If China Invades Taiwan, Taipei Plans To Throw A Thousand Tanks At The Beachhead

If China invades Taiwan and succeeds in landing troops on the island country’s southwestern beaches, expect brutal tank battles to help decide the outcome.

The Taiwanese army on paper possesses around 1,200 main battle tanks—480 American-made M-60A3s plus 450 CM-11s and 250 CM-12s. The CM-11 pairs a modified M-48 turret with an M-60 chassis. The CM-12 is an M-48 with the same modified turret as the CM-11.

These tanks are old. The youngest, the M-60s, date from the 1970s. Taipei recently bought 108 new M-1s from the United States for $1.3 billion in order to begin replacing some of the oldest and weariest current tanks.

The first M-1 isn’t due to arrive until 2023. And once all hundred-or-so of the new tanks are in service, the Republic of China army still will possess a thousand aged tanks.

But their age might not matter. Taiwanese army doctrine calls for heavy armor to strike back against Chinese invasion troops landing on Taiwan’s beaches. Those Chinese troops—the first wave, especially—likely would be lightly-armed.

Any tank, no matter how geriatric, would pose a deadly threat to unprotected Chinese infantry clinging to a narrow beachhead.

For that reason, expect the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to do its best to land its own armor with the early waves of an invasion force. The PLA needs tanks on the beaches in order to defend against Taiwan’s own counterattacking tanks.

Tank operations actually would begin before Chinese troops touched dry land. “Taiwanese army and marine units are likely to disperse their tanks to coastal hide-sites prior to the invasion,” said Ian Easton, a Taiwan expert with the Project 2049 Institute in Virginia.

Taipei’s goal, during this phase of a Chinese attack, is to preserve its forces in the face of potentially devastating bombardment by the PLA Rocket Force’s ballistic missiles.

The odds are good that many of Taiwan’s tanks would survive. “There is an almost limitless supply of potential hiding places along Taiwan’s coast: tunnels, caves, bridge underbellies, airport hangars and empty factories,” Easton noted.

“Some tanks would likely come into action as soon as the enemy began landing,” Easton added. “Others would be held in reserve for crushing and decisive counterattacks. Some may be held back for the defense of urban centers like downtown Taipei. While we tend to think of tanks fighting solely in desolate deserts, historically tanks have often been the deciding factor in urban battles.”

On day one, Taiwanese forces would hold the advantage on the ground. “For a finite period of time, they will greatly out-number and out-gun the PLA amphibious forces landing along the coast at beaches, airport tarmacs and ports,” Easton noted.

The Chinese army’s own armor could help mitigate this disadvantage. “The PLA will try to get as many tanks ashore as quickly as they can,” Easton explained.

That’s easier said than done, of course. A modern main battle tank might weigh as much as 70 tons. That’s a heavy load for a shallow-draught ship.

Fortunately for China, it has access to one of the world’s largest merchant fleets. “In wartime the PLA plans to mobilize China’s entire maritime shipping fleet, commandeering every single vessel that can make the trip across the Taiwan Strait, which is potentially tens of thousands of ships,” Easton said.

“Many of those vessels will likely serve as decoys, expendable targets soaking up Taiwanese mines, obstacles and coastal fires … Those could be followed by wave after wave of actual amphibious ships, including a considerable number of ostensibly civilian roll-on/roll-off ships and ferries that can transport tanks.”

But the first wave of PLA forces likely would include light amphibious tanks that can swim ashore under their own power—and nothing heavier. These thinly-armored vehicles are no match even for Taiwan’s oldest tanks.

PLA light armor “could be over-matched and devastated if the Taiwanese can keep enough of their main battle tanks dispersed and hidden until the critical moment arrives for them to launch crushing localized counterattacks,” Easton said.

“One of the other key variables in such a scenario is which side is able to keep attack helicopters and attack drones overhead to fire against ground targets,” Easton said. Helicopters and drones targeting tanks’ thin top armor could tilt the balance of heavy forces in the bloody early hours of a war over Taiwan.

Any way you cut it, the fight over Taiwan’s beaches is likely to involve heavy forces targeting light forces—a mismatch that could result in extremely violence and bloodshed, and which could set the stage for the grueling days and weeks that would follow a Chinese landing.

“This is going to be a complex struggle with staggering losses,” Easton said.