China’s shipbuilders are teasing a new coast guard ‘mothership,’ and there’s talk it could be an aircraft or drone carrier [Video]

In early August, military bloggers started buzzing about a small detail on a Chinese shipbuilder’s social media.

The state-owned 708th Shipbuilding Research Institute said on August 8 that it’s planning something new to meet the local coast guard’s needs — a “mothership” that can operate in the far seas.

Little else about the project was revealed. The announcement only said the institute had debuted the ship’s design at a coast guard equipment conference in Zhejiang.

The shipbuilder said the vessel was designed according to “system and mission requirements” from the coast guard.

But the Chinese words for “mothership” are also the words used for “carrier,” leading local bloggers to discuss in earnest what the new vessel could be.

A law enforcement agency running a carrier-equivalent ship would be unprecedented in a world where coast guards typically rely on smaller, faster ships.

Yet China has recently been looking into bigger and bolder vessels for its coast guard that are strikingly similar …