It is interesting to think whether the ferries are primarily civilian ships converted to military use, or military ships used currently as civilian ships?
Because civilian Ferries can avoid anti ship missiles.
This is propaganda designed for moron consumption.
“It is interesting to think whether the ferries are primarily civilian ships converted to military use, or military ships used currently as civilian ships?”
My understanding is that every ship including fishing vessels can be used as a military auxiliary. If not a weapons platform, then as a surveillance platform. The Japanese did the same thing, building dual use cruise ships that could be used as auxiliary cruisers. The Japanese actually sent two of these vessels to attack in the Indian Ocean. They attacked an oil tanker and its tiny escort ship. The oil tanker ignored the escort ship’s order to run for it and turned into the attack with its deck gun. The two ships so badly damaged one of the Japanese ships that it sank. The oil tanker got away and the Indian Corvette sank. The remaining Japanese ship got away, but the incident caused the Japanese to abandon the idea of sending basically armed civilian ships into action.
The CCP has several thousand ships of various sizes and types. Fortunately, there are only three beaches in Taiwan that could be used for a landing. Those are within artillery range of high mountains. It is hard to say if the CCP is just huffing and puffing and they’ll blow the island down. I think that Xi is just like Putin in that nobody is going to tell him that his army isn’t ready to take Taiwan in one easy stroke. (You know, four days and its all over.)
They’ve been practicing for a long time
Years and years and years.
A feast for suicide drones
The Chinese do regularly do “mobilization drills”, every 5 years or so, with a focus on the local PLA forces drafting civilian boats for the “practice” invasion. There was one they started earlier this year, and it’s not limited to just a few vehicles. I can’t recall the exact figures from the translated video I watched but they were comandeering thousands of civilian vessels in two different regions for the mock invasion.
“whether the ferries are primarily civilian ships converted to military use, or military ships used currently as civilian ships? “
They’re civilian vessels that are commandeered to use for these type of exercises. China’s military doesn’t have any real troop transport capacity of its own to speak of, since they have no plans for any long range invasions they can’t conduct over land. Taiwan, and perhaps Japan, are the only real targets they might invade that would require naval transport, and I think they can’t justify spending the money for that capability when they can just commandeer civilian vessels instead.