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Originally posted by Mordoch
Right now China lacks the amphibious lift capabilities to actually take Taiwan right now, and an invasion would fail even without US intervention for the immediate future. When looking at the 2010+ timeframe, a sucessfuly Chinese invasion of Taiwan suceeding without US intervention becomes fairly plausible. Taiwan needs to agreesively modernize and otherwise improve their military in order to prevent that possibility.
I'll go ahead and post some points on this subject I made recently on another forum.
The major reason China can't simply take over Taiwan is due to the fact that Taiwan enjoys the defensive advantage of having a large streach of ocean between them. With regards to amphibious landing operations against Taiwan, Taiwan's small size actually works against China. If Taiwan were the size of England, there would be alot of coastline for Taiwan's army and navy to protect and defend, but Taiwan's coastline means that China has little chance of simply sneaking by Taiwan's defenses and pulling off a landing.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan is even further complicated by the fact that the western coast of Taiwan is mostly covered by tidal mudflats that streach for miles off the coast and ensure that any transport crossing the area would get stuck, while much of the eastern part of Taiwan is cliffs rather than beaches. This leaves less than 20% of the coastline as viable for invasion and this is before you factor in that only a portion of these remaining beaches are going to be suitable for an amphibious landing. The Island of Taiwan itself has around 1,100 kilometers of coastline (its a little difficult to calculate exactly since the statistics I found included the outlying islands.) Since less than 20% of this coastline is usable for an invasion beachhead, this means that Taiwan's standing army of 200,000 could be deployed with over 910 soldier per every kilometer of Taiwan. If Taiwan's reserves are all mobilized, (which actually are 1.5 million troops) you are looking at more than 7730 soldier per every kilometer of usable invasion coastline.
This number gets alot higher when you consider that the Taiwanese army is aware that the most viable invasion targets are the parts of Taiwan closest to Mainland China and the defense of the most attractive invasion beaches are also prioritized. The small size of Taiwan as an island means that it doesn't take defensive forces that long to react to amphibious landings and move to reinforce other units.
As the following source notes ""China would take at least 48 hours, contingent on good weather, to make a round trip to fetch reinforcements, within which Taiwan would have successfully marshalled her troops to the battlefield."
This delay before reinforcements arrive means that in order to hold a beachhead, China would realisticly need at least 100,000 troops to sucessfully land on the invasion target on Taiwan, (this is assuming a surprise attack with most of Taiwan's reserves not mobilized yet) and getting them there safely is not that easy.
Taiwan's significantly sized navy and air force should certainly be able to launch some anti-shipping missiles and sink some transports early in the conflict. This is double whammy for China as not only are the troops and supplies on board lost, but that transport can't be used to provide future reinforcements.
Besides its airforce and navy, Taiwan can also launch anti-shipping missiles from land bases, and since missiles such as the Hsiung-Feng II has roughly an 80 kilometer range (I've seen more recent evidence suggesting this range may have been extended even for the ordinary missiles of this type), they can start attacking the invading armada from quite a distance. Taiwan also has the M110A2 Self-Propelled Howitzer which has a range of more than 18 miles, as well as the LT-2000 Rocket lauched artillerly system which has a range of 28 miles and can be very lethal against the sort of tighly concentrated armada necessary to overwhelm a beach's defenses. Taiwan can also stick sea minefields in front of the possible invasion beaches as well as have its helicopter use their Hellfire anti-tank missiles to lethal effect against the invasion forces. The mines are a particular problem as they will either delay the invasion while Chinese forces clear them, leaving the transports exposed at sea and giving Taiwan more time to react, or China will lose a huge number of ships with the "Russian penal battalion method" of clearing mines. When the force get close, Taiwan plans to utilize their tank's main gun to target landing craft before they get too close to the beach, and anti-tank missiles such as the Javelin could be used in this role as well.
The additional problem for China is that even if they accomplish the task of landing 100,000 men with the initial force, the transport force would have taken substancial attrition from Taiwan's defenses and many of the transports will need to carry additional supplies for the existing troops that had already landed. If China can't supply the beachhead with enough reinforcement, the invasion force would be overwhelmed by Taiwan's superior numbers that could be quickly deployed by this spot. If the invasion beachhead was destroyed, another fullscale invasion of Taiwan would not be a viable option for China for years untill all of the transport losses have been replaced. These are the sorts of problems China faces invading Taiwan.
Right now China lacks the amphibious lift capabilities to actually take Taiwan right now, and an invasion would fail even without US intervention for the immediate future. When looking at the 2010+ timeframe, a sucessfuly Chinese invasion of Taiwan suceeding without US intervention becomes fairly plausible. Taiwan needs to agreesively modernize and otherwise improve their military in order to prevent that possibility.
I'll go ahead and post some points on this subject I made recently on another forum.
The major reason China can't simply take over Taiwan is due to the fact that Taiwan enjoys the defensive advantage of having a large streach of ocean between them. With regards to amphibious landing operations against Taiwan, Taiwan's small size actually works against China. If Taiwan were the size of England, there would be alot of coastline for Taiwan's army and navy to protect and defend, but Taiwan's coastline means that China has little chance of simply sneaking by Taiwan's defenses and pulling off a landing.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan is even further complicated by the fact that the western coast of Taiwan is mostly covered by tidal mudflats that streach for miles off the coast and ensure that any transport crossing the area would get stuck, while much of the eastern part of Taiwan is cliffs rather than beaches. This leaves less than 20% of the coastline as viable for invasion and this is before you factor in that only a portion of these remaining beaches are going to be suitable for an amphibious landing. The Island of Taiwan itself has around 1,100 kilometers of coastline (its a little difficult to calculate exactly since the statistics I found included the outlying islands.) Since less than 20% of this coastline is usable for an invasion beachhead, this means that Taiwan's standing army of 200,000 could be deployed with over 910 soldier per every kilometer of Taiwan. If Taiwan's reserves are all mobilized, (which actually are 1.5 million troops) you are looking at more than 7730 soldier per every kilometer of usable invasion coastline.
This number gets alot higher when you consider that the Taiwanese army is aware that the most viable invasion targets are the parts of Taiwan closest to Mainland China and the defense of the most attractive invasion beaches are also prioritized. The small size of Taiwan as an island means that it doesn't take defensive forces that long to react to amphibious landings and move to reinforce other units.
As the following source notes ""China would take at least 48 hours, contingent on good weather, to make a round trip to fetch reinforcements, within which Taiwan would have successfully marshalled her troops to the battlefield."
This delay before reinforcements arrive means that in order to hold a beachhead, China would realisticly need at least 100,000 troops to sucessfully land on the invasion target on Taiwan, (this is assuming a surprise attack with most of Taiwan's reserves not mobilized yet) and getting them there safely is not that easy.
Taiwan's significantly sized navy and air force should certainly be able to launch some anti-shipping missiles and sink some transports early in the conflict. This is double whammy for China as not only are the troops and supplies on board lost, but that transport can't be used to provide future reinforcements.
Besides its airforce and navy, Taiwan can also launch anti-shipping missiles from land bases, and since missiles such as the Hsiung-Feng II has roughly an 80 kilometer range (I've seen more recent evidence suggesting this range may have been extended even for the ordinary missiles of this type), they can start attacking the invading armada from quite a distance. Taiwan also has the M110A2 Self-Propelled Howitzer which has a range of more than 18 miles, as well as the LT-2000 Rocket lauched artillerly system which has a range of 28 miles and can be very lethal against the sort of tighly concentrated armada necessary to overwhelm a beach's defenses. Taiwan can also stick sea minefields in front of the possible invasion beaches as well as have its helicopter use their Hellfire anti-tank missiles to lethal effect against the invasion forces. The mines are a particular problem as they will either delay the invasion while Chinese forces clear them, leaving the transports exposed at sea and giving Taiwan more time to react, or China will lose a huge number of ships with the "Russian penal battalion method" of clearing mines. When the force get close, Taiwan plans to utilize their tank's main gun to target landing craft before they get too close to the beach, and anti-tank missiles such as the Javelin could be used in this role as well.
The additional problem for China is that even if they accomplish the task of landing 100,000 men with the initial force, the transport force would have taken substancial attrition from Taiwan's defenses and many of the transports will need to carry additional supplies for the existing troops that had already landed. If China can't supply the beachhead with enough reinforcement, the invasion force would be overwhelmed by Taiwan's superior numbers that could be quickly deployed by this spot. If the invasion beachhead was destroyed, another fullscale invasion of Taiwan would not be a viable option for China for years untill all of the transport losses have been replaced. These are the sorts of problems China faces invading Taiwan.
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