Where are you getting this information? It's obvious that your knowledge of the Chinese military is at least 5 years out of date - you've shown that with your comments on their ICBMs, submarines, fighter jets, & now their theater ballistic missiles. The DF-15 has a CEP ~50 meters using GPS or Glonass. Many of them are terminally guided. Same with the medium-range DF-21s.
Fine. The airplanes are on the ground while missiles land 600 meters or more away from them. Unless you're talking about nukes, those planes are going to be fine.
Problem is, China now has long-range artillery that can reach Taiwan as well. And while a CEP of 50m is still too high to target individual aircraft it can probably cause big problems for large stationary facilities like hangars or fuel dumps. You don't have to destroy warplanes to render them unfit for combat.
Figures for the DF-15 (the workhorse
It's obvious that your knowledge of the Chinese military is at least 5 years out of date - you've shown that with your comments on their ICBMs, submarines, fighter jets, & now their theater ballistic missiles.
A lot has NOT happened in 5 years. The Song class of SSKs turned out to be duds--so the ChiComs have to buy more Kilos. The Type 093 is still "under construction," and will be about as good as a late-build Permit-class boat. Their ICBM forces are, to put it mildly, stagnant.
The DF-15 has a CEP ~50 meters using GPS or Glonass.
Uh-huh. GPS is subject to "selective availability." Glonass simply doesn't work that well--you'd get 300 meter CEP at best.
Only a complete idiot relies on a guidance system controlled by one's enemy.
And, of course, this assumes that nobody in the loop for building the DF-15s walked off with the money and ripped off the PLA--despite fraud and corruption being rampant in the ChiCom military...
Many of them are terminally guided.
Facts and figures, please. What sort of terminal guidance? When was it tested? Did it actually work?
Same with the medium-range DF-21s.
In that case, the DF-21 threat's already been killed--just deceive their GPS systems, and watch the warheads land WAY off target.
Problem is, China now has long-range artillery that can reach Taiwan as well. And while a CEP of 50m is still too high to target individual aircraft it can probably cause big problems for large stationary facilities like hangars or fuel dumps.
And, of course, the ROC AF isn't smart enough to put in underground infrastructure, unlike their wily inscrutable counterparts on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
BTW, there is an issue with long range artillery--if they are as accurate as their US counterparts, your miss distance will be about 500 meters long or short of target, and 200-300 meters left/right.
You don't have to destroy warplanes to render them unfit for combat.
True. But you have to destroy real targets.
And, even then, you have to follow through with boots on the ground--and unless the ChiComs get Louis Farrakhan to organize a "Million Man Swim," that 80+ miles of Taiwan Strait is going to stop them dead until 2015--by which point, they're going to have some more pressing issues to deal with.
And we have a weakling president who lectures Taiwan instead of China. Pitiful.