China Arms a Container Ship | Picket/Surveillance | First Strike | Cost Effective | Expendable

On this episode of What's Going On with Shipping, China has outfitted an armed merchant cruiser. I'm your host, Salagalano. Welcome to today's episode. For those of you who watch the show know I'm a former merchant mariner, but I'm also a historian. And one of the things I've noticed about shipping is what was

once old becomes new again. That is the case today with this very public announcement and display of a Chinese armed merchant cruiser. If you're wondering what that is, we're going to talk about that and why this is important. If you're new to the channel, hey, take a moment, subscribe to the channel, and hit the bell so be alerted

about new videos as they come out. So, here's the story from the war zone. China cargo ship packed full of modular missile launchers emerge. China has packed a deck of a medium-sized cargo ship with 60 containerized vertical launch cells, radar, and close-in weapon

systems. This is actually a pretty small ship. So, this is the ship, the Zong Da 79, right along the waterfront in Shanghai. Uh, it is not being masked at all. And a matter of fact, it has its weapons on full display here. What you

can see is a row of about five 40ft containers about five across. So, not a very large container ship at all. Up forward, it has some of those containers with some weapon systems we'll talk about. The next three rows actually fit

uh vertical launch cells. Each of the containers have a four tube launcher in them. There are five across, so it gives you about 60 VLS cells. And then the after stack has some radars on board. The ship is not loaded. You can tell how

light it is here. Uh, very much out of the water, so not a very heavy load. This is a computerenerated image of the ship. You get a little bit of a better view here. Uh you'll see midship those three sets of cells there with container

VLS cells in them. Just back a you have a phased array radar and other surveillance radar systems that are on board. And then up forward you have two close-in weapon systems here designed to shoot down uh missiles coming in. You

have chaff launchers here. And then some people have talked about that these look like life rafts. I don't think these are life rafts. Number one, they're too big. Uh those are massive life rafts if those are life rafts. I actually think these are surface decoys uh that are actually dropped and inflate and actually send

off radar images so that they look like vessels. Uh this is a ship that's designed to serve a specific role. It is not designed to go to toe-to-toe against an Arley Burke class destroyer, for example. This ship seems to be filling either one of two missions. that of an

armed merchant cruiser or maybe a disguised commerce raider. So, just to show that this ship is not hiding at all, here it is right along the waterfront of Shanghai. The ship is located right at the Hudong Jang Hao ship building shipyard. She's squawking

her AIS is showing that she was there as of uh 5 minutes ago. Now, she's not a big ship, 97 m, so just over 300 ft in length. The vessel has only shown up as of 2024 and is operated solely within

the coastal waters of China. I talked about two different names for this vessel. An armed merchant cruiser or a commerce raider. Let's talk about historically how these have been used. During World War I, many navies fitted out what were known as armed merchant

cruisers. The British in particularly did this. They needed cruisers to patrol and guard their sealanes. The problem was the British did not have sufficient cruisers to do that. So they would take select merchant vessels, they would put guns on board them, replace the civilian

crew with a military crew, and they would go out and conduct patrols. Uh merchant ships were really good for this because they can carry a lot of lot of fuel. They had great endurance and great range, but they were not geared for really surface fights. Now, armed merchant cruisers did not hide their

identity. It was very clear who they were. uh the ships were registered, they were listed as such. Now during World War II, we also have the example of commerce raiders. Now, this was done in World War I. We've actually go back to the Civil War where we had commerce raiders like the Alabama, the

Shannondoa, and the Florida. World War II, the Germans put out a dozen of these commerce raiders. And these ships were used to go out and interdict trade and traffic on the sea lanes of the world. Now, they were not designed to go

toe-to-toe against a convoy. They were out there trying to find the lone merchant ship. The reason that we really saw commerce raiders fall out of use by the middle and end of World War II is convoy systems took over globally and there was really no more pickings for

them. So, the Chinese are being very open about Zonga 79. There there's no hiding this vessel. They want everybody to know that. We can see the weapons and the sensor suites very prominently on board the ship. I will note that I think the Chinese are having a little fun with

us because all the containers have markings on it. Now, I am not fluent in Chinese, so I use Google Translate for this, but you do get some interesting translations of some of the containers on board the ship. again, China's hemp ocean park human coastal corridor community project and then China's

nation ocean uh and human disease relief and relocation community plan. Again, I don't think you Google translate is being 100% accurate here. Now, why would China do this? China is building a huge navy. The PLN, the People's Liberation Army's Navy, is rapidly expanding. We're

seeing the growth of the PLN. We just had the Defense Department release their annual report on the military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China. China's naval forces continue to grow at a massive level with construction of not

just aircraft carriers, but also amphibious assault vessels, cruisers, destroyers, a a myriad of smaller combatant vessels, and even their submarines are starting to really push into new technology thresholds that are making them much quieter to operate. So,

you have to be asking yourself, well, why then would China put out an armed merchant cruiser? It seems as if they have sufficient naval vessels. Our merchant cruisers give you a lot of versatility, especially when you're a nation like China who has a massive, massive merchant marine. So, one of the

things that China can capitalize on is their ship building capacity. This story from the war zone, alarming Navy intel slide warns of China's 200 times greater ship building capacity. This is out of the office of naval intelligence where this slide was released that showed the

growth of the Chinese ship building capacity. China right now is the world's largest commercial ship builder. Uh they are building uh as of 2024 51% of the world ships. Last year 2025 they have orders for over 60% of the world ships.

Now China is not alone in putting this type of weaponry into containers. We know that many nations have done this. TWWZ had this report here about the United States doing this when President Trump visited Fort Bragg. There were these quote unquote mysterious guided

rocket launchers that were in shipping containers close by while he was there. The army has a counter drone system that pops out of a commercial shipping container. And we know about Ukraine's use of their mass drone assault to attack Russian bombers throughout Russia

a few months ago. But the key here is that China is building auxiliaries to their navy. And one of the things is the integration of the Chinese merchant marine and the Chinese military. They are extremely good at this. You got to

go back to the British in the 19th and 20th century to really see such an integration. The US unfortunately never achieves this in any meaningful way. The British do and the Chinese are doing that. And we can see that through a

whole batch of examples. This story from War on the Rocks, for example, talks about how China's civilian shipping could enable a Taiwan invasion. In particularly, they are building fairies for use along their coast that have military application. In other words, it

can carry tanks and heavy equipment. The Chinese are designing landing craft barges that are usable for potential Taiwan beach landings. These barges allow commercial vessels like those fairies to tie up alongside and you can bridge these fairies together. I did a

whole video on it. You can see the link above there that allow you to kind of cross from the barges onto land directly. It makes an offload or an over the beach operation very quick and you can put a huge throughput, a lot of tonnage across the bridges very quickly.

China has also used its heavy lift capability in a very unique way, outfitting them as temporary helicopter carriers. This is a heavy lift ship that is used to deliver both ships and cranes around the world, but it has an auxiliary use by the Chinese for

helicopter and vertical envelopment. So, China has developed a merchant marine that serves both a commercial role but also a military auxiliary role. Now, within the United States, we kind of do that. We have a separate entity within the United States called the military

sealiff command. It's kind of the government's merchant marine. But what we have failed to do historically is integrate the commercial merchant marine into the military. Now I will say this, the more military you make a ship in its capabilities, the less commercially viable it is. And that works with the

Chinese because the Chinese subsidize their commercial mercharine quite a bit. So that when you have a company like the co uh Costco, the Chinese overseas shipping company, not the big box store, that that has a T in it. Costco is the largest shipping line in the world. When

you look at containers, heavy lifts, bulkers, uh tankers, but it also has a government entity to it. Matter of fact, the Chinese outfit every ship with a political officer on board. And if you want to learn more about Chinese commercial shipping, I really want you to direct you over to the US Navy War

College and the China Maritime Studies Institute. CMSI does a whole series of publications that go into a host of topics including this. They have a quarterly review. They do their news. They have these larger kind of deep studies into China maritime development.

And then they have the red books uh and the maritime reports and the notes that really do a great job. And there's entire volumes devoted to commercial shipping. So why would China do this? Why outfit a commercial vessel with vertical launch systems, with radars,

with with decoys, with self-defense systems? What do you get from that? Well, the US has just announced two massive ship building programs. One of them is the Trump class. These are the new what he calls a battleship. I did a whole video on this, too, where you can

talk about it. This is actually a kind of a a reinvention of what's called the strike cruiser concept that's been around since the 1980s. Basically, this will replace the Ticonderoga class cruisers. This is a massively expensive, very large ship with a host of

capabilities on board from missile launches to conventional weapons to lasers to rail guns. I mean, this is just a a behemoth of a ship and it's massive in scale. The problem with it is going to cost a lot and it's going to take a long time to build and some of

the weapon systems on board is unproven. At the same time, we've announced the replacement of the Constellation Frigot with a version of the US Coast Guard's National Security Cutter, which is an interesting choice because the the

there's several versions of this that Huntington Engles had out there. The one they're pushing is basically an offshore patrol vessel variant, not a frigot variant. They actually have a frigate variant which has VLS cells. This ship is very much geared for presence

mission. It doesn't have a lot of the capabilities. What they're doing is decking over the A section which had a boat launching station for the Coast Guard and instead you'll be able to put some 40ft containers back here. So you can get a little bit of modularity back

there. But even this ship is going to take about 2 years to outfit. an armed merchant cruiser you can outfit very quickly. I mean, the ship exists. In the case of Zadong79, all you have to do is put these containers up on deck, wire

them together, establish a control center, which is probably located just forward of that house there, uh, just aft of the VLS cells right here. You put some crew on board, and this ship is out there. And really comes into the issue of how would you use this ship? Now, the

ship is not designed to go toe-to-toe with a Burke class destroyer. It is not a cruiser. It is It is not. It's an armed merchant cruiser cruiser because the ship will have an extensive long range. It can go out and loiter. You can put a dozen of these ships out there and

they can sail off the coast of Hawaii, for example, or Guam or the Philippines, and they can basically sit there. Now, they're not disguised. You'll see them. You'll know who they are because of their large weapon systems on board. Plus, you can track them. But what it

does give a nation is a first strike capability. Yes, I know. I know. I'm hear everybody screaming right now at it. Oh, we can sync those things in in no time. I'll get a B1 with, you know, a SyncX missile, a JDAM, and we'll sync it. Yeah, but you got to wait for the

Chinese to fire first. And the problem is if you surround Hawaii with 10 of those things and again they have 60 missiles on board. There is 600 inbound missiles coming in to Pearl Harbor or to Joint Base Hickham or at Guam at

Anderson or over in the Philippines or Singapore or the West Coast of the United States or Japan or Korea. What it allows the the Chinese to do very quickly is to get that first strike off. Now, you can sink them when they're empty, but are you going to waste

weaponry on them? That's part of the self-defense features that are on the ship. And more importantly, they can disguise themselves. Again, they look like commercial vessels. You would have to visually track them. You know, the world's oceans are jammed with vessels. You know, the world's oceans are a busy

place. Come over to marine traffic. Uh you can disguise yourself and kind of run a muck. We're seeing that with dark fleet now. Now, you can penetrate through this mess by using AI, satellites, uh both, uh infrared, visual satellites, radar, and tracking systems

so that you can find them. But some of these vessels could be disguised so that you don't know that they are armed. Or better yet, you send a a host of them out there that aren't armed. And again, they are the decoys. Which ones do you watch? Now, you will start to notice very quickly ships that are just

loitering around in an area that aren't moving. Ships that aren't showing up on AIS can be detected by satellite and so you can pay attention to those. But what it does is cloud the screen. It gives you more targets to look at. And if

China can put together not just one ship, this is Zong Dong 79. You know, if there are 78 other versions of that out there, that's a problem. And now all of a sudden you have increased. Now the US could do the same exact thing. The limitations the US has it doesn't have a

deep merchant marine to pull from. Uh it would have an issue with manning these vessels, crewing and operating them. You can pull ships from the ready reserve force and do the same exact thing. But that takes ships away from strategic seal lift. What this does is gives China the ability to very quickly increase the

size of their strike force. If you put five of those and attach them to a Chinese squadron that's going to do a presence mission in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Philippines, that's a big striking element. All of a sudden, it doesn't just have the VLS cells, the

vertical launch cells that are on the destroyers and cruisers that are in the People's Liberation Army Navy. Will they be killed by a single bomb? Yeah, but most ships are going to be mission killed by a single bomb. Uh if you look throughout history and you look, you know, most ships don't absorb a lot of

damage. One of the arguments for a big large ship is that it won't have to pull back as frequently as a smaller ship either because of expending its weaponry or damage to the ship. I do have this question. What is better to build? I I

mean the Trump class USS Defiant is going to take years and billions of dollars before you see that platform arise. Whereas Zong Dong 79, you can pump those out for several million dollars pretty quick and all of a sudden

have a force that can be fielded rapidly and arguably expendable. Uh if you lose that ship, do you care about it? Yes, the crew is the issue. It's one of the reasons why US Navy is pushing for this autonomous type vessel. The problem is

autonomy is not working right now. We we can't get it to work at a sufficient scale to make it practical. So why not build a series of small cargo vessels or buy them and convert them and you have this presence mission out there where

you can basically strike. We did this for a long time with the afflat prepositioning force where we loaded entire cargo ship and stationed them around the world. We put all the gear on board for a marine brigade in the Mediterranean in the Indian Ocean and out in the western Pacific. The ships

had everything except for the Marines and the aircraft. Basically, why not load several of those vessels? You put VLS cells on them. You load them up with tomahawks and and and SM3s and sixes and whatever else you need and you can sail them along with carrier strike groups and surface groups and amphibious ready

groups. And now all of a sudden you have that strike capability. Did you really need a Arley Burke destroyer to launch tomahawks into Nigeria? I don't think we're worried about the Nigerian uh military forces striking back. You could have done that with a platform very

similar to this and executed your strike mission for a fraction of the deployable cost. Plus, you keep your weapon systems, your your heart of your weapon systems, the Arley Burke destroyers, back in the United States undergoing maintenance, keeping them ready, and

they're not being worn down. Uh, the Chinese are demonstrating a concept that has been out for a long, long time. And the question is, do we pay attention to it? I think the Chinese are intentionally trying to draw attention to this. You don't have a ship like this

along the waterfront of Shanghai if you don't think it's going to get a picture taken. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, hey, take a moment, subscribe to the channel, and hit the bell so you be alerted about new videos as they come out. Leave a comment, share it across social media, and if you can, support the page. How do you do that? You hit the super thanks button down below or head on over to Patreon and

become a monthly yearly subscriber. Until our next episode, this S signing