Analytical extensions-themed posts expand on material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of this website more generally.

As explained in a recent post, military media outlet Naval News claims that the nuclear-powered submarine which China recently launched at the Bohai Shipyard near Huludao along the Bohai Sea is not yet another Type 093B-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) but the first completed hull of the long-anticipated next-generation Type 095-class SSN.

As explained in the above post, much rests on the maturity and competitiveness of the Type 095-class SSN, and exceedingly little information is publicly available about the Type 095-class design at this time. In the absence of information, the above post identified several important areas of uncertainty and raised questions to be answered as new information becomes available. This post is intended to broach the potential implications of a new Chinese SSN design of currently unknown characteristics and performance for Australia, just as prior posts did with respect to Japan and Taiwan.

As things stand, Australia encounters a very limited threat from Chinese SSNs, with the still minor caveat that Australian warships operating alongside American and/or Japanese warships in the Philippine Sea may encounter a Chinese SSN. With respect to a PLAN presence around the Australian continent, China’s large fleet of diesel-electric submarines (SSKs) lacks the range-endurance to pose much of a (direct) threat to Australia, and the Chinese SSN threat is, at this time, essentially non-existent for want of numbers if nothing else. While China can, in principle, dispatch one, perhaps more, SSNs to operate around Australia, the country’s SSN fleet is simply too small to operate around Australia while also undertaking other, more important missions, a dynamic that exists whatever qualitative judgement one makes about China’s most recently deployed Type 093B-class SSNs. The major expansion of the Bohai Shipyard and the reported introduction of the first of a new generation of Type 095-class SSNs may, however, may result in a very different situation over the next decade or so, one in which a Chinese SSN presence around Australia may go from a near-impossibility on practical grounds to something that is increasingly treated as a given.

Should China build and deploy additional SSNs in large numbers—perhaps ten to twenty, if not more—over the coming decade or so, Australia will likely encounter a very different situation than what it has grown accustomed to and been able to take for granted. A situation in which even a single Chinese SSN undertakes what amounts to a standing deployment around Australia’s ~30,000 kilometer long coastline will pose a major threat to merchant ships along the approaches to major Australian ports. Large ocean-going merchant ships are, in a given part of the world, more limited in terms of throughput than in aggregate numbers, not least in a wartime situation in which a large subset of the world’s fleet of merchant ships is likely to be, in effect, stranded in Chinese ports alongside much of the world’s shipbuilding capacity.

A single Chinese SSN equipped with thirty or so heavyweight torpedoes allowed to freely operate along the approaches to Australian ports and other forms of maritime infrastructure, such as the massive floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform off the coast of Western Australia, can wreak havoc on the Australian economy in the event of a major war, particularly a major protracted war.

The closest analogy to such a hypothetical Australia-China dynamic playing out in the 2030s can be found in the Second World War, when the German and Japanese navies, including a small number of German diesel submarines operating from Japanese-occupied ports in Southeast Asia, operated around the Australian continent while attacking and sinking merchant ships in the process.

The Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Defence Force more generally are far from helpless when it comes to countering a potential presence of Chinese SSNs around the Australian continent. If nothing else, the United States can be expected to help bolster Australia’s defences in this and other areas, given how critical Australia is likely to be in the event of a major and likely protracted war between China and the United States. It is nevertheless important not to think about this issue in terms of absolutes. The analytically important question is not whether a Chinese SSN presence—which may well be limited to just a single SSN—around the Australian continent can be countered, but at what cost, specifically at what opportunity cost.

Here, as elsewhere, China encounters strong structural incentives to, in effect, “go on the offensive,” an undertaking for which SSNs with functionally unlimited range—excluding provisions for the crew, torpedoes/missiles, and certain types of supplies—are exceptionally well suited. A single Chinese SSN near the Australian continent is likely to force Australia, and perhaps also the United States, to refrain from deploying some number of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) warships and/or ASW aircraft and/or Australia’s own forthcoming Virginia-class and AUKUS-class SSNs elsewhere in the Western Pacific so as to secure Australia’s maritime approaches—plural—against an undersea threat that, for all practical intents and purposes, did not previously exist. Stated differently, Australia may, in a worst-case scenario, even need to primarily employ its forthcoming SSNs as defensive ASW assets to secure Australia’s maritime approaches—as opposed to operating against the Chinese navy in the South China Sea and Philippine Sea—in the event that China builds and deploys a much larger fleet of more competitive SSNs, which may or may not come in the form of the new Type 095-class SSN design.

It is productive to paraphrase a section of text included in the prior post on the implications of China’s new Type 095-class SSN for Japan:

A significantly expanded Chinese SSN force will constitute a qualitatively new and distinct threat to [Australia], even if China’s new Type 095-class SSNs remain significantly inferior to the latest American Virginia-class SSNs. Here, as elsewhere, the fact remains that China does not always need perfect or world-leading military systems to significantly alter the regional military balance in its favour. Needless to say, the more competitive the new Type 095-class SSN is relative to the latest in American submarine technology, the greater the challenge that [Australia] will face in securing its maritime approaches in times of crisis and war in the 2030s and beyond. [Australia—and the United States have], for decades, been able to use forward-sensor and anti-submarine capability barriers to greatly blunt, if not neutralize, the threat posed [to the Australian continent by Chinese] submarines. The mere prospect of a large fleet of potentially far more competitive Chinese SSNs should raise alarm bells in [Canberra] unless [Australian] officials are aware of some fundamental qualitative shortcomings of the new Chinese Type 095-class SSN design that will significantly constrain its military implications for [Australia] without being sensitive to how many China comes to build and deploy over the coming years. (emphasis added)

As mentioned with respect to Japan, the new Type 095-class and future Chinese nuclear-powered submarines that draw upon, and perhaps expand upon, whatever qualitative advances it encompasses relative to preceding Chinese nuclear-powered submarines, may have a significant land-attack capability. The latest Type 093B-class SSNs are understood to be equipped with a vertical launch system (VLS). Although Chinese SSNs and SSKs alike appear to be increasingly viewed as forward sonar nodes and forward anti-ship missile launchers—as seen in terms of the torpedo-launched YJ-18 and YJ-19 anti-ship missiles, such missiles may well have land-attack modes and, failing that, China has the option of loading the torpedo tubes of its submarines and, where applicable, the VLS cells, with land-attack munitions, whether of the subsonic cruise missile, ballistic missile, or supersonic cruise missile varieties.

While a Chinese SSN deployed near the Australian continent is first and foremost useful as a deployed “fleet in being” that can induce Australia and perhaps the United States to forgo the deployment of scarce ASW assets that will be high in demand elsewhere and, secondarily, to damage, if not sink, merchant ships of various types that the Australian economy cannot do without, there may well be a fairly short list of very high priority terrestrial targets in Australia that China may want to target early on in a war. Although China has other ways to undertake such attacks, one should not discount the possibility of a forward-deployed Chinese SSN being used to either undertake pre-planned strikes or strikes against targets of opportunity, not least as a result of how SSNs constitute an all-aspect threat to Australia in terms of air defence and ballistic missile defence unlike the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s (PLARF) land-based missiles. That said, it is important to bear in mind that the virtual attrition that a Chinese SSN near Australia can impose on Australian and American ASW capabilities is likely to be far more consequential than a limited number of SSN-launched strikes against terrestrial targets in Australia.

In the absence of information, observers tend to speculate, but serious analysts endeavour to identify important areas of uncertainty and raise questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available at a later date. This SPAS Consulting analysis merely presumes that the new Type 095-class will constitute some form of qualitative improvement of some sort over the preceding Type 093B-class SSNs and that China may find the Type 095-class design to be satisfactory enough to make full use of the much-expanded facilities of the Bohai Shipyard, which is the only Chinese shipyard to build “full-size” nuclear-powered submarines. It goes without saying that there are very major analytical uncertainties at play. As with the preceding posts on the implications of the Type 095-class SSN for China, Japan, and Taiwan, this post presumes little about the performance and competitiveness of China’s latest SSN design. For Australia, the single most important unknown concerns how many SSNs China will build and deploy over the next decade or so—a much larger fleet of decidedly imperfect Chinese SSNs will still have the potential to negatively affect Australia.

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While forward-deployed Type 095-class and Type 093B-class SSNs constitute some of the most potent threats to the Australian continent, it bears emphasis that China has other ways to attack terrestrial and maritime targets in and around the Australian continent, as well as militarily important adjacent areas in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. This dynamic has been the subject of several SPAS Consulting analyses:

Analytical extensions-themed posts expand on material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of this website more generally.

A previous post explained how the sharp downturn in bilateral relations between China and Japan following the political ascent of Sanae Takaichi, which comes amid an ever-intensifying military-technological competition between China and the United States, may lead China to, in effect, maximally turn the proverbial screws on Japan. One of the approaches that Beijing can undertake entails what is best understood as the activiation of the Sea of Japan threat vector, a dynamic of exceptional military signifiance that has long remained dormant not as a result of anything that Japan or the United States have done or could have done but because Beijing decided—out of self-interest—to restrict the geographic scope of China-Japan and China-United States military competition. While previous SPAS Consulting analyses have broached this topic, this post will offer a concrete example of one way China may activate the long-dormant Sea of Japan threat vector.

As explained in the first of the above posts, Japan is significantly closer to China’s northeast than the rest of the country:

A distance of just ~600 kilometers separates China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province from the northernmost tip of Hokkaido, while just ~700 kilometers separates said Chinese province from the southernmost tip of Hokkaido. Just ~750 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the northernmost tip of Honshu, while just ~810 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the westernmost point of Honshu. Tokyo is just ~1100 kilometers from China’s northeast, while the easternmost part of the Kanto Plain bordering the Pacific Ocean is around 1170 kilometers from China’s northeast. For context, Tokyo is around 1550 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while Tokyo is around 1750 kilometers from Shanghai. Sapporo, meanwhile, is over 1700 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while being over 2170 kilometers from Shanghai.

Given these distances, China can readily employ combat aircraft equipped with standoff land-attack and/or maritime strike munitions to target Japan’s western coast, as well as the rest of the elongated but quite narrow archipelagic country. There is, however, a catch:

China is separated from the Sea of Japan by a distance of just ~10.3 kilometers in orthodromic terms, with the Tumen River flowing for another ~16.5 kilometers from the easternmost point of the China-Russia border until it reaches the Sea of Japan.

By launching ballistic missiles and/or boost-glide vehicles (BGVs, also known as hypersonic glide vehicles, or HGVs) like the DF-17, China can overcome the fairly minor complication of having aircraft very briefly traverse North Korean and/or Russian airspace to reach the Sea of Japan, but China increasingly has an alternative: it can employ low-observable—so-called “stealth”—uncrewed aircraft to undertake such politically sensitive missions without putting at risk a Chinese pilot.

One example of such a Chinese uncrewed aircraft is the GJ-11, which was formally unveiled at a 2019 military parade in Beijing (the carrier-based naval variant, the GJ-21, was one of several large uncrewed aircraft designs displayed at the September 2025 military parade in Beijing).

A reusable armed uncrewed aircraft in the vein of the GJ-11 can be readily used—in time of war—to take off from one of several suitable Chinese airbases in the country’s northeast, transit through North Korean and/or Russian airspace for 2-4 minutes so as to reach international airspace in the Sea of Japan, and transit toward a pre-programmed position from which to launch stand-off munitions against Japan before returning to base and restarting the cycle.

Large uncrewed aircraft such as the GJ-11 can be employed in a manner that is conceptually akin to a reusable cruise missile that launches less expensive shorter-range strike munitions. The GJ-11 has previously been captured on satellite imagery at an airbase in the Himalayas near India, one of several sectors in which the GJ-11 and other Chinese uncrewed aircraft designs are likely to significantly enhance the reach and strike capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) over the coming decade.

The activation of the Sea of Japan threat vector and the use of uncrewed aircraft like the GJ-11 to attack targets across the Japanese archipelago via the Sea of Japan is unlikely to constitute a silver bullet for China. Japan is, in both qualitative and quantitative terms, an immensely capable country, not least when it is allied to the United States, which has forward-deployed military forces in Japan and, as such, tremendous equities in the integrity of Japanese airspace. The activation of the aerial component of the long-dormant Sea of Japan threat vector, which has distinct air-to-air combat, terrestrial strike, and maritime strike components that are beyond the scope of this brief analysis, nevertheless has the potential to profoundly undermine Japanese security.

It bears emphasis that the potential activiation of the Sea of Japan threat vector will come at a time of intensifying military-technological competition between China and the United States, which is already stressing Japan’s ability to keep up in, among areas, air-to-air combat capabilities and naval air defence capabilities, areas in which the potential deployment of uncrewed aircraft such as the GJ-11 above the Sea of Japan is likely to only compound the immense challenges that Japan already faces.

Concepts–themed posts engage in inherently somewhat speculative analysis. I contend that any serious analysis must engage with the world both as it is and as it can be. Avoiding mindless empiricism requires cognizance of what is and what is not within the realm of possibility. Concepts-themed posts engage in this type of analysis.

Maps depicting the maximum range of Chinese maritime strike capabilities, including the country’s anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) and similar, tend to depict range rings that extend from China’s borders or coastline out to a distance of x kilometers for Chinese anti-ship munition y and so forth. Such maps tend to be unrealistic for, if nothing else, two reasons:

• China is unlikely to launch longer-range terrestrial strike or maritime strike munitions from positions along the country’s borders or coastline.

• Attacking a moving target in the form of a ship places immense demands on maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, even in a context in which high-speed short time-to-target maritime strike munitions such as the DF-26 ballistic missile mitigate the inescapable reality of target location error.

While China has developed a dense multi-phenomenology sensor array, including multiple space-based sensor architectures that not only offer redundant coverage but also, with respect to non-geostationary ISR satellites, inherently “global” coverage, China’s ever-improving maritime strike capabilities are primarily oriented toward the Western Pacific. Even so, China is surprisingly well-positioned to target ships—including American warships transiting toward the Western Pacific during a crisis or war—as they traverse two distant but very important maritime chokepoints, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz, which constitutes a bona fide maritime chokepoint that is the entry and exit to and from the Persian Gulf, is around 2100 kilometers from China and around 2300 kilometers from the western city of Kashgar in Xinjiang. For context, the American island territory of Guam is some 3100 kilometres from China, and Tokyo is some 1750 kilometers from Shanghai. The Suez Canal is some 3900 kilometres from China, and some 4050 kilometers from Kasghar in Xinjiang. Stated differently, both the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz—two of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints—are, in principle, within the nominal maximum range of the Chinese DF-26, which the latest annual American China Military Power Report (CMPR) characterizes as being 3000-4000 kilometers.

A curious fact about what is publicly known about the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s (PLARF) order of battle is that there exists a DF-26 launch brigade garrisoned near Korla, also in Xinjiang. The Korla DF-26 garrison, which is likely deployed in Xinjiang to bring Moscow with range—the DF-26 is a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, is “just” ~3200 kilometers from the Persian Gulf, which is to say a shorter distance than DF-26 ballistic missiles targeting Guam from launch positions elsewhere in China are likely to cover. The Korla garrison, which is, of course, equipped with wheeled self-propelled DF-26 launchers that can relocate as required, is, however, situated some 4900 kilometres from the Suez Canal.

Anyone familiar with Iranian maritime strike capabilities and the Iranian-supplied maritime strike capabilities employed by Ansarallah in Yemen will recognize the important role that permissive maritime geography can play in enhancing maritime strike capabilities, including lowering the requirements for effective maritime ISR against moving targets in the form of ships. Maritime chokepoints not only make it easier to discern the presence of ships to target, but also make it easier to directly track the movement of a ship or, at the very least, plot its projected future position. This is how Ansarallah has been able to target ships not only in and around the Bab al-Mandeb—a maritime strait—but also in the open/less confined waters of the Gulf of Aden.

Merchant ships and warships transiting the extremely narrow Suez Canal and even the much wider Strait of Hormuz have, in effect, nowhere to hide should China seek to selectively extend the reach of its maritime strike capabilities in a westward direction.

This is particularly the case with respect to the Suez Canal, as the 2021 obstruction of the canal by the large container ship Ever Given so memorably put on public display.

With respect to targeting ships, including American warships, that may transit the Suez Canal during a crisis or conflict in the Western Pacific, it bears emphasis that China does not need its exquisite and increasingly space-centric multi-phenomenology maritime ISR sensor array. Ground observers—and unattended cameras—with internet access will likely do just fine over a 20 or so minute flight time for the likes of a DF-26 launched from a position to the west of Kasghar.

The intent of this post is not to suggest that China will target ships transiting the Suez Canal and/or the Persian Gulf, but to highlight the importance of grounded but nevertheless creative analysis that deals with the world as it can be and not just as it currently is. China may well enter a crisis or war without having either the desire or the ability to target ships transiting these distant maritime chokepoints, but the highly stylized analysis found in this post suggests that China is likely to face quite low barriers to entry should it proceed in this direction. This post more generally serves as a reminder to observers and military analysts focused on the Western Pacific that the territory of the People’s Republic of China extends some 4500 kilometers west of the country’s coastline—the Earth’s equatorial circumference is “only” ~40,075 kilometers.

Analytical extensions-themed posts expand on material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of this website more generally.

As explained in a recent post, military media outlet Naval News claims that the nuclear-powered submarine that China recently launched at the Bohai Shipyard near Huludao along the Bohai Sea is not yet another Type 093B-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) but the first completed hull of the long-anticipated next-generation Type 095-class SSN.

As explained in the above post, much rests on the maturity and competitiveness of the Type 095-class SSN, and exceedingly little information is publicly available about the Type 095-class at this time. In the absence of information, the above post identified several important areas of uncertainty and raised questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available. This post broaches the potential implications of a new Chinese SSN design of currently unknown characteristics and performance for Taiwan, just as a prior post did with respect to Japan.

Like Japan, Taiwan has much to lose if China experiences a major qualitative and/or major quantitative expansion of its undersea warfare capabilities, something that a new and potentially much-improved SSN design can offer the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN). Many of the implications of the large-scale production of a new Chinese SSN design for Taiwan are indirect in nature. That is, a growth in Chinese naval capabilities vis-a-vis the United States and Japan will inherently affect Taiwan even though Chinese SSNs—whether an SSN of the new Type 095-class or an SSN of the existing Type 093/093B-class—are unlikely to be directly used against Taiwanese warships and merchant ships approaching Taiwanese ports, the targeting of which will likely fall to other areas of China’s expansive maritime strike capability set. That said, the advent of the Type 095-class SSN design does have a direct, albeit not a spatially direct/geographically proximate, implication for Taiwan: an expanded SSN fleet, particularly one composed of an SSN design that is superior to the most recent Type 093B-class SSN variant, will bolster China’s capacity to undertake a distant blockade—as opposed to a close blockade—of the island of Taiwan.

Some may wonder why a potential enhancement of China’s capacity to undertake a distant blockade of Taiwanese ports even matters in a context in which Taiwan’s main ports—which are not concentrated on Taiwan’s eastern coastline and are, therefore, within 300 kilometers of the Chinese mainland—are even relevant. In a 2023 China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) analysis, Lonnie Henley made an insightful argument that the United States and Taiwan, among others, risked a situation in which China’s opponents could potentially win the proverbial first battle but still lose the war in the absence of the capability to resupply Taiwan by sea—using its main ports—by running the proverbial gauntlet of Chinese maritime strike capabilities around the Taiwan Strait in a protracted conflict scenario.

Whatever one thinks of the premise upon which Henley’s analysis rests, and notwithstanding what appear to be very substantial advances in Chinese military capabilities since 2023, the fact remains that there is a non-zero probability scenario in which much of the Chinese surface fleet and many of China’s most capable combat aircraft are heavily damaged, if not destroyed, in the opening phase of what will likely play out as an extremely high-intensity conflict in which neither side will be able to build additional warships and combat aircraft as quickly as these are heavily damaged, if not destroyed, at least in the opening months and perhaps the opening years of major war. In such a hypothetical scenario, the PLA will likely remain capable of targeting not only the ships entering and departing Taiwan’s main ports but also Taiwan’s port infrastructure—the experiences of Iran and Ansarallah in Yemen with respect to the employment of generally low-end maritime strike capabilities in and around confined bodies of water come to mind. The PLA will, however, be more limited in its ability to put in place what amounts to a distant blockade, all in a scenario in which the waters around the island of Taiwan are likely to be high-risk operating areas for Chinese submarines of any type.

A prospective much-enlarged Chinese SSN fleet, particularly one that is centered on a new SSN design(s) that is qualitatively superior to the hitherto latest Type 093B-class design, will inherently offer the PLAN the ability to implement a distant blockade of Taiwan, among others, on the high seas, if and when additional SSNs are deployed in large numbers. The essentially unlimited range of an SSN—excluding provisions for the crew, torpedoes/missiles, and certain types of supplies—means that a Chinese SSN may, for example, operate in the Strait of Malacca, the Gulf of Aden, the waters off the southern coast of Africa, the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific, and elsewhere in Pacific Ocean and the rest of the World Ocean, with the aim of targeting, among other things, ships that are being sent to resupply Taiwan in a protracted war scenario. Even a single SSN can do a lot of damage to merchant shipping, not least in the context of a war in which a large subset of the world’s fleet of merchant ships is likely to be stranded in Chinese ports—alongside much of the world’s shipbuilding capacity—and in the event that a Chinese SSN lingers near a maritime chokepoint and/or a major port.

Uncertainties about the performance of China’s new Type 095-class SSN design and the number of SSNs that China will build and deploy over the next five to ten years notwithstanding, the very prospect of a significantly enlarged Chinese SSN fleet, particularly one that is increasingly composed of submarines that are more capable than the Type 093B-class variant, has considerable, albeit primarily indirect, implications for Taiwan. Chinese SSNs are unlikely to be involved in targeting ships around the Taiwan Strait, let alone in the Taiwan Strait, but an expanded Chinese SSN fleet—which is presumably why Beijing oversaw the expansion of the Bohai Shipyard in the first place—will offer Beijing a distant blockade capability that it is otherwise unlikely to have in a protracted war scenario. Here, as elsewhere, Taiwan is being assailed on multiple fronts.

https://www.spasconsulting.com/p/report-indicates-that-china-has-launched

As the above post explained, much rests on the maturity and competitiveness of the new Type 095-class SSN, and exceedingly little information is publicly available about the Type 095-class design at this time. In the absence of information, the above post identified several important areas of uncertainty and raised questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available. This post broaches the potential implications of a new Chinese SSN design of currently unknown characteristics and performance for Japan. Japan has much to lose if China experiences a major qualitative and/or major quantitative expansion of its undersea warfare capabilities, something that a new and potentially much-improved SSN can offer the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) current submarine fleet.

While Japan has long encountered a large fleet of Chinese submarines, China only operated non-competitive diesel-electric submarine (SSK) designs into the 1990s. Although the situation progressively changed over the course of the 1990s and through the ca. 2010 timeframe, the PLAN submarine fleet remained composed of increasingly more capable but nevertheless qualitatively limited SSK designs. The introduction of the Chinese-built Type 039A-class design (U.S. ONI: Yuan-class) amounted to a major qualitative breakthrough for the PLAN, and a major quantitative breakthrough as it was built and deployed versions of this Chinese SSK design in increasing numbers into the 2020s. The Type 039A-class, and its successor, the significantly altered Type 039C-class (U.S. ONI: Yuan-class mod), nevertheless remain large ocean-going SSKs optimized for operations in the deep waters of the western half of the Philippine Sea with the aim of enhancing China’s maritime strike capabilities by serving as forward sensor nodes and anti-ship missile launchers.

To this end, China developed and deployed not only the YJ-18 cruise missile—a primarily subsonic design with a terminal stage rocket-boosted sprint vehicle—but also the recently unveiled YJ-19, which appears to be a scramjet-powered supersonic anti-ship missile that can be launched out of a standard 533 mm diameter torpedo tube.

https://www.spasconsulting.com/p/unveiling-of-six-new-chinese-anti

With public indications that Chinese submarines are increasingly being employed as forward sensor nodes and anti-ship missile launchers by the PLAN, it bears emphasis that the threat that Chinese submarines can pose to the JMSDF, U.S. Navy and others is very different than the torpedo-centric submarine threat of popular imagination. A Chinese submarine may, using external target location data, launch an anti-ship missile at a target ship that is located several hundred kilometers away, which is to say far beyond the maximum detection range of a warship’s sonars and beyond the maximum range of its ship-based anti-submarine armament. This approach amounts to a qualitatively distinct threat to the JMSDF, one that the Japanese surface fleet is not currently optimized to counter in multiple respects:

https://www.spasconsulting.com/p/japans-navy-is-poorly-positioned

Although China has built and deployed a steadily expanding fleet of second-generation Type 093-class (U.S. ONI: Shang-class) nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) over the past twenty or so years, what little information is available in the public domain strongly indicates that even the latest Type 093B-class SSNs leave much to be desired. China and the PLAN seemingly agree, given the development and reported launch of the first Type 095-class SSN hull, which is presumably the successor to the long-running Type 093-class design.

Whatever the presumed qualitative attributes of the Type 093-class, not least vis-a-vis the formidable anti-submarine warfare capabilities of both the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and the U.S. Navy (USN), the fact remains that—uncertainties about the total number of Type 093-class hulls in existence notwithstanding—the Chinese SSN fleet remains very small. This limits how many Chinese SSNs of any given design may be deployed at sea on any given day and, as such, the practical reach of China’s SSN force, which is incomparably better-suited to undertaking long-range and long-endurance deployments, including deployments around the Japanese archipelago and the maritime approaches thereto.

Whatever the presumed—in the absence of credible information—qualitative attributes of China’s new Type 095-class SSN design, which presumably amounts to an improvement over the preceding Type 093B-class design, the advent of a new Chinese SSN design presents a very major potential threat to Japan, even if the Type 095-class remains significantly inferior in terms of various qualitative attributes relative to the latest American Virginia-class SSNs. The reasons for this are straightforward.

• China made major investments toward expanding the Bohai Shipyard, which specializes in building nuclear-powered submarines, in the 2010s—to what end, one must ask.

• SSNs remain a glaring area of both qualitative and quantitative shortcomings for the PLAN, which has closed capability gaps in many important areas vis-a-vis both Japan and the United States.

• The PLAN requires a large fleet of SSNs if for no other reason than to improve the anti-submarine capabilities of China’s expanding number of aircraft carrier groups and surface action groups, let alone to undertake long-range deployments in distant waters or, more to the point of this post, operate around the Japanese archipelago and along the maritime approaches to Japan, particularly for vessels going to/from North America.

China’s new Type 095-class SSN may or may not be very competitive relative to the ever-moving dynamic target set by American submarine technology. The Type 095-class may, however, be good enough for Beijing to allocate the resources required to make full use of the much-expanded production facilities at the Bohai Shipyard. This can result in a situation in which the PLAN may deploy a greatly expanded SSN force over the course of the 2030s.

While one can indulge in speculation as to how many new Type 095-class SSNs the PLAN may come to deploy, for the present purposes, it should suffice to say that the ability to maintain even a single SSN on station around the Japanese archipelago and the maritime approaches thereto will constitute a new type of threat for Japan, which has long staked much on its ability to interdict Chinese endurance-constrained SSKs as these transit the Miyako Strait and other channels along Japan’s Ryukyu Islands Chain to reach the Philippine Sea and, no less importantly given the fact that SSKs do not have nuclear propulsion, return back to port to refuel, resupply, and rearm. An expanded Chinese SSN force will introduce a new dynamic: Chinese submarines that may be detected in the favourable underwater geographic along the Ryukyu Island Chain, along which Japan has long established undersea acoustic sensors, only to break free into the open waters of the Pacific Ocean and, for example, patrol the maritime approaches to Tokyo Bay, or even undertake patrols in the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific so as to interdict ships transiting to/from the western coast of North America.

A significantly expanded Chinese SSN force will constitute a qualitatively new and distinct threat to Japan, even if China’s new Type 095-class SSNs remain significantly inferior to the latest American Virginia-class SSNs. Here, as elsewhere, the fact remains that China does not always need perfect or world-leading military systems to significantly alter the regional military balance in its favour. Needless to say, the more competitive the new Type 095-class SSN is relative to the latest in American submarine technology, the greater the challenge that Japan will face in securing its maritime approaches in times of crisis and war in the 2030s and beyond. Japan has, for decades, been able to use forward-sensor and anti-submarine capability barriers to greatly blunt, if not neutralize, the threat posed by Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean submarines. The mere prospect of a large fleet of potentially far more competitive Chinese SSNs should raise alarm bells in Tokyo unless Japanese officials are aware of some fundamental qualitative shortcomings of the new Chinese Type 095-class SSN design that will significantly constrain its military implications for Japan without being sensitive to how many China comes to build and deploy over the coming years.

In the absence of information, observers tend to speculate, but serious analysts endeavour to identify important areas of uncertainty and raise questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available at a later date. This SPAS Consulting analysis merely presumes that the new Type 095-class will constitute a qualitative improvement of some sort over the preceding Type 093B-class SSNs and that China may find the Type 095-class design to be satisfactory enough to make full use of the much-expanded facilities of the Bohai Shipyard, which is the only Chinese shipyard to build “full-size” nuclear-powered submarines. There are very major analytical uncertainties at play, and the fact remains that Japan has the most to lose in the event of any major qualitative and/or quantitative advances in China’s undersea warfare capabilities.

Some additional questions to consider:

• Will the JMSDF be forced to hold its SSKs and anti-submarine warfare aircraft, helicopters, and warships “in the rear,” such as around the approaches to Tokyo Bay and the Seto Inland Sea, in order to counter a prospectively qualitatively and/or quantitatively enhanced Chinese SSN force?

• What implications will such a development have on Japan’s ability to prosecute its preferred war plans alongside the United States? Being forced into a defensive posture while having one of the world’s longest coastlines as an archipelagic nation is unlikely to be a welcome development for Tokyo.

• What implications will the Type 095-class have in other sectors, above all around the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific, which are part of Alaska? Japan has long been able to take the security of its maritime lines of communication with North America for granted in the absence of a qualitatively and/or quantitatively significant Chinese SSN fleet.

• The Type 095-class and future Chinese nuclear-powered submarines that draw upon, and perhaps expand upon, whatever qualitative advances it encompasses relative to preceding Chinese nuclear-powered submarines, may have a significant land-attack capability. Japan’s current air defence and ballistic missile defence architecture is optimized against threats that approach Japan from the northwest, west, and southwest. Chinese strike munitions that approach Japan from the east may bypass Japan’s current defences, and require significant adjustments and resource allocations. Here also, submarines constitute a lot more than a means of launching torpedoes.

Concepts–themed posts engage in inherently somewhat speculative analysis. I contend that any serious analysis must engage with the world both as it is and as it can be. Avoiding mindless empiricism requires cognizance of what is and what is not within the realm of possibility. Concepts-themed posts engage in this type of analysis.

The Iranian-designed Shahed-136, which is known as the Geran-2 in Russian service, is the prime example of a lower-cost—and lower capability—strike munition design that enables militaries to service dramatically expanded target lists in a manner that was previously unimaginable. The Shahed-136/Geran-2, and similar fixed-wing propeller-driven strike drones—less expensive, less complex, slower, and easier to shoot down counterparts to turbojet/turbofan-powered cruise missiles—have considerable potential in military operations worldwide, notwithstanding the underway measure-countermeasure competition that has resulted in the advent of a new generation of low-cost air defence capabilities, including electrically-powered armed multirotor drones turned budget surface-to-air guided munitions that are capable of intercepting quite slow propeller-driven strike drones powered by modest piston engines.

Taking full advantage of the potential offered by propeller-driven strike drone designs in the vein of the Shahed-136/Geran-2 will likely require, at the very least, a more diverse array of warhead options so as to optimize the effects of a fairly small and lighter warhead against a greater diversity of target types/classes. In its standard configuration, a Shahed-136/Geran-2 is equipped with a 50-kilogram class high explosive warhead. Both Russia and Iran also employ the Shahed-136/Geran-2 in a reduced-range configuration that features a 90-kilogram class high explosive warhead.

Russia has employed a series of Iranian- and Russian-built warheads with its Shahed-136/Geran-2 strike drones. Publicly known warhead types include:

• High explosive-fragmentation warheads with a singular shaped charge.

• A high explosive-fragmentation warhead with multiple explosively formed penetrators (EFPs).

• High explosive-fragmentation warheads that feature incendiary material.

• A pure thermobaric warhead.

While Russia informally unveiled Shahed-136/Geran-2 strike drones equipped with an airburst fusing mode around the autumn of 2025, the Shahed-136/Geran-2 has not to date been seen with two very useful warhead types.

Submunition-dispensing warhead

The first is a submunition-dispensing warhead (i.e., cluster munition-dispensing) warhead, which will require a modified airframe that incorporates a submunition release/ejection mechanism. This should be a fairly straightforward undertaking when it comes to a very slow propeller-driven strike drone design that can be subject to major modifications without onerous aerodynamic penalties. Consider how a typical 155 mm submunition dispensing artillery shell weighing around 40 kilograms can dispense 60-80 submunitions over a radius of 100 or more meters. The likes of a Shahed-136/Geran-2—particularly an airframe in the higher payload reduced-range configuration which can be equipped with a 90-kilogram class warhead—can not only dispense a larger number/heavier load of submunitions—a thick casing is not required in the manner of an artillery shell subject to extreme chamber pressures—but also dispense said munitions over a larger surface area. The advent of a submunition-dispensing low-cost propeller-driven strike drone design will have major implications in the interrelated areas of air base attack and air base resilience.

Penetrator Warhead Optimized For Use Against Runways

Another approach concerns the use of a penetrating warhead design that is optimized to create (fairly small/shallow) craters in runways, so as to develop a low-cost means to disrupting flight operations at distant airfields—craters/holes in the ground can be filled in and runways can be repaired, so cratering runways is primarily a means of buying time and disrupting adversary opereations rather than a likely approach to securing military victory. While the Shahed-136/Geran-2 has been used with penetrating warheads that are optimized to maximize damage to structures such as electricity substations and heavy-duty industrial machinery in power stations, these are not the same as a warhead that is intended to create a single crater/hole of maximum possible depth. A useful reference design to have in mind is the late Cold War French BAP-100 bomb, which was explicitly designed to crater runways and complement the larger, heavier, and better-known Durandal. The air-dropped BAP-100, which featured both a parachute and a solid-propellant rocket booster, had a total weight of 32.5 kilograms while equipped with a 18.5 kilogram warhead. Through the use of the rocket booster, the air-dropped BAP-100’s shaped charge warhead could reportedly penetrate up to 30 centimeters of reinforced concrete when equipped with a time-delay fuse.

It bears emphasis that even a propeller-driven and piston engine-powered Shahed-136/Geran-2 and similar undertaking a terminal dive will struggle to reach a top speed equivalent to one-fifth that of the air-dropped and rocket-boosted BAP-100. The BAP-100 is, as such, merely invoked in this post to illustrate the potential for a penetrator warhead for use against runways as well as other structures, such as bridges. A low-cost low-payload turbojet-powered cruise missile design will have a much higher cruise speed and top speed during a terminal dive and will be much more suitable as a means of delivering a penetrator warhead. See, for example:

All things considered, propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones are unlikely to disappear even with the intensifying measure-countermeasure competition that has resulted in the increasingly widespread deployment of low-cost air defence capabilities, including electrically-powered interceptor drones. Propeller-driven strike drones are an incredibly inexpensive means of delivering a given payload per kilogram-kilometer. The availability of additional warhead options will likely only increase the appeal of low-cost propeller-driven strike drone designs, which inherently offer militaries the ability to service dramatically expanded target lists in a manner that was previously unimaginable.

Minimal comment-themed posts are used to introduce data points for use in other posts going forward. Posts of this theme will typically feature minimal analysis and commentary.

Japan’s Sakishima Islands, which refer to a subset of the larger grouping of the Ryukyu Islands Chain, constitute prime “real estate” in the Western Pacific. These Japanese islands are home to expanding Japanese military garrisons, and Tokyo is working on plans to evacuate the 100,000 or so civilians who reside in the Sakishima Islands during a crisis before these far-flung outposts of Japanese military power become war zones.

As explained with respect to China’s possible activation of the Sea of Japan threat vector, geography plays a key and often underappreciated role in the fast-evolving China-Japan and China-United States military balance. Technological change is, in effect, making the far-flung Sakishima Islands “increasingly proximate” to China.

The Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu. Military facilities and militarily relevant infrastructure on the far-flung Sakishima Islands are increasingly exposed to Chinese attack. These small islands, the largest of which is Miyako Island, are not and will never be garrisoned by a fairly dense array of air defence and ballistic missile defence capabilities in the manner of Kadena airbase and other military facilities on Okinawa Island.

An orthodromic distance of just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China places the Sakishima Islands within range of a wide range of existing Chinese strike capabilities, including stand-off munitions launched from Chinese combat aircraft. It also places the Sakishima Islands within range of a diverse array of “new” strike capabilities, whether propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones in the vein of the Iranian Shahed-136, low-cost cruise missiles, powered guided glide bombs, and even armed uncrewed surface vessels (USVs).

The isolated Japanese military outposts in the Sakishima Islands are likely to be subject to intense and regular bombardment both at the outset and over the course of a major war. Chinese and Japanese military planners, as well as their American counterparts, are likely to recognize how important it is for Japan to occupy this real estate, which offers land on which to position a wide range of both lower-end and higher-end sensors that can be used to detect Chinese aircraft, surface ships, and even submarines. While the military value of the Sakishima Islands is not in question, the fact remains that these far-flung outposts of Japanese military power are exceptionally and increasingly vulnerable to Chinese strike capabilities.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

Something very unusual transpired on 30 March 2024. Japan’s Joint Staff Office announced that a Chinese military aircraft, which in this case happened to be an uncrewed aircraft design, was observed flying in international airspace over the Sea of Japan.

The Chinese uncrewed aircraft in question is reported to have been a WZ-7, a high-altitude jet-powered high-end fixed-wing uncrewed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft design operated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) that is broadly analogous to the American RQ-4 Global Hawk, three specimens of which have been ordered for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF).

While Japan’s Joint Staff Office has disclosed what appear to be exceptionally irregular WZ-7 flights in the international airspace above the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea both before and after 30 March 2024, the 30 March 2024 flight of a WZ-7 remains exceptionally notable as the sole publicly documented case of a Chinese large fixed-wing military aircraft flying in the Sea of Japan outside the specific and highly transient context of bilateral China-Russia bomber aircraft training flights.

The ascent of Sanae Takaichi to the position of Prime Minister of Japan has been accompanied by a very sharp downturn in bilateral relations between China and Japan. While Japan has experienced an ever-worsening security environment vis-a-vis China over the past fifteen or so years, it is only accurate to state that China has, to date, not played all its cards so as to maximally turn the proverbial screws on Japan. One of the approaches that Beijing can undertake entails what is best understood as the activiation of the Sea of Japan threat vector, a dynamic of exceptional military signifiance that has long remained dormant not as a result of anything that Japan or the United States have done or could have done but because Beijing decided—out of self-interest—to restrict the geographic scope of China-Japan and China-United States military dynamics.

Chinese naval activity in the Sea of Japan remains exceptionally rare, with the deployments of People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels into the Sea of Japan being primarily undertaken so as to facilitate transits to Russian ports that host bilateral China-Russia naval exercises.

With the exception of the 30 March 2024 incident involving a WZ-7 uncrewed aircraft flying in international airspace over the Sea of Japan, the few instances of publicly disclosed PLAAF aircraft activity over the Sea of Japan can be tied to bilateral China-Russia aerial exercises.

As highlighted in an October 2025 SPAS Consulting analysis that examined the military implications of the hypothetical collapse of the Russian state on the China-United States military balance—and, by association, the China-Japan military balance, a very small amount of land separates China from the Sea of Japan. Specifically, China is separated from the Sea of Japan by a distance of just ~10.3 kilometers in orthodromic terms/as the crow flies, with the Tumen River flowing for another ~16.5 kilometers from the easternmost point of the China-Russia border until it reaches the Sea of Japan. In other words, China may not border the Sea of Japan and has no direct port access to the Sea of Japan, but just a very small amount of land determines this.

The 30 March 2024 flight of a PLAAF WZ-7 uncrewed aircraft over the Sea of Japan could not have taken place with a very brief overflight of North Korea and/or Russian territory. Although the answer to the obvious question of whether Beijing formally sought and received permission to undertake such a flight from Pyongyang and/or Moscow is not public knowledge, the seminal incident from March 2024 should highlight a simple truth: Beijing can activate the Sea of Japan threat vector if and when Chinese decision-makers wish to do so.

It bears emphasis that the activation of the Sea of Japan threat vector is not merely about potential PLAAF aircraft flights over the Sea of Japan. A “full-activation” of this long-dormant threat axis/threat vector may also entail the deployment of People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) missile launch brigades across the PLA’s Northern Theater Command (NTC), a sector that Beijing has long deprioritized largely out of self-interest.

Given the longstanding dispositions of the PLARF’s conventionally-armed missile launch brigades, many observers appear to understandably conceptualize the threat posed by said Chinese missiles as being one that approaches Japan from the west and southwest. Should Beijing activate the Sea of Japan threat vector, however, Chinese ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and boost-glide vehicles (BGVs, also known as hypersonic glide vehicles or HGVs) will approach Japan from the northwest.

A distance of just ~600 kilometers separates China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province from the northernmost tip of Hokkaido, while just ~700 kilometers separates said Chinese province from the southernmost tip of Hokkaido. Just ~750 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the northernmost tip of Honshu, while just ~810 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the westernmost point of Honshu. Tokyo is just ~1100 kilometers from China’s northeast, while the easternmost part of the Kanto Plain bordering the Pacific Ocean is around 1170 kilometers from China’s northeast. For context, Tokyo is around 1550 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while Tokyo is around 1750 kilometers from Shanghai. Sapporo, meanwhile, is over 1700 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while being over 2170 kilometers from Shanghai.

Simply stated, the entirety of Hokkaido and Honshu are much closer to China if and when Beijing decides to activate the long-dormant Sea of Japan threat vector. Should China decide to do so, it will be able to launch shorter-range—and, all else being equal, less expensive and, as such, more plentiful—missiles against targets across the primary landmasses of the Japanese archipelago. As China-Japan relations further detioriate, the seemingly one-off 30 March 2024 incident in which a Chinese WZ-7 uncrewed aircraft flew in international airspace over the Sea of Japan may come to be seen as a harbinger of a new normal that has the potential to profoundly undermine Japanese security and greatly expand the challenges that both Japan and the United States face in terms of air defence and ballistic missile defence.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

Japan intends to evacuate civilians residing in the Sakishima Islands in the event of a major cross-Taiwan Strait crisis or conflict. Relocating some 100,000 civilians of all age groups from the Sakishima Islands—which constitute a subset of the larger grouping of the Ryukyu Islands Chain and notably do not encompass the heavily populated island of Okinawa—to the primary landmasses of the Japanese archipelago will likely require what amounts to an all-of-government effort supported by the privately-owned shipping and aviation sectors. Tokyo will, however, likely also require support from another unexpected source: cooperation, whether tacit or explicit, on the part of Beijing, which will inherently be capable of taking full advantage of Japan’s moment of great vulnerability should it wish to do so.

Evacuating some 100,000 civilians from Japan’s Sakishima Islands will be no easy feat, even if these small islands featured airport facilities large enough to accommodate multiple wide-body aircraft, each capable of seating some 300 persons per flight. The Japanese government will almost certainly have to charter, if not requisition, ferries and other civilian-operated merchant vessels, not limited to those operating in the Sakishima Islands and the broader grouping of the Ryukyu Islands. While the Japan Martime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), as well as the civilian Japan Coast Guard (JCG), will doubtless be called upon to both facilitate such an undertaking and, no less importantly, to escort the vessels of various sizes full of civilians undergoing evacuation, the fact remains that the “evacuation ship” will be an enticing target for Beijing both as it approaches the Sakishima Islands to embark civilians being evacuated, and, more grimly, as said vessels with embarked civilians depart the Sakishima Islands.

All things considered, this envisaged evacuation operation will be a very high-stakes undertaking for Japan. The politcal and humanitarian imperatives of evacuating civilian non-combatants from small islands that are likely to become warzones is wholly understandable, but Tokyo will be assuming considerable operational risk should it decide to task a significant portion of the Japanese surface fleet and combat aircraft fleet toward suporting said evacuation operation in a context in which the military incentives will be to disperse and stay further away from China during what could rapidly transition into the opening phase of the China-Japan portion of a larger war.

The Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu. Unlike American and Japanese military facilities on Okinawa Island, the Sakishima Islands are highly exposed to Chinese attack. As a result, there is a case to be made that Japan requires at least Beijing’s tacit cooperation to carry out the evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands, let alone from Okinawa Island and elsewhere in the Ryukyu Islands Chain.

It bears emphasis that the evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands appears set to simultaneously take place alongside the deployment of military reinforcements to the Sakishima Islands. Beijing may well decide to press its advantage in Japan’s moment of great vulnerability, not least if the Japanese vessels heading toward the Sakishima Islands to evacuate the civilian population will also be delivering military reinforcements to these islands.

It is only fair for observers to ask why Beijing would decide to be magnanimous and not take full military advantage of Japan’s moment of great vulnerability. The civilians inhabiting the Sakishima Islands and the rest of the Ryukyu Island Chain more generally are, in effect, automatically hostage to Beijing’s mercy, and Beijing will, in the lead up to, let alone during, a war, have free reign to choose between being merciful or taking full advantage of an excellent opportunity to sink a great many Japanese ships and aircraft, whether military or civilian. It bears emphasis that even the mere possibility of China targeting the Japanese evacuation operation will inherently raise the potential cost that Japan will pay for intervening in a cross-strait conflict. Here, it is worth considering that more than 1.5 million civilians inhabit the Ryukyu Island Chain, which is to say some 1.2% of Japan’s total population.

While Japan’s plans to evacuate its civilian population from the Sakishima Islands have caught the attention of news media and foreign observers, the fact that Japan will inherently require at least China’s tacit cooperation has not. Beijing may well decide to press its advantage in Japan’s moment of great vulnerability, and the political and humanitarian imperative of evacuating civilians from what will likely become a warzone may end up becoming a military disaster for Japan, one that may shape the course of a war.

It should be noted that military and non-military vessels used to evacuate civilians from the Sakishima Islands will require naval escorts in a context in which the Japanese surface fleet has considerable qualitative and quantitative deficiencies vis-a-vis China’s ever-evolving and increasingly formidable maritime strike capabilities. The Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu.

Minimal comment-themed posts are used to introduce data points for use in other posts going forward. Posts of this theme will typically feature minimal analysis and commentary.

Japan intends to evacuate civilians residing in the Sakishima Islands in the event of a major cross-Taiwan Strait crisis or conflict. Relocating some 100,000 civilians of all age groups from the Sakishima Islands—which constitute a subset of the larger grouping of the Ryukyu Islands Chain and notably do not encompass the heavily populated island of Okinawa—to the primary landmasses of the Japanese archipelago will likely require what amounts to an all-of-government effort supported by the privately-owned shipping and aviation sectors.

Transport and amphibious warfare ships operated by both the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) are likely to not only be tasked with supporting the evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands but also transporting military reinforcements from elsewhere in the Japanese archipelago to the Sakishima Islands—public indicators suggest that the recently expanded Japanese military garrisons in the Sakishima Islands will remain in place in the lead up to and during a major conflict.

While the Japanese government will almost certainly have to charter, if not requisition, ferries and other civilian-operated merchant vessels, not limited to those operating in the Sakishima Islands and the broader grouping of the Ryukyu Islands, it will likely also draw upon a series of new vessels built for and operated by the JGSDF, namely the Nihonbare-class medium landing ships and the larger Yoko-class transport ships.

These gray-hulled military vessels are notably operated by the JGSDF rather than the JMSDF, but are subordinate to a joint JMSDF and JGSDF Maritime Transport Group based at Kure. These and other military and civilian/merchant vessels flying the Japanese flag will likely be tasked with delivering larger and heavier types of equipment to military garrisons across the Ryukyu Islands Chain, including the Sakishima Islands, in the event of a cross-Taiwan Strait crisis that may be a prelude to a major war that involves Japan.

While these JGSDF-operated ships will likely be used to transport important types of military equipment, such as a Type 03 Chu-SAM medium-range air defence system to the Sakishima Islands, it bears emphasis that the gray-hulled Nihonbare-class and Yoko-class are essentially defenceless against any form of aerial or subsurface attack. These vessels will require naval escorts in a context in which the Japanese surface fleet has considerable qualitative and quantitative deficiencies vis-a-vis China’s ever-evolving and increasingly formidable maritime strike capabilities. It should be noted that the Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu.

The evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands appears set to simultaneously take place alongside the deployment of military reinforcements to the Sakishima Islands. As explained in another post, Beijing may well decide to press its advantage in Japan’s moment of great vulnerability, not least if Japanese vessels heading toward the Sakishima Islands to evacuate the civilian population will also be delivering military reinforcements to these islands.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

This post is intended to broach a specific question: what will the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) do in the event of a major conflict in the Indo-Pacific that involves China, Taiwan, Japan, and, presumably, the United States? Tokyo cannot afford to overlook the potential wartime role(s) that an organization home to more than 14,000 trained, able-bodied personnel—including many mariners and aviators—can play during a hypothetical major conflict in which Japan will likely have to muster all of its sources of national strength.

The JCG, which was established as the Maritime Safety Agency in 1948, emerged from the proverbial ashes of the Imperial Japan Navy. Coast guard-type organizations exist in a variety of flavours. The JCG is formally a civilian coast guard organization subordinate to Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. In this important respect, the JCG differs from the explicitly paramilitary U.S. Coast Guard (USCG)—which is subordinate to the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of Defense in times of war—and the explicitly paramilitary China Coast Guard (CCG)—an organization that is part of the paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP) and reports to China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) in the same manner as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

While formally a civilian organization that is neither administratively subordinate to Japan’s Ministry of Defense nor under the operational control of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the JCG nevertheless operates a non-trivial number of (very modestly) armed patrol ships—a development that notably long predates more recent tensions with China over Japanese-controlled features in the East China Sea that China now actively disputes. In the event of a major war in the Indo-Pacific, even the largest and most—relative to other JCG vessels—“heavily-armed” JCG patrol ships are unlikely to directly participate in naval operations in the Philippine Sea and around the Japan’s Ryukyu Island Chain, but can nevertheless fulfill roles of non-zero importance in terms of bolstering maritime defences and, no less importantly, and air defences around the Japanese archipelago. JCG vessels are likely to also help facilitate what will likely amount to an all-of-government effort—supported by the privately-owned shipping and aviation sectors—to evacuate civilians from Japan’s Sakishima Islands in the event of a major cross-Taiwan Strait crisis. The JCG may, in time of war, also be stripped of some of its more militarily useful assets, as well as some of its trained personnel, to bolster the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).

It is productive take a moment to highlight some of the more militarily useful JCG assets. These include:

• 19 larger JCG patrol vessels that can embark at least one helicopter.

• 10 medium-to-large surface search radar-equipped maritime patrol aircraft.

• 3 MQ-9B SeaGuardian surface search radar-equipped large uncrewed fixed-wing maritime patrol aircraft, which are a variant of the American MQ-9 Reaper.

• ~60 helicopters of various types, most of which exist to provide maritime search and rescue (SAR) services to civilians that will still be required in time of war.

• The JCG’s land-based coastal (surface search) radar network.

In the event of war, the aforementioned JCG assets and associated personnel can be used to bolster JSDF units tasked with:

• Patrolling Japan’s coastline so as to provide early warning of approaching (potentially armed) uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and (potentially armed) fixed-wing strike drones, and potentially intercept such threats either independently or in concert with the JASDF and/or JMSDF, as well as the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF), which plays an important role in coastal defence.

• Support JMSDF convoying measures to secure merchant ships operating from one Japanese port to another, including vessels used to transport critically important fuels and chemicals from import hubs to industrial facilities across the Japanese archipelago.

• Support JMSDF and JASDF military search and rescue efforts, which will doubtless take place in coordination with American search and rescue efforts.

• Being home to a pool of Japanese persons trained in the operation of small arms and, in some cases, ship-mounted autocannons, the JCG may also be called upon to help bolster wartime Japan’s ground-based short-range air defences to intercept the likes of a Chinese analogue to the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 single-use propeller-driven fixed wing strike drone design that Russia uses against Ukraine under the designation Geran-2.

It bears emphasis that Japanese decision-makers will need to decide—if they have not already done so—when they will pull back JCG vessels and aircraft from “frontline sectors” in the event of a major crisis with China. This includes operations around the Ryukyu Island Chain, given how JCG vessels and aircraft that continue to patrol in this sector are likely to be treated as militarily relevant targets by the PLA, not least when we are discussing JCG vessels—some of which are armed—and aircraft that are equipped with radars that can detect Chinese warships and, in some cases, Chinese aircraft. JCG vessels and aircraft are not equipped with defensive countermeasures and/or defensive armament to have any chance of surviving PLA attacks, a dynamic in which the JCG fleet is notably unlike a specific subset of both the USCG and CCG fleets.

Given the above, JCG operations during a crisis will likely be closely coordinated with the JASDF and JMSDF, and Tokyo may well decide to pull back JCG vessels and aircraft from the Ryukyu Island Chain to the Japanese archipelago as the shadow of war approaches. There is a caveat to be made with respect to an all-of-government effort to evacuate civilians from the Sakishima Islands, but JCG vessels and aircraft have no business being anywhere near the Ryukyu Islands in the event of war with China and are, more to the point, far more useful to Japan’s war effort when located elsewhere.

News analysis-themed posts typically focus on recent developments. These posts tend to be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

According to military media outlet Naval News, the nuclear-powered submarine that China recently launched at the Bohai Shipyard near Huludao along the Bohai Sea is not yet another Type 093B-class (U.S. ONI: Shang-class) nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) but the first completed hull of the long-anticipated next-generation Type 095-class SSN. Much rests on the maturity and competitiveness of China’s Type 095-class SSN design, which may become a major inflection point in the evolution of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and herald a very different era of naval and undersea warfare dynamics in the 2030s and beyond.

Supposing that this claim is accurate, it is analytically productive to think about some of the many uncertainties concerning the future of the Chinese submarine fleet. In the absence of information, observers tend to speculate, but serious analysts identify important areas of uncertainty and raise questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available. The following questions and the underlying analytical issues are worth considering as additional information becomes available on the new Chinese Type 095-class SSN.

• How many Type 095-class SSNs—and other SSNs more generally—does China plan to build and deploy?

• Will an expanded SSN fleet come at the cost of a smaller diesel-electric submarine fleet (SSK)? Many older SSKs will need replacing over the coming five to ten years, including both Russian-built Kilo-class (Project 636) SSKs and Chinese-built Type 039 (U.S. ONI: Song-class) SSKs.

• Where does the reported Type 041-class (U.S. ONI: Zhou-class) submarine fit into Chinese fleet planning? The Type 041—which is notably not built at the now-expanded shipyard near Huludao along the Bohai Sea in the manner of the Type 095-class SSN and all previous Chinese nuclear-powered submarines—reportedly includes a small nuclear reactor to extend the range-endurance of the submarine. It bears emphasis that the Type 041-class is far too small to substitute for the likes of the Type 095-class SSN and is likely to either supplant or complement SSKs in the PLAN.

• Will Chinese shipyards continue to build standard SSKs, including the latest Type 039C-class (U.S. ONI: Yuan-class mod), for the PLAN—as opposed to export customers? If so, will there be a new Chinese SSK design? Other countries, especially South Korea, are expanding the envelope of what an advanced SSK can offer. The appeal of larger, more complex, and more expensive SSKs for the PLAN may or may not be affected by the introduction of not just the recently launched new Type 095-class SSN but also the new Type 041-class.

• In the 2010s, the PLAN was rumoured to have a requirement for an SSK design optimized for operations in shallow littoral waters, which the widely deployed Type 039A-class (US ONI: Yuan-class) and the succeeding Type 039C-class are not. There have, to date, been no indications of developments in this area, with the caveat that some large uncrewed underwater vehicle designs—uncrewed/unmanned submarines—may be used to at least partially address this capability gap, which the PLAN may or may not care much about as of 2026 and going forward.

It is possible to raise additional questions that will need answering.

• How many reportedly forthcoming Type 096-class ICBM-equipped nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) does China plan to build and deploy? What will Type 096-class SSBN production and deployment mean for the existing Type 094-class (U.S. ONI: Jin-class) SSBNs, which reportedly leave much to be desired? Will the Type 094-class SSBN be repurposed for use as conventionally-armed strike munitions launchers in the vein of a subset of American Ohio-class SSBNs?

• Supposing that the new Type 095-class SSN is optimized for use as an attack submarine—optimized for use against enemy ships, will China develop and deploy a follow-up design in the vein of the stretched/larger American Virginia-class Block V submarines, which can be equipped with a significantly larger number of vertically-launched terrestrial strike and/or maritime strike munitions?

• Will China emulate the Soviet-Russian concept of a missile-centric and maritime strike-optimized nuclear-powered submarine design in the vein of the Project 949 (U.S. ONI: Oscar-class) submarines? It bears emphasis that the recently unveiled Chinese ship- or submarine-launched YJ-17, YJ-19, and YJ-20 long-range anti-ship missiles are all indicative of the direction of travel in this key capability area.

As indicated earlier, observers tend to speculate in the absence of information, but serious analysts try to identify important areas of uncertainty and raise questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available. Suffice to say, much is uncertain about China’s new Type 095-class SSN in the public domain. There are, more generally, a great many areas of analytical uncertainty of both a qualitative and quantitative nature concerning the future of China’s submarine fleet and undersea warfare capabilities. The long-expected launch of a new Chinese SSN design at the much-expanded—to what end, one must ask—Bohai Shipyard amounts to an important development, but the proverbial analytical glass is nowhere near being even half full.

The following post from October 2025 broached the potential for a Chinese naval base in the general vicinity of the southern coast of Africa, which will help facilitate a hypothetical much-expanded Chinese SSN fleet operate in the Atlantic Ocean, including off the eastern coastline of North America. Suffice to say, no such Chinese naval base currently exists, and the following post highlighted the implications of endemic political instability across much of Sub-Saharan Africa for the PLAN.

Analytical extensions-themed posts expand on material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of this website more generally.

China-related commentary expanding upon the post published in another section/newsletter:

The Iranian experience with the U.S. military in general and the U.S. Navy in particular is highly salient to anyone interested in Chinese military capabilities. In times of crisis and war in the Pacific, American naval vessels operating in the Indian Ocean and its marginal seas, such as the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, will have to transit the Malacca, Sunda, or Lombok straits—or else navigate around Australia—so as to rendezvous with American warships operating in the Philippine Sea and elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean. This presents risks for the United States and multifaceted opportunities for the Chinese military. It bears emphasis that American warships homeported at ports along the eastern coast of North America encounter similar dynamics, and may even have to transit into the Indian Ocean via the southern coast of Africa in the event that Iran and Ansarallah in Yemen continue to constrain American transits of the Bab al-Mandeb—following transits ofthe Mediterranean and the Suez Canal—into the Indian Ocean. The United States’ nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are too large to transit into the Pacific Ocean via the Panama Canal. The alternative for American aircraft carriers homeported along the eastern coast of North America is to reach the Pacific Ocean by navigating around the southern tip of South America.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this here post. Link

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/02/01/iran-missiles-persian-gulf-trump-military-buildup/

Why do many seem to think that Iran's 23 June 2025 retaliatory strike against American forces at al-Udeid airbase was a "symbolic barrage?" As best as I can tell through publicly available information, Iran launched a total of fourteen ballistic missiles against American forces in Qatar, at least one of which impacted near a very large American satellite communications antenna. What were the intended target(s)—the discrete aim points/coordinates of the intended point of impact—for the thirteen other ballistic missiles that Iran launched? Without knowing the answer to this question, on what basis can anyone operating with publicly available information confidently claim that Iran only launched a "symbolic barrage"? Is this an inherently problematic post hoc outcomes-based determination?

To be clear, I don't know what the intended targets of the fourteen Iranian ballistic missiles were on 23 June 2025, and I will go so far as to say that there exists a low but nevertheless non-zero probability that the observed impact near the American satellite communications antenna may reflect chance/luck. Note that we do not know what type(s) of ballistic missiles Iran launched, why one of the fourteen Iranian ballistic missiles ended up as a leaker that by definition evaded American and Qatari Patriot ballistic missile defence interceptors, and, among many other things, whether any qualitative variance in the types of Iranian ballistic missiles employed explains why there was only one observed impact.

Perhaps all fourteen ballistic missiles launched by Iran were aimed at the American satellite communications antenna. Perhaps the thirteen other Iranian ballistic missiles were aimed at other, potentially more consequential and less "symbolic" targets. I do not know, and I imagine that most of the people who are calling Iran's 23 June 2025 retaliatory strike "symbolic" don't know either. If nothing else, it is fair to say that greater intellectual humility and analytical rigour are in order. Explicating what we do not know and the uncertainties of what we think we know is a very good place to start.

Cross-Post: Newsletters/sections are primarily categorized by region, and posts can only appear in one section/newsletter at a time. Posts may, however, be relevant to more than one region/section/newsletter.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this here post. Link

One of the more curious dynamics currently at play concerns how the interplay of geography and Iranian maritime strike capabilities has divided the American naval presence in the Middle East into three separate components that are risky to concentrate into a single more capable force. The United States Navy now finds itself in a situation that is broadly similar to the everyday reality of the Russian Navy: subunits that cannot readily concentrate as a result of the interplay of geography—and, in the American case, Iranian maritime strike capabilities deployed in Iran itself as well as in Yemen through the services of Ansarallah.

There are three Independence-class littoral combat ships and two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that are, in effect, "trapped" inside the confined, narrow, and shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz is a bona fide maritime chokepoint—it is the only way in and out, and Iran is very well positioned to threaten any ship that attempts to force a transit.

All things considered, and notwithstanding the formidable air and ballistic missile defence capabilities of the two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the Persian Gulf, these warships are best extricated from that confined body of water and are ideally sent to the Arabian Sea so that they can operate alongside the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that serve as that aircraft carrier’s escorts. This will require these two American destroyers currently in the Persian Gulf to run the proverbial Iranian gauntlet when undertaking an outbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Delbert D. Black recently made an unpublicized transit of the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, with its most recent port of call being the southern Israeli port of Eilat. This destroyer is likely to stay put in the northern half of the Red Sea to intercept ballistic missiles launched against Israel from Iran and/or ballistic missiles launched against Israel by Ansarallah in Yemen, alongside the two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that remain in the eastern Mediterranean to do the same. Even so, the U.S. Navy encounters a parallel risk should it dispatch the USS Delbert D. Black to transit into the Arabian Sea via the Bab al-Mandeb, which will entail running the gauntlet established by Ansarallah's primarily Iranian-supplied maritime strike capabilities.

If the United States is going to send additional warships to join the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its three escorts in the Arabian Sea, it will have to decide whether American warships will force the Bab al-Mandeb and run Ansarallah’s gauntlet. The aircraft carrier USS George Bush—which is currently undertaking training activities off the American east coast—is one of the carriers that may be sent to reinforce the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. Another candidate is the USS Gerald Ford, which continues to operate near Venezuela. Transiting to the Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility via the Mediterranean in the shortest possible time will necessitate a transit of the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb. The alternative is for the aforementioned aircraft carriers to take a very lengthy detour around the southern tip of Africa so as to avoid running Ansarallah's gauntlet, not least in the event of open war with Iran and its non-state allies, including Ansarallah in Yemen. Alternatively, the United States can dispatch an aircraft carrier from the American West Coast, although that entails a very long journey across the Pacific.

While the United States has many options, and the American naval presence near Iran remains formidable, the de facto forward deployment of Iranian terrestrial and maritime strike munitions in Yemen through the services of Ansarallah has fundamentally transformed military dynamics in the region in ways that the current crisis is putting on public display.

Minimal comment-themed posts are used to introduce data points for use in other posts going forward. Posts of this theme will typically feature minimal analysis and commentary.

Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this here post. Link

A newly released video seemingly offers documentary evidence of Iranian ballistic missiles—of the (very) short-range variety—in the hands of Iran's Iraqi non-state allies. The timing of this deliberate disclosure amid the ongoing crisis between Iran and the United States is unlikely to be a coincidence. While American military forces are reported to have recently departed from all facilities in the parts of Iraq controlled by the federal government in Baghdad, American forces remain in the parts of Iraq controlled by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.

It is important to note that documentary evidence already exists for Iran's Iraqi non-state allies being in the possession of Iranian-supplied long-range cruise missiles and propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones. Both of these types of strike munitions—but not ballistic missiles—were launched against Israel over the course of 2024.

While Iran’s Iraqi non-state allies have previously claimed to operate a different Iranian short-range ballistic missile design (the above image to the right) under the designation al-Quds 1, the missile seen in the above video appears to be an Iranian-made Ababil/Arman, and the sole publicly available image of the al-Quds 1 may not have even been photographed in Iraq.

The newly unveiled Qare’e would likely have been deserving of the name “Al-Asad shekan“ before the very recent withdrawal of American forces from al-Asad airbase, which was subject to an Iranian retaliatory ballistic missile attack in January 2020 following the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the United States.

Minimal comment-themed posts are used to introduce data points for use in other posts going forward. Posts of this theme will typically feature minimal analysis and commentary.

Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this here post. Link

Iran hosted the "Security Belt 2025" naval exercise, which included a Chinese and Russian naval presence, at the southeastern port of Chabahar in March 2025. A forthcoming trilateral naval exercise was reported well in advance of recent events in Iran and the current crisis with the United States. Any forthcoming Chinese presence off the Iranian coast will almost certainly entail the presence of ships from the PLA Navy's 48th escort group, two of the three ships of which recently participated in a multinational naval exercise hosted by South Africa. Any forthcoming Russian presence off the Iranian coast will entail the deployment of a corvette and accompanying logistical support ship from the Baltic Fleet that recently participated in the same multinational naval exercise hosted by South Africa and/or will require the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov, which recently made an appearance at a naval exhibition in Qatar, to make a port of call in Iran instead of returning home to the Pacific Fleet. The attached images are from the 2025 naval exercise.

Cross-Post: Newsletters/sections are primarily categorized by region, and posts can only appear in one section/newsletter at a time. Posts may, however, be relevant to more than one region/section/newsletter.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this here post. Link

It is interesting to see Japanese reports that two of the China Coast Guard’s (CCG) large new patrol ships—a Type 052D-class destroyer derivative and a Type 054A-class frigate derivative—are patrolling around the Senkaku/Diaoyudao Islands amid ongoing tensions between China and Japan.

These large CCG patrol ships—the attached file images of the vessels in question are for reference—are part of what is best characterized as the CCG’s “high seas fleet”—large and well-equipped patrol ships that are well-suited to spearheading a ~blockade-type action against Taiwan that is backstopped by the PLA Navy (PLAN). These large CCG ships can also be used to extend the CCG’s presence to more distant waters, including patrols in the North Pacific and perhaps the Indian Ocean. Chinese decision-makers have, however, so far dispatched the CCG’s expensive new large patrol ships to undertake fairly menial patrol duties in disputed waters in both the East China Sea and the South China Sea. It remains to be seen whether these—by current CCG standards—(literally) extraordinary patrol ships will be tasked with—by current CCG standards—(literally) extraordinary missions going forward.

It bears emphasis that the new large patrol ships built for the CCG’s “high seas fleet,” which are quite heavily downgraded and minimally armed derivatives of PLAN warship designs, are equipped with acquisition/air search radars. This allows these CCG vessels to independently detect Japanese aircraft, whether those of the formally civilian Japan Coast Guard (JCG), the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), or the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). These CCG ships are also equipped with data links that will likely allow the CCG patrol ships to share their radar sensor data with PLAN vessels and vice versa. For Japan, the JMSDF and JASDF, and the formally civilian Japan Coast Guard in particular, the presence of armed radar-equipped CCG patrol ships in the East China Sea introduces a new form of risk.