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Thomas Shugart Profile picture
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21 Sep, 9 tweets, 2 min read
For folks reading about French shock and surprise at cancellation of the Attack-class diesel submarine program, here's a taste of what those of us who follow this stuff have been reading for quite a while before things came to a head: thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3…
defenceconnect.com.au/maritime-antis…
abc.net.au/news/2021-01-2…
canberratimes.com.au/story/7097642/…
nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-…
anao.gov.au/work/performan…
maritime-executive.com/editorials/aus…
asialink.unimelb.edu.au/insights/Austr…
aumanufacturing.com.au/why-did-austra…

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More from @tshugart3

Thomas Shugart Profile picture
22 Sep
A dog cemetery. One of your listed "750 bases" is a dog cemetery. Image
And apparently Naval Base Guam isn't one naval base, it's 12!

And the Naval Hospital is a "base", too! Image
Even by the source document's absurd standards, the number of "bases" is 439, with 300+ yet smaller facilities called "lily pads", or even "unconfirmed".

Yet @QuincyInst trumpets "750 bases". 🤔 Image
Read 6 tweets
Thomas Shugart Profile picture
16 Aug
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...
Read 11 tweets
Thomas Shugart Profile picture
28 Jul
Was stunned when I heard this information presented by @Ian_M_Easton at a recent @ChinaMaritime conference, glad it's out there now for folks to hear about: forbes.com/sites/davidaxe…
@Ian_M_Easton: "Over the past two decades, the CCP has established representative offices in Taiwan’s major ports, invested in Taiwanese port building projects, and gained direct access to at least some of Taiwan’s basic port infrastructure."

Me:
"Other Taiwanese ports, including the Port of Taipei, use a significant number of cranes from ZPMC, which is a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Corp. (CCCC). In August 2020, CCCC was blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Defense for its ties to the PLA."

Me:
Read 5 tweets
Thomas Shugart Profile picture
27 Jul
Again? Wow.

230-odd silos found under construction in a matter of weeks.
Again, folks talking up the "shell game" idea where most silos stay empty, talking it up as a "technique is as old as the nuclear arms race" rather than—AFAIK—something that has NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN DONE.

Not sure why we wouldn't assume they're building them to...put missiles in.
A reminder, DoD projected in the last China Military Power Report that China's warhead stockpile would "at least double in size" and move "to a launch-on-warning (LOW) posture with an expanded silo-based force."
Read 5 tweets
Thomas Shugart Profile picture
25 Jul
UPDATE: it looks like the PLA may be at it again.

Poking around MarineTraffic.com last night, I noticed something a bit odd…
Just sitting there, anchored off the coast of Guandong Province southwest of Hong Kong, are two large roll-on/roll-off passenger ferries, more than a thousand miles from their normal routes crossing the Yellow Sea. Image
The two ferries, which you can check out realtime for yourself via these links, are the BO HAI MA ZHU, built in 2015 at over 33000 gross tons, owned by Bo Hai ferries and homeported at Yantai on the Yellow Sea… marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details…
Read 12 tweets
Thomas Shugart Profile picture
20 Jul
Some incredible #OSINT from CMSI's @KennedyMaritime.

It appears the PLA has been testing modified ramps that could allow its large fleet of "civilian" car ferries to launch amphibious assault craft from offshore, reducing the need for captured ports.

jamestown.org/program/rampin…
This matters at a strategic level, as many have taken comfort that the PLA lacks sufficient amphibious assault shipping to invade Taiwan, & doesn't appear to be building at the scale necessary to do so soon.

See for example this passage from the 2020 DoD China Military Report: Image
China does, however, have the world's largest merchant marine, including dozens of modern Ro-Ro vessels, many of which have been built to military specification since a 2015 law required doing so. maritime-executive.com/editorials/chi…
Read 7 tweets

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