Gessler commented, November 4, 2022, in his customary lucid manner, with Pete inevitably commenting in [...] brackets:
The Chinese seem to be sending another missile telemetry & tracking ship [this time Yuan Wang 6 of 25,000 tonnes] to the Indian Ocean Region. This is ahead of a planned Indian ballistic missile test later in this month [ie. late Nov 2022].
The rate of Chinese ISR activities on the Indian Ocean side of the Malacca Strait is seeing a definite increase. What's interesting is that the two main tracking ships designated by the Chinese for military/ISR usage, namely the Yuan Wang5 and 6, were commissioned into the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) roughly 15 years ago but their forays into the Indian Ocean have only recently begun in earnest.
Gessler suspects Indian development of missile platforms, like those below, greatly interest the Chinese for obvious reasons. Such platforms being:
- the Agni-Prime [aka Agni-P MRBM] (assumed to have [DF-21D like?] anti-ship capabilities)
- the indigenous BMD program (a component of which, called the AD-1 interceptor, was test fired Nov 2, 2022
- not to mention India's regular ballistic missile programs [eg. the land based Agni series and K SLBM family]
So if Chinese Yuan Wangships [as well as Chinese satellites, surveillance aircraft, large UAVs and ground stations] have the capability to collect telemetry data about these Indian systems [not to mention “Yuan Wang 4 off the coast of Western Australia”] when missiles are tested, China will undoubtedly collect telemetry.
Gessler wonders when & if India would send its own recently-commissioned tracking ship, INS Dhruv (which he talked about on SubMattshere) into the South China Sea [to collect Chinese data].
Earlier in 2022 Indiasigned an MoU with Vietnam for Mutual Logistics Support - the first such agreement signed by Vietnam with a foreign power. Gessler suspects the building blocks which could enable an Indian presence, symbolic or otherwise, in the South China Sea, are being put in place.
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Later breaking news “Indian Navy Plans To Stop Chinese Spy Ship [Yuan Wang 6] From Entering India’s EEZ” reported November 6, 2022.