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Tom Shugart Profile picture
@tshugart3
Aug 16, 2021 • 11 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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For a break from Afghanistan news, my latest in @WarOnTheRocks on the PLA's apparent use of civilian RoRo ferries & vehicle carriers to augment its amphibious assault capacity - a lack thereof having been an area of comfort re the PRC threat to Taiwan.

warontherocks.com/2021/08/mind-t…
In summary:
For years now China appears to have been building its "civilian" shipping, and especially its RoRo ferries to dual-use civilian-military standards...
Significant portions (I'm guessing most) of China's RoRo ferry and vehicle carrier fleets are already formally organized into auxiliary units of the Chinese military...
...and the PLA has been regularly practicing using RoRo ferries in its amphibious assault exercises, including using them to discharge first-echelon assault forces directly toward the beach, rather than to captured port facilities as was usually assumed in the past.
In terms of scale, China's large ferries are ocean-going vessels, and much larger than the ferries that most readers may have encountered...
...in aggregate, by my calculations China's RoRo shipping fleets are roughly three times the size of China's traditional amphibious assault ship fleet.
Does this mean that China has enough combined civil-military amphibious assault capacity to successfully invade Taiwan. It's hard to say for sure.

But what is clear is that China very likely has far more of it available than has generally been thought to be the case.
A bit of back-story: what got me interested in this topic was stumbling onto these new ferry terminals while scrolling around looking at imagery of Hainan Island. They struck me as being quite large, as well as having a fair number of idling ferries and pretty empty parking lots.
In my experience, ferry landing parking areas are pretty small and usually full, with traffic often backed up well into nearby communities.

For comparison, here are two of the busiest ferry terminals in the U.S., for the Staten Island and WA State Ferry systems.
I was also inspired by @KennedyMaritime's superb OSINT on this topic:
Would you like to know more about the broader cross-Strait military balance? Then check out my testimony (as well as that of my superb fellow witnesses) earlier this year on this topic to @USCC_GOV.

Fin.

uscc.gov/hearings/deter…

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More from @tshugart3

Tom Shugart Profile picture
Jan 7
I’m excited to share that @ChinaMaritime has just released a short paper I co-wrote with Mike Dahm titled “Flooding the Zone: The Use of Civilian Landing Craft (LCTs) in PLA Amphibious Operations”.

digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/18/
This paper follows the surprising observation last year that the PLA appears to be using civilian “LCTs” - a civilian derivative of WWII landing craft - to go straight to the beach in practice landing exercises.
Here are our key takeaways in the report: Image
Image
Read 10 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Dec 28, 2025
Ok, continuing on this thread on the 2025 CMPR...
...first up, China's nuclear warhead totals. This year's report says that warhead production has slowed, with a total in the low 600s, but that the PLA is still on track to have 1000+ warheads by 2030. Image
Regarding China's early warning capability, we get a lot more specificity than I've seen before: that China now has IR warning satellites that can detect and warn of an incoming ICBM within minutes. Image
Read 25 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Dec 28, 2025
Last week saw the release of the 2025 China Military Power Report (CMPR). For those not familiar, this is DoD’s Congressionally-mandated unclassified update on the Chinese military. It’s an annual feast of open-source data.

So, here are few thoughts (Part 1) on the report: Image
I'll focus on those things that I thought were most noteworthy: significant changes from previous reports, reveals of information not previously seen in the open-source world, etc.

Where there is a point of comparison I'll have the new report on the left, older on the right. Image
Image
The new report is fairly different: for one thing, it clocks in at 100 pages to the previous report's 182.

From the top, the preface differs: the 2024 report's reads mostly like an intel product, where there's more proclamation of administration policy in the new one. Image
Image
Read 26 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Oct 27, 2025
PRC SEALIFT UPDATE: based on a review of satellite imagery & AIS data from recent landing exercises, it appears China is practicing using dual-use civil-military landing craft for direct beach assault.

Of note, while info is sparse, these ships appear to exist in large numbers. Image
To the details: for a few years now, we've seen what've been known as "deck cargo ships" being used in PLA military transport exercises. Image
Image
For details, see the work of analysts like Conor Kennedy... digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/4/
Read 24 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Oct 8, 2025
This has been making the rounds—another article calling for U.S. conventional submarines—so I suppose it's time to weigh in. In this case, the article is written by someone personally knowledgeable of submarine operations—a U.S. submariner.

However...
usni.org/magazines/proc…
...the article seems to be missing consideration of two key factors that IMO continue to make the idea of U.S. (manned) diesel-electric submarines a bad idea: advances in autonomy, and the PLA Rocket Force.
First, autonomy: he explicitly calls for these diesel boats as cruise missile platforms (SSGs), making a point to separate them from the multi-mission capabilities of U.S. SSNs.
No need for ISR, ASW, or torpedo capability. Ok, great—this sounds like a perfect job for an XXLUUV. Image
Read 16 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Oct 6, 2025
It's taken me a bit of time to get around to addressing this article by Jennifer Kavanagh about US-PRC-Taiwan relations in the NYT, but here we go.
She's pretty clear about how we got where we are: close to a US-PRC war, that the problem started with Taiwan. Image
She says the situation is not pre-ordained, and that the best way to avoid a war is to restrain US military posture in the region and tell Taiwan they may be on their own.
(I'd say she's half-right: it didn't have to be this way; but I'd place the blame elsewhere.)Image
Read 18 tweets

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