Red’s Hellscape: Far More Dangerous Than Blue’s

Chinese industry will excel at mass-producing UxVs for first-island-chain defense, denial, and control

In a bid to deter war over Taiwan, Admiral Paparo has dripped details into public view of his Hellscape plan to turn the waters east of China into a fiery death box for any armada seeking to attack Taiwan. Lethal UUVs (Uncrewed Undersea Vessels), loitering munitions, and one-way USVs (Uncrewed Surface Vessels) would flood the Taiwan Strait. In the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary Hicks has staked her legacy on Replicator. She knows INDOPACOM’s plan relies on drones that only her initiative can buy rapidly.

But China’s Navy, not the United States’, can more easily use uncrewed maritime vessels to control the Taiwan Strait. Should the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launch its own UxV sea denial program, an offensive Hellscape, it might not matter how the Pentagon’s counter-blockade concept executes. Effectively, a Chinese Hellscape could be the perfect counter-counter blockade.

This piece will examine the unique geographic and industrial factors that enable a Chinese Hellscape.

Because Chinese UxV capability will resemble Ukraine’s, but with far more robust production, their uncrewed vessels will likely dominate waters within 400 NM of China, perhaps further. Analysis of Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian uncrewed speedboats shows that most have ranges from 200 NM, for those with large payloads or engines, up to 500 NM, for those prioritizing fuel over payload or speed.

Several American USVs, such as the hundreds of GARCs supposedly purchased by the US Navy, now have ranges approaching 1,000 NM. Saronic’s recent Corsair USV product launch seemed designed to upstage GARC’s range-payload specs. Whether these USVs can achieve max range at full payload capacity remains unclear, but US UxVs must have longer range than Chinese or Ukrainian because of geography. Major US bases like Guam and Yokosuka are much more than 500 NM from Taiwan. Let’s quickly look at that geography, and superimpose the Black Sea battlefield onto the first island chain’s potential front.

Ukraine has conducted numerous attacks as far into the Black Sea as the Kerch Straight Bridge, which the below map shows is 362 miles from a potential launch area. Since attacking USVs can’t travel in straight lines, we’re safe to assume that these vessels have 400-500 miles range. They have also conducted attacks deep into the Sea of Azov, much farther. HI Sutton’s comprehensive USV guide shows that the Ukrainian’s USV range is likely around 450 nautical miles (517 miles).

Unmanned Kill Box - The Reach of USV Attacks in the Black Sea Shows China Can Easily Blockade Taiwan With Cheap, Expendable Vessels

Superimposing a conservative 400 miles of range onto China’s geography shows that Chinese USVs with similar range to Ukrainian could encircle Taiwan. Ranges of 400-600 nautical miles (520-700 miles) are probably in reach, and could extend the reach of a PLA Hellscape across much of the first island chain. This capability-geography alignment means that China could potentially enforce a blockade with only attritable uncrewed assets. If they can develop the technology and produce enough, that is.

China’s 5-1 UxV Prototyping Advantage

China already has many variants of uncrewed vessels. Online marketplaces like Alibaba are “awash” with one-way-attack USVs produced by Chinese firms, according to analyst HI Sutton. This year, a Chinese Saildrone analog washed up in Taiwanese waters, suggesting operational use.

Undersea, the PLA Navy is testing at least five different XLUUVs and building piers for more. These Chinese XLUUVs likely iterated on Boeing’s Orca XLUUV. The US Navy bought one Orca for $80M. This month, they announced the first 48-hour in water tests. The contrast between American and Chinese approaches to XLUUV shows how the PLA is using their advantage in rapid, cheap production to test and iteratively develop more advanced UxV capability. America’s defense production is even more sclerotic than its own XLUUV prototyping.

And the PLA Navy isn’t just prototyping in quantity. This month, they launched the world’s largest naval USV “Orca.” This prototype looks like a much more robust version of the US Sea Hunter or Sea Hawk USVs.

China’s advantage in XLUUV and USV prototyping hints at a much bigger, latent problem. First, it means the PLA can learn how to build and operate UxVs far faster than the US Navy can. Second, it’s emblematic of China’s rapidly advancing product development capability. A decade ago, Chinese firms would mainly copy US hardware products. Today, they still can copy. But they can also iterate, developing even better tech. The side-by-side above – the US Navy’s Sea Hunter USV looks flimsy next to the PLA Navy’s JARI Orca USV – shows that Chinese firms are happily learning and iterating to build better tech than their American counterparts.

Last, it’s a reminder that China’s factories can easily churn out many thousands of USVs and UUVs. No other country has the world’s largest shipbuilding and automotive industries, plus end-to-end supply chains from raw materials to marine electronics to military communications equipment.

China’s automotive sector, for example, produces tens of millions of vehicles per year. Land vehicles have several supply chain overlaps with maritime vessels, but electric vehicles, where Chinese producers are flooding domestic and international markets with millions of cheap cars per year, have especial relevance for UxVs, which are often electric.

China has the world’s biggest automotive sector, both conventional and electric

In world war two, America’s car factories pivoted to produce planes, the key industrial output militaries needed. In Ukraine, factories of all types now produce UxVs. Ukraine’s 2023 manufacturing output was estimated at $15B. China’s by comparison, was $4,659B, 309x the size of Ukraine’s. If Ukraine can produce a fleet of UxVs to hold off Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, China could produce 300x that fleet to send against the US Navy. Although industrial proxies are helpful, let’s think through the components that make up a speedboat-style USV to better-understand China’s USV production capability.

China’s USV Industrial Base

USV hull forms range from traditional ship metals like steel and aluminum to high end carbon fiber and cheap fiberglass. With these raw materials commoditized and cheap, production capacity is the differentiator, not supply chains. And Chinese factories, with nearly as much capacity as those of Germany, Japan, and the United States combined, have it. So do Chinese shipyards.

For marine propulsion, Chinese firms produce nearly a third of the world’s supply. These companies make the waterjets and outboard motors that drive most speedboats. Some Chinese USVs are already using more advanced main engines. The even-bigger automotive sector has vast capacity, from combustion engines to electric components. For UxVs, electric powertrains offer numerous C2, reliability, and endurance advantages. China’s world-leading electric vehicle sector could make its uncrewed maritime vehicles especially potent.

The rest of the components are small and easy to mass-produce in China. For communications and navigation for example, Chinese USV assemblers can choose among standardized electronic components that have gone into iPhones, DJI drones, and servers or pick from advanced military radios and sensors that have gone into China’s fleet of warships and fighter jets. China’s robust UAV supply chain, especially the electronics, will help building larger form factor USVs and UUVs. To build undersea vessels, the battery production capacity of Chinese firms will engender scale. So will specialized experience building submarines, acoustic sensors, and naval vessels, something only a handful of economies have.

China has about a third of the global production capacity in Maritime UxV supply chains

Ukrainian industry, by comparison, had almost no automotive or boatbuilding capacity before 2022. Ukraine probably had zero experts to help build stealthy, undersea technology. They had a vibrant software labor market, but built few electronics in country. Ukrainian firms assembled some military ground vehicles, but imported most of the non-metal components.

When I helped design an armored vehicle in Kyiv in 2023, over three quarters of our components had to come from large Western original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Deutz or Cummins. They make great technology, but they make it slowly, often to-order, and they get tied up in red tape at the EU’s border.

Today, individual Chinese firms on Alibaba already offer to produce 100+ USVs per month. The production capacity of individual Chinese firms is already higher than the production capacity of any US firms in play for Replicator’s maritime UxVs. The largest Replicator order for USVs is likely several hundred over 12-24 months, suggesting that an individual Chinese firm in peacetime has 3-6x the production capacity of DoD’s equivalent Replicator-Hellscape force. Chinese firms have the production capacity, the know how, and the supply chain to rapidly produce many thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of maritime UxVs.

Conclusion: China Can Flood The Zone, The Strait, The First Island Chain

If Chinese UxVs perform even comparably to Ukraine’s, they should be able to hold at risk any assets approaching Taiwan. A trip around Taiwan starting in Shantou and ending in Fuzhou, two PLA ports, is just 700 miles or 600 nautical miles. UxVs today have that range. They only need half of it.

If a single Chinese firm in peacetime can produce 100 USVs per month, on an Alibaba order, China’s industrial base can likely produce many thousands per month should the communist party demand it. PLA forces can flood the zone around Taiwan much more effectively than the US can.

Admiral Paparo’s Hellscape plan is creative, nimble, and laudable. But it probably can’t go head to head with a Chinese Hellscape of thousands of UxVs. Unfortunately for the United States, our industry cannot simply launch 1000 ships as Agamemnon’s did. China’s can.