Initial Deployment Of China's 48th Naval Task Group Highlights The PLAN's Enduring Logistical Challenges
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The People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) 48th escort task group departed Qingdao on 11 October 2025 and transited the Miyako Strait to enter the Pacific Ocean on 13 October. According to Chinese state media, the 48th escort task group, which is composed of the Type 052D-class destroyer Tangshan (122), the Type 054A-class frigate Daqing (576), and the Type 903A-class replenishment ship Taihu (889), undertook the first underway replenishment of its deployment at an undisclosed area in the South China Sea on the morning of 18 October.
The three ships of the PLAN’s 48th escort task group will eventually reach the Gulf of Aden and will be able to make use of the very modest naval facilities that are part of the Chinese military base in Djibouti—Chinese warships can also make use of Djibouti’s civilian port infrastructure as required.
The transiting of the Miyako Strait into the Pacific Ocean, followed by a westerward transit of the Luzon Strait/Bashi Channel into the South China Sea to reach the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca, initially appeared to be unusual. The PLAN warships could, of course, have transited the Taiwan Strait, which is not an irregular practice for the PLAN. According to the X/Twitter user Song’s Defence Watch, however, the examination of years of Japanese military press releases indicates that PLAN escort groups transiting the Miyako Strait while en route to the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca is not without precedent. Even so, the PLAN’s 48th escort task group’s transit of the Miyako Strait and underway replenishment somewhere in the South China Sea—the area in which the underway replenishment took place is, of course, fully discernible through various means but is not readily available public information at this time—is notable in several respects. It indicates that:
The PLAN chose not to have the three ships homeported in Qingdao stop to “top off” their fuel tanks at PLAN bases further south, including the naval facilities located on Hainan.
The PLAN chose not to have the three ships homeported in Qingdao stop to “top off” their fuel tanks at China’s three largest reefs-turned-islands in the South China Sea.
It also suggests that the PLAN may not have refuelled the underway Type 903A-class replenishment ship Taihu (889). Such an (underway) refuelling/replenishment could have been undertaken at sea, whether by another gray-hulled PLAN replenishment ship, a suitably converted Chinese merchant-crewed oil tanker, or a suitably converted Chinese oil tanker crewed by PLAN personnel and/or merchant sailors serving as naval auxiliaries (in the manner of the American Military Sealift Command and the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary).
While I do not contend that the PLAN should have, let alone must have, refuelled the three ships of the 48th escort task group as these headed south from Qingdao prior to transiting the Strait of Malacca, this minor episode draws attention to the following:
The fairly limited number of replenishment ships, whether purpose-built and gray-painted or otherwise, available to the PLAN, which are as vital in increasing the endurance of PLAN warships in, for example, the Philippine Sea, as they are in enabling long-distance deployments to the Indian Ocean and beyond.
The apparent non-use of China’s three largest reefs-turned-islands in the South China Sea as refuelling stations for larger PLAN warships undertaking longer-range and longer-duration deployments.
The unavailability of any high probability of access port, even a civilian port, for use in refuelling Chinese warships in between Fierry Cross Reef, the southernmost of China’s three largest reefs-turned-islands, and Djibouti.
It bears emphasis that Chinese access to ports in Myanmar and/or Pakistan means little for the present purposes, given how much of a detour such out-of-the-way northward transits will entail when the ultimate destination is the Gulf of Aden. Relatedly, access to the Omani port of Duqm may be important to sustaining PLAN operations in the western half of the Indian Ocean, but it does not help in supporting deployments to the western half of the Indian Ocean in the first place. It also bears emphasis that transiting to Cambodia’s fairly small Ream naval base and Cambodia’s larger civilian ports more generally, also entails a major detour when the objective is to transit the Strait of Malacca.
Given the inescapable facts of geography, the PLAN requires access to a port either in Sri Lanka or in southern India. The latter amounts to an impossibility for the foreseeable future. While a Chinese-built port exists in Hambantota, which is situated along Sri Lanka’s southern coastline, and while PLAN warships and state-owned non-PLAN ships of military importance (i.e., oceanographic research ships and similar) visit the port facilities in Colombo to refuel and resupply, the state of China-India relations and Indian pressure on Sri Lanka make a regular Chinese naval presence in Sri Lanka, even one of a purely logistical nature, unlikely for the foreseeable future. As things stand, the PLAN continues to face non-trivial challenges in reaching, let alone operating, in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Leaving aside Sri Lanka, the countries that are in the best position to change that are Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as Singapore. Absent a major reorientation of the foreign and military policies of these three Southeast Asian countries, the PLAN will likely have to, in effect, go it alone for the foreseeable future and rely on ad hoc naval diplomacy visits to enable its standing naval deployments in the Indian Ocean and beyond.
While this post focuses on naval/marine logistics, it is worth broaching the related challenges that the PLA faces in deploying aircraft beyond the South China Sea. Unless Chinese aircraft are permitted to transit the airspace of Southeast Asian countries or, a de facto impossibility, Indian airspace, PLA aircraft, including both the PLAN’s maritime patrol/anti-submarine warfare aircraft and the PLAAF’s military transport aircraft, must fly to airbases in Xinjiang and afterward fly over the Karakoram Mountains to reach the Indian Ocean by way of Pakistan. If the PLA hopes to ever operate in the Indian Ocean in the manner of the American military, it will either have to heavily rely on transits via Pakistani airspace and, all things considered, have a permanent presence at Pakistani airports/airbases, or, it will require access to airports in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, given the range restrictions faced by most aircraft.