What is causing the supply chain shocks? People have said that its manpower shortages and vax mandates, but aren't most ports in the US union? And aren't they relatively high skilled and high-paying jobs? From what I know about unions, also, the benches are deep enough with newbies that they can keep things staffed. Also, most places vax mandates aren't effective yet or only just becoming effective? .
So why would all these ships be sitting off the shore? You can see them on tracking maps, but can someone confirm that the number of ships is abnormally high? Or is that just some of GAW confirmation bias? Also, under what flag are the majority of these ships domiciled? It looks like some of the tracking sites let you filter by ship's flag, but the ones I looked at required paid subscriptions. So open question for shipfags - whose ships are sitting offshore?
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Further questions. Lets just say you're China, and you want to invade. Of course using merchant ships is an interesting way of moving troops and weapons. Almost like the offshoring movement was 100% to plan for an invasion. Would you be able to use other country's ships as well? Who are proxy nations? Singapore? Iran? Can you use tankers as well? or Just bulk carriers? How would you unload? Would it need to be advance teams at ports? Possible to have helicopters onboard? Finally, lets just say you were going to spring the trap. How would you keep from tipping your hand? Would positioning your ships abnormally give them away? Would you be able to turn off your ship's location? Would that be a giveaway? Or do ship position updates not happen frequently (I saw many on the ship trackers that were 3-4 days old for ships that were clearly still underway)? Once again, shipfags, is this common?