Recently, a War on the Rocks website in the United States focused on national security, after publishing an article published in August last year that China's civilian passenger ship may play an important role in the conflict in the Taiwan Strait, and once again published a signed article, which gave a more detailed explanation of the development of Chinese civilian ships and the cost-effectiveness issues in a short period of time. believes that although the Chinese military lacks traditional amphibious landing capabilities, the development of the civilian field is gradually making up for this shortcoming. From a certain perspective, this statement from the American media seems to be revealing our army's "shortcomings", but they do not know that this so-called "shortcomings" are a reflection of our army's amphibious landing strength.
▲Related content of American media
- The military-civilian linkage has the highest cost-effective
In recent years, the People's Liberation Army has been constantly trying to carry out effective military-civilian linkage in related exercises, including the use of civilian ships to carry out transshipment and delivery tasks. In August last year, the Central Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army released a video of the 83rd Group's military exercises through social media. In the video, the group used civilian ships to conduct armored equipment ferry training. As for the armored equipment transferred, it included a number of heavy heavy equipment. In June this year, the official media also mentioned in the report that was rarely used to deliver in a sea drill of a certain unit of the 72nd Group Army of the People's Liberation Army. The reason for using the term "rare" is that on the one hand, the scale of using civilian ships for exercises is relatively large, and on the other hand, this time it is long-distance delivery, which has a more obvious practical significance.
▲ The 72nd Army used civilian ships to deliver
It is understood that in August this year, cross-strait relations deteriorated rapidly due to Pelosi 's visit to Taiwan. Against the backdrop of the surge in the possibility of conflicts, relevant foreign media found that at least 7 civilian passenger-roll-on-roll ships on the mainland on left the original navigable sea area and sailed to the coast of Fujian. This may prepare for military-civilian linkage in response to emergencies. Compared with the simple use of amphibious landing ship , this approach not only significantly increases the base of the delivery force, but also increases the total amount of heavy-armed delivery. The most important point is to double the combat efficiency. This will play a certain positive role in effectively responding to the outbreak of conflicts, shortening the war time, and reducing one's own losses. It can be seen that military-civilian linkage is not a bad thing.
▲Luxury passenger and roulette ships are used for transportation of established troops
and need to be paid attention to, high combat efficiency and higher cost-effectiveness. In 2019, Huanghai Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. delivered the latest design and construction luxury passenger ship with a total tonnage of more than 45,000 tons to Bohai Ferry Group Co., Ltd. The planned passenger quota of is 2,000, and theoretically, it can carry 350 conventional vehicles. It is extremely reasonable for space design . If this design is used for personnel and equipment in wartime, it is much higher than that of conventional amphibious landing ships. It is understood that the purchase unit price of this luxury passenger ship is 420 million yuan. Combined with the US military's full load displacement of 25,000 tons, the purchase unit price of 1.76 billion US dollars of San Antonio-class dock transport ship , it will be clearly found that if civilian ships are simply in terms of carrying capacity, they have super high price comparison.
- PLA has the advantages of military-civilian linkage
For this advantageous condition, it is limited to discussion at the strategic and tactical level. First of all, from the current strategic direction of the PLA's cross-sea landing operation, the main focus is on the Taiwan direction, and the main problem is also the Taiwan issue. Under this specific tactical background, the PLA has an overwhelming advantage in both equipment and firepower, especially the PLA's island-round exercises and training operation in August fully demonstrated this ability to the world.
In this island-round training, the PLA demonstrated its strong anti-intervention/denial capability, which can fully prevent interference from external forces; on the other hand, the live-fire maritime soldiers and live ammunition carried out in relevant waters involve training, especially the cruise near Taiwan's coast, which further demonstrated the PLA's absolute sea control capability. Faced with the current PLA's maritime power, the main ship of the Taiwan Army, , the Taiwan Army , except for being able to be anchored at the port to demonstrate, does not pose any threat in actual combat, and this loss of sea control has also created conditions for the PLA's military-civilian linkage.
▲The military-civilian linkage was a helpless move before, but now more
Theoretical, there is indeed great uncertainty in civilian ships for amphibious landing. In addition to limited defense capabilities, the design direction is also completely different. In theory, the damage after being hit will be far beyond conventional warships. From this perspective, there is indeed a high risk of using civilian ships. However, when our army fully controls sea power and controls air power , this risk is almost zero.
▲PLA amphibious combat delivery combat power further improves
Today's PLA air force, whether it is the quantity, quality of equipment, and the degree of air system construction, they are far above the Taiwan Air Force. With such an advantage, once a conflict breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, the People's Liberation Army will have the confidence and ability to control absolute air and sea control in a short period of time. At this time, using civilian ships to conduct amphibious landings, the risk has been minimized. Moreover, it must be mentioned that in the conventional situation, the amphibious landing ships are mainly relied on. Judging from the number of ships of this type of PLA at this stage, it can meet the delivery of about two waves of large groups of troops. The completion of the delivery of two waves of group forces has paved the way for the later transfer and delivery of civil ships. This shows that this "shortcoming" is precisely the most preferred at this stage in front of the PLA.
