How are they supposed to support the PLA navy if all they have is a boat with some military radios? The only thing I can think of is cannon fodder or search and rescue.
All of sudden there can be 50,000 or 100,000 ships carrying sea mines, underwater listening devices, depth charges, targeting systems or short range anti-ship missiles. Just like their merchant cargo ships they have some standardization that allows PLA to plan ahead what they can carry.
If USN carrier group must sail to help Taiwan in short notice and huge fleet of these ships just happen to stand in the way, then what? It's huge risk just to just assume that they are unarmed and sail trough, or that they have not mined the area. Just being able to provide targeting for Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles is a big problem.
Even if just 10% of them are armed, USN would have to sink or inspect every one of them to neutralize the threat. 7th fleet is not carrying enough anti-ship missiles board to take them down quickly.
Sounds like they're using civilian ships as human shields or cannon fodder to me. What's the legality of this? I feel like this would run afoul of some sort of international law requiring combatants to be identified[1], or preventing them from using civilians as human shields[2]. Can
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war#Lawful_conduct_of_b...
The OP gives an example:
> In the South China Sea, the Spratly Islands have attracted most attention as the Chinese government has built artificial islands on reefs and shoals in these waters, militarizing them with aircraft strips, harbours and radar facilities. Chinese fishing boats bolster the effort by swarming the zone, intimidating potential competitors, as they did in 2018, suddenly dispatching more than 90 fishing ships to drop anchor within several miles of Philippines-held Thitu Island, immediately after Manila began modest upgrades on the island's infrastructure.
Other obvious uses are espionage, observation, and covert transportation.
