A newly DVIDS-hosted Army University Press documentary offers a starting point for understanding China’s growing ability to project force around islands, but the military and political choices it depicts are more varied — and more constrained — than a simple invasion scenario.1 2 4
By PAI
Aug. 30, 2026
WASHINGTON — A 48-minute Army University Press documentary now hosted by the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service examines China’s force-projection capabilities, including small- and large-island seizure operations and the phases of amphibious landings. The production, filmed June 29 and posted July 22, was made by Kyle Davis and is organized around the Pacific command, China’s worldview and military modernization before its force-projection section begins at 20:43.2
Peter Wood, a senior China analyst for Army Transformation and Training Command G2, called the film an accessible orientation in an Aug. 30 LinkedIn post. He said its original Army University Press YouTube channel had been removed in a recent reduction of Army social-media sites and directed readers to the DVIDS version.1 3
The film’s subject reaches beyond a question of whether China could land troops on Taiwan. Force projection is the capacity to move, protect and sustain military power beyond a state’s immediate territory. In China’s case, it includes naval and air operations in nearby waters, long-range strike and sensing systems, logistics, coercive patrols, blockade options and amphibious forces. The Congressional Research Service says the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, is increasingly operating in the western Pacific, Indian Ocean and waters around Europe as its modernization extends to ships, weapons, command-and-control systems, logistics, training and exercises.5
A range of military options
Taiwan is central to the issue. China’s government says it seeks peaceful reunification under “one country, two systems,” but its 2022 white paper also says Beijing will not renounce the use of force and reserves what it calls necessary measures against external interference and separatist activity.7
The Pentagon’s 2025 assessment describes several possible PLA campaigns to compel unification. A joint firepower strike could combine missile and air attacks against military and government targets. A joint blockade could attempt to curtail maritime and air traffic for weeks or months while pairing naval and air forces with missile strikes, electronic warfare, network attacks and information operations. The same assessment says China could consider seizing Taiwan’s offshore islands as part of a blockade campaign.4
A joint island landing campaign is the most consequential option, but not the only one. The Defense Department describes it as a three-dimensional amphibious assault aimed at breaking shore defenses, establishing a beachhead and building sufficient combat power to seize territory or force unification. That would require the PLA to obtain and maintain air and maritime superiority and to rapidly reinforce and sustain forces ashore — demands that make a large landing among the most complex operations in warfare.4
The distinction matters because activity short of an invasion can still change the operating environment. ChinaPower, using Taiwan Ministry of National Defense data, counted 3,764 PLA aircraft entries into Taiwan’s de facto air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, in 2025, a 22.4% increase from 2024. It also recorded two named large-scale PLA exercises around Taiwan that year.8
Those figures should not be described as breaches of Taiwan’s sovereign airspace. An ADIZ is a security buffer used to identify and monitor approaching aircraft; it is not territorial airspace under international law. ChinaPower notes that no PLA aircraft have been publicly tracked in Taiwan’s territorial airspace, a distinction that is important when measuring coercive activity and escalation risk.9
Fleet growth changes the menu, not the outcome
China’s naval buildup supplies more of the tools required for both nearby coercion and longer-range operations. CRS reported in April 2025 that the PLAN had more than 370 battle-force platforms — a category including major surface combatants, submarines, ocean-going amphibious vessels, aircraft carriers and auxiliaries. Citing Defense Department projections, CRS said that total was expected to reach 395 ships in 2025 and 435 in 2030.5
Amphibious platforms are particularly relevant to island scenarios. CRS identifies the Type 071 amphibious transport dock, the Type 075 amphibious assault ship and the Type 076 as newer, larger vessels that would have value in a Taiwan-related landing scenario. The first Type 075 entered service in 2021, and the first reported Type 076 was launched in December 2024; CRS said the Type 076 was reported to have an electromagnetic catapult for drones. The report also says such ships can serve other missions, including supporting China’s claims in the South and East China seas, humanitarian assistance, maritime security and noncombatant evacuations.5
This dual-use character complicates inference from a hull count. The presence of amphibious vessels does not by itself establish the mission for which they are being prepared, and neither an amphibious ship nor a carrier guarantees the joint combat power a landing would require. CRS specifically cautions that comparisons based principally on ship numbers or displacement can give a highly inaccurate picture of relative naval capability because weapons, sensors, software, networking, readiness, sustainment and mission differ.5
China is also examining ways to expand transport capacity beyond dedicated warships. CRS says observers assessing a potential large-scale invasion have focused on civilian ferries and other commercial ships that could augment military transport and landing capacity; reported PLA exercises indicate Beijing is exploring and testing that concept. Whether and when China will be capable of a large-scale invasion remains a subject of debate, the report says.5
The wider force-projection picture also includes systems that enable forces to find targets, communicate and support operations at distance. The Pentagon’s 2025 assessment says China’s land-based sensors, special-mission aircraft, unmanned aircraft, naval patrols and space-based systems improve maritime-domain awareness and support long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. It says the PLA conducted exercises in 2024 that tested elements of strikes, port access disruption and other Taiwan-related options.4
The limits on an amphibious assault
Capability development does not erase the obstacles to an operation across the Taiwan Strait. The Pentagon says a full-scale landing would carry “enormous risks” for China and would require coordination across multiple operations while the force creates and sustains a beachhead. Its report also assesses that the PLA would face challenges coordinating multiservice strikes and integrating cyber capabilities into joint combat operations, in part because of limited combat experience and organizational changes after the 2024 dissolution of the Strategic Support Force.4
A 2024 China Maritime Studies Institute volume published through the U.S. Naval War College reaches a similarly cautious conclusion. It says Taiwan’s defensive geography is formidable and a large-scale amphibious invasion is among the most difficult military operations to execute. At the same time, the study says the PLA is reforming, acquiring new capabilities and training to improve its prospects. The two propositions are compatible: military modernization can increase options without making a landing routine or assured.6
Logistics is a central reason. A force that gets troops and equipment to shore must protect transport routes, suppress defenses, unload under pressure, move inland, replace losses and sustain combat while facing possible air, sea, missile, cyber and information challenges. The requirement is not merely to reach an island but to maintain a viable force there. That is why the Pentagon frames air and maritime superiority, rapid buildup and sustainment as prerequisites rather than secondary details.4
The United States and Taiwan are part of this calculation, although U.S. policy does not create an automatic military response. The Taiwan Relations Act says the United States will provide Taiwan defense articles and services needed for sufficient self-defense and will maintain the capacity to resist force or other coercion that jeopardizes the security or social or economic system of people on Taiwan. It directs the president and Congress to determine the appropriate response to a threat through constitutional processes.10
The 2026 National Defense Strategy says the United States will pursue deterrence by denial along the first island chain while seeking expanded military-to-military communication with the PLA for strategic stability, deconfliction and de-escalation. That pairing reflects the practical problem posed by frequent operations: readiness and deterrence must coexist with channels to reduce the chance that an encounter becomes a crisis.11
What the documentary can — and cannot — establish
The DVIDS production is useful as an introductory map of the subject. Its official synopsis says it surveys the PLA’s size and scope, military history and doctrine, including island-seizure and amphibious-landing concepts. It is a government-produced educational documentary, however, not a public intelligence estimate, a prediction of conflict or a declaration of U.S. policy.2 12
For readers assessing developments around Taiwan or other islands, the important questions are therefore separate: What forces and supporting systems are being fielded? What training and operational patterns are observable? Which coercive option would serve Beijing’s objectives in a particular crisis? And what constraints would remain once forces moved from exercise to combat? The available evidence shows continued Chinese growth in platforms, sensors, training and operational tempo, alongside enduring operational and political uncertainty.4 5 6 8
The central lesson is not that fleet expansion makes an invasion inevitable. It is that China’s ability to project force has broadened the set of tools available for coercion, presence, blockade, limited island operations and, at the far end of the spectrum, a major amphibious campaign. Each option has different warning signs, risks and requirements — a distinction that is more useful than treating force projection as a single capability or a countdown to war.4 5 7