New Taiwan Thread

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Captain
Let's put the discussion here.

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As for the tunnel boring idea, Beijing already wants to drill a Fujian-Taiwan tunnel as rail and road traffic. This provides civilian cover at least up to the halfway mark. In the event of actual war, the objective becomes to drill through the halfway mark as fast as possible to secured tunnel opening sites. After the tunnel is complete, amphibious landing becomes unnecessary.

There's actually three important alternatives to amphibious landing Beijing has when it comes to Taiwan. Tunnel boring is one of them, another is just artillery shelling.

Currently, China relies on a vast array of short-ranged ballistic missiles to threaten Taiwan. Unfortunately, missiles are expensive, at least a million a pop (the DF-21 is around 10 million), meaning that they can't be relied on to keep Taiwanese defenses wrecked and to keep the RoCAF down. Advancements like Chinese plasma artillery (which is actually electrothermal chemical technology applied to artillery, instead of tank guns) portend to allow China to use 155mm or 207mm guns to cheaply shell Taiwan from Fujian.

The last important alternative is Z-10s. Now, these aren't the best for the job, as the Z-10s are designed along Mangusta / Eurocopter lines, meaning they're more suited for tank hunting, as opposed to the heavily-armored Ka-50 type flying tanks, but helicopters fly and thus don't need to do an amphibious disembarkment. The Z-10 is reputed to have 800 km range, which is more than enough to cross the straits, conduct fire support or search and destroy missions, and come back. The biggest problem with Z-10s is numbers. The PLA is reputed to have around 300 Z-10s, when the US handles around 750 Apaches,

These provide China with three alternatives to landing in Taiwan, where you have heavily-fortified beach defenses to deny Beijing easy landings, alongside a heavily-urbanized terrain on the Taiwanese Western coast.

A combination of all three (i.e, artillery shelling all of Taiwan, swarms of Z-10s and drones to destroy Taiwanese ground assets, tunnel operations to land the deathblow by rendering the Taiwan Strait no longer a protective barrier) could dramatically change the calculus when it comes to a Taiwan Straits conflict.
 

Inst

Captain
Would the mods clarify?

Once again, I'm stating that the tunnel idea isn't stupid. The civilian version is a topic of political debate across the straits, except for the fact that it's the Chinese who want it and the Taiwanese who hate it and there's no real conversation on the topic.

Increasing militarization of the Straits is an inevitability because Taiwanese are increasingly identifying as Taiwanese and anti-China. It has already long passed the tipping point and actual PLA invasion capability is needed for China to deter Taiwan from, first, going nuclear (Taiwan maintains nuclear plants), and second, declaring independence.

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Note that the proposed routes look very much like the ones needed for an actual invasion. I'm in favor of the technology in general; because I'd like to see the mainland with rail and road links to Taiwan, but also Taiwan with rail and road links to Okinawa then Kyushu. Links to the Philippines might also be possible in the future.
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
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There is a Taiwan military thread.
I'm not sure what purpose this thread is meant to serve and what it is in response to, if it is just meant to talk about PLA military options in event of a Taiwan contingency, which frankly is not something that SDF has really openly allowed. Inst, if you want to have that discussion I think CDF would be better than here.

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