Breaking Defense – The US may have the most advanced navy in the world — but as Pentagon officials have openly warned, China’s strategy to counter it has been to load up on land-based anti-ship missiles. Below, Albert Palazzo of the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, warns that the threat will only continue to grow.

USNI News – The material two alleged spies for China provided to their handlers point to a sustained interest from the People’s Liberation Army in amphibious operations as threats to Taiwan grow.

China Aerospace Studies Institute – In early 2023, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began transferring PLA Navy Aviation units to the PLA Air Force. By mid-2023, the PLA transferred the majority of PLAN fighter, bomber, radar, air defense, and airfield units to the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). In total, the PLA transferred at least three fighter brigades, two bomber regiments, three radar brigades, three air defense brigades, and numerous airfield stations.

Global Times – The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recently conducted a cross sea troop transport exercise using a large ferry ship, which could play a vital role in large-scale amphibious landing missions.

Global Times – China has begun to build a dedicated port to support deep sea research in the South China Sea, a move experts said on Sunday will serve many ocean-related activities as well as national defense.

China Maritime Studies Institute – The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has made incremental progress in its mine countermeasures (MCM) program in recent years. The PLAN’s current inventory of about 60 MCM ships and craft includes classes of minehunters and minesweepers mostly commissioned in the past decade as well as unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and remotely operated vehicles with demonstrated explosive neutralization capability. Despite the addition of these advanced MCM platforms and equipment, experts affiliated with the PLAN and China’s mine warfare development laboratory have serious reservations about the PLAN’s current ability to respond to the full range of likely threats posed by naval mines in future contingencies. The PLAN’s MCM forces are currently organized for operations near China’s coastline, but writings by Chinese military and civilian experts contend that to safeguard Beijing’s expanding overseas interests, the PLAN must develop MCM capabilities for operations far beyond the First Island Chain. PLAN and civilian mine warfare experts have proposed various solutions for offsetting perceived shortcomings in the PLAN’s MCM program, including the development of autonomous USVs and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), deployment of modularized MCM mission packages on ships such as destroyers and frigates, and mobilization of civilian assets such as ships and helicopters in support of MCM operations. Although there appears to have been little to no adoption of these proposed solutions to date, the PLAN recognizes MCM as one of its biggest challenges, and one can expect the PLAN to continue making measured progress in its MCM program in the years ahead.

Global Times – The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s Type 055 10,000 ton-class large destroyers will likely participate in far sea escort missions, experts said on Wednesday, after reports came out confirming that one of the eight powerful warships recently conducted a mock mission for the evacuation of Chinese nationals in a foreign country in conflict.

Breaking Defense – With the fast approach of the Davidson Window, which sets the date for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan as soon as 2027, much attention has been focused on Beijing’s aircraft carriers and how they could come into play. In the following analysis, Ben Ho of IISS looks at two prevailing theories about how effective the carriers may be in an invasion, before raising a new way of looking at the issue.

Naval News – New imagery confirms that production of the next generation frigate for the Chinese Navy is now underway at both Hudong in Shanghai and Huangpu Wenchong in Guangzhou.

War Zone – The Office of Naval Intelligence is sounding the alarm about the huge gap in U.S. and Chinese shipbuilding capacity and its implications.

Naval News – Production of further Zubr-class amphibious assault hovercraft appears to be underway for the Chinese Navy.

Global Times – China has made significant breakthroughs in the development of unmanned ships, as drone vessels are now not only undergoing testing but also seeing practical deployment, the country’s national broadcaster said in a recent report, with experts saying on Monday that China is in the first tier in unmanned ship technologies.

Ghana Business News – The long-standing relationship between Ghana and China has been strengthened with the visit of the 43rd Chinese Naval Escort Task Group to Tema Port, Ghana.

(Thanks to Alain)

Aljazeera – The arrival of Chinese naval fleet in Nigeria comes amid speculation that the Gulf of Guinea could offer a base for Beijing.

(Thanks to Alain)

1945 – Do all of this, writes James Holmes, and we might blunt the worst excesses of China’s imperial foreign policy—and spoil the Chinese Dream. 

Barents Observer – The icebreaking multifunctional research ship is expected to be delivered in 2025 and will sail both Arctic and Antarctica

Council on Geostrategy – This article, the second of a series on underwater warfare, explores how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is evolving as an underwater power. Specifically, it will identify how the PLAN’s submarine capabilities will affect the strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific and how British interests might be challenged as the PLAN becomes more able to assert itself regionally and beyond.

China Maritime Studies Institute – “Above-the-neck” reforms in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that began in 2015 directed the development of a new joint operational command system that resulted in commensurate changes to PLA Navy submarine force command and control. Additional changes to tactical submarine command and control were driven by the evolution and expansion of PLA Navy surface and airborne capabilities and the introduction of new longer-range submarine weapons. Follow-on “below-theneck” reforms inspired significant organizational change across most of China’s military services. However, the PLA Navy submarine force, for its part, did not reorganize its command structure but instead focused on significant improvements to the composition and quality of its force. Between 2017 and 2023, the PLA Navy submarine force engaged in a notable transformation, shuffling personnel and crews among twenty-six submarines—eleven newly commissioned and fifteen since retired—relocating in-service submarines to ensure an equitable distribution of newer, more capable submarines across the fleet. Observations of infrastructure improvements at PLA Navy submarine bases portend even more changes to submarine force structure in the coming years.

Global Times – China has begun to build a dedicated port to support deep sea research in the South China Sea, a move experts said on Sunday will serve many ocean-related activities as well as national defense.

Global Times – H-6K bombers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force have carried out nighttime sorties encircling the island of Taiwan, a move experts said on Monday will become routine and will send a warning to everyone who attempts to separate the island from China.

National Interest – Recent data confirms that Chinese state ownership of ports, or investment firms that own ports, carries a unique array of economic, strategic, and political risks for recipient port states.

CIMSEC – This campaign analysis seeks to determine how long U.S. decision-makers can realistically have debates about intervening in a Taiwan crisis before the PLA seizes Taipei and the window for effective intervention with military force has closed. It does so by employing analytical modeling, informed by historical data, to determine how long the Taiwanese can resist a Chinese invasion absent direct U.S. military intervention given best-case-scenario timelines for the PLA. That is to say in this campaign analysis, tactical and operational chance favors the PLA, and Taiwanese resistance is more similar to that of the brave but desperate 2014 Ukrainian military fighting in the Donbass than the more successful and combat credible 2022 Ukrainian military which halted a Russian invasion. What follows is not meant to be predictive, but rather cautionary, and presents the most stressing timeline for U.S. decision-makers. Any deviations from this scenario would only serve to elongate the timeline for the PLA’s campaign, thereby increasing the decision-making space for U.S. leadership.

Chinese Maritime Studies Institute – The way the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) selects and manages its submarine officers increases the likelihood of human performance errors onboard a PLAN submarine. First, PLAN submarine officers are selected from applicants with among the lowest college entrance examinations of any PLA educational institution, suggesting that PLAN submariners are among the service’s least talented officers. Second, the Party Committee system at the apex of decision-making aboard PLAN submarines may be less agile than other approaches to command, at least in certain circumstances. Lastly, while the policy of embarking flotilla leaders senior to the submarine captain may reduce some of the negative effects associated with the first two conditions, it could lead to reduced performance when senior leaders are not present. If external events during wartime stressed these factors, the likelihood of human-induced error events in the PLAN submarine force could increase substantially.

War on the Rocks – Leading Northeast Asia security analyst Ian Easton argues that March through May is one of two ideal windows of meteorological opportunity for cross-strait amphibious operations, with the other occurring in September and October. For the U.S. joint force, the spring campaigning season in the Indo-Pacific is thus essential for strengthening regional partnerships, increasing multinational lethality, and instilling doubt in Chinese leaders’ minds about whether they could successfully invade Taiwan.

The Guardian – A dependence on food and energy imports could be China’s biggest weakness in a potential future conflict with Taiwan