Agreed, and thanks for the detailed info. I'm primarily concerned with the massed missile and drone attack scenario. China has the ability to launch literally tens of millions with a little prep. Ukraine is currently building about four million military drones per year; imagine what China could turn out, and hide fairly easily.

The default plan people imagine is a massed amphibious assault. That's possible, and hard to defend on the scale they could execute, but as you say, it takes a lot of pretty visible prep.

Imagine instead a drone swarm. Taiwan has roughly 170k active duty military, and 10x that in reserves according to Google. One hundred drones per active duty member is only 17 million, or just over 4x Ukrainian annual production. And China's factories are... somewhat more extensive than war-torn Ukraine.

Imagine wave one of, say, 1,000 small drones per Taiwanese solder, each carrying maybe 24oz of C4. That's the content of a standard claymore, for perspective. Launched from a dozen or so of the thousands of ships that leave China and pass Taiwan all the time, with simple GPS coordinates targeting every military facility or residence with, essentially, hundreds of claymores. Mid-size civilian drones can easily carry a couple of pounds and fly to a GPS location at 70+ mph. Military could do way more, but it's not needed. Even if launched from international waters, 12 miles out, they could reach targets in less than ten minutes. If they start three miles out, Taiwan has a quarter of that.

They wouldn't get everyone, but they could likely delete a huge portion of the defenders in the first few minutes. And land a few million drones to swarm any defensive strong points. Simultaneously launch a couple thousand missiles at hard targets. Unmask a couple thousand tourists and sleepers, plus a few civilian airlines filled with spec ops that are landing right as the drones launch, and seize key targets like airports as the drones come in. At the same time, launch heavy airlift capacity to bring troops into the fully functional international airport. While jets and drones finish suppressing any air defense ready stations that were hardened, manned, and survived the drones and missiles. And as this week proved, they cups have hundreds of attack planes a few minutes out without drawing fire.

Within ten to fifteen minutes they could be unloading the first wave of thousands of troops, having eliminated most of Taiwans active military. And they have more strategic airlift than anyone but the US, and it's a very short hop. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport alone is sized for 90 million passengers per year, or about 250k daily. A military blitz could land several times faster; theoretically landing 60k troops per hour from pure civilian craft, which could be staged from anywhere in China, and which we'd have trouble distinguishing and engaging with the countless actual civilian craft in the area. Before Taiwanese reservists can respond, their command and control are gone and a thousand troops a minute are spreading out from the airport, with heavy air cover, ordering all civilians to accept the completion of the one China policy, and taking up defensive positions against any US counter invasion.

All this is purely theory, and plenty could go wrong with such a plan, but it's possible, and wouldn't trip the same wires that massing on the beaches would. And even if they were only, say 30% effective on the drones and only got a couple hours of landings in before we cleared the skies, you'd still have a gutted defense and tens of thousands of Chinese troops in the city, and then they could launch the seaborne invasion.

We might still win, but it would be really, really messy. And if China thinks they have a strong chance, they might go for it. We might consider it crazy, they might disagree. If they delivered a war declaration a minute before, like the Japanese tried to do on 12/7, they could even argue it was legal and they only hit military targets. And they'd have Taiwan.

This is a thought experiment, and I don't think it's likely, but you plan for what's possible.