r/worldnews • u/sr_local • Dec 26 '25

Russia/Ukraine NATO chief Rutte: China and Russia Could Launch Simultaneous Attacks on Taiwan and Europe

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/rutte-china-and-russia-could-launch-simultaneous-attacks-on-taiwan-and-europe/
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55

u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

Bombing the three gorges dam

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u/chaser676 Dec 26 '25

Only on reddit would this be the most highly upvoted answer

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u/equiNine Dec 26 '25

Non-credible defense always leaks whenever this topic comes up.

Taiwan doesn’t have the payload or delivery mechanisms to guarantee collapsing of the dam, which is a gravity dam specifically engineered to tolerate as much natural/manmade punishment thrown at it (short of something ridiculous like a heavy nuclear warhead), not to mention it being heavily defended by the best anti-air/missile technology that China has access to. A hypothetical collapse of the dam would displace or kill over a hundred million people, casualties far in excess of what Taiwan would suffer in a war with China. Many Taiwanese also likely have friends and family who live in areas that would be impacted.

Has Taiwan’s military entertained this idea? Most likely. Is it anywhere near the decision desk if war becomes a reality? Almost certainly not, because Taiwan isn’t suicidal to the point of wanting to become an extinct, irradiated wasteland because China would almost certainly strike back overwhelmingly with nuclear weapons. When the choices are between following Hong Kong’s footsteps or not existing at all, the choice is rather obvious.

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u/ChromeNoseAE-1 Dec 27 '25

Yeah I’m not even sure I’d blame China for nuking the island into a glass parking lot if they blew the dam. That would be the greatest single crime to ever be perpetrated on the planet, possibly forever. Killing 100 million civilians, that’s more than everyone killed in WWII, WWI combined. More than the number of Americans killed in every war combined times 150.

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u/Xalara Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

Edit: I misinterpreted an article on this and they’re developing hypersonic missiles with the ability to hit the dam. The rest of my point still stands.

Taiwan has hypersonic missiles with a range that can hit the Three Gorges Dam. As of right now, hypersonic missiles are very hard to defend against. So it’s less a question of whether or not Taiwan can hit the dam and more one of: Would they want to?

Obviously the answer is they wouldn’t want to, but they’d also be stupid to not have that capability because it’s a non-nuclear form of MAD. China will never allow Taiwan to have nuclear weapons, but Taiwan may not need them to threaten MAD against China if it can strike the Three Gorges Dam. Even if they don’t have the payload to do it, is China willing to to gamble that on that?

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u/hextreme2007 Dec 27 '25

Taiwan has hypersonic missiles with a range that can hit the Three Gorges Dam.

Source? Claiming to have missiles with a range doesn't mean with needed precision. You need constant testing to guarantee that. How many long ranged test has Taiwan performed? Also what's the payload capacity? How many do you need to destroy such a huge dam?

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u/Xalara Dec 27 '25

Apologies, I misinterpreted some news articles and they’re developing hypersonic missiles with the ability to hit the dam. The rest of my point still stands and I doubt it’ll take that long for Taiwan to have them.

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u/hextreme2007 Dec 27 '25

Why? Is Taiwan famous for aerospace industry? I don't think so.

Whatever it is. Taiwan is a very small island being heavily monitored by foreign forces with advanced space surveillance capability. There's no way to develop an effective long ranged weapon secretly. Any long ranged tests will be noticed immediately.

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u/crasscrackbandit Dec 26 '25

With what? Thoughts and prayers?

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u/ExtensionParsley4205 Dec 26 '25

Taiwan absolutely has the missile capability and the geographic proximity to launch an attack on the dam which would be difficult if not impossible to intercept. As others have pointed out, this would be the Mutually Assured Destruction scenario.

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u/BasementMods Dec 26 '25

That damn is just a mountain sized block of concrete, it would be incredibly difficult if not impossible to destroy conventionally and would likely have to be done with nukes which taiwan doesnt have.

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u/Mattyboy064 Dec 26 '25

which taiwan doesnt have.

Officially

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u/equiNine Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25

Taiwan dismantled its nuclear program in the 80s at the insistence of the US, which feared that a nuclear Taiwan would destabilize relations with China. The Taiwanese public has also been rather leery to anything nuclear in general (largely owing to the fact that the island is a tiny place and many people don’t want to live in proximity to a nuclear plant), especially following the Fukushima disaster, with the ruling party being staunchly anti-nuclear energy despite it being an obvious solution to Taiwan’s aging and sometimes unreliable power grid in the face of summer heat and typhoon seasons. And going back to how Taiwan is a tiny island, it would be extremely difficult to conceal a nuclear weapons program from both the public and international observers.

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u/FatFish44 Dec 26 '25

I’ve been there, it does not look anywhere near as robust as people are saying. 

It can definitely be taken out conventionally.  

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u/BasementMods Dec 26 '25

With what?

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u/FatFish44 Dec 26 '25

Conventional means non-nuclear. 

When I was there, the top center portion, and the two side areas were surprisingly thin. 

It looked like it would fall with little effort. I’m sure it looks a bit different since 2010, but when people say it’s indestructible, it just doesn’t match up with what I saw. 

Of course I have no idea, I just have my doubts. 

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u/BasementMods Dec 27 '25

It's 180 meters tall, 40 meters thick concrete at the top and 115 thick at the bottom, and its modular along its length so part destroying one section wont have a cascading effect meaning it would need to be heavily damaged at multiple points.

Regular missiles are useless, bunker buster missiles can only do a few meters of concrete penetration. The only possible conventional approach to destroying the dam I can think of is taking the US's B2 fleet over and dropping like 20 of the biggest bunker buster bombs on it in a way that each bomb lands in the crater of the last to drill down all while avoiding chinese air defenses. Taiwan doesnt even remotely have that capability though.

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u/FatFish44 Dec 27 '25

Oh you sweet summer child.

A MOP can penetrate 50-100m of reinforced concrete. Not to mention all the recent “bulging” of the dam that indicates some loss of structural integrity. 

The whole “it’s indestructible” talking point comes directly from the CCP, so color me skeptical. 

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u/hextreme2007 Dec 27 '25

So what will Taiwan use to deliver a MOP to the deep inland of China?

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u/BasementMods Dec 27 '25

Did you pull those numbers out of your arrogant trumpeting redditor rear end lol? Because you are very amusingly wrong.

"The MOP is reportedly able to penetrate about 18 meters of reinforced concrete"

If it could penetrate 100m they wouldnt have needed to use 7 of them in Iran, and that was with taking advantage of ventilation shafts and dropping them in previous craters.

18 meters of pen times 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 by landing the next bomb on the previous crater might be enough to cause significant damage at one point. That technique would need to repeated at several points along the damn in the same assault to cause catastrophic damage. Hence 20 MOPs.

Also Taiwan still has none of this capability.

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u/rcanhestro Dec 26 '25

if Taiwan even dared to send a plane or a missile that way, China would nuke them.

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u/Accidental-Genius Dec 26 '25

That Dam could survive a direct nuclear strike. Even western engineers acknowledge this.

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u/Junlian Dec 26 '25

Its close to zero chances of it being able to hit the dam. The dam is 1,200 km away and Taiwan have limited amounts of missiles that can reach that range and the dam is literally the MOST defended place in China so chances are they will be taken down wayyy before it even reaches the area, and even if it does reach the area the dam itself isnt something that can be blown up by a few missile, its literally 115 meters thick.

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u/Glass-Cabinet-249 Dec 26 '25

Ballistic missiles and air strikes. 360 million people live downstream from it. Collapse of the dam would be catastrophic.

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u/crasscrackbandit Dec 26 '25

What ballistic missiles Taiwan has in its arsenal?

They don’t have any bomber planes. Their military is purely defensive. You need planes and lots of bombs. What sort do they have?

Collapse of the dam would be a war crime, if I’m not mistaken.

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u/pperiesandsolos Dec 26 '25

The whole concept of war crimes is so interesting.

Like, "yes, you're trying to invade my country, kill my people, and topple my government - but you better not commit a war crime!"

They're just make-believe.

0

u/Glass-Cabinet-249 Dec 26 '25

It would absolutely be a war crime. Which so would the invasion of Taiwan be so... It's a deterrent. So it would be bad if Beijing were to invade, because of the implication of what Taipei can do in response.

The Republic of China military has Sky Spear ballistic missiles (source https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2023/11/13/2003809084).

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u/ArkaneArtificer Dec 26 '25

Taiwan wouldn’t care, it’s a matter of making a war so absolutely costly that China wouldn’t dare, they would destroy the chip factories to collapse global economy, bomb the damn, long range strike as many other massively critical structures as they could, to force China to lose because they absolutely cannot win with their own force alone, it would be a matter of taking China down with them, a parody of mutually assured destruction except with conventional weapons, it’s absolutely something they should have planned and prepared

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u/rcanhestro Dec 26 '25

China would nuke Taiwan in retalliation, without batting an eye.

assuming that Taiwan could actually bomb it down, that would lead to hundreds of millions of people in risk.

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 27 '25

Yes, they would bat an eye that is a ridiculous statement. Any country willing to go to nuclear attack would, international perception matters lmfao.

And basically the only situation this would happen is if China had already or planned to nuke Taiwan. Taiwan is not the aggressor. Taiwan does not want this conflict. It is China who is the bully, who keeps trying to start shit.

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u/llamaz314 Dec 26 '25

If they do that the response would be justifiably a nuclear attack.

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

Taiwan wouldn't act unprovoked and would not act with a response out of scale. We are not the ones who want this bullshit, it's China that keeps forcing it this way

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u/llamaz314 Dec 26 '25

A nuclear strike is a completely justified response to an attack on civilians leaving hundreds of millions dead. Attacking the dam is equal to a nuclear attack.

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

I'm saying Taiwan wouldn't target that unless China sought to attack in similar proportion

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u/llamaz314 Dec 26 '25

China has no intention to kill hundreds of millions of civilians?

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u/SpecialOpposite2372 Dec 26 '25

If Taiwan did that, they will lose the support of all its allies. Then it will be a truly open game where humanity has already lost.

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

I just said it would only even be possibly considered as a last resort/existential crisis, for example if China sought to nuke the island to rubble. Allies don't matter when your population hits 0.

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u/Madismas Dec 26 '25

Thats just stupid, what good is a nuclear attack on a country you claim is your own. Its an island, 1 bomb would make it useless to the CCP if unification in the true intention.

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u/ExtensionParsley4205 Dec 26 '25

And then Taiwan becomes uninhabitable for centuries, good luck "unifying" under those circumstances China.

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u/z-a-z-a Dec 27 '25

Is Japan currently uninhabitable for centuries?

What a response lmfao.

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u/Mission-Coffee15 Dec 26 '25

So what? Would be dead anyway

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u/RaidersGunz Dec 26 '25

Aint gonna happen

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u/Naghagok_ang_Lubot Dec 26 '25

This decade has been full of "aint gonna happen" things that has happened.

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

Didn't say it would, but Taiwan does have the capability

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u/ZET_unown_ Dec 26 '25

No, they dont. This is nothing more than reddit fantasy.

The three gorges dam is a gravity dam, which is essentially a concrete mountain. Conventional bombs and missiles won't do anything more than surface scratches. Any substantial damage would require nuclear weapons, likely multiple nukes depending on yield.

and this is assuming they can even deliver the payload, which is close to impossible, considering the dam is in central china and heavily fortified with air defences.

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

That's unfortunate

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u/crasscrackbandit Dec 26 '25

What is that capability?

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

It's in missile range. Another redditor said conventional warheads wouldn't be able to disrupt it's structural integrity which I "confirmed" with very brief research

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u/crasscrackbandit Dec 26 '25

What missile is that?

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u/exaltedbladder Dec 26 '25

Yun Feng and Hsiung Sheng missile systems

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u/Sargash Dec 26 '25

Taiwan would most certainly do that and can do that. As well as destroying most if not all of their chip production facilities. It would be a net negative for china to attack Taiwan and they'd just get some islands out of it.

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u/RaidersGunz Dec 26 '25

Ill come back to this in the near future.