The Planning Work missions for The Cargo Ship Robbery in GTA Online's The Chop Shop DLC involves several key tasks including sabotaging port operations, securing Coast Guard disguises, stealing a Skylift helicopter for extraction, and you also have the option to disrupt enemy air support.

Like the other robberies, this robbery has two mandatory and one optional planning work.

Planning missions are the most important preparatory missions for any Chop Shop robbery in GTA Online. You can start all your planning work missions from the planning screen by accessing the computer from your Salvage Yard.

Planning Work 1: Sabotage and Disguise

In this mission, you must destroy some critical records and steal the Coast Guard outfit for the robbery. For this, you must go to the marked LSPA (Los Santos Port Authority) office. The location you get is completely random.

LSPA office entrance.

So far, we've had one at the Del Perro Pier and the Elysian Island. In this guide, we got the Elysian Island LSPA office. Regardless of the location, the mission structure is exactly the same.

When you get to the LSPA office, you need to find a circuit box that is always nearby. You need to turn off the security cameras using the circuit box so you can enter the office.

Side note: if you get the Del Perro Pier as your location, you will find the circuit box behind a big blue stair wall.

In our case, the circuit box was on the wall to the right side of the main entrance of the LSPA office.
Once you've disabled the security cameras, you can enter the office.

When you get inside, you first need to make your way to the computer at the far end of the office and hack it.

The computer with the digital records of La'oub Princess cargo ship.

After accessing the computer, click 'My Computer' and 'External Device (J:).'

After that, click on BruteForce.exe to hack into the computer.

You will get a mini-game where you must freeze each column when the highlighted letter is within the horizontal blue strip.

Freeze all the highlighted letters in the middle to successfully hack.
We strongly recommend you stock up on armor and ammo before you start this planning mission.

First, you need to go to a marked location to steal a Skylift. The location you get is completely random. So far, we've gotten Sandy Shores Airfield and Fort Zancudo.

In this guide, we got Sandy Shores Airfield. However, regardless of the location, the mission structure is exactly the same for both (or all) locations.

When you get to the location, take cover by any nearby options (sand-filled boxes or containers) and take out as many soldiers as possible.

Taking out the soldiers at the site.
Mount the automatic machine gun and clear more enemies.

Once you've eliminated enough soldiers, enemy attack choppers will spawn.

Take them out as well.

You must take out the choppers before you can steal the Skylift. You will get 2-3 enemy choppers. For some reason, we only got one in this playthrough.

We're assuming that is because we started firing at the chopper from a fair distance as soon as the first one spawned.

The game somehow glitched and didn't make the rest of the spawned choppers hostile towards us.

After eliminating the enemy choppers, get into the Skylift and lose the cops.

Flying away in the Skylift, trying to lose the cops.