Ethiopia's controversial mega-dam on Nile tributary

By 'airforce action on the dam' I assume you mean aircraft bombing of the dam. By when would this happen? (ie when would the bet be closed?)

[edit] I will admit I thought your idea was crazy, but you are not totally wrong looking into it, but this is about Egypt objecting it being filled in one year, which they'll let pass if conditions are ok rather than war, and going from talking about it to actually bombing it means they have think about what if Ethiopia bombs the Aswan Dam in response. Geneva Convention also comes into it.

They won't do it, all over it's being filled to quick. Bomb some military installations to make them slow down instead.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/egypt/2026/

And in particular their fertility rate, which remains stubbornly high at 3.33 children per woman.

A popular meme has been that as countries and people get richer, they have fewer children. But, that is not occurring in Egypt, which is about twice as rich as India or Bangladesh, but has about 50% more children.

Really, its just Egyptian and Muslim culture which prioritises volume of children ahead of all else. Egypt will suffer if they cannot bring their population to sustainable levels.

The President of Egypt agrees:

https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/98679/Egypt-s-populatio...

Keep in mind that Egypt has a scientific output equivalent to Luxembourg: https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/glo...

Despite having a population 166x larger. So, Earth is not gaining much by having millions of Egyptians - just increased resource degradation.

A. The dam already contains more than 4.9 billion cubic meters of water. That along with the wet season rain will mean breaching it will result in catastrophic flooding of Sudan which will result in death and loss of arable land.

Each day that goes on, the water level is increasing, after a some time, Egypt itself will face flooding.

B. Egypt has powerful military but it seems it was designed to fight Israel, not Ethiopia. The distances are just too great. Not many nations in the world have that kind of power projection in the world. That's an exclusive club of great powers like Russia, France, and superpowers like the USA and China. Most Egyptian fighter/bomber aircraft don't have the range to reach Ethiopia. And Sudan seem to be against war so they're unlikely to grant them passage as they will be the ones that suffer the consequences of a breached dam.

The Egyptian airforce is getting new jets from France and Russia. Last I checked, which was months ago, only a few of those jets were delivered. It's unclear that the air crew have the resources, time, training to accomplish the difficult task of dam busting.

C. The renaissance dam is a gravity dam. Giant concrete structure. It's not going to be easy to destroy. And attempts could just make it collapse on the water spillways. Which might end up even more disastrous.

D. Dam or no dam, the water still flows from Ethiopia. And the Nile is not like the Amazon river in that it doesn't contain as much water. If Egyptian leadership plays a zero-sum game, where only they use the Nile then Ethiopia has zero incentive to protect and develop the water. In the age of climate change, this is a huge factor. Diverting some of the smaller tributaries would at most require a single grader and a few days of work. Diverting some 10 or 20% of the water would not be difficult. And that is far more disastrous to the stated objective of Egypt (Which is to maintain the colonial era agreement that allows them and Sudan 100% of the water).

E. Ethiopia is currently a divided country. But when it comes to the dam, its people are 100% on the same page. Most western lenders don't finance any project on the Nile due to Egyptian lobbying. So Ethiopian populace paid for it out of pocket. Most salaried people payed for it out of pocket. WHat that usually means is giving up a month of your salary for the dam. And When Ethiopia is united, it is capable of putting up a good fight.

As for the PRC, who do you think loaned to Ethiopia the money for buying the generators?

And also, PRC has dams on similar rivers. It unlikely to positively accept such an act.