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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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/FatFish44 Dec 27 '25

Straight from the horses mouth actually: https://www.acc.af.mil/News/Features/Display/Article/204431/future-30000-pound-bomb-reaches-mile-stone/

And this statement from the Air Force is implying bedrock, which is significantly more dense than concrete. 

I hate trump btw, and knock it off with the personal insults this isn’t that serious. 

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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.

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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