China Needs Taiwanese Ports to Take the Island
Mines are the key to protecting them
If China ever makes good on decades of implicit threats to invade Taiwan, most of its ground force will have to land at ports. Relatively little of it can come over beaches, because they “lack purpose-built infrastructure for unloading large transports, and because they are inherently exposed positions,” Ian Easton noted in a 2021 study for the Project 2049 Institute in Virginia.
Even the advent of China’s new elevated beach landing barges—bespoke pieces of equipment that surprised many observers when they appeared in March—may not significantly improve China’s capacity to unload at Taiwan’s 14 suitable beaches. As ASPI’s Erik Davis wrote last year, almost all are “overlooked by terrain that would turn the unloading zones into kill zones.”
Easton says, “The success or failure of a future invasion of Taiwan would likely hinge on whether or not Chinese amphibious landing forces are able to seize, hold and exploit the island’s large port facilities.”
Defending the most important ports from a large-scale assault from the sea—there are five ports that Easton concluded are top targets—should be the Taiwanese defense ministry’s main priority. And the most effective weapon for this defense should be obvious.
Mines.
Read the rest at The Strategist.
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