Future War with (Red) China Hypotheticals/Theorycrafting

[JagerIV]

Okay, seriously, are you not reading my posts?

I have said repeatedly throughout them that the one thing that could ruin the US military fighting against China, was incompetent political meddling. I'm not some fantasizer that is unaware that this can be a real problem, I know just how much of a problem it can be, and that it is literally the worst possible thing that could happen on the US side.

No, the fantasy is that the issue is just political incompetence. Its a stab in the back narrative that the only reason we lost was the politics.

That's what I'm point to with the Union and Revolutionary war that the politics being extremely important doesn't negate the military performance. If the Union and Revolutionary army were just shit, the politics wouldn't matter. If the British just crushed the continental army in the first year of the war, the French wouldn't have had time or interest to get involved. If the Confederates were just dramatically better than the Union, that numerical advantage wouldn't have mattered, because they'd have just swept up to Washington.

Likewise, we lost in Vietnam because "we" the west faught them for roughly 30 years, of generally escalating force, and couldn't beat them, while they were able to inflict enough damage that the war was not sustainable at costs we were willing to pay.

If they were hapless, helpless communists, then the French would have crushed the rebellion, like the British mostly crushed the communist/Chinese uprising in Malaysia (at grossly disproportionate force ratios). The French deployed nearly 200,000 men there, plus roughly 200,000 local forces, for 400,000 troops. Hardly a trivial force. And the French were committed, staying in for 8 years.

If communists had some disability that made them incapable of fighting, then obviously the French won, no?

Except obviously not. With only about 125,000 regulars, and a total force of 450,000, mostly irregulars, the French lost. Overall ratio of casualties was 200,000 communist dead vs 130,000 anti communist, a ratio of 1.5-1 . 50% higher casualties as the comparatively poorly equipped militia force doesn't strike me as particularly bad performance.

This seems pretty good performance to me. Is your belief that the French are just another level below Iraqis in ability to fight, so the Vietnamese should have won with zero casualties? Should a Vietnamese farmer with a rifle have traded with the French with their artillery and aircraft at a possitive kill ratio? Is that possibly a reasonable expectation?

Did the French militarily lose to the Vietnamese, or does this not count for some reason as a sign of the army's ability?

 

[LordsFire]

Except obviously not. With only about 125,000 regulars, and a total force of 450,000, mostly irregulars, the French lost. Overall ratio of casualties was 200,000 communist dead vs 130,000 anti communist, a ratio of 1.5-1 . 50% higher casualties as the comparatively poorly equipped militia force doesn't strike me as particularly bad performance.

This is getting really, really tiring.

If you're going to make an argument like this, then carry it through to the next stage to see if it really supports your position.

Moving forward to the Vietnam war, and using Wikipedia to be consistent with you using it as a source (and because it's convenient):

North Vietnamese military dead:
849,018, and ~232,000 missing.

Other communist dead:
~11,021

South Vietnamese military dead:
254,256.

American military dead:
58,281.

Combined other allied dead:
20,943.


Total comparative losses:
~1.08 million, vs ~333,480 (some estimates say 60k more)

We're looking at a 3:1 ratio against the Communists here. If we were to only count the dead before the US pulled out, and South Vietnam was largely left standing alone, I wonder how much worse the kill/loss ratio was up to that point. It's fairly clear that if we count American vs North Vietnamese directly, the kill/loss ratio jumps to a hilarious 15:1.

North Vietnam won the war because they continued to be backed by Russia and China, while the South Vietnamese lost support. Even with all of that, the communists still suffered disproportionate losses on their path to victory.

Unfortunately for the CCP, infantry rushes and masses of military hardware shipped from Russia cannot win them an amphibious assault, or a full-scale war over the sea lanes.


Particularly relevant to the scenario that this thread is about, is the fact that a war of deterrence against China is not some nebulous forever war, with preposterous victory conditions (turn Afghanistan and Iraq into western democracies!) or that are politically forbidden (actually use superior firepower to level Hanoi.)

Successfully sinking enough of the PLAN to make an invasion of Taiwan impossible is a victory. China is a one-ocean nation, and they don't have something like the St. Lawrence Seaway to let them hide chunks of their fleet deep inside their own territory from hostile air power.

Successfully holding a blockade, which can be enforced a thousand kilometers away from Chinese territory, is a win condition. China can't get enough oil and coal in through land routes to feed its economy, much less a significant war effort.

In order to win, the US military does not need to fight a protracted war through mountainous jungles, some of the nastiest terrain in the world to fight in, it has to fight on the high seas, one of the most open environments where it is easiest to detect the enemy, especially if you are the world leader in satellite deployment and usage.

On top of all of this, we're no longer a nation where a handful of TV networks and big-name newspapers have a functional chokehold on public media. Everyone and anyone with a smartphone and internet service can be a reporter, and send footage that utterly shatters public narratives. The media isn't powerless, but they don't have the ability to completely occlude anything violating their narrative like they did before.

Most importantly, is the amount of time it would take to win such a conflict. If it's fought kinetically, modern aircraft and missiles would be sinking ships horrifyingly quickly, and the decisive phase of the war would probably only last days or weeks. If it goes to the blockade as a pressure on the Chinese to get off of Taiwanese islands without open warfare, then it's a matter of months to a year, perhaps two on the outside.


If it was going to take years and decades to win a war of deterrence against China, yeah, I'd be seriously worried about political issues in the US forcing a withdrawal. The possibility of things turning out like in Vietnam would be very real, because Americans don't like wars with no clear path to victory, especially as the body-bags keep coming home.

But it wouldn't take years and decades. Either the naval and aerial slaughter happens swiftly and brutally, clearing the PLAN out of the ocean, and some portion of the USN depending on if the PLAN performs at the absolute pit of incompetence, or more like the better Soviet units in WWII, and inflict some stinging losses as they go down, or it's the waiting game over the blockade.

Neither side can replace military ships and aircraft fast enough to recover from a decisive defeat in the outset of such a conflict; modern multi-role jet aircraft roll off the assembly line in a matter of months or weeks, maybe days if someone accomplishes a modern industrial miracle, it isn't going to be hours and minutes like Willow Run during WWII.

If the Chinese military performs a lot better than expected, they might manage to cripple or sink a couple of Supercarriers and do a number on their escorts. There is no sane expectation that they'll manage that without incurring serious losses of their own however.

Perhaps they'll manage to deal a crippling strike package to the US base on Okinawa, though again, they should be expected to take serious losses in doing so.

If they accomplish both of these things, what does that get them?

Three or four new Carrier Battle Groups get sent to deal with them, and US bases in South Korea and Japan can be used instead of Okinawa. It means a lot more use of tankers, which is expensive and time consuming, but the USAF and USN are far from out of the fight.

What happens if they lose the cutting edge of their air force, and their coastal air defense gets smashed flat?

Their entire Navy gets sunk, and any part of their older inventory of aircraft that comes out to try to tangle with the USAF and USN Air Corps gets slaughtered with almost no ability to inflict meaningful harm in return.


The conflict is massively stacked against the Chinese in almost every way. Political subversion is literally the only reasonable expectation they can have of victory, which is why if they are smart they will never go to a hot conflict anyways, instead trying to use gray zone tactics against the West, as that's what the West is historically weak against.

If the CCP had actually kept their word about letting Hong Kong remain mostly self-governing, they might have actually been able to win Taiwan over through political subversion. After seeing the boot the CCP put on the neck of Hong Kong though, the Taiwanese lost any taste whatsoever for such a thing.

 

[JagerIV]

This is getting really, really tiring.

If you're going to make an argument like this, then carry it through to the next stage to see if it really supports your position.

Moving forward to the Vietnam war, and using Wikipedia to be consistent with you using it as a source (and because it's convenient):

North Vietnamese military dead:
849,018, and ~232,000 missing.

Other communist dead:
~11,021

South Vietnamese military dead:
254,256.

American military dead:
58,281.

Combined other allied dead:
20,943.


Total comparative losses:
~1.08 million, vs ~333,480 (some estimates say 60k more)

We're looking at a 3:1 ratio against the Communists here. If we were to only count the dead before the US pulled out, and South Vietnam was largely left standing alone, I wonder how much worse the kill/loss ratio was up to that point. It's fairly clear that if we count American vs North Vietnamese directly, the kill/loss ratio jumps to a hilarious 15:1.

This is probably partly where the major disconnect is, because with the material deficiency and having to make up that difference with bodies, 3-1 in the Vietnam situation is pretty good performance. Especially given that the North Vietnamese were on the offensive. Its even less bad when the conditions the Vietnamese fought in are taken into account, and they suffered a lot of non-combat death, like a traditional pre-modern army without advanced developed medical, and jungles are particularly unhealthy: so you have 710,000 combat deaths vs 330,000 in the South, 2-1, which is decent for an army on the offensive anyways, with all the defenders advantages, and extremely good for the material disadvantage they were in.

The North Vietnamese did better than most other armies in their situation would have performed.

Even the Tet Offensive is a sign of the general ability of the military. The scale of operation and secrecy it was carried out is generally impressive. They launched a wide offensive while generally outnumbered in secret against an enemy with general air supremacy. Bad assumptions seem more to blame for failure than some general inability of the Vietnamese military. A 100,000 troops weren't going to beat 1.2 million troops. 12-1 numerical advantage is going to give bad results. Which the North Vietnamese knew, so this wasn't pure stupidity either. They just thought the South Vietnamese were closer to collapse, and thus could trigger a general uprising. This was obviously unfounded.

However, even with a badly concieved plan that had a disasterous battle, its further to the Vietnamese credit it didn't destroy the army: losses were recovered, and pressure and offenses were maintained. They inflicted worse casualties than the South Vietnamese and Americans had suffered previously, and casualties remained high afterwards, meaning even a defeat as bad as Tet didn't seriously cripple the Army's offensive ability.

So, even in a year of maximum US commitment, carrying out a badly conceive plan, fatal casualties for that year seem to have been roughly 100,000 to 150,000 for 1968, so even in a particularly bad year casualties were 3-4 to 1. Losses they recovered from, and learned from.

This all seems like very good performance of the North Vietnamese, given their situation. I'm not sure they could reasonably have been expected to do better, and many would have done worse. If there's a communism penalty for the ability and willingness to fight, I'm not seeing it.

This is an important point to get out of the way: we are not going to agree on anything if to any point I make, your just going to go "but communists can't fight, lol" if I point to things the Chinese could do, because you think they're suddenly not going to be able to do things that aren't even that complicated, or particularly different from what they already do.

I would also insist when considering performance the total matters. the 15-1 US to Vietnamese casualty is meaningless. Ignoring most of the fighting paints an incorrect picture, and gorilla warfare naturally would result in relatively few casualties to the main military, especially early: that's not the goal of a gorilla campaign. You would only expect particularly heavy military casualties after the support for those military forces had withdrawn. The US tended to withdraw before that point. Discussion of American civil war should have made this a fairly clear point.

That pattern seems to have happened repeatedly for Afghanistan, as a recent example: we come in, very few Americans die, giving good KD ratio in Taliban to US losses, say 100 Taliban lost to 1 US troop. But, during that time the Taliban killed off all the police loyal, so control of the area was reduced to practically zero, so the US declares victory, leaves, with victory somehow resulting in Taliban control of the region 1 month later.

Thus, complaining that the enemy's victory doesn't count because they didn't fight the way you wanted them to fight. Assuming the enemy will fight the war in a way to maximumly play to our strengths and their weaknesses while ignoring their own and our weaknesses seems a poor plan.

If we fought a war with China, inflicted a 20-1 KD ratio of 100,000 US troops to 2 million Chinese, but the Chinese end in control of Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, Iraq, and Ukraine, having killed a million Blue loyalists in the process while losing another 1 million Red allied troops, would you still consider that a US victory?

I don't need to know right now how likely you think such an outcome is, I just need to know if you would consider that a US victory or defeat. Is a 10-1 China-US casualty ratio, and a 3-1 Red-Blue casualty ratio, where the Chinese end the war in control of the territory, be considered a win or loss to you?

 

[Zachowon]

The Tet offensive failed.
The US defeated it and everything.

Vietnam was the US fighting with a hand tied behind its back

 

[paulobrito]

The Americans confound the richest military with the best military. They have the first, not the second.
About corruption - the Pentagon failed for the seventh consecutive year to get an audit. Nuff said.
Going to war against China is going into a war in which they don't have air superiority (nor missile numbers superiority) and against an adversary that is tech-wise at the same level. Not a war that they can win.
About the illusions about a naval blockade collapsing the Chinese economy - just look at the effects of the sanctions on the Russian economy. Right now, the Russian economy is better than before February 2022, and the EU is fucked. BTW, these conclusions are from the FMI and WB.
But like some wise man once said - don't learn from history and commit the same errors time and again.

 

[Zachowon]

The Americans confound the richest military with the best military. They have the first, not the second.
About corruption - the Pentagon failed for the seventh consecutive year to get an audit. Nuff said.
Going to war against China is going into a war in which they don't have air superiority (nor missile numbers superiority) and against an adversary that is tech-wise at the same level. Not a war that they can win.
About the illusions about a naval blockade collapsing the Chinese economy - just look at the effects of the sanctions on the Russian economy. Right now, the Russian economy is better than before February 2022, and the EU is fucked. BTW, these conclusions are from the FMI and WB.
But like some wise man once said - don't learn from history and commit the same errors time and again.

We have more stealth aircraft then they do.
We have the capability to strike thier systems without them knowing until it is too late.

We have the best military.
We have shown the world that we don't lie about our capabilities.

Look at the Patriot. It shot down the Kinzhel.
The patriot hasn't been destroyed and has a better record then that of any Societ system.
Not a single russian system has the same record

 

[paulobrito]

Yes, the Patriot shot down the Kinzhal - with his units. Just see the video of that attack. The Patriot battery shot itself dry and you see two big explosions on the ground - and reports of the Patriot battery being damaged.
They get lucky because they are not hit on the central units. Spare me your/Ukrainian propaganda.
Like - We intercept 20 of 21 Russian missiles but on a different media is reported that 7 ground targets are hit - the single missile they failed to intercept hit seven targets? They don't even lie well.

Do you have the capability to strike Chinese systems without them knowing? Based on what? Your wet dreams?

If you take note that from both sides the Russian-made SAM systems have intercepted a lot of cruise and ballistic missiles - even several stealth ones, thanks for yet another joke about the Patriot.

The bottom line, Zach, you believe too much in your propaganda.
Do you know what that is a recipe for?

 

[Marduk]

This is probably partly where the major disconnect is, because with the material deficiency and having to make up that difference with bodies, 3-1 in the Vietnam situation is pretty good performance. Especially given that the North Vietnamese were on the offensive. Its even less bad when the conditions the Vietnamese fought in are taken into account, and they suffered a lot of non-combat death, like a traditional pre-modern army without advanced developed medical, and jungles are particularly unhealthy: so you have 710,000 combat deaths vs 330,000 in the South, 2-1, which is decent for an army on the offensive anyways, with all the defenders advantages, and extremely good for the material disadvantage they were in.

The North Vietnamese did better than most other armies in their situation would have performed.

Even the Tet Offensive is a sign of the general ability of the military. The scale of operation and secrecy it was carried out is generally impressive. They launched a wide offensive while generally outnumbered in secret against an enemy with general air supremacy. Bad assumptions seem more to blame for failure than some general inability of the Vietnamese military. A 100,000 troops weren't going to beat 1.2 million troops. 12-1 numerical advantage is going to give bad results. Which the North Vietnamese knew, so this wasn't pure stupidity either. They just thought the South Vietnamese were closer to collapse, and thus could trigger a general uprising. This was obviously unfounded.

However, even with a badly concieved plan that had a disasterous battle, its further to the Vietnamese credit it didn't destroy the army: losses were recovered, and pressure and offenses were maintained. They inflicted worse casualties than the South Vietnamese and Americans had suffered previously, and casualties remained high afterwards, meaning even a defeat as bad as Tet didn't seriously cripple the Army's offensive ability.

So, even in a year of maximum US commitment, carrying out a badly conceive plan, fatal casualties for that year seem to have been roughly 100,000 to 150,000 for 1968, so even in a particularly bad year casualties were 3-4 to 1. Losses they recovered from, and learned from.

This all seems like very good performance of the North Vietnamese, given their situation. I'm not sure they could reasonably have been expected to do better, and many would have done worse. If there's a communism penalty for the ability and willingness to fight, I'm not seeing it.

This is an important point to get out of the way: we are not going to agree on anything if to any point I make, your just going to go "but communists can't fight, lol" if I point to things the Chinese could do, because you think they're suddenly not going to be able to do things that aren't even that complicated, or particularly different from what they already do.

I would also insist when considering performance the total matters. the 15-1 US to Vietnamese casualty is meaningless. Ignoring most of the fighting paints an incorrect picture, and gorilla warfare naturally would result in relatively few casualties to the main military, especially early: that's not the goal of a gorilla campaign. You would only expect particularly heavy military casualties after the support for those military forces had withdrawn. The US tended to withdraw before that point. Discussion of American civil war should have made this a fairly clear point.

That pattern seems to have happened repeatedly for Afghanistan, as a recent example: we come in, very few Americans die, giving good KD ratio in Taliban to US losses, say 100 Taliban lost to 1 US troop. But, during that time the Taliban killed off all the police loyal, so control of the area was reduced to practically zero, so the US declares victory, leaves, with victory somehow resulting in Taliban control of the region 1 month later.

Thus, complaining that the enemy's victory doesn't count because they didn't fight the way you wanted them to fight. Assuming the enemy will fight the war in a way to maximumly play to our strengths and their weaknesses while ignoring their own and our weaknesses seems a poor plan.

If we fought a war with China, inflicted a 20-1 KD ratio of 100,000 US troops to 2 million Chinese, but the Chinese end in control of Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, Iraq, and Ukraine, having killed a million Blue loyalists in the process while losing another 1 million Red allied troops, would you still consider that a US victory?

I don't need to know right now how likely you think such an outcome is, I just need to know if you would consider that a US victory or defeat. Is a 10-1 China-US casualty ratio, and a 3-1 Red-Blue casualty ratio, where the Chinese end the war in control of the territory, be considered a win or loss to you?

The fact that you have to resort to the military and political issues of land insurgency and hybrid conflicts (Vietnam wasn't a normal COIN war, as North Vietnam also had a well supplied conventional military, with current generation fighters and armored vehicles) to make your point for what would be in 99% a naval-air conflict shows that you either don't understand the difference or are scrapping the bottom of the barrel for arguments.
As far as modern USA is concerned the fate of insurgency wars is decided more in the offices of large media conglomerates in US major cities than on the actual battlefields, which is where the ridiculous results come from.
But that's not what we are talking about here.
The technological, political and strategic dynamics of naval warfare are inherently different than land warfare, nevermind COIN.
Technology matters a whole lot more. Even today in Ukraine a lot of weapons are just somewhat modified early Cold War systems, some even WW2. They may work somewhat worse and be more cumbersome than modern equivalents, but an old 6in howitzer still throws a big boom to a decent distance, even if a bit slower, a bit closer and a bit less accurate. Can you imagine going to war over ocean with some upgraded Gato class subs, Fletcher destroyers, and F-8 Crusaders providing air cover?
Of course not, these things would be more of a liability than useful assets now. A rifle is a rifle, it's cheap and a WW1 one can still kill people just fine, even if your soldiers are crap winning with 4:1 casualty disadvantage can work if you have the meat, but when it comes to ships or aircraft, quality and training matter more - loss ratios like 20:1 or 50:1 are not outside the realm of possibility at all if one side decides to slum it with their force quality.
As usual for such states, China is very tight lipped about how deep their rot is, even more than Russia was before reality verified their very ambitious claims, so we will not know for sure before a major war, but the few leaks suggest there is quite some:

Chinese tank loses roadwheel at Tank Biathlon

At the recent Tank Biathlon competition at Alabino training grounds in Russia, the Chinese team suffered a rather embarrassing equipment failure when one of their Type-96B (ZTZ-96B) tanks lost a r…

tankandafvnews.com

If they can't get a tank that doesn't fall apart to the public international tank show off, imagine how good is the stuff that no one pays attention to...

 

[Zachowon]

Yes, the Patriot shot down the Kinzhal - with his units. Just see the video of that attack. The Patriot battery shot itself dry and you see two big explosions on the ground - and reports of the Patriot battery being damaged.
They get lucky because they are not hit on the central units. Spare me your/Ukrainian propaganda.
Like - We intercept 20 of 21 Russian missiles but on a different media is reported that 7 ground targets are hit - the single missile they failed to intercept hit seven targets? They don't even lie well.

Do you have the capability to strike Chinese systems without them knowing? Based on what? Your wet dreams?

If you take note that from both sides the Russian-made SAM systems have intercepted a lot of cruise and ballistic missiles - even several stealth ones, thanks for yet another joke about the Patriot.

The bottom line, Zach, you believe too much in your propaganda.
Do you know what that is a recipe for?

A video done by someone whose job is Patriot.



He knows more about this system then ANYONE else outside of fucking Raytheon and CWs that work in his field.

And did you know that Ukraine prioritizes certain targets over others, like you realistically would.
But the hypersonic have been shot down.

And because we have Stealth Aircraft that look like the size of bee on radar (unclass)
We have capabilities to be anywhere anytime without being noticed.

He'll, there are USAF stealth drones thay there has only been a SINGLE picture of from the ground.

You do not understand the true power of US militaty

 

[paulobrito]

"You do not understand the true power of US military"
LOL
After WW2 - that you don't fight alone, btw
One draw - Korea.
all others wars - abject failures.

Yes, yes, spare me the ' is the politicians, not the militaries'.
You don't understand what a military is for.

BTW the true power of the US military is to maintain the US MIC rich.
Nice fiction/cope videos, btw. Just don't confuse them with the reality on the ground. That is just a 'bit' different.

 

[LordsFire]

I don't need to know right now how likely you think such an outcome is, I just need to know if you would consider that a US victory or defeat. Is a 10-1 China-US casualty ratio, and a 3-1 Red-Blue casualty ratio, where the Chinese end the war in control of the territory, be considered a win or loss to you?

We are not talking about a ground war.

If the USA inflicts 10:1, or even 3:1 losses on the Chinese air force, they will not have anything left to fight with.

The US Air Force alone substantially outnumbers the PLAAF, and when you fold in the USN air corps, it gets even more lopsided.

Aside from the J-20 (if it actually performs somewhere vaguely close to purported ability), half of their combat airframes might perform to the level of generation 4 aircraft, and the rest are basically fossils from the 60's.

If the Chinese pilots perform to the best level communist pilots ever have against post-Korean War jet aircraft, they're going to suffer 3:1 losses. In the far more likely scenario, that they perform merely 'average,' it's not going to be 10:1, it's going to be more like 30:1 or worse.

Modern combat aircraft are not something where you can do what Russia is, and arresting more people to conscript, then shove them to the front line to get butchered taking a few yards of land. It takes a long bloody time to build combat aircraft, with complex, multi-national supply chains. Any war between major modern nations will seriously disrupt those supply chains; Russia's having a hard time continuing to build tanks without input from western equipment, and tanks are much less technically demanding than modern jet fighters.

If the US losses substantial amounts of F-22s, F-15s, F-35s, F-18s, we can simply advance more to the operational area. It'll suck, but our entire active arsenal is at least generation 4.5 or generation 4.

If China loses aircraft at rates that remotely reflect historical losses, they'll be attritioned out of almost their entire inventory of Generation 4+ aircraft in the first wave of exchanges, and have basically nothing left to fight against the second wave of US Generation 5 and 4.5 aircraft. Generation 3 and older aircraft are going to get butchered by Gen 5.

And they literally will not be able to build more fast enough to matter, if they can build any more at all.

Once they can't contest you in the air, they can't contest you in the sea. Once they can't contest you in the sea, they can't effectively fight against Taiwan, and they can't effectively fight against a naval blockade. Shipping over land routes might be enough to keep their nation from outright starving, but it won't be enough to keep their economy from imploding.


China may manage to pull a few aces out of its sleeves. It may have some classified weapons in reserve. It might actually outperform all communist militaries historical performance in the field!

It needs all of these things and more in order to be able to successfully fight the US at sea, and expecting literally every die rolled to turn up natural 20 for the CCP is ridiculous.

 

[JagerIV]

The Tet offensive failed.
The US defeated it and everything.

Vietnam was the US fighting with a hand tied behind its back

Yes, as I said above. My point was, even in a year where they launched a very poorly concieved offensive, they were able to recover from it, learn from it, and continue the offensive. Those are very good performance of a military. In the same way Cannae points to the virtue of the Romans and their army, they were able to raise a massive well equipped army, were aggressive enough to to deploy it, and after disastrously losing it by walking into Hannibal's trap, were able to rally, rebuild, and adapt fast enough that Hannibal couldn't really exploit the crushing victory, while the Roman's landing in Carthage freaked the Carthaginians out enough that they sued for peace.

Likewise, the ability to even launch something on the scale and daring of the Tet offensive speaks to the virtue of the army, and its ability to suffer such a defeat and so quickly recover, continue offensives, and learn from prior mistakes and adjust speaks to even greater virtues of the army.

All militaries make mistakes. The source of the mistake, and how the military responds, show the virtue of the military. Tet Offensive speaks pretty well to the virtue of the North Vietnamese army. The mistake mostly lay in the political leadership misjudging the political situation in the South. Despite the poor basis of the plan, it was more or less carried out, and when the assumptions of the campaign were wrong, they were able to adjust and recover before it was disasterous.

The arguement I'm countering is the idea that Communists are idiotic cowards incapable of fighting with any determination or skill. That this is something inherent to communists throughout time and space. I don't see that in the historical record.

Once there's agreements on whether Communists are helpless cowardly babies who couldn't hurt a fly or implement a plan or not, then there can be useful discussion of what the Chinese could or could not reasonably do.

 

[paulobrito]

F-15, F-16, and F-18 are 4th-generation aircraft - just saying.

 

[JagerIV]

@LordsFire would the Chinese and allies suffering 3 million casualties while taking Taiwan, Singapore, Iraq, and South Korea while the US + allies suffer 1 million casualties be a victory or defeat for the US?

Like I said, I don't right now care how likely you think this would be, just want to see if were roughly on the same page what a victory or defeat would look like, because you seem to be repeatedly defining good performance as extremely poor.

 

[Zachowon]

"You do not understand the true power of US military"
LOL
After WW2 - that you don't fight alone, btw
One draw - Korea.
all others wars - abject failures.

Yes, yes, spare me the ' is the politicians, not the militaries'.
You don't understand what a military is for.

BTW the true power of the US military is to maintain the US MIC rich.
Nice fiction/cope videos, btw. Just don't confuse them with the reality on the ground. That is just a 'bit' different.

I mean at least my country has a record of success, and a competent military.
Portugal has only had failures.

also, desert storm, panama, Grenada, Invasion of Iraq, Operation Prehing Mantis

F-15, F-16, and F-18 are 4th-generation aircraft - just saying.

4.5 for the F 15 due to EX, and F/A18 super hornet.
16 even newest vareitn is 4.

@LordsFire would the Chinese and allies suffering 3 million casualties while taking Taiwan, Singapore, Iraq, and South Korea while the US + allies suffer 1 million casualties be a victory or defeat for the US?

Like I said, I don't right now care how likely you think this would be, just want to see if were roughly on the same page what a victory or defeat would look like, because you seem to be repeatedly defining good performance as extremely poor.

We don't even have a million military members who would be fighting the naval air war.

And our allies have as good if not the same air defense as us, and have a Navy that can compete with China.
Adding Japan and thier aircraft you add a bunch if 35s to the mix, same with Korea.
They also have a lot better trained and ready troops.
The combined force may suffer 1 million.
But it would destroy China capability to bully its neighbors, would basically cripple any chance of them becoming a superpower once again.
Thier economy would be shot from the loss of money and resources coming in

 

[LordsFire]

@LordsFire would the Chinese and allies suffering 3 million casualties while taking Taiwan, Singapore, Iraq, and South Korea while the US + allies suffer 1 million casualties be a victory or defeat for the US?

Like I said, I don't right now care how likely you think this would be, just want to see if were roughly on the same page what a victory or defeat would look like, because you seem to be repeatedly defining good performance as extremely poor.

You are arguing against a self-created straw man of me. I did not try to claim that the Vietnam war was a victory, yet you're acting like I'm playing silly games with what victory and loss mean.

Bluntly put, I am getting incredibly sick of all the silly buggers you are playing with this argument. I thought you in particular could formulate a position and argue for it better than this.

To answer the question anyways, if the end state when a peace treaty was signed was China taking Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea despite suffering disproportionate casualties, yes, I'd still that call a win for China, and a loss for the US and assorted allies.

F-15, F-16, and F-18 are 4th-generation aircraft - just saying.

Yes. And they are the oldest we have in our inventory, most upgraded to what is commonly called Generation 4.5 standards. A large portion of China's air force is Generation 3 stuff, and much of the generation 4 stuff they have is knock-offs of old Soviet designs on top of that.

The J-20 is the only serious contender they have that's on their own design, and that still had the caveat of needing to ask the Russians for help with the engines, which they were having so much trouble with they started production with an inferior engine not capable of giving the performance the J-20 was supposed to operate on.

The arguement I'm countering is the idea that Communists are idiotic cowards incapable of fighting with any determination or skill. That this is something inherent to communists throughout time and space. I don't see that in the historical record.

I have not made this argument, nor has anyone else.

What has been argued is that communists consistently fight with poor competence, with poor skill, and very poor morale, with examples of panicking soldiers being given as an example.

Competence, morale, and discipline, are increasingly crucial as you try to conduct more and more sophisticated forms of warfare. Infantry fighting in trenches is about as unsophisticated as it gets. Adding in artillery is basically the next level up, and about as much as I've seen historical evidence of communists being able to reliably and consistently accomplish.

Coordinating with tanks and other vehicles is a couple steps up from that, and the Russians have been showing themselves to be currently incompetent at that. Full combined arms, with full and effective coordination between air, infantry, armor, and artillery, is something I'm not aware of communists ever being effective at, though I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of their more top-notch units have managed it here and there, and I'm just not familiar with the examples.

Conversely, the baseline expectation for US/NATO forces, is to be able to be an effective part of a well-coordinated combined arms operation. If you can't manage that, it's time for remedial training until you can. If the Chinese manage to perform at this level consistently, they'll have met what is considered the minimum acceptable standard for western militaries.

Adding in carrier operations, arguably brings you to the most complex form of war ever conducted. Running an air force is already incredibly complex, with fairly high minimum competence requirements across a broad range of skills. Doing it from an aircraft carrier adds an entire additional dimension of complexity.

These are all things that the US has been doing routinely for decades. The PLA has not done so in wartime conditions ever.


We are not getting reports out of China about how they're conducting regular exercises against opposition forces trained in their expected enemies style of combat, with realistic field conditions, and kicking ass. We are not seeing regular reports of their naval vessels practicing missile interception drills against US-equivalent hardware and succeeding.

We're seeing reports of how their officers focus on political indoctrination. We're seeing reports of how nepotism is rife. We're seeing promotional videos of them using rifles that keyhole at short range. Their submarines having malfunctions that kill entire crews and leave the vessels adrift. Their carriers having planes damaged on landing, or just straight-up dropping into the ocean.

And, of course, we have no reports on how effective they are in real combat at all.

 

[paulobrito]

I see that a lot of people here drink too much murika fucking yeah cool-aid.
That's fair, is their preference for drinking of sorts.
Now, confunding that with reality... Is like believing in Santa Claus.
Waste of time discussing with dreamers.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

I see that a lot of people here drink too much murika fucking yeah cool-aid.
That's fair, is their preference for drinking of sorts.
Now, confunding that with reality... Is like believing in Santa Claus.
Waste of time discussing with dreamers.

Then tell us what reality is like Morpheus.

 

[Zachowon]

Then tell us what reality is like Morpheus.

We are weak, have outdated training and weapons, a Navy that is barley functioning, and that we would lose to any competent adversary that isn't in the sand box.

But hey, at least we have had modern successes in our history.

And have shown repeated times our equipment is superior to anything our adversaries have shown

 

[ATP]

I see that a lot of people here drink too much murika fucking yeah cool-aid.
That's fair, is their preference for drinking of sorts.
Now, confunding that with reality... Is like believing in Santa Claus.
Waste of time discussing with dreamers.

No muriks cool-aid,but facts.Till then,they lost only with themselves - so,only China hope in case of war is that Biden would win war for winnie the pooh.

Becouse,if they remain semi-normal,they must win.