Julian Spencer-Churchill & Liu Zongzo
Mainland China is far from conducting the types and scale of exercises it will need to blockade, let alone invade, Taiwan. At best, China is currently able to attempt a re-run of the 1954 and 1958 Taiwan Straits Crises, consisting of an aerial, artillery, rocket bombardment and amphibious assault of Taiwanese possessions off the Chinese coast: Kinmen, Matsu, Pratas, possibly extended to Penghu and Itu Aba Island. Both of those crises ended in military exhaustion and concerns for U.S. escalation, including permanent deployments of U.S. troops in the then named Republic of China (ROC). It is well within China’s capability to seize these islands. However, Beijing is concerned that an attempted conquest of the coastal Taiwanese islands of Kinmen and Matsu will simply be reciprocated by a U.S. backed Taiwanese capture of Chinese Islands in the South China Sea. The U.S. Marine Corps has been reconfiguring its combat units to seize island promontories.
China’s most recent extensive maritime exercises around Taiwan, taking place on August 4-7th, were a response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s high-profile visit to Taiwan, and were in part political intimidation by a demonstration of capabilities, and cognitive warfare. However, the deployment was mainly a routinized sequence of small flotilla, single mixed-squadron, and marine battalion-sized training exercises meant to give experience to frontline naval platforms and air squadrons that would participate in a blockade or invasion of Taiwan.
Prior to the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visit between 29 July to 2 August, China conducted a simultaneous five-day exercise comprising naval, air and land-based missile units, as far out as the median line of the Taiwan Strait. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) deployed its HQ-9 and HQ-22 air defense systems, as well as related logistical missile refuel trucks, necessary to contest the Taiwan Straits against a Taiwanese interdiction of an amphibious landing force from China. The exercises were also accompanied by naval maneuvers, and anti-air live fire drills, but the forces exercised were a fraction of the flotilla needed to guide in an amphibious force onto Taiwan’s beaches. The post-Pelosi assets were likely similar to the pre-visit and typical deployment of Type 055 destroyers, 8 J-11C and 10 J-16 fighters, 1 KJ-500 AEW&C, 1 Y-9 EW and 1 Y-8 ELINT aircraft, which at best would constitute a single aerial sortie package, out of thousands that would need to be conducted to bring a Taiwan campaign to conclusion.
Based on the information map released by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, this exercise penetrated the medium line, deep into its Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), and the drills breached the Exclusive Economic Zone of the ROC, with the closest exercise location being less than 20 kilometers away from the coast of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, indicating their principal purpose as political intimidation. These exercises were far closer to the Taiwanese coast than the previous, 1996, Third Cross-Strait Crisis under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin’s tenure.
A PLA military journal reaffirmed the objective of focusing on continuously exercising its military capabilities and modernization over the next five years: specifically to strengthen China’s military through modernization of its organizational structure, and to develop a synergy between mechanization, informationalization (network-centric capability), and artificial intelligence. Since the Fifth Plenum, the PLA military has committed itself to the 2027 to 2035 timetable in which to achieve peer competitiveness in its region. Former Chinese Communist Party secretary general Jiang Zemin’s “three-step plan” was the foundation of the PLA’s strategic modernization plan, of which the first step was to accelerate force development in order to reduce its capability weaknesses versus its adversaries; the second step was to leap-frog ahead in mechanization and its informationalization; the third step is to be able to achieve victory in an information warfare environment in a regional conflict.
The problem is that many of these requirements are poorly operationalized, given that senior Chinese military officers are somewhat politicized, and they lack of joint warfare training experience, based on their career postings, let alone their absence of combat experience. However, neither did almost all of the British army, navy or air force that were sent to fight amphibiously in the Falklands in 1982, have combat experience. The PLA soldiers and Marines most likely to assault Taiwan are overwhelmingly professional rather than conscripts, and the PLA possesses a full-time cohort of Non-Commissioned Officers (unlike Russia), mimicking its Western adversaries.
In a 2022 Military Balance report, it was observed that the PLA’s exercises involve combined operations between all of its branches, tailored for realism, adaptation and interoperability. However, none of these exercises were of a sufficient scale to emulate a multi-brigade sized landing, or included the mobilization of civilian logistical support, which would be vital to the sustainability of an invasion. For example, its Army Aviation Corps conducted a joint strike exercises with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), under electronic warfare environment, to improve jamming and anti-jamming capabilities, which enabled testing their C3 in unfamiliar training environments. However, it is unclear whether this was a time-tabled bombardment, rather than real-time support provided to a smaller combat unit, like a battalion. Failure to provide responsive interdiction against Taiwanese ground units could leave PLA(N) Marines trapped on a beach. Exercises also involved night time armored units’ live-fire exercises and night-time combat exercises, which satisfied the goal of testing their combined doctrine, troops’ synergy, and inter-unit coordination.
The exercise areas were chosen to envelop Taiwan, but their locations do not reveal a preference in Beijing for a naval blockade versus an amphibious attack. The PLA could just as easily opt for the politically less escalatory strategy of employing a blockade, while claiming rights to maritime features to unlawfully restrict the right of passage within the territorial waters, versus the employment of nuclear threats as a pretext to conduct a difficult amphibious landing against Taiwan. The PLA also used the Pelosi visit crisis to conduct in-depth testing of the ROC’s A2/AD capabilities, comprising aircraft sortie interceptions and naval shadowing.
Current Chinese Communist Party secretary general Xi Jinping further emphasized military modernization by signing the order on “non-war military activities.” The PLA’s think-tanks have recommended compensating China’s serious lack of military experience with a thorough emphasis on maintaining a high degree of readiness achieved through other operational experiences. These recommendations imply long-distance deployments to the Indian Ocean, or perhaps limited operations against a neighbor, like Vietnam. The problem, likely recognized in Beijing, is that the U.S. is likely to seize on any Chinese aggression, to mobilize its alliance and to seek to impose a naval blockade.
According to the Military Balance’s 2021 report, the PLA’s defense budget was increased by 6.4 percent, boosting its military capability in conjunction with the maturing of its military-industrial complex. In 2020, the PLA’s logistics system sought to replicate the U.S.-inspired operation-oriented structure. To that end, one PLA think-tank recommended the purchase up to 400 Y-20 transport aircraft, the equivalent of the U.S. C-17 transport, of which the U.S. possesses 279. If achieved, the procurement of which would take a decade, and China would possess the world’s most significant intercontinental airlift capability. There is also an increased emphasis on sustainable logistics operations, a discussion of which appeared in the 14th Five Year Special Plan for Science and Technology Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) Development plan. Logistics was not a priority in the previous 13th MCF development plan.
Given the fact that the PLA currently suffers from recruitment and leadership problems, an internal assessment demonstrate that it has not yet attained the desired capability for an invasion. Even if only intended to occupy the Kinmen islands, it would reflect a low-risk high return for Beijing.
The PLA is committing heavily to building new destroyers – 5 new Type 052D destroyers are currently under construction simultaneously in Dalian. According to the Pentagon’s 2021 Military and Security Development Involving the People’s Republic of China, the People’s Liberation Army Navy already possesses the world’s largest navy by numbers, with 355 ships, including more than 145 major surface combatants, although markedly inferior to the U.S. Navy in Vertical Launch System tubes. More exercises are anticipated as these new platforms are commissioned, as well as the recent upgrade of China’s coast guard capabilities, which have been involved in PLAN’s exercises in the past. Further Western and U.S. political delegations will likely trigger more Chinese exercises, whose shortcomings can then be identified and targeted with the most appropriate U.S. funding support to Taiwan’s defense.
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