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…
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...
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.
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.
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:
https://twitter.com/tshugart3/status/1417309287492292611
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…
Fin.
uscc.gov/hearings/deter…
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