Taiwan’s Underground Bases Are Better Than Hamas Tunnels

Taiwan has one hundred times the area of Gaza. Over 13976 square miles versus 140 square miles.

Taiwan has at least two hollowed-out mountains. They are to place hundreds of airplanes and thousands of missiles in those underground facilities. They have tunnels connecting military and government facilities throughout the island. Imagine Gaza 100 times bigger with 100 times the money and 7 decades to prepare instead of one decade. Taiwan has upgraded exposed entrances and doors to the underground facility with ultra high performance concrete and likely further upgraded to functionally graded cementitious composite (FGCC).

Concrete is one of the most widely used construction building materials in civil engineering. The brittle behaviour subjected to tensile or flexural loading is an adverse property, which causes negative influences, e.g. abrupt failure without warning, reduced service life due to crack formation and propagation. To overcome this shortcoming, fibre reinforced concrete was proposed by adding discrete steel fibres into plain concrete matrix. In the 1990s, Ultra-high Performance Concrete (UHPC) was invented and further extended to the concept of fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC), which is characterized by high dosage of steel fibre.

FGCC is a new concrete composite that has different functions and properties across its spatial position. FGCC is made up of multiple concrete mixes in one or more dimensions of a concrete element. A chinese study found FGCC resisted penetration and explosion far better than UHPC.

Bunker busters had to go through several generations of upgrades. In the early 2000s, the Air Force even developed a special type of steel for the purpose, known as Eglin Steel, in association with steel specialist Ellwood National Forge Company.

Eglin Steel is a low-carbon, low-nickel steel with traces of tungsten, chromium, manganese, silicon, and other elements, each contributing a desirable property to the whole. Eglin Steel is the gold standard for bunker-busting munitions, although in recent years it has been supplemented by new USAF-96 steel, which boasts similar performance but is easier to produce and work with.

How much did Israel’s air force breakdown the tunnels in Gaza? It was mainly the army with tanks and soldiers who found and destroyed the tunnels.

Any competent maker of underground facilities today would use ultra high performance concrete and/or build it into granite.

Iran, China and the US and all other nations are using new stronger military-grade concrete.

Ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) is a type of concrete that is stronger and more durable than traditional concrete. It has a compressive strength of up to 200 MPa, which is 10 times that of regular concrete.

In 2012, the Pentagon requested $82 million to develop greater penetration power for the existing bunker buster weapon. A 2013 report stated that the development had been a success, and B-2 integration testing began that year. The bomb can penetrate 200 feet of 5000 psi hardened concrete and is accurate enough for multiple hits on the same location to penetrate deeper targets or targets with even stronger concrete. One GBUJ-57A/B can only penetrate 8 meters of 10,000 psi rock or concrete. This could drop to 2 meters of penetration against 30,000 psi material. Iran created 60000 psi superconcrete. Previously, a yield strength of 5,000 pounds per square inch (psi) was enough for concrete to be rated as high strength with the best going up to 10,000 psi. The new UHPC can withstand 40,000 psi or more.

After the concrete study, the Air Force upgraded the MOP. Then it upgraded it again. By 2018, it was on its fourth upgrade. Upgrades were made to smaller weapons.

Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has a compressive strength of 18,000 to 35,000 psi. Military grade is now 60,000 psi or more.

A regular jet cannot deploy the bunker buster bombs. Bunker busters are dropped by big and slow bombers. Big and slow bombers are wrecked by anti-aircraft weapons until all of the anti-air weapons are gone. This would include man portable stinger missiles which Taiwan has by the thousands. Taiwan’s military has a number of U.S. Patriot batteries, as well as Sky Bow batteries developed domestically.

The Hubble Space telescope was a converted Keyhole spy satellite technology. The US had over 20 Hubble class keyhole satellites at any one time. They gave two unused ones to NASA. The US has upgrade spy satellites to James Webb class Keyhole.

The US has its bases in Japan and has been allowed back into the Philippines. The US is already basing F-22s out of the Philippines. The Philippine bases covers the 100 miles of water south of Taiwan. This can be used to stop military and merchant traffic to and from China. The Japan bases cover the northern waters above Taiwan.

Less than half of China’s planes were modernized. The modernized planes are 80% purchased or copies of Russian Planes. China has also tried to copy the F-22 and F-35. The US has had trouble with maintenance and keeping their stealth planes flying. New planes and especially new stealth planes take a lot of maintenance. They are always breaking down. the Russians have not used their stealth planes in the Ukraine war. The US has used stealth planes in some wars with complete air superiority. The US F-117A was the most used stealth fighter.

There are general limits to air power and missiles strikes even with air dominance. Russia has not achieved air dominance in two years and Taiwan has more counter air force and more anti air missiles than Ukraine.

Taiwan has superior terrain vs Ukraine. Mountains vs fields.

Taiwan has a 80-120 mile moat. The only shorter-range weapons that China could operate in that zone would be planes and ships that move to be exposed to Taiwan, Japan, Philippine and US missiles and weapons.

A thousand or even a few thousand longer missiles is not that much.