When vying for air supremacy over the Taiwan Strait, many consider the J-20 to be the best choice to overpower the F-16V.
However, some netizens believe that Taiwan’s aircraft have no chance of taking off at all because China's Rocket Force and long-range artillery (long-range fire) can directly cover Taiwan's airports.
Let’s explore whether it is possible to destroy Taiwan’s air force on the ground relying solely on the Rocket Force and long-range artillery.
Taiwan has 10 air force bases, 4 civilian airports, and 6 emergency road runways where fighter jets can take off and land.
Although the Makung Airport in Penghu has military significance, the number of stationed aircraft has been reduced due to its proximity to the mainland, so it can be temporarily ignored.
All airports on the main island of Taiwan, whether in the east or the west, are within the range of China’s PHL-191 long-range artillery.
Most airports can be covered with 370mm rockets.
The Hsinchu Air Force Base in the west is 130 kilometers from Pingtan Island, Fujian, and the Ching Chuan Kang Air Base is 146 kilometers from Nanjih Island, Fujian.
These two bases can even be covered by 03A long-range artillery.
These airports have 22 runways, 185 hardened aircraft shelters, 42 non-hardened hangars, and 2 hardened cave shelters.
The hardened aircraft shelters of the Taiwanese military are designed to withstand 500-pound (226.8 kg) bombs, but the 230 kg warheads of China’s 300mm rockets are sufficient to penetrate these shelters, and the 370mm rockets are even more powerful.
Therefore, the first wave of attacks can destroy the Taiwanese military's hardened shelters and non-hardened hangars.
However, destroying the two hardened cave shelters is more difficult. They are located at the Hualien Air Force Base and the Taitung Chihhang Air Base in the east.
The Chihhang Base's Ji'an Cave has a 10-15 meter thick rock debris roof, which requires Dongfeng-11A or DF-15C earth-penetrating warheads to destroy.
These two types of missiles have been in service for over thirty years and are available in large quantities, so destroying the Ji'an Cave shelter is not difficult.
The Jiashan Cave shelter at the Hualien Air Force Base can accommodate 100 F-16Vs, with only the runways and taxiways exposed.
The shelter’s roof is covered with more than 200 meters of granite, which cannot be penetrated by conventional earth-penetrating bombs, and even a surface nuclear explosion would be ineffective.
Only a nuclear weapon detonated underground could potentially destroy it.
The cave door is its weak point, but it is shielded by the mountain, making it difficult for ballistic missiles from the mainland to hit it.
The glide capability of the Dongfeng-17 is also insufficient to solve this problem.
Therefore, the attack must come from the Pacific Ocean direction.
The probability of penetration by cruise missiles is low, so it requires H-6K bombers and Type 055 destroyers with YJ-21 missiles to complete the task.
Whether deploying H-6Ks or Type 055 destroyers, they need to stay away from Taiwan's east coast, ideally beyond the 400-kilometer range of the Hsiung Feng III missile.
In this way, escort fighters such as the J-20 would have a combat radius of over 1,000 kilometers, significantly shortening their loiter time and requiring aerial refueling.
Y-20 tanker aircraft moving into the western Pacific would be extremely risky, requiring substantial escort fighter protection, increasing the complexity and difficulty of the mission.
Due to the exceptional robustness of the Jiashan Cave shelter, even if the YJ-21 destroys the door, it would not collapse the entrance rock. The fighters can still take off after the door is removed.
Therefore, the better method is to continuously bomb the taxiways and runways after destroying the door.
Runways and taxiways are easy to repair quickly, so the bombing must be continuous.
The number of long-range artillery and ballistic missiles is limited, as they need to target key installations like command centers, air defense positions, bridges, and power plants, making continuous attacks on runways challenging.
Sustained damage to runways and taxiways relies on more affordable air-launched precision-guided munitions.
Securing air superiority requires not only airport blockades but also suppression of air defenses.
The number of landing troops is much smaller than that of Taiwanese defenders, requiring ultra-intense saturation bombing before landing and heavy reliance on aerial fire support afterward.
Therefore, relying solely on expensive long-range artillery and ballistic missiles is unrealistic; large quantities of glide-guided bombs are needed, which inevitably enter the range of Taiwan's long-range air defense missiles.
Taiwan’s air defense density is the highest globally, requiring numerous "Wild Weasel" aircraft for suppression missions.
Solely relying on long-range artillery and ballistic missiles cannot achieve air superiority over the Taiwan Strait;
joint operations by naval and air forces are necessary to ensure that "not a single Taiwanese aircraft takes off" and to minimize the threat from Taiwan's air defenses.
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