CDR Salamander - China Finds its Back Yard Vibe

Over the weekend on X, Singapore-based Alec posted a graphic that deserves a proper geographic explainer for an American audience.

As we go through the below, I’d like you to ponder a few things:

• Were you the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), would you do anything else?

• Given the size of 1QFY27’s PLAN, do you really have any other options, given what the second largest navy, the U.S. Navy, needs to train and operate?

• A quarter century ago, the U.S. Navy and the national security apparatus thought nothing about sending two carrier strike groups through the Taiwan Strait. How does that CONOPS look in late 2026?

Of course, that means we have to go to the chartroom.

It is important here for people to understand the distances involved, what that means for how the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is operating, and the utility of its Interior Lines of Operation when it comes to the waters off Taiwan.

A fair portion of the regulars here are familiar with VACAPES off Norfolk. For those who have led an incomplete life and have never been East Coast Sailors, that is the training area that everyone uses because it is close and easy to manage.

Let’s all take a moment to ponder how much time we’ve spent in W72, because to get from Norfolk to the edge of Whisky-Seventy-Two, you’ve got to venture out roughly 172 nautical miles (nm), as represented by the red circle.

Right opposite Taiwan is Quanzhou, PRC. If you were to travel 174 nm from there, roughly the same distance to the edge of W72 in VACAPES—the smaller of the circles below—you’ve pretty much covered all of the island of Taiwan.

The larger of the two circles above represents the roughly 1,200 nm distance from NAS Key West to Caracas, Venezuela. That is about the same distance over which you see PLAN ships operating in Alec’s short video at the top of the post.

For reference, the distance from Norfolk to the Strait of Gibraltar is about 3,300 nm. The distance from San Diego to Taiwan is 6,000 nm.

I tried to find a map of the Puerto Rico Operating Area (PROA), but no joy on my end. If I recall correctly, it covers most of the Eastern Caribbean. Heck, the Caribbean itself is +/- an ‘American lake’.

With the PLAN being the world’s largest navy, the argument can be made that the Western Pacific, roughly halfway out to Guam, is going to become its lake…or at least the PLAN is going to try to make it so.

We need a larger Navy and one characterize by range and capacity.

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