The Chinese regime has built out several new facilities with intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities on its artificial islands in the South China Sea over the past few years, according to a recent analysis of satellite imagery by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI).
“New facilities likely designed to support vehicle-deployed [electronic warfare] or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems have been installed on all of China’s ‘big-three’ Spratly outposts: Fiery Cross, Mischief, and Subi reefs,” AMTI’s Dec. 2 report states.
“These upgrades underscore the fact that a major function of China’s bases is to provide unparalleled ISR coverage of the South China Sea.”
AMTI identified several new facilities built since satellite imagery of these outposts was last analyzed in 2022.
The Spratly Islands are a chain of more than 100 tiny islands, reefs, and atolls that lie west of the Philippines and in the middle of critical shipping lanes in the South China Sea. Rich in marine life and energy resources, the islands are contested territory that several nations claim as their own.
The Chinese regime has seven outposts in this chain that include a wealth of air bases, naval ports, missile sites, and other military infrastructure.
From 2023 to 2024, new antennas were installed on at least six sea-facing facilities across the Fiery Cross Reef, Mischief Reef, and Subi Reef outposts. Images also showed vehicles carrying sensing and communications equipment near or on these facilities.
AMTI stated that the grouping of facilities resembles “several Chinese mobile [electronic warfare] systems,” in which partially camouflaged vehicles carry different equipment for jamming different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Five such vehicles were seen on the facility built on Mischief Reef, and on Subi Reef, the facilities appeared to be connected to an older electronic warfare deployment area.
The researchers wrote that these new facilities differ from other antenna-and-vehicle deployments seen on these outposts in their distinctive setups, which suggest “a more specific function.”
The satellite images also captured a “concrete circle approximately 50 yards in diameter and containing seven smaller concrete platforms” being installed on the Mischief outpost in 2023. According to AMTI, it has similarities to other circular concrete areas installed previously for mobile electronic warfare systems that allow for rapid deployment, with the “circular array suggesting a potential direction-finding purpose.”
In early 2025, two weatherproof domes meant to protect radar or similar equipment were installed on opposite sides of the Subi Reef outpost. AMTI researchers said they resemble others built in 2017, identified by Johns Hopkins senior national security researcher J. Michael Dahm in 2020, to provide a broad-range intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system in the South China Sea.
In addition to electromagnetic warfare systems, tarp-covered vehicles seen along the western and northern edge of Mischief Reef in 2023 may have been meant for kinetic weapons, according to AMTI.
“The positions are likely capable of accommodating a wide variety of road-mobile weapons platforms, including artillery guns or rockets, or even vehicle-mounted versions of the same close-in weapons systems installed on the point defense towers on the islands,” the report reads.
