– The Diplomat – Based on satellite imagery analysis, Chinese naval aviation has acquired its first four Xian H-6J bombers.

– National Interest – The December 2016 drone incident could well be a harbinger of coming attractions.

– National Interest – It might not end peacefully.

– National Interest – Beijing’s military wants to sow paralysis in an enemy system-of-systems for long enough to accomplish its goals—that way it will not need to bother trying to annihilate its adversary.

– Royal United Services Institute – The United States and Chinese navies have just narrowly avoided a dangerous collision. This was not an accident but an escalation, a show of force on the part of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to drive out the US Navy from what China considers its territorial waters in the South China Sea.

– USNI News – China ratcheted up its response to U.S. Navy freedom of navigation operation over the weekend, sending a Luyang-class destroyer on a near-collision-course with USS Decatur (DDG-73), but the reasoning behind the move is likely more nuanced than defending territory.

– National Interest – Recent Chinese writings point to some interesting signs.

– USNI News – Russia recently concluded the 2018 edition of the massive Vostok exercise series that included Chinese forces for the first time. At Moscow’s invitation, Beijing sent People’s Liberation Army soldiers, helicopters, tanks – and one uninvited Chinese surveillance ship.

– CIMSEC – Since the end of the Cold War, the West has been able to exercise Sea Control when so needed without having to fight for command of the sea. This comfortable situation is now going away – and it has already disappeared regarding a potential conflict with China.

– National Interest – In lieu of real wartime experience, the PLAN is drawing from history.

– South China Morning Post – Last August, China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, a tiny nation in the Horn of Africa. Djibouti plays host to more foreign military facilities than anywhere else in the world, offering a key strategic location to supply regional peacekeeping and humanitarian missions and combat piracy.

– National Interest – Could it be sea mines?

– National Interest – There is a small probability that China will emerge as a genuine aggressor state. In that case, a defensible “red line” will have to be drawn, but Taiwan is precisely the wrong place to draw that potentially very important line.

– National Interest – Even as Western strategists spill gobs of ink recalling the Great War that convulsed Europe a century ago, Chinese military thinkers are actually fixated on another anniversary. 120 years ago, Japan shocked the world with a lightning campaign that not only reduced the faltering Qing dynasty to its knees in a matter of months, but more to the point: put the pride of China’s then ascendant fleet on the bottom of the Yellow Sea.

– USNI Proceedings – As China has built its naval power, it has relied on a variety of ideas—old and new, Eastern and Western. For U.S. military leaders seeking to understand China’s naval aspirations, certain images can bring the strategy into focus—like the crumple zones built into a modern automobile, designed to give but not fail.

– National Interest – Chinese naval strategists have watched the development of Russia’s Status-6 large-scale UUV with considerable interest.

– US Naval War College Review – In its official documents, China has defined what it means by the term maritime great power and has laid out how it intends to achieve that status, becoming the world’s “main maritime power” by 2049.

– National Interest – Washington would do well to stop provoking China’s ire on Taiwan, lest it trigger a “Cuban Missile Crisis” in reverse.

– National Interest – The battle for future undersea AI dominance is heating up and China’s ambitions are not small in this domain.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy sent two destroyers through the Taiwan Strait, the first U.S. warships ships to pass through the strait since 2017.

– War Zone – The People’s Liberation Army Navy will need significantly more jets anyway if it wants to make good use of their new carriers.

– National Interest – Treat Beijing as an enemy, and it is quite certain to emerge as an enemy.

– Breaking Defense – China’s increasingly aggressive rise puts the Pacific theater in play in a way it hasn’t been since 1945. In this essay, Singaporean scholar Ben Ho Wan Beng and retired US Marine Gary Lehmann look at what a critical but overlooked World War II battle has to tell us about the potential strengths — and weaknesses — of the Marine Corps’s new concept for waging the next Pacific war.

– China Military Online – The PLA Navy’s hospital ship Peace Ark (Hull 866) set sail from its homeport in Zhoushan in east China’s Zhejiang Province on Thursday morning to embark on the voyage of “Harmonious Mission 2018”.

– Global Times – Military actions, including those involving aircraft carriers, are always an option if the island of Taiwan continues to “play with fire,” an expert warned Tuesday after the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy conducted real combat exercises around the island involving “Chinese Aegis” class destroyers.