TAIPEI, Taiwan – China appears to be conducting amphibious landing exercises with specially built vessels at a beach on the South China Sea, the sort of practice it would conduct if it was considering an island invasion as tensions over self-ruled Taiwan grow.
Open source investigators analyzing Chinese social media this week detected the presence of a fleet of large ships, which they called “invasion barges” as they can be used to land heavy military vehicles and troops quickly onto beaches.
An analyst who used synthetic aperture radar, or SAR, satellite imaging technology, pinpointed the location of the three barges as Zhanjiang in Guangdong province, home of the Chinese South Sea Fleet.
An SAR sensor uses radar signals to capture images on the surface of the Earth, unlike optical sensors that can be blocked by obstacles such as clouds and vegetation.
Damien Symon, a geo-intelligence researcher at The Intel Lab, told Radio Free Asia that he could confirm that the exercises were held at Zhanjiang between March 4 and March 11.
It is unclear whether they are still going on.
Zhanjiang is 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) west of Taiwan and 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) northwest of the Philippines, territories whose governments have both traded barbs with Beijing as regional tensions rise.
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What are ‘invasion barges’?
In an image captured by Symon, three barges were seen in a long formation next to a beach.
Photos, apparently taken at the location and circulated on Chinese social media, show them lining up, forming a long “bridge” to the beach, over which tanks and other vehicles can land.
RFA was not able to independently verify the images available on WeChat and Weibo.
“By my math, they combine to about 850 meters in length,” said defense analyst Thomas Shugart from the Center for a New American Security.
“Instead of three different-size mobile causeways, they are combined into one long causeway, allowing a much longer reach, and access to deeper water,” Shugart said.
The barges appear to have some pillars that analysts say could be lowered to make contact with the sea floor to support the vessels, making a stable platform in poor weather.
The rear of the barges is open, allowing other ships to dock and unload onto them.
When combined with roll-on/roll-off ferries that carry military vehicles from bases to target locations, the barges serve as a solution to the challenge of landing tanks and troops at many sites, even those previously considered unsuitable such as soft sandy or rocky beaches, as they can reach further to deliver the assets.
Shugart, who examined the “invasion barges,” said that China was building more of them.
There is no consensus among military strategists about if and when China would invade Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province that needs to be ‘reunified’ with the mainland.
Taipei has rejected China’s overtures and threats, saying Taiwan has never been part of China.
Edited by Mike Firn.