I had this idea couple days ago.
Q post 38 talks about 4 carrier and escort groups in the pacific to prevent other state actors from attempting to harm us during this transition?
Could our Navy be intermingled with these cargo ships so they are not such obvious targets? I don't know the Chinese attack capabilities when targeting one of our naval vessels. If the Chinese attempted to attacks us, would they have to get much closer to differentiate our Navy from one of their cargo ships? I'm sure they don't want to sink one of their own cargo ships.
Perhaps the decoys would require the Chinese to get much closer and putting them in range for our Navy to destroy them before they got a shot off.
Perhaps someone who has better knowledge about this stuff could chime in.
I also had a similar thought except I wonder if the Chinese are intermingled. I read something, I'm pretty sure a story linked from here the other day of how quickly they can convert shipping vessels into military vessels. Are the refer containers actually climate controlled quarters for enemy soldiers? It is definitely a stretch but possible. Is there a scanning type of plane that can detect humans among the, what, 100's of thousands of containers sitting within spitting distance from both coasts. Ramble-Ramble. Who knows. It is very difficult to turn off the mind these days. I've gone so far down the rabbit hole that nothing would shock me these days. Well... except for a 4k high definition video of Bigfoot. Wouldn't it be hilarious is the Chinese invaded by way of the forests and Bigfoot beat their asses before we could. He-He. Sorry, see the mind never stops and it wanders often.