A new dry dock that could be used to service Chinese submarines has been added to Ream naval base in southern Cambodia, a U.S. military analyst said.
The construction of a new dry dock and a wharf at the south of the base appeared to be almost completed, Thomas Shugart, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank, told Radio Free Asia.
Satellite data obtained by RFA from the Earth imaging company Planet Labs in June show a new dry dock around 140 meters (459 feet) long, and a ramp next to it. A 270-meter (886 foot) wharf runs along the southern edge of the naval base.
The dry dock was still being constructed in May.
“140m is too short for PLAN‘s [People’s Liberation Army Navy] larger ships,” said Shugart. “But the right size for submarines.”
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China has about 60 submarines, according to a Pentagon report, and most of them are less than 100m long.
However, Chinese destroyers, cruisers and new frigates are much larger.
Shugart explained the new dry dock is just big enough for the Type 056 corvettes like those that have been seen at Ream since last December.
He added that it seems a big investment to have it to only serve the corvettes, noting that the new facility at Ream resembles that at the Chinese submarine base in Qingdao: a roughly 140m drydock paired with a ramp for smaller vessels.
The retired Navy captain argued that a submarine base at Ream could make sense for the Chinese Navy, as it’s roughly half the distance from Ream to the Strait of Malacca as from the nearest sub base at Hainan island.
The Malacca Strait is a strategic choke point and the distance to it matters more for slower non-nuclear submarines.
Should a conflict flare up in the South China Sea, the presence of submarines in the Gulf of Thailand could provide the Chinese Navy with “another axis of approach,” Shugart said.
The base already has a new pier long enough to accommodate aircraft carriers.
RFA contacted the Cambodian defense ministry for comment but had not received a reply at time of publication.
Neighbor watch
Developments at Ream are closely watched by neighboring Vietnam as the base is less than 30 km (18 miles) from Vietnam’s Phu Quoc island where it also has a naval base.
Vietnam has a submarine base in Cam Ranh in the central Khanh Hoa province, home to its fleet of six Russian kilo-class subs.
“Vietnam should pay close attention, especially if Cambodia develops an airfield nearby, which I believe they will,” said Nguyen The Phuong, a Vietnamese military analyst at University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia.
The Cambodian government earlier disclosed that 157 hectares of land were allocated to the Ministry of National Defense in September 2022 to develop an air defense command and general headquarters near Ream naval base with an additional 30 hectares also granted for a naval radar system.
Two Chinese naval ships could still be seen docked, likely on rotational deployment, at Ream this week.
Vietnam and China are parties to an intense territorial dispute in the South China Sea.
Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.