China Just Tested Its Invisible Navy… And No One Noticed
Like Christmas Day, we woke to find a surprise - our work was being covered by a Youtuber.
Consider the following How much of China's Irregular Warfare can be seen by conventional vessel tracking ? The fleet that matters is often the one not transmitting.
人民解放軍の戦区またぐ動員に「上層部」の影…中国漁船の異常隊列、日本の脅威に
Twice — late 2025 and again in January — up to 2,000 fishing boats formed a wall near the median line. We built the case from AIS and satellite imagery.
Thousands Of Chinese Boats Mass At Sea, Raising Questions
Thousands of Chinese fishing boats, massing in large formations that stand hundreds of KM in the East Sea. Fleets cluster where fish are; they do not hold angles.
U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission - China Bulletin: February 4, 2026
China is marshalling thousands of fishing vessels in drills that impede movement through the East China Sea. Obstruction is an underrated capability.
Thousands of Chinese Fishing Boats Quietly Form Vast Sea Barriers
China quietly mobilized thousands of fishing boats twice in recent weeks to form massive floating barriers of at least 200 miles long, showing a new level of coordination that could give Beijing more ways to impose control in contested seas.
The two recent operations unfolded largely unnoticed. An analysis of ship-tracking data by The New York Times reveals the scale and complexity of the maneuvers for the first time.
Last week, about 1,400 Chinese vessels abruptly dropped their usual fishing activities or sailed out of their home ports and congregated in the East China Sea. By Jan. 11, they had assembled into a rectangle stretching more than 200 miles. The formation was so dense that some approaching cargo ships appeared to skirt around them or had to zigzag through, ship-tracking data showed.
OP-ED: Securing Taiwan’s submarine cables - Taipei Times
Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) specifically addresses this challenge. DAS detects, classifies and tracks activity along the entire length of a cable by turning the cable itself into a sensor.
Rigging the Game: PRC Oil Structures Encroach on Taiwan’s Pratas (Dongsha) Island
Beijing’s relentless pressure on Taiwan now includes oil rigs: twelve permanent or semi-permanent structures and dozens of associated ships. The structures, which are owned by state-owned firm CNOOC, include seven rig structures, three floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, and two semi-submersible oil platforms. All are located within Taiwan’s claimed exclusive economic zone (EEZ) near Pratas/Dongsha Island.
Clouds Over China: A Challenge to Intelligence Gathering
China's persistent cloud cover is not a nuisance for analysts — it is exploitable cover for moving PLA military and dual-use civilian assets, and an argument for radar satellites over electro-optical.
NYTIMES: China Surveys Seabeds Where Naval Rivals May One Day Clash
Chinese research ships survey seabeds for science and resources. The same data says where submarines can hide, and where they cannot. Dual-use by design.
China has debuted its new landing barges
China's new landing barges relieve the constraint every Taiwan invasion assessment rests on: putting heavy vehicles ashore without first taking a port.