Missiles Versus Artillery in Regards to Taiwan and Ukraine

Most people do not contextualize what is happening in the Ukraine War or the Gaza War with what they expect to happen in a war between China and Taiwan.

Ukraine and Russia have been fighting their larger expanded war for nearly 2 years. Both sides still have weapons and are continuing to hit each other every day. Ukraine has been told not to strike into Russia by the US and the UK. Conventional weapons take time to deliver devastating war damage.

Taiwan is loading up on medium and longer-range missiles. These are able to hit targets across eastern China.

Taiwan and China’s missile are similar. China has some more long range missiles (DF-26) and China’s conventional missiles warheads are about 2to 4 times bigger at 800 kg to 1.5 tons versus Taiwan with about 200-400 kilogram warheads.

Taiwan and China would both be able to hit each other with missiles. Both China and Taiwan have tunnels and underground protection for key weapon systems. Both have very important civilian facilities that are completely vulnerable to conventional attack.

Most Important Thing for Taiwan is Hitting China’s troop ships

Taiwan can use long range missiles or planes to hit China’s 80 troop ships when they go port once a war has started. The troop ships can also be attacked when they are located with satellites and other intelligence.

The US has a shortage of the best Harpoon anti-ship missiles and JDAM (precision missile guidance). The US has been delayed providing 400 anti-ship Harpoon missiles to Taiwan. The US is looking to modify older Harpoons with less sophisticated but workable launching to speed up delivery to Taiwan. At its peak, JDAM’s manufacturer was able to produce around 45,000 JDAMs a year. A Powered JDAM – an innovative concept that would allow a standard 500-pound bomb to travel several hundred miles as a cruise missile – could provide a cheaper, near-term solution to complement the more expensive PGMs that take years to build.

The Joint Direct Attack Munition is a guidance kit that converts unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions, and the Extended Range variant (JDAM-ER) converts unguided bombs into precision-guided glide bombs with a range of up to 45 miles. The United States has produced JDAMs in large numbers — over 520,000 in 25 years. The current production rate is 10,500 per year, with a surge capacity of over 50,000. The US has provided about 1800 JDAM to Israel over the last 3 months.

Conventional missile attack is usually slow and not devastating in a day. It is devastating damage over weeks and months.

2000 conventional missile launchers for China and Taiwan about 200.

China and Taiwan both have longer range rocket artillery. They are not cannon-like guns but multi-rocket launchers. They both have systems able to fire 60-190 miles. There are not hundreds of thousands or millions of these short range rockets on either side.

The range of combat would mean 100 to 1000 times less damage being inflicted by Taiwan and China because they could only use long and mid-range rockets or airplane attacks.

The Ukraine and Russian war is showing that modern anti-airplane missile systems are very effective at preventing airplanes from being effective. Air defense is not perfect but it slows down the modern war from shifting into an air dominance phase.

51 russian missiles were used in a recent day. Some targets hit but not a big deal. 51 Russian missiles is less than what two B-52s could delivery in one pass. A B-52 has 20-40 times the bomb payload for one mission as one China missile and 80 times a smaller explosive Taiwan missile.

Ukraine is using 6000 to 10000+ artillery shells per day. This is over 100X the volume of missiles. Artillery has 3-10% of the explosives in a missile. Russia is firing back 40,000 artillery shells per day. Regular cannon artillery does not have the range to strike across the Taiwan Strait.

The China Taiwan war would not be able to shift into a high level of artillery unless China was able to effect a D-day style invasion and get a beachhead on Taiwan.

A long and mid-range missile with some air power war would be about 100 times less intense than what is happening in Ukraine now.

The US had complete air superiority over Iraq and still spent months hunting down Scud missiles and other launchers. Taiwan does not have to hide mobile launchers, they just leave them in caves and mountains that are too thick for bunker busters. Bunker busters which China are inferior and far fewer than US bunker busters.

The US has been able to use air power fairly extensively in several wars. This was against over matched opponents without effective antiair weapons. This got as high as 2000-4000 bombs or missiles per month in the war in ISIS. Hamas fired 20,000+ smaller, inaccurate missiles into Israel. Israel has been doing about 100-400 air strike each day in to Gaza.

The Blitz on London from September 1940 to May 1941 and the V1 flying bomb and V2 rocket attacks in 1944 caused a lot of damage. It is estimated that more than 12,000 metric tons of bombs were dropped on London. Modern missiles, planes and bombs would be more accurate. The amount of explosives would be comparable but we are better able to hit and destroy specific targets. This kind of battle or when Israel uses the air force and missiles only or when the US uses air force only, is more like what the China-Taiwan battle would be for months.

Conventional war is slow, both sides shoot at each other for a long time. Longer range air and missile war is even slower.

Taiwan has a mile of shallow water in most areas which means big troop ships would have to anchor and then send smaller ships over.

The US provided multi-year stockpile of missiles, JDAMs and artillery ammo to Ukraine. 1.5 million shells took about ten years to make. The US is trying to increase artillery production from 14000 per month to 87000 per month.