How a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could unfold
An amphibious assault of Taiwan would be one of the toughest military operations to pull off. This wouldn’t be the Normandy landings – but if the PLA could capture a port, it would be game over.
Five miles (eight km) off Taiwan’s coast, ZTD-05 amphibious vehicles roll out of ships and zip over the water amid a hail of artillery fire. The Chinese soldiers inside have their orders: Seize the beach, or die trying.
Close by, China’s airborne troops are taking losses. They arrived before dawn in low-flying Y-20 aircraft to seize Taoyuan Airport. Taiwanese defenders downed several planes. The paratroopers that landed, scattered, are in a race to assault the airfield before Taiwan wrecks it.
This hypothetical battle scenario imagines a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, as militaries, policymakers and wargamers are doing. An amphibious invasion would be one of the toughest military operations to execute. And an all-out war would be extremely bloody, devastate the global economy and change the course of the 21st century.
Whether Beijing will try to conquer the democratically governed island by force is the biggest geopolitical unknown facing the world. A close second: How the US, Taiwan’s main defence partner, would respond.
The Strait
The Taiwan Strait is a daunting obstacle. Tens of thousands of Chinese troops would need to cross it with tanks, trucks and more while Taiwan’s missiles and mines — and possibly US bombers and submarines — target the invading fleet.
The strait can be hostile without any of that. Depending on the month, amphibious vehicles attempting to land on Taiwan would encounter some mix of typhoons, unpredictable currents, strong winds, rain and fog. “Really, really nasty,” Joshua Arostegui, a US Army War College expert on China’s military, said of the sea conditions.
The Island
Taiwan is much bigger than Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the nearby Japanese islands US forces captured in gruesome World War II battles.
The 1945 battle of Okinawa was “the last time a very large-scale amphibious operation happened,” said Ian Easton, author of a book on a possible Taiwan fight. “And that one was pretty simple compared to what an invasion of Taiwan would be.”
At the time, the US also had extensive plans to storm Taiwan, then controlled by Japan. It aborted the effort, called Operation Causeway, because the scale and complexity demanded many hundreds of thousands of troops.
The Terrain
Mountains run the length of Taiwan’s main island, and line cities and beaches. Built into them are tunnel networks and military bases. In a fight, defenders would fire from high, concealed positions.
The topography also complicates a key decision for China: where to land. If amphibious forces approached Taiwan’s east coast, they would confront steep cliffs. If they landed in the south, soldiers would find themselves fighting through rugged “slow-go” terrain to Taipei.
The Beaches
Taiwan’s beaches aren’t suited for amphibious landings. Many are too small to mass a sizeable force. A number of them are bordered by mountains, cities or paddy fields, making it harder to break out of the beach perimeter.
This isn’t Normandy of the D-Day landings.
China’s options would be limited by another priority: seizing a seaport or airport — ideally both — to bring follow-on forces and bulky supplies. Only a few areas offer a beach, port and airfield in close proximity.
The Cities
Most of Taiwan’s 23 million people are concentrated along the coast that faces China.
Taiwan is increasingly preparing to bog down Chinese forces in deadly urban combat, said K. Tristan Tang, an associate fellow at Secure Taiwan Associate Corp., a Taipei-based research group. Defenders know the cities, can set up sniper positions and make it difficult for China to identify strongholds nested in the concrete, he said.
Taipei
Taipei is ringed by mountains and crisscrossed by rivers. It would be heavily defended, especially against “decapitation strikes” targeting key government buildings, mockups of which Chinese forces train on.
If Chinese troops came up the Tamsui River, Taiwan could block their path by dropping a major bridge that straddles it, said Tang. Taiwanese marines, equipped with anti-aircraft missiles, would likely defend the city’s airport.
The flip side is that Beijing knows these problems better than most. A hot war isn’t inevitable, but Chinese leader Xi Jinping has asked his military planners to get ready, driving a rapid peacetime buildup.
Shape of the war
How would an invasion unfold? A lot would depend on what Taiwan does to fight back, whether the US intervenes and how well Chinese forces work together across the skies, seas, sand and space.
Chinese doctrine and Western experts point to three broad phases. First, China would hit Taiwan with missile barrages. Second, its ships would cross the Taiwan Strait and amphibious units would attempt to land on one or more beaches. Third, Chinese forces would break out of the landing zone and launch a ground assault for Taipei.
In reality, the war would involve a dizzying array of attacks and counterattacks. China could begin by snapping up Taiwan’s small outer islands. It could enforce a blockade to squeeze Taipei into submission. It could sever undersea internet cables to plunge the island into digital darkness, or order crippling cyberattacks.
Phase 1: Firepower
China would unleash a “joint firepower strike,” pounding Taiwan with missiles. The goals: to “soften” Taiwan up by battering its defences, make it safer for Chinese ships to cross the strait, break Taiwan’s will to fight, and dissuade a US intervention with a strong show of force.
The campaign would likely involve hundreds of missiles falling on hundreds of targets, from Taiwan’s air defence systems and air force bases, to ammunition bunkers, command hubs and coastal artillery. The blitz would aim to destroy warplanes on the ground, crater runways and discombobulate the defenders.
How long the bombardment lasts — a few days or a few weeks — is a crucial decision Chinese war planners would have to make. Stretching it out could give the US time to act, but failing to eliminate key capabilities could imperil the invasion’s next steps.
China has undertaken a dramatic buildup of missiles. The Rocket Force, which was elevated to a full military branch a decade ago, has 3,500 missiles across different ranges.
It’s not just the Rocket Force. China’s ground forces, warships and modern jet fighters like the J-16 would all strike Taiwan.
During military drills in 2022, the Chinese army brought the PCH191 rocket launcher to Pingtan Island, 85 miles from Taiwan. Developed over the past decade, it can throw munitions of varying ranges, including volleys of low-cost rockets.
The Rocket Force would go after tough targets, such as US-made Patriot air-defence systems.
It could also attack Taiwan’s underground military installations using “bunker buster” missiles like the DF-11AZT, said Decker Eveleth, an expert at CNA, a US-based research organisation. Those warheads wouldn’t destroy deeply buried facilities but could collapse tunnel entrances, he said.
The Rocket Force’s Base 61 would be a key player. The brigades under it, located across from Taiwan, are growing in size and capability.
One big dilemma for Beijing: whether to pre-emptively strike US bases in the region. American warplanes flying from these bases — in Japan and the US territory of Guam — could sink a lot of Chinese ships, but striking them would instantly put the world’s top two powers in a head-to-head war.
If China went after US targets in Japan, it would launch a lot of missiles at once. “Not just a large number but a large variety so that missile defences have to cope with different types of missiles coming at different speeds from different trajectories and different directions,” said Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at MIT’s security studies program.
One of the earliest missiles would be the Dongfeng-17. Equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle, it skims along the earth’s atmosphere and can manoeuvre, making it less predictable.
The biggest trend in the Rocket Force has been the extension of range, Mr Heginbotham said. The Dongfeng-26 missile can reach Guam, a hub of American military power.
“It has a heck of a warhead,” Mr Heginbotham said. “It’s very accurate, comes in fast and has ferocious killing capability.”
Phase 2: Crossing and landing
After the blitz comes the amphibious assault. In this part of the invasion, Chinese ships would be sunk, landing forces could be blown up in the water or cut down on beaches and fighting akin to bloody World War II battles might unfold.
How would it begin? Thousands of Chinese troops and millions of tons of warfighting equipment would move to coastal staging areas in China on trucks, trains and planes — potentially tipping off its adversaries.
“If they’re going to go big — and they’re either going to go big or they’re not going to go — it’s going to take a lot of preparation,” said Dennis Blasko, a former US Army attaché in Beijing and Hong Kong.
In the last two years, however, some People’s Liberation Army watchers have begun to wonder if it could use the cover of military exercises to obscure the warning signs. Since 2022, Chinese drills around Taiwan have grown far more complex and realistic. If that trend intensified year after year, China could pivot to a rapid, high-intensity attack, some experts said.
Picking the right landing spots would be tricky.
If amphibious forces headed to southern Taiwan, they might have an easier fight since Taiwan’s army is concentrated in the island’s north. But after that, they would have to wage a grinding overland campaign to Taipei, river by river, ridge line by ridge line, said Mark Cancian, a retired colonel in the US Marine Corps who has run wargames simulating such a scenario.
Defenders could blow up bridges, collapse tunnels and bog down the enemy in cities or mountains.
Approaching Taiwan from the north would put the landing teams closer to Taipei, but they would meet stiff resistance on and beyond the beach from tanks, artillery, mines and more. Taiwan would focus its counterattacks and plant booby traps on the limited pathways out of the beaches.
Since a military restructuring in 2017, China has honed an A-team that would likely act as the spearhead. They are the army’s six amphibious combined arms brigades, totalling around 30,000 troops and more than 2,400 vehicles, Blasko’s research shows. These forces would cross the strait on ships, launch into the water in speedy armoured vehicles, and “swim” to the target beach in rows.
China has also rapidly built out its marine corps, from two brigades in 2017 to 11 today, that would execute missions in tandem or separately from the army.
The most-debated question: Can Chinese forces and their weapons get across the Taiwan Strait in the numbers they need?
China’s navy has dozens of amphibious ships, but not hundreds. It hasn’t hugely ramped up production of the types of landing vessels that would best serve a Taiwan attack, though it could do so relatively easily in the future, being the world’s top shipbuilder. Instead, it has churned out ever-larger warships better suited to projecting power far from China’s shores.
These behemoths would nonetheless be pressed into service for a Taiwan fight.
To fill the gap in “sealift,” China’s military would lean on a secondary source: civilian ships. Take for instance roll-on, roll-off ferries that typically carry passengers, trucks and cargo, but are now built to defence standards and train with the military.
These large ships have modified ramps that can drop down until submerged, allowing armoured vehicles to roll out into the water, said Michael Dahm, a retired US Navy intelligence officer and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. The stern ramps can withstand heavy waves and weight, he said.
The main challenge would be scaling up for a conflict in which they would need to convoy in close formation under the protection of warships sailing alongside, Mr Dahm said.
Phase 3: Breakout and seize Taipei
A successful beach assault offers a foothold. After that, however, waves of soldiers — potentially hundreds of thousands — need to follow to break out of the beach, push deeper and take Taipei. Their equipment, such as heavy battle tanks and truckloads of bullets, fuel and medical supplies, can’t swim ashore.
The best way in is a port.
“If they take a port it’s kind of game over,” said Thomas Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
That is because China could then bring in civilian ferries, deck cargo ships and other commercial vessels. These would be loaded up with warfighters and large volumes of logistics needed for a ground campaign. “The vast majority of their sealift is going to be the commercial stuff and its supply is near limitless,” said Mr Shugart.
This is Taiwan’s nightmare. To avoid it, its forces could sabotage its ports to keep them out of Chinese hands or sink ships in the channel to block access.
This year, another capability showed up on the Chinese coast: mobile piers that can be used to unload directly onto a beach or possibly to a damaged port. The setup consists of three barges that line up one behind the other, close to the shore. Each has retractable legs that thrust down into the seabed to hold the ships in position.
Once steadied, long bridges extend out, connecting one barge to the other, and the first barge to the shore, research by Mr Dahm and Mr Shugart shows.
The result is a 2,700-foot causeway where ferries or civilian cargo ships could pull up. Tanks, trucks and tactical vehicles would roll out to the bridge and onto Taiwan, possibly hundreds at a time. These piers would be vulnerable to attack, though, which means they could only be used once a beach was secured.
If China got a large force ashore, it would move on Taipei, waging a 21st-century battle for a megacity.
The Wall St Journal
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