130 meters. That’s how long the ramps on China’s new “invasion barges” are.
It’s long enough to reach over a landing beach and the obstacles on it to “safer” ground beyond. Or perhaps it’s long enough to reach from deeper water to land in coastal areas without a beach. Perhaps.
The existence of the barges was first reported in Naval News by submarine expert H I Sutton. He recorded between three and five individual vessels in a shipyard in Guangzhou. The Financial Times subsequently put the number at six, three in the water and a suspected three more under construction.
It’s important to emphasize that contrary to much online discussion, these do not represent a new class of invasion barge. Rather, they represent at least three different classes.
The annotated photo published by the Financial Times shows that the three in the water are quite different from each other. The suspected three still being built appear to each match one of those already launched.
According to the Financial Times, one type is 108 meters long, one is 139 meters long and one is 183 meters long. Open source intelligence service All Source Analysis published a brief report which disagrees slightly on these numbers, but not on the substance that they are different from each other. All three types appear to have pylons or “legs” that can be extended down from the hull to the seabed to anchor and stabilize a barge in position on the shore rather than tethering it using ropes.
But the most intriguing feature is the long ramps or bridges that appear to be able to extend off the front of the barges. The measurement of 130 meters was for the bridge on the 108-meter-long barge. In theory, the 188-meter craft might have a far longer one.
According to analysis from Naval News, the barges have loading platforms at their rear. This would allow ships that can’t disembark vehicles directly onto a beach to unload them on to the barge, from which they could drive ashore. In effect they would become rapidly deployable piers.
China has a large number of amphibious assault ships that can disembark vehicles directly to land, but it also regularly conducts military drills using “civilian” car ferries usually in service elsewhere in China. Theoretically these would synergize well with the new barges.
Many have reacted strongly to this news, believing that it means a Chinese invasion is now imminent. This is of course the usual reaction to any Chinese naval developments. It’s certainly the case that military thinkers have long warned that a build-up of military resources in Fujian and surrounding provinces would be a key indicator. Six barges is a far cry from that, but then again what else would these be for?
This news definitely should not be treated as business as usual, but neither is it truly extraordinary. It is simply the case that for thirty or so years China has been preparing to give itself the option of invading Taiwan and that preparation continues.
It is hard to know what conclusion to draw from the fact there appear to be three different types of barge. Has China already worked out that it needs all three, for slightly different roles or conditions? Or is it building genuine prototypes for testing, because it is not sure? Clearly the latter would push readiness timelines a bit further out than the former.
The most chilling scenario would be that China is building different types because it is converting existing vessels to have them ready as soon as possible. That seems less likely since it appears more are under construction that match those already floating.
Speaking to the Taipei Times, Shen Ming-shih (陈明士), a research director at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that he thought the barges would serve the purpose of allowing China’s military to avoid the mines that Taiwan will deploy all over its beaches. This analysis can be taken further. There is often unfavorable ground, like mud-filled shrimp farms, directly off Taiwan’s beaches. A bridge 130 meters long could be much more useful for bypassing these obstacles than for reaching over rocky landing grounds.
This is one conceptual analysis of the role of the barges. The other is the idea raised by Sutton in his initial reporting. He said that due to the extreme reach of the bridges, “the P.R.C. could land at sites previously considered unsuitable. They can land across rocky, or soft, beaches, delivering the tanks directly to firmer ground or a coastal road.”
It’s a bit of an old saw in Taiwanese defense analysis that there are only very few beaches where an invading force could effectively land. Sutton thinks that these barges would change that.
Personally I am a little unconvinced. Stationary and large, the barges would be very vulnerable to attacks by artillery, drones and missiles in the early stages of a landing operation. These weapons can be launched or fired many miles away from the landing zones. Even if China had total air superiority it would not have been able to clear the ground of these threats around the beachhead. Taiwan’s need to strengthen its arsenal of these kinds of munitions grows ever stronger.
Tom Shugart is a retired U.S. naval officer and now an analyst who has been key in building up the open-source information about China’s civilian ferry fleet and its invasion applications. After the news about the landing barges broke, he wrote this on X:
“[E]ven if China sees invasion as the least-attractive option, IMO the THREAT of an invasion significantly increases the likelihood of success for less-extreme coercive options like quarantine/blockade or bombardment.”
It’s an important note to finish on. As always, China is playing chess as well as poker. This threat is meant to be seen, as well as to be used. An invasion ultimatum is only credible if you have the ships to do it.
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