[tlear]

They can't, not even remotely close any time in the next 20 years at least. Can you imagine what a landing beach would look like being pounded by drone spotted artillery? See war in Ukraine. Forget the approach, anti ship missiles, mines, sheer volume of logistics needed. Stepping on the landing beach is a suicide without absolutely astronomical advantage in air power and ability to suffer huge attrition, even then.. 155mm hidden under camo/thermal nets, DJI drone rigged with magazines of small bombs.. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson Childs play, this would make Diep and Galipoli look like walk in the park.

I would go as far as to say that US Army + Marines + Navy could not land on Taiwan without suffering multiple brigades of attrition AFTER at least a year long blockade and air campaign. It is that hard.

PRC has to surpass US in GDP, then spend 10-20 years of US level military spending, then maybe.

[whimsicalism]

China can just send cruise missiles to start and ignore beaches.

A major power with 1.2 billion people can take an island of 20 million 80 miles away from its shores.

[Apocryphon]

If they want to make a desert and call it peace, perhaps. Seems like a bad strategy to smash a crown jewel before you annex it.

[intrasight]

They will take it without a fight

[Apocryphon]

That simple sentence is doing a lot of heavy dodging to ignore all of the points brought up in the post upthread about the inherent difficulties involved in naval landings.

Now, if you're going to say economic pressures will lead to political settlements without conflict, then that's a discussion to be had.

[tlear]

Putin called he needs your brilliant strategic advice. 1 week to Kyiv or was it 2 days? I can't recall. This kind nationalistic PRC BS is how they will start a war, get defeated than have another civil war with 100 million dead.

[protoc]

They will fire 10,000 drones/missles and destroy the power/water/internet/fuel since those are legit military target as we saw in iraq war 1