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?
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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