This satellite image taken on March 25, 2025 and received on April 3, 2025 by Planet Labs PBC shows three Chinese barges connected via extendable bridges in waters off Zhanjiang city, in southern China’s Guangdong province. Handout / Planet Labs PBC/ AFP

A US Naval War College defense experts say Chinese barges spotted off the country’s south coast could be used to land heavy equipment and thousands of personnel in a possible invasion of Taiwan.

The expert revealed Beijing’s another potential weapon — barges that can connect via extendable ramps to form an 820-metre-long (half-mile-long) pier from deep waters to land.

With retractable legs that can push into the sea floor, the Naval War College said they could create a platform for personnel and “hundreds of vehicles” an hour to land on Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.

“These barges are clearly meant to facilitate amphibious invasion against Taiwan,” Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told AFP.

Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would have been forced to rely on small amphibious landing vessels to get ashore.

Only a handful of Taiwan’s beaches are suitable for large-scale amphibious landings — giving Taipei a critical edge in the defense of the island.

“These barges may enable Chinese forces to make landings even on the more challenging terrains of the Taiwanese coastline,” Sung said.

This, he added, “gives the Chinese military a greater selection of potential landing spots, and spreads Taiwanese defenses thin”.

Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC obtained by AFP show the system deployed in the waters off Zhanjiang city of Guangdong, southern China, at the end of March.

Earlier, in a state TV programme military commentator Wei Dongxu discussed the barge ability to transport large numbers of heavy equipment onto an island “while keeping their feet dry”.

“Once the naval and air forces effectively control the air and sea, then this… barge will appear,” he said.

And another three barges, dubbed Shuiqiao (“water bridge” in Chinese) by analysts, are under construction in southern China, the US Naval War College said.

China could harness its world-leading shipbuilding industry to rapidly build many more barges at affordable cost, Erickson said.

Beijing has ramped up military pressure on Taiwan in recent years and held multiple large-scale exercises around the island that are often described as rehearsals for a blockade and seizure of the territory.

US officials say President Xi has ordered his military to be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.

Beijing this week launched what it called “punishing” drills around Taiwan, sending jets and warships in a rehearsal for a blockade and assault on the self-ruled island.