Thread by @johnkonrad

This arrow points to the Singapore the Wall Street of Asia, the entrance to the South China Sea and the most important maritime “choke point” in the word. In black letters is the Chinese Navy’s #PLAN new base. washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

A choke point is an area where traffic meets and a numerically inferior defending force can use as a force multiplier to thwart or ambush a much larger opponent or cripple the economy of large regions of the world.

This news is also important because Cambodia is chair of the 10-member regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year, Cambodia is keen to avoid the perception it is “a pawn” of Beijing.

Also ground stations for BeiDou - PLA’s #gps system - are located at the Chinese portion of Ream Naval Base. BeiDou is China’s homegrown alternative to the U.S. Space Force-managed Global Positioning System, and has military uses including missile guidance.

This is the second military base PLAN has built since constructing one in 2016 next to the US navy’s base in Djibouti which is located at the eastern entrance to another critical choke point: the Suez Canal. gcaptain.com/china-build-fi…

China’s navy is already the world’s largest by numbers of vessels but, as American defense experts including @USNavyCNO and @SECNAV, have told Congress PLAN’s ability to protect power outside the region and control choke points is limited by the number of naval bases they own.

But is it? Critics of this, including maritime historian @mercoglianos, claim China already has ownership and of commercial ports which could be used to supply warships.

This has concerned naval strategists for years but is most troubling now that China has militarized it’s vast fleet of commercial ships and seafarers: gcaptain.com/warning-china-…

And it’s commercial shipyards: gcaptain.com/is-taiwans-eve…

Meanwhile America’s commercial mariners- the US Merchant Marine - is mostly untrained in naval operations and warfare: gcaptain.com/editorial-admi…

And the person in charge of the US Merchant Marine (and port and shipyard subsidies), Commandant Anne Phillips, has no experience in commercial operations gcaptain.com/biden-maritime…

The new base in Cambodia may give China military support & close access to the Singapore Strait which is used by more than 83,000 vessels annually. Almost 40% of the world traffic passes through this strait. Here’s a heatmap of all shipping traffic globally with ->’s on Singapore

As far as warship numbers U.S. Navy has 297 battle-force ships — carriers, destroyers, submarines, etc. — according to the Congressional Research Service, while China has 355 and is growing at fast rate. gcaptain.com/20-years-of-na…

The US Navy also has a critical shortage of working Naval ships needed to control commercial shipping and salvage or rescue ships damaged in Asia, or even put out ship fires in San Diego: gcaptain.com/us-navy-lied-c…

And America’s Merchant Marine is old and breaking down:

Both @DOTMARAD and @MSCSealift have ships on the @USCG’s latest critical detention list:

And, possibly most troubling of all, we don’t have the cargo ships needed to bring bombs and ammo to #USAF air bases in the region or the tankers needed to supply fuel to USAF bases so tankers can refuel and @SecDef closed our ship oil tanks in Hawaii: gcaptain.com/shutdown-world…

And this is just the latest news. Many more troubling updates could not fit in this 🧵. The news from the South China Sea no longer sounds like a ticking time bomb it sounds like the tick of a gyro repeater when the ship is turning HARD to port.

If you are still reading this, please add a link to this 🧵with the one article that troubles you most about Sea Power in the Pacific, PLAN or the failure of the Navy and @thejointstaff to fix the growing imbalance of power in Asia so we can sail forward on an even keel.

UPDATE: gcaptain.com/china-secret-n…

And for those who don’t understand why Cambodia may favor China over the US Navy, Blake’s thread is essential reading:

https://twitter.com/bdherzinger/status/1534036893125705730