These aren’t like the troop landing ships one sees in World War II movies, disgorging troops on beaches from Normandy to Iwo Jima. These troops will be invading the enemy in style, in trucks and tanks rolling off bridges protruding more than 100 meters from sleek barges extending stern to stern a mile into the sea.

That’s the scene the Communist Chinese envision for the invasion of the future, most likely starting with the independent island province on which is headquartered the Republic of China. It’s an enclave of democracy about 90 miles from the mainland of Communist China at the closest point. Easy though it might seem for the Communists to bomb strategic targets on Taiwan and then unload troops into the surf, that kind of attack is likely to endure only in history books.