How To Invade Taiwan

A practical guide to Chinese planning

It may look like some sort of mechanical narwhal, but it is assessed to be an invasion barge. Maritime experts have been watching Chinese developments very closely, and the construction of these unusual vessels could not go unseen. Three major variants have been identified by Tom Shugart. They have been photographed operating linked together as a single extended, deployable pier.

Each section of the assembled pier has legs to anchor the combined structure on the sea floor. This offers “a hint as to how they will be used,” H.I. Sutton says at Covert Shores. In the shipping trade, they are called “jack-up barges,” and they are common in offhore industries like oil and gas extraction. From the moment he saw them in January, however, Sutton called them “a leading indicator for a Taiwan invasion.” They certainly make the threat of Chinese invasion more realistic for Taiwan.

The “amphibious bridging system” assembled like Voltron. Source: NavalNews.com

Images of the system being tested on a beach show that Type 2 is the component at the shore, with the other types linked behind it, either singly or together. “They basically line them up smallest at the front and they get bigger as they go back,” H.I. Sutton observed in a more recent video.

“It’s not just that it’s a different designer because they’re built in the same shipyard. It’s as if they go together somehow, and I think we’re getting the idea how” because Type 2 and Type 3 have ramps in the back, whereas Type 2 does not, Sutton explained.

In a March white paper, Shugart and J. Michael Dahm of the China Maritime Studies institute explain that open source analysts “have dubbed this class of barge ‘Shuiqiao’ (literally ‘water bridge’ (水桥) in Chinese), tentatively categorizing it as “landing platform utility” (LPU).” A fourth, possibly “prototype or developmental design” was identified in March.

As Sutton points out, once erected, this pier will resist easy destruction by firepower. Taiwan would have to use numerous anti-ship missiles to sink it. “This design intends to provide a stable platform for high-load transfers and operations above the waterline,” Alex Luck reports at Naval News.

Because they “appear to be self-propelled, it is incorrect to call them ‘barges’. Rather, “they are more accurately seagoing vessels capable of transiting across significant distances unassisted. This aspect carries importance for a notional invasion of the Taiwanese main.”

“The three barges arrived around February 27 and remained in place until March 22. During that time the PLA had conducted tests involving at least two civilian Ro/ro-ferries connecting to the platforms,” Naval News reports.

The reference is to “roll on/roll off” ferries, which are common enough in high-traffic waters. However, Chinese RO/RO ferries are unique in that while they are ostensibly civilian ferries, they are actually built from the keel-up to handle tanks and armored vehicles and even land helicopters on deck.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) does in fact rehearse this activity on occasion. ‘Civilian’ ferries have even been observed disgorging hovercraft in amphibious landing exercises.

Sutton suggests that the ramps at the rear of Type 1 and Type 3 craft are where hovercraft and ferries are meant to deliver troops, supplies, aven whole armored columns to the shores of Taiwan. For that matter, they represent a realistic threat to all of China’s littoral neighbors: South Korea, Japan, the Philippines.

“They’re designed to come in behind an amphibious operation, but before a port is opened up,” Sal Mercagliano explained in a recent analysis. The PLAN has studied the American textbook on shore operations. The eastern coast of Taiwan is shallow, a good place for jack-up barges to land ashore, and there are ports that Chinese troops can sieze for the next phase of any invasion.

Type 2 matters most because it has a wider berth than the other types. It is the component that actually touches the beach, having the shallowest draft. It will carry “bulldozers and road grading equipment, because you can’t just put your ramp down on the beach and expect to start offloading trucks and tanks. They’re going to get bogged down in the beach.”

The beach must be prepared with an off-ramp, Mercagliano says. He notes that the absence of visible rudders and propellers suggests that Type 2 uses a jet drive system to get extremely close to shore without grounding or fouling.

Transfer ramps on the sides of Type 1 “Shuiqiao 135” vessels indicate that commercial shipping will also tie up alongside it to deliver their shipping to the shore. Their rudders and propellers indicate they are meant to be further from shore. Type 3 “Shuiqiao 185” vessels also have a starboard-side Bailey bridge in addition to the huge rear Bailey bridge. Both can be used as ramps or platforms.

Alternative explanations for these ships have little weight. Naval News doubts that the system has any intended humanitarian relief purpose. “The bridging-elements as observed distinguish themselves by high mobility, high materiel throughput and flexible application accommodating a range of shore conditions,” they write. “No requirement in recent history compels relevance of such a bespoke design for purely civilian applications including disaster relief.” It’s definitely a war machine.

Dahm and Shugart add more detail to the analysis. “Based on their function, paint scheme, and lack of Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmissions, the barges are very likely PLA Navy auxiliaries and not civilian vessels.” As Shugart explained in a recent interview segment, the long drawbridges can access parts of the Taiwanese coast that are not easy to land on, such as sea walls.

Furthermore, the Chinese have experimented with jack-up rigs for a long time, Naval News points out. “Obvious shortcomings of the earlier arrangement include a more time consuming setup-process and higher susceptibility to bad weather conditions. The new designs tackle these problems, representing a significant qualitative improvement.”

According to Dahm and Shugart, the Shuiqiao system represents 25 years of development, with a concerted effort beginning only in 2020, when the PLAN recognized its shortcomings in preparedness for Joint Logistics Over The Shore (JLOTS) operations.

The March exercise on a beach in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province located next to an amphibious operations base with hovercraft “suggests the PLA may have significantly advanced its timetable to have sufficient capabilities to conduct a large-scale cross-strait operation against Taiwan in accordance with Xi Jinping’s 2027 centennial military building goal,” Dahm and Shugart write.

During Phase Two of any amphibious operation — the part between the troops hitting the beaches and the seizure of ports — “the relocatable pier could potentially transfer hundreds of vehicles ashore per hour,” they estimate. “A single heavy combined arms battalion of 150 vehicles would likely need a minimum of 30 minutes to offload from a RO-RO ship using the LPU temporary pier. 40-60 minutes is probably a more realistic time.”

“A second, identical set of three landing barges is still under construction in southern China” at Longxue Island as well. Two of these piers would of course double the number of tanks, trucks, and other vehicles that can can be transferred to shore in an hour. “If a Shuiqiao-110 were damaged or destroyed,” on the other hand, “that might neutralize the landing capability of the entire three-LPU composite pier system.”

There is an ironic twist. “With a newfound capability to offload more personnel, equipment, and materiel faster, the PLA may have created a throughput problem for itself, in that the challenge may no longer be getting things onto the beach or into a port,” Dahm and Shugart add. “The challenge may now be getting those same things out quickly enough to make room for more personnel, equipment and materiel.”

China has still never actually conducted a large amphibious military operation. Once the initial landing has taken place, everything must proceed like clockwork if the beachhead is to be secured and then expanded. Lack of experience means the best China can do is learn from others and train hard. Put a pin in that.

We are likely to see the Shuiqiao in Chinese training exercises this year, the authors write. Those exercises “typically increase in size and complexity beginning in the early-summer months and peak with large, multi-day exercises in September and October that involve PLA Navy amphibious ships, civilian RO-RO and cargo ships, and PLAA amphibious forces, as well as nonswimming support forces and second echelon forces such as heavy combined arms brigades.”

None of this means that China will ever actually invade Taiwan. What it means is that China wants realistic options to invade Taiwan, so that their island province fears them too much to break away. Shuiqiao is primarily designed to inspire fear of invasion in both Taiwan and its allies, including the United States. It may in time represent a way to make that fear real. For now, the realness of the threat is debateable.

Elbridge Colby, an Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Trump administration, writes in his book that the most likely scenario of Chinese aggression is a series of surprise attacks in which the CCP seeks to overwhelm one potential enemy at a time in “focused and sequential” series, dividing Taiwan from allies.

In the best-case invasion scenario, Beijing would want to achieve a “fait accompli” by occupying the island, or some part of it, then persuade Taiwan’s allies that a fight to liberate the island would be too costly.

Within that context, Shuiqiao has a clear doctrinal role, closing the gap between any initial landings and the siezure of ports, ideally allowing the PLA to occupy the island in such force, and fast enough, that the allies capitulate rather than attempt to fight their way through a Chinese blockade to land forces on the island.

To further isolate the island, China has reportedly developed a device for cutting undersea cables. A state laboratory designed it “specifically for integration with China’s advanced crewed and uncrewed submersibles like the Fendouzhe, or Striver, and the Haidou series,” according to the South China Morning Post. “Beijing now operates the world’s largest fleet of crewed and uncrewed submersibles.”

Not only can it cut communications with Taiwan, Chinese submersibles armed with the device can also wreak havoc across the region, for example by cutting allied comunications with the islands that the United States intends to use as bases. Like the RO/RO ferries, this device is dual-use, and ostensibly intended for peaceful purposes, namely “marine resource development.”

Once Chinese forces hold ports, and the PLA has at least a solid foothold on Taiwanese shores, the PLAN numerical advantage in hulls becomes another deterrent to allied action. If numbers are not enough to deter an American-led coalition from attempting to relieve or liberate Taiwan, then the PLAN will exact costs on their enemies in hopes of exhausting them.

This might just be the Achilles’ heel of American strategy. The United States is now reckoning with a “dangerous collapse” of strategic sealift capacity. “The US Transportation Command’s Military Sealift Command (MSC), the subordinate organisation responsible for strategic sealift, is unprepared for the high intensity fighting of a war over Taiwan,” Andrew Rolander of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute writes bluntly.

Too many vessels are too old, and “current estimates indicate that the sealift fleet will lose 90,000 to 180,000 square metres (1 million to 2 million square feet) of capacity each year as ships reach the end of their useful life” when there are only 9 million square feet of capacity right now.

“Recent fleet exercises also indicate that most of MSC’s vessels cannot complete long voyages or are completely non-mission-capable,” Rolander writes. “Without immediate investment, sealift will remain largely incapable of supporting major sustained combat operations.”

There are not enough mariners to sail more ships, anyway. In both technical and human terms, the current fleet is “woefully inadequate” for a war over Taiwan. Once the shooting starts, “any level of sustained attrition would quickly turn catastrophic without sufficient sealift.”

“To boost our defense industrial base, we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial ship building and military shipbuilding,” President Donald Trump said during his address to Congress in early March.

“Trump is hardly alone in his concern,” DefenseOne point out. “Navalists have been sounding alarms for years, but the issue leapt to the fore in summer 2023, when a briefing slide prepared by the Office of Naval Intelligence reported that China’s shipyards can build around 232 times more tonnage than their U.S. counterparts.”

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is promoting the SHIPS for America Act (Shipbuilding and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security).

“The bill aims to narrow the vast gap between U.S. and Chinese shipbuilding capacity and improve the Pentagon’s ability to move forces and materiel in a conflict. Currently, the U.S. has 80 flagged commercial shipping vessels to China’s 5,500, according to a release from the office of bill co-sponsor Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.”

So the race is on to restore American shipbuilding. But will it happen in time to deter Xi Jinping from attacking, or even invading Taiwan, knowing that the Americans are unprepared for the war that would follow successful landings?

This question has a flip side, however. What if China simply won’t be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, no matter what the President of the People’s Republic says?

In a paper published this January by the RAND Corporation, defense policy researcher Timothy B. Heath writes that the PLA exists to maintain the rule of the CCP and is not even primarily a warfighting force. “China’s military modernization gains are designed first and foremost to bolster the appeal and credibility of CCP rule,” Heath says.

Furthermore, “Taiwan’s importance to CCP legitimacy is far from clear and very likely seriously overstated in Western scholarship. The fact that the CCP has thrived without owning Taiwan for more than 70 years discredits the claim that the CCP’s legitimacy depends on unification.”

Heath argues that “Chinese leaders have made no speeches that glorify war, advocate for war, or otherwise characterize war as inevitable or desirable. In addition, there is no evidence that the country is mobilizing for war or otherwise putting itself on a war footing.” Instead, the CCP “very likely hope to gain control of Taiwan but do not appear to have given up hope on nonwar methods of doing so,” he writes.

No media campaign has prepared the Chinese people for war. No detailed war analyses have been published in Chinese military periodicals. “Research to support specific, high-priority military missions, such as how to defeat U.S. forces, which would be standard in U.S. defense circles, does not appear to exist.”

Perhaps classified war plans exist, but “the lack of any unclassified supporting research raises questions about how detailed and robust any such PLA plan for fighting and defeating the U.S. military might be,” Heath explains.

Real-world Chinese military deployments have largely been “muscle-flexing demonstrations that do not actually entail combat.” Indoctrination takes up resources that would otherwise go to miasion preparedness. “The PLA spends up to 40 percent of its training time on political topics,” Heath adds.

Military reforms have therefore failed to create a war-ready force. “China’s leadership seems to tolerate the limited gains in combat readiness because the PLA is delivering on its main mission of upholding CCP rule and the leadership does not regard a major war as likely.”

Heath assesses that the “halting, plodding pace of reforms does not support the image of a military racing to prepare for war but rather that of a reluctant bureaucracy making gestures at a mission that it knows its leaders care little about.” Taiwan is important to the CCP, but the leadership “cares more about urgent, largely domestic social, political, and economic threats to CCP rule” than the martial glory of a reconquest.

Finally, Heath observes that “the PLA has not built large inventories of dedicated amphibious landing ships that could be useful for conquering Taiwan.” China still has not constructed the Phase 1 force that would have to land on the island’s shores to secure them for a Shuiqiao pier in the first place, so it is unclear that they are really intended for actual combat use in 2027, or ever.

If Heath is correct, then the invasion of Taiwan may not be imminent at all because China remains unready for a high-intensity war, let alone amphibious operations at scale. Furthermore, if conflict does come to the Taiwan Strait, China has many other options for escalation short of invasion, such as blockade and mining, that present far lower risks.

That scenario would amount to a naval siege, and sieges are risk management situations. Shuiqiao likely exists to create risks that Taiwan must respect, creating leverage against military confrontation — or Taiwanese independence.

Until there is more evidence of real preparation for war, and the PLAN has more amphibious landing attack ships, the world’s fanciest jack-up barges are not enough evidence to prove that an actual invasion is coming in 2027. This of course does not rule out other Chinese military aggression against Taiwan, but it suggests that such actions will probably not involve ‘boots on the ground,’ at least not soon.