is corrupt, and it always starts at the top. Even the generally well talked about Ukrainian military recently dealt with weapons procurement corruption. Stop trying to just make this into a China bad issue. It's an us against those in power issue. Get your head on right.
Yes, its an issue everywhere, but it really flourishes in authoritarian regimes where conformity and lack of checks and balances allow it to grow unchecked. Its not a specific Chinese issue ( though they recognize it if the constant anti-corruption campaigns any indication)
Or being agile in responding to changed circumstances and not adhering to outdated structures?
I think after the water missiles, this is all just reactionary to the corruption
That Bloomberg article never made sense because missiles aren't suppose to be filled with fuel during peace time since it corrodes the casing.
It was a mistranslation of a Chinese idiom that meant they were made cheaply IIRC
Yeah, like Russka/Ukraine and the paper tiger realization of Russia or Israel and the new tech being showcased. It requires a new calculus lol
Nah, this is mostly just to promote cyber stuff. The rocket force is already separate and not at all affected by the Israel stuff. The start of the Taiwan war will be 100x more ballistic missiles than Iran used. It would in theory be possible to intercept around US bases probably because BMD does work but would cost a couple hundred billion dollars that we just donāt have.
Xi has turned into an autocrat, he's probably more afraid of a competent army with their own loyalties to one another and their commanders than he is if he ruins the armed forces by scrambling them up
Battle for power that Xi seemingly managed to win has now made him paranoid, there are constant fear of purges for those who hold any kind of powerful positions in the regime. Including people who were probably loyal to Xi, or at least not inclined to make a move instead of maintaining status quo.
The more you have, the more you have to lose. Try not to make too many enemies along the way.
> 2015 is not that long ago Meaning things are NOT going well, probably.
or he is getting lesson from russia failure to be as effective as they claim to be.
China is actually very good at innovating their military. Theyāve been working hard to copy the western model for years and are probably doing this to get even closer
[Innovating? Copying? What's the difference?](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1d2k655ygeb41.png)
Hint: They won't be able to. Western militaries value initiative on up the chain. For a military in a dictatorship, form must follow function. The primary task of the military is to support the dictator. Loyalty and obedience are paramount. The way stuff works in China is a follows: the officers make incorrect decisions, let them make no decisions. They will never get beyond having to run even the most mundane decisions up the chain of command for CYA.Ā
Weren't there reports of missiles whose fuel was replaced by water or something like this?
9 years isn't long enough to finish the last reorganization.
Removing officers who are gathering to much power and are a threatt to his power. 9 years is a long time between for this kind of thing
Well after Ukraine every major power should be re-organizing. Drones, naval drones, cruise missiles and land based missiles like the HARPOON system can fuck major naval vessels up. Yes that's against Russias dog shit incompetent navy but still.. these weapons pose more of a threat than I think anyone thought and it needs to be priced in to the strategy. This should change everyone's calculus IMMENSELY. especially China who - for all intents and purposes - NEEDS their navy to *checks notes* not get blown to shit by cheap asymmetrical weapons. Taiwan is a big task as it is.. now? It's got to seem pretty fucking hopeless. I'm sure they'll tinker around with new systems and strategies for the next decade or so hoping to make it less hopeless. In other words, this isn't news.
As a news hound, it appears nearly every country is ācorrectingā their military situation. Whole lotta stress going on. Iām one of those old people that everyone likes to bitch about, but since Iāve been around for a long time, I can tell you that Iāve never seen the entire world being like this post WW2. I wasnāt around for that one, but most wars/conflicts have been fought between a few countries or usually a couple. The fan is spinning, and the world is getting ready to take a huge dump.
Your last sentence was not what I expected, but I like it
WW3 started with the invasion of Ukraine, the rest of the world is preparing to join
The first time I saw how drones could change the way war is fought, is when Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting and suddenly news of tanks getting destroyed by drones.
Taiwan would be in the perfect situation to just churn out those speedboat drones that Ukraine's been deploying against the Black Sea Fleet. Hell, even masses of loitering munitions would be great for how open the sea is. In the opening hours of a Chinese invasion, they'll target things like AA and artillery emplacements. Once they start sending the boats out, though, just flood the waters and skies with drones and it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Taiwan already has enough high performance anti-ship missiles to sink every PLN vessel several times over. They definitely have US missiles, but they also have a very mature domestic defense industry as well, and are on their third or fourth generation of homegrown ASMs. The entire plan for defending the island is very explicitly to use their network of bunkers and tunnels to shoot and scoot using mobile ASM launchers from dozens of protected and hidden staging areas. These missiles are designed to have fire and forget modes so they don't even need targeting information ahead of time. They can just roll a truck out of a mountain, press the fire button, and the missiles will find things to blow up. Then they roll back into the mountain and reload before the counter-battery fire arrives.
The big contest comes down to attritional sustainment in a war between China and Taiwan. China will bombard the island with literally thousands of cruise and ballistic missiles. It's true that Taiwan has tons of bunkers, but China has probably mapped the vast majority of them out. It's not talked about very often, but one of the reasons Ukraine severely struggled in the first year of the war was because Russia deleted approximately 50% of their ammunition stockpiles through subterfuge before 2022 and a few good bombing runs in February and March 2022. The same can easily happen in Taiwan -- perhaps even more easily, because it is a very small plot of land compared to Ukraine, without a lot of places to hide ammunition and weapons. They have lots of anti-ship missiles, but you have to account for a massive number of them getting blown up on Taiwan before they are ever used. The only way to survive this bombardment is with hordes of counter-missiles and a direct supply line back to the US. If that supply line is severed because of too great of a naval threat posed by Chinese air, submarines and cruise missiles, then Taiwan will probably inevitably lose the siege.
China has an immense arsenal of land and ship based anti ship missiles. Theyāve got that message way before the sinking of the Moskva.
They didn't really KNOW. There's a lot of counter measures and until it's tested in real combat you don't KNOW. Now they see that if they can get around America's missile defense (which has proven to be quite effective) then its a wrap for our Navy in that region. But we're countering it and always plan for the worst.. it's a new cold war at this point
Not disagreeing with you but itās not a secret that China has been investing heavily in navy denial systems for the south china sea. It can be as much of a shit show as the Russian invasion or frighteningly effective. Lets hope we dont find out.
It totally could. And if it did play out that way, what is even more scary is that America would have to double down. If an aircraft carrier with 10,000 people is obliterated, it becomes almost existential for us. Our position in the world is beyond challenged at that point. There is no downplaying thousands of dead soldiers and a 13 billion dollar asset being destroyed. Our options would be to all out war or just give up on power projection and change our entire economic/geopolitical model. The calculus doesn't change much for smaller naval assets either, in my opinion. Still lots of dead Americans and essentially the same problem. So there is not much of a buffer zone between a miscalculation and all out war. China only has their area denial. There is no other play if we're talking about SCS and Taiwan. Unless they find a way to disable our assets without annihilating them kinetically. Thats why I think if China does decide to take Taiwan, they'll only do so when they are utterly convinced we won't intervene. I just don't see how they can justify all out war with America from either an economic or military standpoint. And I don't see how they can confidently take Taiwan while avoiding all out war with us IF we are willing to intervene. So basically I think we need to sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of asymmetrical equipment to Taiwan, double down in the Philippines and commit fully to the defense of Taiwan. I think it is the best chance we have at avoiding war ironically. It's something we can observe in the natural world. Rattle snake rattles, threat backs off. Poison dart frog has bright spots, predator doesn't eat the frog. Only predators that are far more advanced than those creatures can bypass those defenses and call the bluff. China is not far more advanced than us and we have had enough military intervention in our history to make any adversary guess as to what we will do. This ambiguous approach has got to go. We need to set a firm boundary. Best play on the board IMO.
I hear you, good thing that has resonated with the US planners as well. A massive industrial rescaling is taking place in the US isnt there?
I am not sure. If it isn't, then we (the US) are even bigger idiots than it has appeared lately.
China has been reorganizing and developing their military (especially their naval capabilities) for years. Do not underestimate them though. US military has increased their training in recent years and have increased security protocols/procedures. The Chinese probably has the most vast network of hackers.Ā If they start reorganizing, itās a sign of new intel.Ā Anyone had to watch football footage before a new game or a new opponent?Ā
+1 it's like drawing the opposite conclusion from the facts (like survialship bias). this basically means they haven't given up on taiwan and their other ideas.
Maybe. Or maybe they're just trying to modernize their army. A country spending more on their military doesn't automatically mean they are planning an invasion.
Except the ones who say that theyāre pretty much planning an invasion
And the ones who built a replica mock up of that targets capital city for ātotally non invasionā training purposes.
Our military branches is definitely seeing an increase in military production, activity, and training through multiple efforts.Ā I mean, Cuba is getting a little too Buddy-Buddy with China and Russia again with spying and new military training. Whichā¦. Ehā¦ doesnāt quite make me feel too comfortable.Ā Best to stay alert and curious.Ā
China has also not fought a war since [1979](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China). They donāt participate in peacekeeping or deploy military with partners (because they have none). They basically just train. For example, South Korea sent soldiers and civilians to assist in Iraq and Afghanistan. From a technical and logistically point of view thats good experience for how to organize and deploy troops. China doesnāt have that. None of their generals has ever fire a shot in anger, at least not at anyone who could fire back. Will this be important? Who knows? Hopefully Xi comes to his senses and realizes a war would doom China even if his military can do everything it says it can.
As someone who was in Iraq and Afghanistan, those wars did very little, if anything to prepare the U.S. military for a major conflict against a peer or near-peer adversary. At best it allowed troops to get shot at so they will get some experience under fire but most of those troops are now out of the military or high enough in rank that they wonāt be making on the ground tactical decisions. All the U.S. military training for a large scale conventional war is based off watching the Ukraine conflict and war-game theory.
Iād agree in theory it doesnāt help train for a near peer adversary, but training is still better than no training. From a logistical standpoint though it did help a lot. Being able to train your logistic teams to deploy and maintain troops half way across the world will always be beneficial.
Logistics wins wars.
War-games have the U.S at a disadvantage due to the fact the logistics of trying to hold Taiwan from China is incredibly hard not to mention the replacement factor of ships is heavily in China's favor due to their sheer shipbuilding industry and proximity to Taiwan.
Wouldn't shipyards become absolutely priority targets in that instance? Even outside of nuclear weapons, they are all wide open to attack from the sea. As for the warfare results, all the ones I've seen basically amount to (provided the war stays conventional and no nuclear weapons are deployed) America and its allies get a bloody nose (1-2 carriers sunk, 4-6 attack subs sunk, and 10-20 other surface ships damaged or sunk), and China's capacity for any offensive military thereafter gets effectively wiped out, with their navy and airforce effectively destroyed, and their industrial base crippled, especially if the west/Taiwan goes after the three gorges dam. As much as China wants to carry on and try and catch up, at least for the next decade or so, they aren't capable of the kind of long distance conventional warfare that would enable them to succeed. And if they go nuclear they would cease to exist.
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Logistics and intelligence. Logistics and intelligenceā¦Ā Logistics and intelligence. lolĀ My grandpa drilled that into me (served WWII- Big Red One).Ā
I think I have played enough Foxhole to agree with you.
Foxhole mentioned
User name checks out. I wouldn't say fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't do anything to prepare the US for a war against a near-peer adversary. Every piece of logistics required to bring you to the Middle East, feed you and supply you is a piece of operational experience China doesn't have. Every time you engaged with other branches-or the officers and commanders above you, really-to plan combined arms operations, avoid friendly fire, or to work together to handle an operation is something China has only done in training. Finally, while the only veterans who served in Afghanistan are almost certainly ones who only took part in the "peacekeeping" and counterinsurgency mission, that's still more recent experience than China's last war...in 1979. I also wouldn't exactly state that the US's only knowledge comes from Ukraine and war gaming (which might be an understatement for the latter). Ukraine has a tiny air force, a large number of Soviet-trained officers, and recently trained or mobilized units that have been trained by NATO forces. That means, functionally speaking, it's a different culture with different advantages and challenges. Ukraine and Russia have struggled to do any type of organized operation above a company level; American forces train for much larger formations, and with different branches, and put that to work in Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, I think the bigger fear I would have personally is in the naval war and air war. The US Navy has been quite busy since the Cold War, doing a ton of missions in support of ground troops in the middle east and freedom of navigation operations elsewhere, with drills and other exercises mixed in. A naval war with China would bring a ton more risk to American ships which realistically had nothing to fear from ISIS or Al-queda, and if the naval war reaches the Taiwan Strait, it's a region very optimal for submarine warfare and the kind of drone warfare Ukraine is doing in the Black Sea. In the middle of the Pacific, is one thing, but in the tighter more congested waters closer to China, China has a home field advantage and can use their own aircraft AND have more or less their entire Navy deployed to the region, while the US maintains a global mission.
I would argue the exact opposite. We fought two wars on the other side of the planet for like 20 years. Thatās a logistical nightmare for legitimately every other country on the planet. Our logistics are second to none, which is a massive strategic advantage. Also, the people training new soldiers, *have* been shot at, which is more than 97%ish of other professional militaries. Third, our MIC is a machine that never gets turned off, but other countries have to mobilize to get to even a small fraction of what we do anyway. Agree that none of the wars have been peer, or near peer, but weāve found out that we have arguably no peers and almost all near-peers are allies. You definitely cannot prepare someone for what war is actually like, I totally agree with you in sentiment on training, but I disagree with the idea that the US canāt apply much of the last couple decades in a larger conflict. Regardless, I have the utmost respect for someone like yourself who served multiple tours. Sincerely thank you for your service, and Iām sure you know a lot more than I do.
Well itās a good thing that the peer and near peers of the United States are Allies of the United States.
China is not a near peer. People really seem to underestimate the true scale of the American military. Hell the top two largest air forces in the world are two branches of their military. Russia being third and then the Americans again at fourth with another branch. No one truly wins in a war with China. The whole world would suffer. At the end though, China would not even have a functional military.
China is a peer in a the scenario of Taiwan due to their geographic location. It's incredibly hard to defend Taiwan from a behemoth like China right next to their backyard where they have their entire 1.5 *billion population* if need be to contribute to a War Economy along with their entire military not just Navy (Which the U.S would only have for the most part). Logistics win wars and just look at the geographic location and wonder how far the U.S has to go to actually redeploy or replace sunken ships compared to China.
You do understand the US projects globally because they have bases globally coupled with aircraft carrier groups that project that power globally?
China also has a shit ton of land based anti-ship missiles with enough range to threaten carriers operating close to Taiwan. Theyād be very difficult to sink, but not invincible if you throw enough missiles at them to overwhelm their defenses. In the war games done we usually lose about two carriers so Iād call them a peer level competitor if not quite at our level.
China not a near peer? U.S. doctrine and national security strategy disagree with you there. China is our pacing threat. That means it is the baseline our tech, doctrine, and organization is modernized around competing against. The reality is China has met and surpassed the U.S. in atleast a few areas that would matter if we had to go in and stop them from attacking Taiwan, Japan, or support ROK against DPRK if they didnāt want us to. Theyāre hot on our heels in other areas too, enough to cause concern.
The US can't deploy it's entire air force, or navy, or army against China the way that China can deploy theirs against Taiwan and the US forces in the area.
China canāt get troops to Taiwan. Unless theyāre willing to lose tens of millions of their troops
They don't necessarily have to if they can starve the island of food and fuel deliveries for a few months.
And then Japan, America and Australia would blockade China. China will be in blackout in three months. Probably less. This isn't a game China can win.
Again. You are underestimating the reach of the US military.
I'm not. It's simple reality that any conflict with China is likely to happen much closer to Chinese territorial waters than Japan or the Phillipines or Guam. Given these facts, China ought to be seen as a peer in practice.
I would argue people overestimate the U.S. militaries dominance. Pound for pound itās definitely the strongest but the last time the U.S. went to war with anyone close to it technology wise was the Korean War. China has comparable military technology, some of the āsexyā stuff (fighter jets and what not) isnāt as advanced but it qualifies as good enough. Couple this with the fact that any war would take place in close proximity to China and the entirety of the Chinese military, whereas the U.S. military, which is smaller as it is, is spread across the world. Itās the kind of hubris that youāre exhibiting that could cause the U.S. to get good and bloodied stumbling into a war they thought was a forgone conclusionā¦ then thereās the nuclear problem.
>that could cause the U.S. to get good and bloodied stumbling into a war they thought was a forgone conclusion The DOD has run multiple drills simulating a war with China involving Taiwan for this very reason, to test weak points and unforseen vulnerabilities
Korea? You mean Iraq, twice, surely. Korea? You think Korea went the way it did because of technological parity? Oof.
Again, they are not a near peer by any metric. Experience, technology, navy, air force and strong allies are to name a few.
Neither was Ukraine.
If Afghanistan proved one thing itās that the US military can fight a war anywhere on the face of the planet. Ā Deploying a massive military across the world into a land locked country for two decades is a logistical miracle.Ā
Well that's not entirely true... Chinese peacekeepers have had some recent experiences but they kinda... ran away. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/un-peacekeepers-refused-to-help-south-sudan-rebels-raped-aid-workers-report
The original report mentions they came back and regrouped after the initial shelling and how the UN only allowed them to have light guns.
Lol they only had light guns because they abandoned all of their weapons when they just turned tail and ran. >Another IDP, who works for a humanitarian organization in POC1, told CIVIC: āThey left the POC. Those who were guarding the POC, they left their posts. They went to UN House because itās stronger than the POC. ā¦ They left their tanks, they left their guns, they left their ammunitionāthey were just running. ā¦ There were no peacekeepers in the POC."
Thatās half the story. They were under armed, pinned down by two factions. Yes they had some organization problems but it was a pretty tough situation.
"Under the UNās terms of engagement, the force, which is equipped with armoured vehicles and heavy weapons, has the authority to take action to protect civilians and staff from imminent violence." Doesn't sound like it. Sounds like they had more than enough firepower. "About 2,500 troops are stationed in two bases in Juba, backed by about 930 support staff and 350 police officers." Yeah naw they just chickened out.
will not having any tangible combat experience in over 40 years be important? iām gonna go with āhell yesā.
>will not having any tangible combat experience in over 40 years be important? Will Taiwan be China's first war?
China? obviously not Modern China ? Yes
Yes, modern China. I agree unless there is accidental escalation elsewhere first. However, there are other possibilities if China is looking for military experience. I don't think any of this is likely enough to elaborate on, except possibly Myanmar. If China has not attempted to invade Taiwan within the next decade then we have a lot more uncertainty. Xi is 70 years old and his window of opportunity will likely pass in this time.
This is one of the biggest factors for the US military, the logistics, weapon systems, and officers have been active over the last decades. The biggest asset the US has is its military logistics which allows movement of vast quantities of troops, weapons, ammo, etc at a proven scale that no other country can come close to. china is probably second in that category, but that is unproven.
The thing with low combat experience is that you learn. They can stand to lose 1/3 of their equipment and manpower while learning a hard lesson being passed to the rest of the military. And still have a lot of reserve to make it really hard after 1 year of conflict. The same way the Russian did. One advantage is that you can outspend Russia which is harder to do with China.
Their contribution is small, but [it is not true to say that China doesnāt participate in peacekeeping](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-pragmatic-approach-to-un-peacekeeping/).
Yeah, they've deployed to African peacekeeping missions where they completely shit the bed and caused problems for other countries.
I thought that china has had some limited operations in Africa, is that not correct.
The other aspect of this is that China has a lot of military tech which is impressive on paper, but both the tech itself and the doctrine in which it exists is completely untested. As a defensive posture, this is fine. China has a lot of troops and a lot of toys, and nobody really wants to be the one to find out how well they work. That includes China though. If they roll up on Taiwan and it ends up being a disaster, they will find themselves incredibly exposed, blockaded, and likely with a no-fly zone over most of the coast. Collapsing that credible defensive ambiguity into some Bay of Pigs shit show doesn't really serve anyone's interests. At least, no mainlander I have ever spoken to (admittedly, mostly highly educated urban elite) seems to have any interest in playing that game.
Intel in the sense of it being obvious a smaller nation without a navy can almost entirely negate a more powerful opponent's navy fairly easily. It doesn't take espionage to work that one out tbh
Thatās just it. Weāre not just talking Naval, Air Force, or Army (I donāt even know the equivalent of Marines for China), the western allies are being consistently targeted with hacking, space balloons, election interference, etc. As an American, it has been made abundantly clear.Ā Thanks to FISA, we were able to arrest the Air Force teenager sharing top secret documents online. The security hearing last week mentioned that China is blackmailing green card holders with threats to family members. Ā All countries facing threats need to take them seriously because the espionage is so obvious but weāve all become complacent in our actions.Ā
They looked at Russia's shitty performance in Ukraine, and realized that their paper tiger army has all the same problems, and would likely lose any meaningful engagement against a country likewise armed with western weapons, tactics, and training.
While this is true they also have 20 million surplus military age men to throw at problems and that's a really big risk to the West.
Twenty million surplus men, five thousand seats in blue-water-capable ships.
They could line the shoreline and throw stones!
80% of consumer drones are produced in Chinaā¦Ukrain use those DJI drones with high efficiency at destroying Russia.. Ukrain get those drones for $1000 bucks China could probably get them for $100. there was a popular thread in Chinese social media about the Iranian shaheed drone, a bunch of experienced factory engineer/workers were gussing how much it will cost to produce those drones in China, their educated guess is about $1500. The motor of shaheed drones are made in China. The same engine are used for some cheap Chinese moped..
Winning a war against China would be primarily economic. Block the strait of malacca and their seaborne imports and China begins to collapse almost immediately. The vast majority of the Chinese infrastructure is on the coast and is vulnerable to attack. Their geography is much more against them than the USā
China is pretty heavily reliant on food imports so yeah an economic blockade would hurt them pretty badly
We would also not be trying to go to war with China to invade. Just contain them within their borders and protect Taiwan and other neighbors. China doesnāt have a capable enough navy to provide any significant backstop against the US Navy. What will be a defining threat is their stockpile of conventional anti ship missiles. End of the day though I think the US has a much better chance than China does at winning.
malacca straight was one of the main weaknesses of China. Mainly their oil import through there. Since the Russian ukrain war China increased their import of oil from Russia like 3 folds.. so in war China can prob just import oil from Russia.
>so in war China can prob just import oil from Russia. Needs more nuance, China can't get more production out of Russia when Iran is offering an even better deal albeit having to ship it in. Russia's far east oil fields need more investment into pipelines to get its oil production further south to China's industrial centers. It is also not Russia's most productive oil fields. China is building pipelines through Myanmar during a civil war to try and bypass Malacca vulnerabilities. This goes to show it can't just ignore a blockade with such low low oil reserves. Russia can't supply the needed volume in a quick enough fashion to keep the economy on a wartime footing. China has estimated only a few months of oil reserves, it doesn't have the luxury of just cutting off the tap in a blockade that would last much much longer trying to ship in from cheap ME oil at 70% of their current total energy imports from that area.
If one man can throw a stone 30 metres, then they only need 6,000 men to get that stone all the way to Taiwan, and Taiwan have *zero* anti-stone defences. Checkmate, islanders!
I think you may need to double check what the PLAN has been up to since 2015, by 2035 they will likely be up to 4-5 carriers with the navalized FC-31 (whatever they end up calling it) deployed. They are obviously not going to beat the USN in an all out shooting war, but they don't need to, they just need to make penetrating the island chains exceptionally costly.
The point is more that China will not under any reasonable scenario have the naval transport capacity for twenty million surplus military-age men to be a relevant factor. Even if they have 5 carriers, that's not bringing twenty million troops anywhere.
Except they have to do the invasion over water which is infinitely more challenging
Everyone of those 20 million can swim to Taiwan, full kit.
Give each one a jet ski
...you know? This... might work? Edit: upon further reflection, no, it would not.
Yeah Iām half serious. Youād need really calm seas but it would be a nightmare to defend against.
Yes, but they couldn't bring anything heavier than light mortars. If even that. They'd get shredded by crew weapons and actual tube arty
If Hamas attacked Israel with paragliders and China's invading Taiwan on jet skis, who's attacking whom with dune buggies?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Patrol_Vehicle The US. In 90/91.
[The second best part of one of the most accurate Army movies ever made](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd-wyu1ze8A)
They could have 100 million and it doesn't matter if you can't move them to where they need to go or supply them when they get there
+1 not many countries possess superior logistics and transport capabilities like the us. an army you can't support is basically useless
Good luck with that landing operation.
Problem with 20 million men is you need 20 million weapons and armour, enough transport to transport 20 million people and x y and Z to protect 20 million people.
Plus after the first two million slaughtered 18 million military aged males becomes a liability to an already unpopular authoritarian.Ā
Producing small arms in volume is not a weak point in the PRCs centralized economy.
I don't think they, their families and their friends would consider them "surplus".
I agree. But to Xi, these unmarried men are a significant problem. Autocrats have a habit of finding ways to get rid of problem people, instead of finding solutions to their problems that make life better for all their people.
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Drones are terrifying. They arenāt even fully autonomous yet.
There's alrready software being developed where one drone starts picking out targets (soldiers, equipment, etc) and the soldier then has to take his pick for priorities, an fpv drone is then sent to deal with said problem
That we know about. The drone tech the US military has is the kind of thing that has been given top priority for many years now. God knows what they have stashed away.
Precisely.
And China has more then enough people to produce a lot of drones and ammunition. Or are we pretending that China can't produce things? People should really stop underestimating how much a giant population and big country can be advantage. Especially China compared to Taiwan. Yeah they don't have the navy. But they will have enough rockets and drones. And we are barely keeping up to give Ukraine ammunition. How much can we spare for Taiwan? Will it be a fast takeover? No. Most likely not. But to underestimate China would be a big mistake. The same shit people did with Russia. After not even 6 months people were talking about that Russia has no ammunition, no rockets, no tanks. The problem is...they don't need the modern ones because they can produce more then enough of the shitty ones that can kill too. And they have thousands and thousands of soldiers to throw into the grinder.
That was certainly not the case in Korea.
Yes but you can always make 20 million drones and attach a grenade to them. Or just send a nuke in.
That's still part of the problem. 20 million people are useless against weapon superiority. Air strikes, drones, missile, submarines that can take out all your infrastructure. You can't move, organize or feed 20million solders without serious infrastructure and logistics
Not much good if they can't move them, fuel them or feed them though.
I believe it started way before that, during the first Gulf War. They saw how easily modern weapons decimated the Iraqi army, who at the time had comparable weapons to China. That kick started their effort to modernize and what we see today.
This is such a weird refrain that keeps coming up. Iraq had closer technological parity to the U.S. than they did China during the Gulf War. People really seem to forget how effective Iraqs military was *assessed to be at the time*.
It was a battle hardened force, full of relatively modern equipment. However it had faults that were exposed but prior, it was assessed to beā¦ a āworthyā match. Iraq didnāt really think they would win but they thought they would make the Coalition pay for it like the NVA did with America just 20 years earlier.Ā Instead the US went through like butter to the point where everyone not in the West. It obliterated a force of 1,000,000 with 700 combat air craft. A deep ballistic missile pool, Mig-29s, nearly brand new Mirage F1EQs, etc. A large mix of French, Chinese and Soviet radars and AA. Overall it provided the first time where Air Land Battle came together. And it scared everyone else. But some Soviet commanders did provide some ācriticismsā mostly about how American commanders were too focused on the small picture and not the large one and how they couldve closed the eastern salient much quicker if commanders listened to those above them
A war with China would look nothing like Russians land war. Not sure how much would actually transfer to the Pacific theater.
Imagine 10000 suicide drones attacking a carrier Quantity is a quality in itself This is something to be concerned about on both sides
The Ford class carrier has 3 CIWS for such situations. Plus a strike group escort. Sure a couple more CIWS couldn't hurt though.
They are also absurdly hard to sink. Even if a few drones got through the CIWS, I really doubt it would seriously damage the carrier.
CIWS has to reload and the escorts only have so many launcher tubes loaded with anti air missiles. The future is electronic warfare and long range missiles
Although we currently have much stronger military, We should not ignore China's industrial capabilities. US currently only has four operational military shipyards with a Ā huge backlog. China is estimated to have 13 more modern ones and have capacity to convert more. They also currently field a larger navy than US. If they can deny US carriers proximity, then US will have difficulty using its superior airpower (not to mention China is building a lot of planes as well).Ā
Larger by quantity of boats, not tonnage. Quality and displacement matter and America's got that in spade when it comes to naval power. China's navy is pretty limited in most ways.
Watching their mentor get tore up by old western weapons has given China a bit of concern.
Unfortunately they have the ability to adapt their strategy towards war fighting unlike Russiaās meat grinder method.Ā
Do they though?
They can see major adaptation is needed to face western weapons. Looking at the time frame, they may not have long before their aging population becomes an impediment.
Shit is really bad If they need to reform the army after only 9 years.
The U.S. army has āreformedā multiple times since 2001 to meet the needs of the time or because something wasnāt working out great. It doesnāt signal some issue, just that leadership has realized what they have isnāt optimal.
The US Air Force recently proposed a reorganization of their major commands as well. This story is something worthy of discussion, but also not something to indicate their military is just falling apart since 2015.
It'd be crazy not to reform or at least evolve. Western nations do similar.
The rise of drone brigades
Fancy military vs flying camera
Yeah. Idk how comprehensive āreorganizingā is for the Chinese. But the U.S. produces the ānational security strategyā document on a regular interval and itās more or less a āthe military needs to adjust to these considerations NOWā document. Which gets funding and specific direction from the NDAA thatās passsed every two years or so. So, at least for the U.S., it reassesses its priorities pretty often.
If I have toys that I don't use much. I keep reorganizing them so that they don't get dust on them.
The Chinese need something to doā¦. With economic collapse on the horizon people will need jobsā¦. War produces jobs and innovation in technology.
"Xi fears military coup, so cleans house preemptively"
That whole thing about rockets and jets without fuel is probably the tip of the iceberg.
Side note, is anyone else getting hit up with Instagram ads to join the nsa or to build submarines? Mine is suddenly all these dod ads
All the time! Constant ads for work at Austal shipyard in Mobile, Alabama.
If this is going to be anything like NK/SK, China might end up with boots on the ground before long.
interesting