Name: These New Chinese Ships Could Bring a D-Day-Style Invasion to Taiwan | WSJ Equipped
Uploaded: 2025-05-15T02:47:41.000Z
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This massive mobile pier system could one day be used to deliver an unprecedented number of troops and equipment in an amphibious invasion.

Relative clauses (Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive)

It's being built by China in a shipyard constructing vessels that are changing modern warfare.

As Beijing escalates its military activity around Taiwan and rapidly builds its naval and civilian fleets, China's threat to seize the island could be coming closer to reality.

To be able to deliver vehicles at huge volume straight to the beach without having to capture a port changes the calculus of whether China could successfully invade Taiwan.

Here's a breakdown of how these ships could set the stage for a D-Day style invasion.

The vessels were built here at this island shipyard in Guangzhou, China.

It's used to construct both military and civilian vessels.

Thomas Shugart is a defence analyst and former navy warfare officer whose research focuses on maritime competition.

This shipyard has been quite interesting to watch over the last year.

They've had a number of very different vessels they've had under construction at the same time.

Right here we can see two Soviet design now built by China amphibious assault hovercraft, a ostensibly military test platform unmanned service vessel.

Among them, analysts noticed a unique set of ships taking shape with distinctive jack-up legs that can stabilise them out of water.

And also the long ramps you can see here extended from the landing platform all the way onto the shoreline.

Shugart says the ships represent a significant improvement in the People's Liberation Army's amphibious assault capacity.

We had never seen before this kind of matching set that were designed to go together in multiple sizes.

About two months after this satellite image was taken, the ships were seen on China's Nanshang Island, roughly 225 miles southwest.

This is where the first known footage was captured showing the ships in sea trials.

A couple of things were surprising about it.

Also seeing them lifted up out of the water, that was quite impressive.

I had not seen anything quite like that before.

The ships did not transmit their location using the Automatic Identification System or AIS and the ship's paint scheme was now visible, which closely resembles the Chinese Navy's.

All these being indications that confirm for me that it is highly likely that these are PLA Navy ships.

Video footage, photos and satellite images examined by Shugart and other analysts provide insight into many of their specifications and capabilities.

There are three distinct types that have been classified by their hull length.

The first is about 360 feet long, the second about 440 feet and the third about 600 feet.

When linked together with their bow ramps extended, they span nearly 2,700 feet.

That's the length of seven and a half football fields.

The ship designed to land on shore has a bow bridge that extends more than 400 feet and it features four 105-foot jackup legs.

The middle platform has six 164-foot jackup legs and two drop-down loading ramps, one on the port and one on the starboard side.

The end platform has eight 180-foot jackup legs and two drop-down loading ramps, one on the starboard side and one at the stern.

The three ships were seen about 12 miles south two days later where these systems were put to the test.

It was probably just a testing trial to be able to verify that they connect together properly, that they can connect to the bottom properly and that ships can moor with these platforms in the way that was intended.

China regularly uses its civilian fleet of what are known as roll-on roll-off ferries in military transport exercises and has demonstrated they can carry some of its heaviest vehicles.

The landing platforms appear specifically designed to link with these commercial ships.

It has two side ramps, one on each side, that can flip down and we have seen them connect to roll-on roll-off ferries that can basically back up to those ramps and drive vehicles off.

On the side of the platform are what are called camels, which are these big rubber bumpers essentially that allow full-size ships to come up and nest up against the side of the platform.

So the ferry that we see alongside here is called the Chang La Gong Zhu.

It is a ferry that has been seen in numerous times during PLA exercises.

Ferries like these have been used to offload equipment in various scenarios including in ports, on floating causeways and even in the open ocean.

China has also used its larger roll-on roll-off vehicle carriers in transport exercises between ports but not with the PLA's temporary floating causeways which couldn't accommodate their diagonal ramps.

Satellite imagery suggests these landing platforms could serve that purpose.

What we see here is a vessel called the Shenlong Hai.

While it is not technically a normal pure vehicle carrier, it is a roll-on roll-off cargo ship and it does have a diagonal ramp confirming our suspicions that that's what that unique shape of that stern ramp was for.

Additionally, it is possible that a ferry could back up to this stern ramp and also unload vehicles straight on out of the back as we have seen them do with floating piers in the past.

With as many as five points of contact where ships could offload, the linked platforms could potentially transfer hundreds of vehicles ashore per hour including some of the PLA's heaviest.

I would be very surprised if these structures and the bridges are not also built to those at least those same standards and able to deliver any of the Chinese military's armored vehicles including the battle tanks.

Within about eight miles of the two sea trial sites is a base with Chinese amphibious assault craft including hovercraft, landing craft that can deliver tanks to shore and a military specific roll-on roll-off ship.

All of this equipment is designed to be used in what one would traditionally think of as a beach assault, something right over a beach and would also be the first wave of troops that go ashore probably in combination with helicopter delivered troops and airborne troops in the case of a Taiwan invasion.

One thing that these new platforms could potentially bring to the table is the ability to land troops at places even these vessels can't bring troops ashore.

Adding the landing platforms to the PLA's amphibious fleet would boost the volume of equipment delivered across the Taiwan Strait and would also make more areas of the island's rocky coastline vulnerable.

One of the things that analysts and the Taiwanese military have been able to have some confidence in over the years is that there were a fairly limited number of locations where the Chinese could potentially land on Taiwan thereby allowing Taiwan to concentrate its defensive efforts in those places.

This could thin out Taiwan's defenses and make it harder to defend all the different places that now exist.

After the sea trials, the three landing platforms return to the same Guangzhou shipyard where China is building a second set.

One right here, one right here and one right here.

US officials say Chinese leader Xi Jinping instructed the PLA to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027.

Most military experts agree China isn't ready to execute a full-scale amphibious invasion yet.

But these landing platforms might be the key to making one possible in the near future.