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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
Oct 8
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
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
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Sep 5
Ok, a few more thoughts on some of the things we saw in this week’s PLA parade. I’ll start in the undersea domain, with this large UUV.

Going back and looking at the footage, you can see in this shot that it appears to have a couple of sonar arrays. Image
My guess is that those are a flank array and a bow array.

We can also see 4 masts/antennas: 3 appear to be retractable with a closure panel and one fixed on a short mast near the stern (see above). Image
Based on the number of sensors - sonar for acoustic detection, masts perhaps for EW/ESM, video, perhaps a snorkel for a diesel, I’m guessing this is an ISR UUV.

From this shot, it appears it has a 9-bladed propulsor. Image
Read 13 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Sep 3
China’s parade is about to get started. Xi is making a speech where he says China is a force for peace, development, etc. Anyway…time to roll those new missiles, UxVs, armored vehicles, etc.

(I’ll be posting any stuff that I see that’s particularly interesting. Here we go…) Image
Right now it’s just Xi driving by - wondering now if they’re going to roll this stuff past like in the past or if this is it? Image
Looks like some unmanned undersea and surface vessels (UUVs and USVs). Image
Read 26 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Aug 5
Image
hooboy, that's a lot of doing things the wrong way...😬 Image
I recall time there being significance attached to the "dropped two wts" message in the reporting at the time, as an indication they had a problem & needed to come up. Apparently completely normal.

In contrast, I recall no word that THEY HEARD A BANG FROM THE OCEAN SURFACE. 😬 Image
Read 14 tweets
Tom Shugart Profile picture
Apr 20
In the "you can't make this stuff up" category, in this 16 Apr image of COMEC's Longxue shipyard in Guangzhou you can see 5 of China's new Shuiqiao-class "invasion barges", whose only apparent purpose is to invade Taiwan, as well as... Image
...based on AIS data, what also appears to be a container ship under construction for a TAIWANESE Company, Evergreen Lines.

(and a couple of Zubr-class assault hovercraft, PLA Navy auxiliaries, and more.) Image
Image
To be clear, this sort of thing has been talked about before, even in Taiwan: taipeitimes.com/News/front/arc…
Read 8 tweets

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