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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31601 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Regarding the sealift situation, things might be less optimistic for Taiwan on that front than previously thought. https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/mind-the-gap-part-2-the-cross-strait-potential-of-chinas-civilian-shipping-has-grown/

Uninformed amateur: is it hard to sink civilian ferries used as troop transports?

Not particularly. Then again it's not really hard to sink military grade amphibious warfare ships either.

There are a number of reasons that some readers and analysts are likely to discount the feasibility of using civilian shipping in the manner and at the scale described above. First, some are likely to question the survivability or defensibility of civilian vessels in a high-intensity conflict when compared to dedicated amphibious assault ships. Such an assessment, however, overlooks the fact that even naval amphibious assault vessels have quite limited self-defense capability. As an example, the Department of Defense’s own director of operational test and evaluation assessed that the defenses of the San Antonio-class ships discussed above “did not demonstrate adequate capability to defend the ship against the threats it is likely to encounter.” The Chinese military is well aware that amphibious assault shipping, whether painted navy gray or some other color, is vulnerable and as such must be defended. This is why the People’s Liberation Army has long been fixated with seizing what it calls the “Three Dominances” — information dominance, air dominance, and sea dominance — as the first step in a landing campaign.

Interesting read. Those 2.4 million tonnes of sealift capacity sound like a lot, I'm surprised that only translates to 60,000 troops in the first wave. I suppose they're moving a lot of ammo and light vehicles.

Those 60,000 troops come from using Heavy Combined Arms Brigades as a metric for sealift and estimating about 8 of those in the first wave. The estimate deliberately picked the biggest, heaviest brigade level option probably to demonstrate just how much heavy, expensive, logistically intense stuff Beijing could bring across the strait. That's a lot of tanks, artillery and support equipment in that estimate, not just 60,000 guys with QBZ-191s.

For some reason I got mixed up between the bit where he says 'most likely split between lighter brigades' and the eight heavy brigades + 60,000 quote. It's a weird way to say things - do 60,000 troops comprise 8 heavy brigades? Those would be big for brigades, more like small divisions. Anyway, it's the heavy marine brigades that would be first onto the beach anyway, yet they aren't mentioned.

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