China may have found a way to get boots on the ground in Taiwan. New images of "invasion barges," mobile harbors used to land men and materiel, have surfaced on social media.
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00:00China may have found a way to get boots on the ground in Taiwan.
00:05New images have emerged on social media of what are being called invasion barges, mobile
00:10harbors used to land troops and supplies.
00:14Our defense reporter Jaime Ocon is live in our newsroom in Taipei.
00:18Jaime, what do these images show?
00:21Well, that's right.
00:24So on Thursday, some images were posted on Chinese social media site Weibo with one video
00:29showing what appears to be a specialized barge that could be used for an invasion of Taiwan.
00:35Now in January, a military news site, Naval News, was the first to report that China was
00:39building about five of these barges.
00:42These are mini ports that some analysts say are specifically used for an amphibious attack
00:47potentially on Taiwan.
00:49Now Taiwan Plus has obtained satellite imagery taken a few days ago near southern China,
00:54which appears to show that same kind of barge used in a small amphibious exercise.
01:00Now some people are concerned because China has been trying to find ways to get boots
01:03on the ground here in Taiwan in the event of an attack.
01:07Now this would mean transporting hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment across
01:11the Taiwan Strait, either through the air or by sea, and it's still unclear whether
01:16Beijing has those kinds of capabilities.
01:18But China has been practicing that kind of operation for decades.
01:22Observers are now saying that if Beijing uses these kinds of barges, that Beijing can actually
01:26pull that operation off.
01:28Now for more on this, I spoke to Tom Sugar, he's an adjunct senior fellow at the Center
01:33for a New American Security, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
01:38The big surprise, and it was a surprise to me that we learned today, is that these apparently
01:42are intended to be linked together to form one much longer transfer assembly from the
01:47shore to the sea.
01:49So instead of three different landing points where you could project essentially a pier,
01:56something like 300 meters out into the water, we're seeing now more like 800 to 850 meters
02:01that this thing could get out of the water.
02:03Potentially for much larger areas of the Taiwanese coast, now being able to get a pier from the
02:10shore all the way out deep enough to deep enough water where you can have these ferries
02:14pull up and unload onto them.
02:16I think these will be much quicker to be set up, where you can wind up with a lot less
02:21warning, where they could potentially be moved if they need to for weather or threats, where
02:25they're not nearly as much of a fixed target as these normal floating piers are.
02:30Because these vessels are self-propelled, it appears.
02:32They're self-propelled, I imagine they're probably highly automated.
02:36And they basically just, they can just drive up and they lower these legs and lift themselves
02:39out of the water, and then you bolt the next one and connect to it, and the next one and
02:43connect to it.
02:44It really is quite something.
02:45And Tom, well, we've known for a while that China is trying to increase that capability
02:49to transport soldiers and equipment across the Taiwan Strait in the event of a war with
02:53Taiwan.
02:54How concerning is this new development?
02:56Well, I've said for several years now with respect to the use of roll-on-roll-off ferries
03:01that in the absence of the China civilian sea lift, if you're asking the question, and
03:05it's an important one, does China have the ability to invade Taiwan without civilian
03:10shipping with only the PLA Navy's amphibious assault ships, the answer is clearly no,
03:15they don't have enough sea lift.
03:16But if you add in China's civilian shipping, and this is not theoretical, these are, these
03:21civilian companies, the ferry companies and roll-on-roll-off vehicle carrier companies,
03:26they're organized auxiliaries of the Chinese military.
03:30They regularly practice, their ships are built to defense standards.
03:34This is not something that, you know, they might think about doing someday, they are
03:37practicing doing it.
03:38And to the question, can China invade Taiwan?
03:41I think it goes from a no to maybe, maybe they can, maybe they do have sea lift to do
03:46it.
03:47I think it's unlikely that these six vessels by themselves provide the capacity to successfully
03:53invade Taiwan.
03:54But what we have to remember is that China has literally dozens of shipyards that could
03:58probably build these.
04:00And these six were built by one shipyard in about six months, six to eight months.
04:07Now we've reached out to Taiwan, to Taiwan's defense ministry for a comment, but they have
04:11not yet responded.
04:12And it's important to remember that China's President Xi Jinping has made it a mandate
04:16for his military to be ready by 2027 to annex Taiwan by force if needed.
04:21Now that year, 2027 is not a certain year, the conflict is certain, but these new types
04:27of capabilities, these barges that Beijing is building does move it more towards that
04:31goal to be a more modern fighting force and ultimately an even bigger security concern
04:36for Taiwan.