How to Grab Taiwan in 7 hours

Fairthought

Junior Member
It will take lots and lots of money, and years of construction, but it could be done excepting an especially careful defense on the part of Taiwan.


The Secret Weapon: TBM's

That's right, TBM's (tunnel Boring machines). It sounds absurd, but hear me out on this before posting replies.

TBM technology has been around for decades. Major cities, like Chicago, have enormous storm sewers cut out by TBM's. The most famous TBM project was the British-French Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel. TBMS's can carve out tunnels hundreds of miles long, under seas, and wide enough for large vehicles to pass through.

China may have started this project over ten years ago, long enough to already reach Taiwan and set up an underground base (or bases). After a few years, these bases could support tens of thousands of troops.

By surreptitiously buying up some real-estate for constructing 'warehouses', China could create access points for their underground troops to spill out into Taiwan's surface and sieze many vital targets - TV stations, radio stations, Alarm stations, runways, harbors, wherever one could conceivably set up a warehouse nearby without stirring suspicions.

Any targets too remote or well defended for these surprise groundtroops to take will simply be hit by intermediate range ballistic missiles from the mainland.

Meanwhile, a tremendous airwar errupts, and Taiwanese aircraft will soon have their ammo depleted -but with no place to land and resupply! With the skies secure, the PLAN begins largescale amphibious invasion. Meanwhile the general population -which includes Taiwan's reserve forces- will not hear any alarms calling them to battle.

Assuming an attack at midnight, By the time most Taiwanese wake up in the morning the PLA would already control the beaches and the airwaves and calmly broadcast cartoons and soap operas as the remaining encirlced Taiwanese forces are either surrendering or getting blasted to smithereens.

The US and Japanese warplanes would have arrived earlier that night and realized that Taiwan is lost, and it would be too late to deploy aircraft carriers. While they mull over how to strike back at China, they are cautious not to take any rash military actions -they have to figure out how China won so easily.

Could it be a new superweapon? If so, details would be needed before sending stealth bombers into China -they may be sent to their doom.

As the West spends several days preparing their reports figuring out what the hell happened, China fortifies their island defenses, preparing for a heavy counterstrike.


Sound silly? sound crazy? That's what makes it work.

Criticisms:

1. You can't tunnel through this region as it is tectonically active. you'd trigger an eathquake and cave-in.

Answer: Taiwan is actually tectonically stable- much moreso than Japan. The biggest earthquake experienced there in recent years was off shore to their east and was only a 6.9. Japan by contrast has regularly experienced 7.0 earthquakes and larger, and this has not harmed Japan's huge underground/underwater tunnels. Japan has a very big one connecting the islands of honshu to hokaido (we're talking 1970's technology here) which is very similar to the one I'm proposing. Even in an earthquake zone, it is possible to re-inforce tunnels from cave-ins thus safe-guarding them provided your are not directly at the epicenter.

2. You can't excavate large underground caverns in Taiwan without the Taiwanese knowing it.

Answer: Actually, you wouldn't have to do much excavating. Taiwan was formed millions of years ago from volcanic activity. The volcanoes are extinct now, but they have left behind many large underground caverns ready for use.
In fact, the Taiwanese military already uses some of these underground caverns for their own underground military posts. These posts include hidden ammo and fuel depots, fortified command bunkers, and large caches of weapons. It would require careful prodding to make sure China does not cut into to an already occupied cavern. This could be simplified by obtaining highly sensitive intelligence on Taiwan's facilities. This could also be a great way to destroy/capture these fortified Taiwanese underground military bases. Once you've tunneled to these facilities, their defense is compromised.
Furthermore, even if a Taiwanese geophysical survey revealed a large Chinese underground base, the data would simply be interpreted as just another large natural underground formation. Even a 'newly discovered' cavern would be regarded as an old cavern that previous surveys just missed.

3. TBM's are loud machines that would certainly be detected by Seismographs.


Answer: Not true. The machines can use high pressure water for blasting and softening rocks and carrying away the sludge. The impact of TBM carving is very quiet.
The microquakes caused by the weight shift of so much rock is infinitesimal, and would be indistinguishable from the background noise of thousands of daily microquakes that are always occuring. All points on the earth's surface experience thousands of microquakes, seismologists consider this normal.

4. The massive amount of rock removed would have to come out somewhere in China, this would be impossible to hide from spy satellites.

Answer: This is easily solved by declaring the excavation entrance a state owned mine (coal mines, for instance, produce prodigious quantities of debris). Excess rock debris can be trucked to major landfill projects such as for an earthen dam.



Okay, what do you guys think?
 
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BKulan

New Member
well i don't believe it is impossible but just think of the incredible costs of such a project, i don't doubt that china can afford and it's an excellent way of transporting troops to Taiwan after taking it. Problem and Merit of it is than no one is crazy enough to do it, at least according to what most people is likely to think of the idea and if Taiwan reunite with China before tunnel is complete then it could be made into a civilian project.

Still cost, time and likeliness of problems during construction is probably what stops it from being done since it is a lot easier to construct from both ends simultaneously.

However if they really take Taiwan by means of tunneling then i'll buy you a meal, consider that a promise.
 

MIGleader

Banned Idiot
one thing though..wouldnt taiwan notice the mass asembly of troops on the one end of the "Tchunnel"(taiwan/china tunel)? even so, these tunnels would allow for only modest transport of troops, and the troops would have to move from the warehouses to taiwanese bases, which requires great secrecy and coordination. however, if chinese commanders and thinktanks ever decided to work on this plan, it could certainly be developed into a plausible feat.

never bank your sucess on one secret weapon. taiwans new weapons deal seems as if it can help deter a pla invasion. the solution? get your own "hing plan". the pla should strike a massive deal with russia for 2 missle cruisers, 12 tu-22s, 10 zubr transports, 4 more kilos, and hundred of supersonic cruise missles. this deal will hinge on whether taiwan decides to pass its own wepaons deal. put short, if taiwan decides to buy more american weapons, china will buy more russian weapons. this may force even the dpp to think twice about their deal.
 

Kampfwagen

Junior Member
No offense, but why does this sound like the plot from Goldfinger?

:rofl:

But seriously. It has quite a few logistical problems and money could be a serious problem for them. But I like your thinking. It's a plot so ridiculous, who would think anyone would do it? Again, no offence but it is the gist of how the secrecy is kept.

Besides, crazier plots have been conjoured by militaries just as compitent as China's. And some of them even worked!
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
if you are digging a tunnel of that scale.. there's going to be a lot of workers.. and you can't keep everyone quiet.. someone is going to talk.. and there are plenty of spies in china working for taiwan. also the tunnel would only be able to transport infantry. since once they get to the other side can be moved easily to other locations on the island without detection. i guess when the war is over, can always use the tunnel as a civilian tunnel. but digging 100 miles is crazy... it will take forever. the english channel took 7 years and it is 31 miles long... taiwan strait is 100 miles long.. that means 21 years to build. and the english channel was being digged from both sides.. for this one.. you can only dig from china.. so double again, to 42 years.. by then, taiwan is probably unified already.

also the english channel tunnel cost about 10 billion pounds.. times that by 3 is 30 billion pounds.. or a lot of money that could be used to do a lot more stuff.
 

MIGleader

Banned Idiot
two things, pisigma. the chunnel was being built in the 80s. digging and earth processing technologyhave coem along way since then. lessens learned from the chunnel project can be applied to the strait. also, china has far more workers, all of which are motivated and persistent, more so than their english and fench counterparts. its true for all factories, so why not with this?
the workers also can work for less pay, and less comforts. equipment is cheaper in china, so the cost will not be tripled. besides, this chunnel is not going to handle trains, just soem jeeps and troops, at most some ifv's.

spies? im guessing workers would be drafted form the country side, and guards would certainly moniter the work. much like the manhatten project.
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
manhatten employed top scientists, these people are not the kind that's easily bribed. when you get workers, hundreds of thousands of them, it's easy to sneak a few spies into the workers (pretend to be workers) give them some money, and they'll spill everything. and it's kinda easy to notice when you got a few thousand workers going in and out. the machines used for the tunnel digging will be specialized, it's not just two arms and a hammer anymore. chances are the technology and machinery need to be imported, and special workers employed to maintain them.

trains will move troops faster and more effectively.. they'll also need to think of future plans after the attack. to convert the tunnel for civilan use.
 

BKulan

New Member
PiSigma is right, keeping it all secret would be extremely hard. Especially if you need to import machinery.

Besides China don't have time to wait 25-40 years if they really intend on invading Taiwan

Sure you could speed it up by just placing a long row of concrete blocks on the bottom instead of building under it but it still would take forever and keeping it quiet would be close to impossible.

Still my attitude to it is like before: Good luck with making the plan a complete success.
 

MIGleader

Banned Idiot
PiSigma said:
manhatten employed top scientists, these people are not the kind that's easily bribed. when you get workers, hundreds of thousands of them, it's easy to sneak a few spies into the workers (pretend to be workers) give them some money, and they'll spill everything. and it's kinda easy to notice when you got a few thousand workers going in and out. the machines used for the tunnel digging will be specialized, it's not just two arms and a hammer anymore. chances are the technology and machinery need to be imported, and special workers employed to maintain them.

trains will move troops faster and more effectively.. they'll also need to think of future plans after the attack. to convert the tunnel for civilan use.

yet, somehow those top scientists got nuclear information to russia.
good point though. this seems like a fairly ambitious project, and has many places where something an go wrong. but it was a very novel idea, and thats what the forum needs.
 

The_Zergling

Junior Member
Fairthought said:
Taiwan is actually tectonically stable- much moreso than Japan. The biggest earthquake experienced there in recent years was off shore to their east and was only a 6.9. Japan by contrast has regularly experienced 7.0 earthquakes and larger, and this has not harmed Japan's huge underground/underwater tunnels. Japan has a very big one connecting the islands of honshu to hokaido (we're talking 1970's technology here) which is very similar to the one I'm proposing. Even in an earthquake zone, it is possible to re-inforce tunnels from cave-ins thus safe-guarding them provided your are not directly at the epicenter.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Taiwan is actually NOT tectonically stable. The biggest earthquake Taiwan experienced recently was 921, measuring 7.3 on the richter scale. What's more the epicenter was in Central Taiwan. The quake caused roughly 2000 deaths, 8500 injured. I walked around the streets of Taichung speechless, just looking at the destructionn, and I hadn't even seen the bodies yet. And Taichung's damage wasn't even close to Nantou or other areas.

Taiwan regularily has small earthquakes that are noticeable (i.e. buildings rocking gently) and generally most of the epicenters are in the center of Taiwan.

I can't believe that so many of you guys posted on this thread without the slightest information regarding Taiwan's geography? This isn't an insult but if you want to discuss a hypothetical scenario I believe it is best to understand as much as possible about the area in which it would take place. Granted I don't think anyone else other than myself in this thread have lived in Taiwan before, but to put it bluntly, it's all geography. Taiwan is NOT stable, and that fact alone might negate this entire strategy.
 
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