Becoming a Great “Maritime Power”: A Chinese Dream

The following is adapted from the Center for Naval Analyses report Becoming a Great “Maritime Power”: A Chinese Dream. Read a similar article adaptation at The National Interest.

By Michael McDevitt

Introduction

In November 2012, then president Hu Jintao’s work report to the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Party Congress was a defining moment in China’s maritime history. Hu declared that China’s objective is to be a haiyang qiangguo—that is, a strong or great maritime power. China “should enhance our capacity for exploiting marine resources, develop the marine economy, protect the marine ecological environment, resolutely safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests, and build China into a strong maritime power” (emphasis added).1

Hu’s report also called for building a military (the PLA) that would be “commensurate with China’s international standing.” These two objectives were repeated in the 2012 PRC defense white paper, which was not released until April 2013, after Xi Jinping had assumed Party and national leadership.

According to the white paper: 

“China is a major maritime as well as land country. The seas and oceans provide immense space and abundant resources for China’s sustainable development, and thus are of vital importance to the people’s wellbeing and China’s future. It is an essential national development strategy to exploit, utilize and protect the seas and oceans, and build China into a maritime power.”2

Answering the obvious questions

The study upon which this paper is based addressed a number of questions related to what China’s aspirational goal actually means.3  These are summarized below:

How does China understand the idea of maritime power?

In the Chinese context, maritime power encompasses more than naval power but appreciates the importance of having a world-class navy. The maritime power equation includes a large and effective coast guard; a world-class merchant marine and fishing fleet; a globally recognized shipbuilding capacity; and an ability to harvest or extract economically important maritime resources, especially fish.

The centrality of “power” and “control” in China’s characterization of maritime power

In exploring how Chinese commentators think about maritime power, it was instructive to note how many Chinese conceptualizations included notions of power and control. For example, an article in Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s theoretical journal, stated that a maritime power is a country that could “exert its great comprehensive power to develop, utilize, protect, manage, and control oceans.” It proceeded to opine that China would not become a maritime power until it could deal with the challenges it faces in defense of its maritime sovereignty, rights, and interests, and could deal with the threat of containment from the sea.

Why does China want to become a maritime power?

China’s strategic circumstances have changed dramatically over the past 20 years. The growth in China’s economic and security interests abroad along with longstanding unresolved sovereignty issues such as unification with Taiwan and gaining complete control of land features in the East and South China Seas. Of perhaps equal importance, Xi Jinping has embraced maritime power as an essential element of his “China Dream,” leading to a Weltanschauung within the Party and PLA that becoming a “maritime power” is a necessity for China.4

Finally, it wants to be a maritime power because it deserves to be; China’s reading of history concludes that maritime power is a phenomenon associated with most of the world’s historically dominant powers.5

Anxiety regarding the security of China’s sea lanes

China’s leaders worry about the security of its seaborne trade. The prominence given to sea lane protection and the protection of overseas interests and Chinese citizens in both the 2015 defense white paper and The Science of Military Strategy makes clear that sea lane (SLOC) security is a major preoccupation for the PLA. Chinese security officials can read a map, they appreciate the vulnerability of China’s SLOCs; a concern reinforced by U.S. and western security analysts who write frequently about interrupting China’s sea-lanes in times of conflict.6

When will China become a maritime power?

Remarks made by senior leaders since 2012 make it clear that the long-term goal is for China to be a leader across all aspects of maritime power; having some of these capabilities means that China has some maritime power but that it is “incomplete.” The research for this paper strongly suggests that China will achieve the goal of being the leading maritime power in all areas except its navy, by 2030.

Is becoming a “maritime power” a credible national objective?

China is not embarking on a maritime power quest with the equivalent of a blank sheet of paper. In a few years it will have the world’s second most capable navy. China is already a world leader in shipbuilding, and it has the world’s largest fishing industry. Its merchant marine ranks either first or second in terms of total number of ships owned by citizens. It already has the world’s largest number of coast guard vessels.

The United States inhibits accomplishing the maritime power objective

A significant finding is that from a Chinese perspective U.S. military presence in the Western Pacific impedes Chinese maritime power ambitions. To Beijing, the U.S. rebalance strategy exacerbates this problem. For China to satisfy the maritime power objective, it must be able to defend all of China’s maritime rights and interests in its near seas in spite of U.S. military presence and alliance commitments. In short, it must be able to successfully execute what the latest defense white paper terms “offshore waters defense” for China to be considered a maritime power.

The maritime power vision is global

A wide variety of authoritative sources indicate that maritime power will also have an important global component. The latest Chinese defense white paper indicates that PLA Navy strategy is transitioning from a single-minded focus on “offshore waters defense,” to broader global strategic missions that place significant importance on “distant-water defense.”

Assessing the Elements that Constitute China’s Maritime Power

The PLA Navy (PLAN)

When one counts the number and variety of warships that the PLAN is likely to have in commission by around 2020, China will have both the largest navy in the world (by combatant, underway replenishment, and submarine ship count) and the second most capable “far seas” navy in the world.

To this point, when comparing PLAN’s “blue water” or “far seas” capabilities projected to circa 2020, to other “great” navies of the world, navies that have the experience and capabilities necessary to conduct sustained deployments very far from home waters, the results are interesting. The PLAN will have:

  • A well balanced fleet in terms of the full range of naval capabilities— a smaller version of USN
  • As many nuclear attack submarines (6-7) as UK and France, third behind US and Russia.
  • More SSBNs (5-7) than UK and France, third globally.
  • As many aircraft carriers (2) as the UK and India.
  • 18-20 AEGIS like destroyers—second globally, more than Japan’s 8.
  • More modern multi-mission frigates (FFG) (30-32) than any other navy.
  • A blue-water amphibious force second only to USN in large (LPD/LSD) class ships (6-7)
  • A modern underway replenishment force, behind only the US.
  • A “new far seas” navy; all warships built in 21st century

The total “far seas” capable warships/underway replenishment/submarines forecast to be in PLAN’s inventory around 2020 total between 95 and 104 major warships. If one adds this number to the 175-odd warships/submarines the PLAN has commissioned since 2000 that are largely limited to near seas operations and likely will still be in active service through 2020, the total PLAN warship/replenishment/submarine strength circa 2020 is in the range of 265-273.

This raises the obvious question; how does this stack-up versus the U.S. Navy? The USN will have many more high-end ships in 2020 than the PLAN, including 11 CVNs, 88-91 AEGIS warships, 51 nuclear powered attack submarines, 4 nuclear powered land–attack  cruise missile submarines, 14 SSBNs, 33 modern amphibious ships, and 30 odd underway replacement ships. If one also includes 28 Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), the U.S. Navy is projected to have a force structure of around 260 warship/replenishment/submarines in 2020; in short, the USN and PLAN will be in a position of  rough numeric party, but the USN will maintain a wide qualitative advantage.   

If current plans are carried through, some 60 percent of the total USN force structure, or around 156 warships and submarines, will be assigned to the U.S. Pacific Fleet by 2020.  So, while the U.S. number includes more high-end ships, the total number of combatants the PLAN would have at its disposal for a defensive campaign in East Asia is significant. In this sort of defensive campaign (A2/AD) one must also consider the land based aircraft of PLA Navy and the PLA Air Force as well as the Strategic Rocket Force’s anti-ship ballistic missiles.

How large will the PLAN become?

We don’t know. This is the biggest uncertainty when considering China’s maritime power goal, because China has not revealed that number.

The China Coast Guard (CCG)

The China Coast Guard already has the world’s largest maritime law enforcement fleet. As of this writing, the Office of Naval Intelligence counts 95 large (out of a total 205) hulls in China’s coast guard.7 Chinese commentators believe that China cannot be considered a maritime power until it operates a “truly advanced” maritime law enforcement force. The key will be the successful integration of the discrete bureaucratic entities that have been combined to form the coast guard, and much work remains to be done on this score.

The maritime militia—the third coercive element of China’s maritime power

One of the most important findings of this project is the heretofore underappreciated role that China’s maritime militia plays, especially in the South China Sea. Often, it is China’s first line of defense in the maritime arena. It has allowed China to harass foreign fishermen and defy other coast guards without obviously implicating the Chinese state.

Shipbuilding and China as a maritime power

China became the world leader in merchant shipbuilding in 2010. For the last several years, global demand has shrunk significantly, and China, along with other builders around the world, now faces the reality that it must shed builders and exploit economies of scale by consolidating and creating mega-yards. In short, for China “… to move from a shipbuilding country to shipbuilding power,” it has to focus on quality above quantity.

China’s merchant marine

China’s current merchant fleet is already world class. Beijing’s goal is to be self-sufficient in sea trade. During the past 10 years, the China-owned merchant fleet has more than tripled in size. In response to the Party’s decision for China to become a maritime power, the Ministry of Transport published plans for an even more competitive, efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly Chinese shipping system by 2020.

Fishing is an element of China’s maritime power

China is by far the world’s biggest producer of fishery products (live fishing and aquaculture). It has the largest fishing fleet in the world, with close to 700,000 motorized fishing vessels, some 200,000 of which are marine (sea-going) with another 2,460 classified as distant-water (i.e., global, well beyond China’s seas) in 2014.8 The fishing industry is now viewed in strategic terms; it has a major role in safeguarding national food security and expanding China’s marine economy.

Beijing’s views on its maritime power: What are the shortfalls?

When one considers all the aspects of maritime power—navy, coast guard, militia, merchant marine, port infrastructure,9 shipbuilding, fishing—it is difficult to escape the conclusion that China already is a maritime power, at least in sheer capacity. No other country in the world can match China’s maritime capabilities across the board.

So what is the problem?

Why do China’s leaders characterize becoming a maritime power as a future goal, as opposed to asserting that China is a maritime power? Chinese experts think that China has to improve in several areas:

  • The China Coast Guard needs to complete the integration of the four separate maritime law enforcement entities into a functionally coherent and professional Chinese coast guard.
  • Increased demand for more protein in the Chinese diet means that the fishing industry—in particular, the distant-water fishing (DWF) component—must expand and play a growing role in assuring China’s “food security.”
  • Chinese projections suggest that by 2030 China will surpass Greece and Japan to have the world’s largest merchant fleet by DWT10 and that its “international shipping capacity” will double, to account for 15 percent of the world’s shipping volume. China’s goal is that 85 percent of crude oil should be carried by Chinese-controlled ships. China will become the largest tanker owner by owner nationality around 2017-18.
  • China’s shipbuilding sector is facing a serious period of contraction; thus, the biggest shortcoming is trying to preserve as much capacity as possible: among other things, thousands of jobs are at stake. Chinese builders are also working to ensure the future health of the industry by building economically competitive complex ships and thereby moving up the value chain.
  • China’s most serious impediment to becoming a maritime power is its navy. It wants its navy to be able to deal with the threat of containment, defend its sea lanes, and look after global interests and Chinese citizens abroad. Chinese assessments quite logically conclude that until its navy can accomplish these missions China will not be considered a maritime power.

When will China Become the Leading Maritime Power?

From the perspective of spring 2016, none of these shortcomings appear insurmountable. Past performance suggests that China is likely to achieve all of its maritime power objectives, except perhaps one, sometime between 2020 and 2030.

Shortcomings in the coast guard, maritime militia, and fishing industry are likely to be rectified by around 2025. Chinese experts estimate that the merchant marine objectives will be accomplished by around 2030. China seems determined to move up the value/ship complexity scale in shipbuilding. This is will depend on the success of China’s attempts to create mega-yards to capitalize on economy of scale.

China is forecast to have a larger navy than the United States in five years or so if one simply counts numbers of principal combatants, underway replenishment ships and submarines—virtually all of which will be available in East Asia, facing only a portion of the USN in these waters on a day-to-day basis. China will have a growing quantitative advantage in the Western Pacific while gradually closing the qualitative gap. China also depends on its land based air and missile forces to contribute to the defense of its home waters.

Since it is up to China’s leaders to judge when its navy is strong enough for China to be a maritime power, it is difficult to forecast a date. Their criteria for deciding when its navy meets their standards for being a maritime power are likely to revolve around several publicly stated objectives:

The first objective is to control waters where China’s “maritime rights and interests” are involved. This likely means the ability to achieve “sea and air control” over the maritime approaches to China—i.e., to protect mainland China when U.S. aircraft or cruise missile shooters are close enough to attack it, probably somewhere around the second island chain.11 “Near-waters defense,” known as A2/AD in the United States, is intended to defeat such an attack. A very important uncertainty is when, if ever, China’s leaders will come to believe that its navy can provide such a defense, because the United States is actively working to ensure that it cannot.

The second objective is being able to enforce its maritime rights and interests. If one considers this to be primarily a peacetime problem set, the combination of China’s coast guard and maritime militia are already capable of, and increasingly practiced in, enforcing Chinese rules and regulations in its territorial seas and claimed EEZ (or within the so called nine-dash line) in the South China Sea.

The third objective revolves around the ability to deter or defeat attempts at maritime containment. It is not absolutely clear what China means by “maritime containment.”

  • If “maritime containment” is intended to mean a blockade, a war-time activity, the combination of the capabilities required to “control “ its maritime approaches, addressed above, plus the capabilities associated with the “open seas protection” mission addressed above, pertain.
  • But if deterring maritime containment implies a peacetime activity involving the combination of Chinese conventional and nuclear capabilities and the perception that China’s leaders have the will to act, this deterrent is already in place—and will be enhanced by its newly operational SSBN force.
  • Deterring maritime containment may also address the broader political-military objective of making certain that the United States and other leading maritime powers of Asia do not establish a formal defense treaty relationship where all parties are pledged to come to the aid of one another. (This seems highly unlikely because of China’s economic power, geographic propinquity, and strategic nuclear arsenal, and because it has the largest navy in Asia.)

Implications and Policy Options for the United States

Implications

Whether it is the navy, the merchant marine, or China’s distant-water fishing fleet, the Chinese flag is going to be ubiquitous on the high seas around the world. There may be far more opportunities for USN-PLAN cooperation because the PLAN ships are far removed from Chinese home waters, where sovereignty and maritime claim disputes create a different maritime ambiance.

Collectively, a number of factors—the goals for more Chinese-controlled tankers and other merchant ships, the new focus on “open seas protection” naval capabilities, the bases in the Spratlys, Djibouti, and probably Gwadar, Pakistan, and the ambitious infrastructure plans associated with the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road—suggest that China is doing its best to immunize itself against attempts to interrupt its seaborne trade by either peacetime sanctions or wartime blockades.

One implication for Washington of China’s growing “open seas protection” capable ships is that U.S. authorities can no longer assume unencumbered freedom to posture U.S. naval forces off Middle East and East African hotspots if Chinese interests are involved and differ from Washington’s. Both governments could elect to dispatch naval forces to the waters offshore of the country in question.

Once the reality of a large Chinese navy that routinely operates worldwide sinks into world consciousness, the image of a PLAN “global” navy will over time attenuate perceptions of American power, especially in maritime regions where only the USN or its friends have operated freely since the end of the Cold War.

More significantly, the image of a modern global navy combined with China’s leading position in all other aspects of maritime power will make it easy for Beijing to eventually claim it has become the “world’s leading maritime power,” and argue its views regarding the rules, regulations, and laws that govern the maritime domain must be accommodated.

Policy Options

Becoming a maritime power falls into the category of China doing what China thinks it should do, and there is little that Washington could (or should) do to deflect China from its goal. The maritime power objective is inextricably linked to Chinese sovereignty concerns, real and perceived; its maritime rights and interests broadly and elastically defined; its economic development, jobs, and improved technical expertise; the centrality of fish to its food security goals; and its perception of the attributes that a global power should possess. Furthermore, it is important because the president and general secretary of the CCP have said so.

There is one aspect of Chinese maritime power that U.S. government officials should press their Chinese counterparts to address: just how large will the PLA Navy become? The lack of Chinese transparency on this fundamental fact is understandable only if Beijing worries that the number is large enough to be frightening.

Washington does have considerable leverage on the navy portion of China’s goal because of the direct relationship between the maritime power objective and its impact on America’s ability to access the Western Pacific if alliance partners or Taiwan face an attack by China. U.S. security policy should continue to focus on and resource appropriately the capabilities necessary to achieve access, or what is now known as Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC).12

Conclusion

The only thing likely to cause China to reconsider its objective of becoming the leading maritime power is an economic dislocation serious enough to raise questions associated with “how much is enough?” This could cause a major reprioritization of resources away from several maritime endeavors such as the navy, merchant marine, and shipbuilding.

Thus, beyond grasping the magnitude and appreciating the audacity of China’s ambition to turn a country with a historic continental strategic tradition into the world’s leading maritime power, the only practical course for the United States is to ensure that in the eyes of the world it does not lose the military competition over access to East Asia because without assured access the central tenets of America’s traditional East Asian security strategy cannot be credibly executed.

Read the full report here.

Rear Admiral (ret) Michael McDevitt has been at the Center for Naval Analyses since leaving active duty in 1997. During his Navy career, McDevitt held four at-sea commands, including command of an aircraft carrier battle group. He was a Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group fellow at the Naval War College and was director of the East Asia Policy Office for the Secretary of Defense during the George H.W. Bush Administration. He also served for two years as the director for Strategy, War Plans and Policy (J-5) for U.S. CINCPAC. McDevitt concluded his 34-year active-duty career as the Commandant of the National War College in Washington, D.C.

1. “Full text of Hu Jintao’s Report at the 18th Party Congress,” Xinhua, 17 November 2012, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/special/18cpcnc/2012-11/17/c_131981259.htm.

2. See State Council Information Office, The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces, Beijing, April 2013. The official English translation is available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-04/16/c_132312681.htm. Also see Liu Cigui, “Striving to Realize the Historical Leap From Being a Great Maritime Country to Being a Great Maritime Power,” Jingji Ribao Online, November 2012.

3. The link to the complete study is  https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/IRM-2016-U-013646.pdf

4. The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces, 2013; China’s Military Strategy; “Xi Jinping Stresses the Need To Show Greater Care About the Ocean, Understand More About the Ocean and Make Strategic Plans for the Use of the Ocean, Push Forward the Building of a Maritime Power and Continuously Make New Achievements at the Eighth Collective Study Session of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau,” Xinhua, July 31, 2013;  Liu Cigui, “Striving to Realize the Historical Leap From Being a Great Maritime Country to Being a Great Maritime Power,” Jingji Ribao Online,  November 2012.

5. Andrew S. Erickson and Lyle J. Goldstein, “Studying History to Guide China’s Rise as a Maritime Great Power,” Harvard Asia Quarterly 12, no. 3-4 (Winter 2010): 31-38.

6. See for example, Douglas C. Peifer, “China, the German Analogy, and the New Air-Sea Operational Concept,” Orbis 55, no. 1 (Winter 2001);  T.X. Hammes, “Offshore Control: A Proposed Strategy for an Unlikely Conflict,” Strategic Forum 278 (Washington, DC: NDU Press, June 2012); Geoff Dyer, The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China and How America Can Win (New York: Knopf, 2014), chapter 2; and Sean Mirski, “Stranglehold: Context, Conduct and Consequences of an American Blockade of China,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 3 (2013).

7.  Office of Naval Intelligence, The PLA Navy: New Capabilities and Missions for the 21st Century, Washington, DC, p. 18, http://www.oni.navy.mil/Intelligence-Community/China, and U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2015, p. 44, http://www.defense.gov/Portals‌/1/Documents/pubs/2015_China_Military_Power_Report.pdf . For comparison, the Japanese coast guard operates 54 cutters displacing more than 1,000 tons. See the Japan Coast Guard pamphlet available here:  http://www.kaiho.mlit.go.jp/e/pamphlet.pdf. The USCG currently operates 38 cutters displacing more than 1,000 tons. See the USCG website:  http://www.uscg.mil/datasheet/.

8.  “Transform Development Mode, Become a Strong Distant-water Fishing Nation,” China Fishery Daily, 6 April 2015. Online version is available at http://szb.farmer.com.cn/yyb/images/2015-04/06/01/406yy11_Print.pdf.

9. China has 6 of world’s top 10 ports in terms of total metric tons of cargo (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, Ningbo, and Dalian) and of  7 of the world’s top 10 ports in terms of container trade, or  TEUs (Shanghai, Shenzen, Hong Kong, Ningbo, Qingdao, Guangzhou, and Tianjin). No other country has more than one. China also has 6 of 10 of the world’s most efficient ports (Tianjin, Qingdao, Ningbo, Yantian, Xiamen, and Nansha). UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Review of Maritime Transport 2015, http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/rmt2015_en.pdf.

[10] Deadweight tonnage (DWT) is a measure of how much weight a ship is carrying or can safely carry. It is the sum of the weights of cargo, fuel, fresh water, ballast water, provisions, passengers, and crew.

11. The goal of “control” is found in the 2004 PRC defense white paper, from the Information Office of the State Council of the PRC, December 2004, Beijing, http://english.people.com.cn/whitepaper/defense2004. Western naval strategists/theorists normally define “sea or air control” as being able to use the sea or air at will for as long as one pleases, to accomplish any assigned military objective, while at the same time denying use to the enemy.

12. Sam LaGrone, “Pentagon Drops Air Sea Battle Name, Concept Lives On,” USNI News, January 20, 2015, https://news.usni.org/2015/01/20/pentagon-drops-air-sea-battle-name-concept-lives.

Featured Image:  Soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy patrol at Woody Island, in the Paracel Archipelago, which is known in China as the Xisha Islands, Jan. 29, 2016. (Reuters)

Latin American Navies Combat Illegal Fishing

The Southern Tide

The following article is the first in CIMSEC’s newest column: The Southern Tide. Written by W. Alejandro Sanchez, The Southern Tide will address maritime security issues throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It will discuss the challenges regional navies face including limited defense budgets, inter-state tensions, and transnational crimes. It will examine how these challenges influence current and future defense strategies, platform acquisitions, and relations with global powers.

“The security environment in Latin America and the Caribbean is characterized by complex, diverse, and non-traditional challenges to U.S. interests.” Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, Commander, U.S. Southern Command, before the 114th Congress Senate Armed Services Committee, 10 March 2016.

By W. Alejandro Sanchez

Introduction

In mid-March, Argentina’s Coast Guard shot at and sank a Chinese vessel that was illegally fishing in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Across the globe, navies and coast guards are devoting more resources to combat illegal fishing, as this maritime crime is a major cause of the depredation of the global maritime ecosystem. Latin America is no exception to this phenomenon, with the March incident in the South Atlantic exemplifying a worst case scenario. This focus towards combating maritime crimes, like drug trafficking and illegal fishing, has prompted a shift in strategies, and by extension, acquisitions among Latin American navies.

Illegal Fishing

Some examples are necessary in order to contextualize the amount of illegal fishing that is occurring in Latin American waters. It is important to mention that the following incidents occurred within the past seven months, which stresses the current gravity of this problem.

Unsurprisingly, there is a significant amount of illegal fishing carried out by fishermen within their own country’s territorial waters. For example, in May a vessel was accused of fishing close to the Revillagigedo archipelago, a Mexican biosphere off Baja California. Officers from Mexico’s Secretariat of the Navy escorted the vessel to port to investigate the origins of its multiple-ton load.

Fishermen often travel to another country’s sea without regard to international maritime borders. For example, in mid-April the Chilean Navy stopped a Peruvian vessel 74km off the coast of Antofagasta (northern Chile). The vessel had over two tons of shark meat that it had illegally fished in Chile’s EEZ. As for Colombia, in mid-February, the Navy stopped a Nicaraguan vessel that was lobster fishing in a protected area in the San Andres archipelago in the Caribbean. Months later, in early May, the Colombian Oceanic Patrol Vessel (OPV) ARC 20 de Julio stopped a vessel flying the Jamaican flag also off San Andres. The vessel was carrying one ton of different types of fish, including the parrotfish, which is protected under Colombian law.

Similarly, the Peruvian Navy seized 26 ships between January and March of this year alone off the country’s northern regions (Tumbes and Piura), which were engaged in illegal activities. While most of these vessels were fishing without authorization, five of these vessels were Ecuadorean pirates that attacked Peruvian fishing vessels in order to steal their cargo. This highlights the link between fishing and piracy in Latin America (while this problem may not be comparable to piracy off the Horn of Africa, it is a security threat nonetheless).

pescadores_ecuatorianos
The Peruvian patrol vessel “Rio Zana” detained 21 Ecuadorean fishermen that were fishing without authorization in Peru’s northern waters (El Regional Piura / April 7 2016)

Nowadays, it is unsurprising to find Chinese fishing fleets sailing across Latin American waters, either on the Pacific or Atlantic side of the continent. In July 2015, Chile deployed its OPV Piloto Pardo and a Dauphin-type helicopter to stop a fleet of Chinese fishing vessels inside Chile’s EEZ. On that occasion, the Chilean Navy determined that the ships were not carrying out illegal fishing.

As for the March 2016 incident, three Chinese vessels were fishing without authorization in the South Atlantic, within Argentina’s EEZ. The Argentine Coast Guard utilized helicopters and vessels to chase the vessels as they ignored warnings to stop. Two ships managed to flee but the Argentines shot one boat, called the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010. To make matters worse, Buenos Aires argues that while the vessel sank, it tried to ram an Argentine ship. Ultimately, the crew jumped into the sea and several were rescued and arrested by Argentine Coast Guard while others were picked up by the remaining Chinese ships.

Argentine Coast Guard encounters Chinese fishing vessels. (CNN)

Enter the FAO

It is important to highlight that Latin American governments are approaching multinational organizations for support against illegal fishing. Case in point, in recent months numerous nations have signed agreements with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to unite against this crime. In fact, eight Latin American and Caribbean states (Barbados, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis and Uruguay) have signed the legally binding Port State Measures Agreement  (PSMA).  It entered into force this past 5 June as the threshold for its activation was 25 countries and the PSMA now has 29 signatories (plus the European Union). This agreement is groundbreaking as it is regarded as the first international treaty that will directly address illegal fishing.

Moreover, in June, the Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama signed a separate agreement with the FAO to achieve “better sustainable management of fishery resources in the country safeguarding livelihoods, food production for local communities and marine ecosystems.” The FAO will now provide “technical assistance” to Panama City so the aforementioned Central American agency can formulate a national strategy to combat this crime.

Panama and FAO representatives sign agreement to cooperate against illegal fishing ( Panama 24 Horas / June 15, 2016)
Panama and FAO representatives sign agreement to cooperate against illegal fishing ( Panama 24 Horas / June 15, 2016)

The issue to keep in mind here is the greater attention that regional governments are giving illegal fishing, including requesting FAO support and pledges to fight this crime. This will have obvious repercussions in regional naval strategies and the acquisition of sea platforms.

New Objectives, New Platforms

The author argues that the possibility of inter-state warfare nowadays in the region is quite low in spite of several ongoing border disputes and occasional inter-state incidents (e.g. Bolivia and Chile; Guatemala and Belize; Colombia and Venezuela). Nevertheless, crime is prevalent not just to dry land but also at sea. In the 21st century, a principal objective for Latin American navies will be to tackle maritime crime like drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, maritime pollution and, of course, illegal fishing.

The relatively low possibility of inter-state tensions and the rise of maritime crimes have an obvious effect in the acquisition of sea platforms. On the one hand, several nations will without a doubt continue to acquire platforms more suited for conventional warfare. For example, Brazil is constructing a nuclear-powered submarine while the Sao Paulo carrier undergoes repairs. Colombia recently purchased two (used) German subs while the Peruvian Navy, via recent agreements with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp AG and Israel’s Elbit Systems, is going to upgrade its four Angamos-class U-209 subs.

The author contends that the priority of regional navies is to constructor purchase small, fast, multipurpose vessels and OPVs in order to more efficiently patrol their seas and stop suspicious vessels. For example, the Uruguayan Navy plans to acquire up to three new vessels, likely OPVS from the German shipyard Lurssen, which would be the country’s largest acquisition of new sea platforms in years. The vessels will be the new cornerstone of the fleet and will be charged with patrolling Uruguay’s EEZ for maritime criminals, such as illegal fishing vessels.

Similarly, the Peruvian Navy has acquired a Pohang-class corvette from South Korea, the BAP Ferré, which will also be utilized for patrol operations. Additionally, the Peruvian state-run shipyard Servicios Industriales de la Marina (SIMA), has finished building two new OPVs for the Andean nation’s Navy, the BAP Río Pativilca and the BAP Rio Cañete. As a final example, the Mexican Secretariat of the Navy is also constructing OPVs to patrol its EEZ. Just last November, the Mexican Navy baptized the ARM Chiapas, constructed by the state-run shipyard Astilleros de la Marina.

Peru/SIMA Launches new patrol vessels BAP Cañete and BAP Pativilca (SIMA Peru)

While any of these platforms can also be deployed for conventional warfare if necessary, the acquisition of OPVs by several Latin American navies highlights changing strategies given evolving regional geopolitics and threats. Conventional conflict is always a possibility, but the clear and present maritime danger comes from criminals, not the possibility of an invading fleet a la Spanish armada. Hence, the ongoing wave of new purchases focuses on OPV-type vessels.

Concluding Thoughts

Between 12-17 June, the Royal Canadian Navy hosted the 27thbiennial Inter-American Naval Conference (IANC), which brought together representatives from 14 hemispheric navies. The topic of the conference was the “Future Maritime Operating Environment,” with a particular focus on maritime crimes, like drug trafficking, in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific.

In his remarks at the IANC, Admiral Marcelo Hipólito Szur of Argentina explained how demographic pressures and globalization will put greater pressure on the demand for natural resources, including those found in the oceans. He described how this will push governments to protect their (maritime) natural resources which could in turn lead to conflict between nations over yet-undefined maritime borders. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the possibility of future inter-state conflict due to issues like fishing rights, however it is certainly within the realm of possibilities, given unsolved differences between Latin American states and the non-violent “Cod War” between the United Kingdom and Iceland that serves as a recent precedent.

Nevertheless, the issue does stand that climate change and population explosion will increase the demand for maritime resources, which will foment bigger fishing operations, legal or not. It is safe to assume that fishing vessels crossing maritime borders without authorization is a problem that will continue, which will in turn lead to future incidents. The accusation that the sinking Chinese vessel tried to ram an Argentine ship brings up the issue if, in the worst case scenario, illegal fishing vessels become violent and attempt to attack isolated coast guard vessels, rather than attempting to flee. The author has not found incidents of fishing vessels shooting at OPVs or other security ships, as unauthorized ships prefer to flee or talk their way out of a possible arrest, but it is likely that violent incidents will eventually occur.

In order to counter ongoing maritime crimes, Latin American navies are devoting more time and resources to monitor and protect territorial waters. The acquisition of OPVs and patrol-type vessels by regional naval forces exemplifies the growing attention to this new maritime reality. Moreover, illegal fishing is also being addressed at forums for dialogue like the IANC and now there is even the FAO framework to help focus resources on this problem.

Illegal fishing may not make headlines as compared to drug busts in the Caribbean Sea, however this is an ongoing maritime crime that affects Latin American states and will continue to occur, if not worsen.

W. Alejandro Sanchez is a researcher who focuses on geopolitical, military and cyber security issues in the Western Hemisphere. Follow him on Twitter: @W_Alex_Sanchez.

The views presented in this essay are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any institutions with which the author is associated.

Featured Image: ARC July 20 of the Colombian Navy. (webinfomil)

Unmanned Systems: A New Era for the U.S. Navy?

By Marjorie Greene

The U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Systems Directorate, or N99, was formally stood up this past September with the focused mission of quickly assessing emerging technologies and applying them to unmanned platforms. The Director of Unmanned Warfare Systems is Rear Adm. Robert Girrier, who was recently interviewed by Scout Warrior, and outlined a new, evolving Navy Drone Strategy.

The idea is to capitalize upon the accelerating speed of computer processing and rapid improvements in the development of autonomy-increasing algorithms; this will allow unmanned systems to quickly operate with an improved level of autonomy, function together as part of an integrated network, and more quickly perform a wider range of functions without needing every individual task controlled by humans. “We aim to harness these technologies. In the next five years or so we are going to try to move from human operated systems to ones that are less dependent on people. Technology is going to enable increased autonomy,” Admiral Girrier told Scout Warrior.

Forward, into Autonomy

Although aerial drones have taken off a lot faster than their maritime and ground-based equivalent, there are some signs that the use of naval drones – especially underwater – is about to take a leap forward. As recently as February this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that the Pentagon plans to spend $600 million over the next five years on the development of unmanned underwater systems. DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) recently announced that the Navy’s newest risk taker is an “unmanned ship that can cross the Pacific.”

DARPA’s initial launch and testing of Sea Hunter. (Video: DARPA via YouTube)

Called the Sea Hunter, the vessel is a demonstrator version of an unmanned ship that will run autonomously for 60 – 80 days at a time. Known officially as the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), the program started in 2010, when the defense innovations lab decided to look at what could be done with a large unmanned surface vessel and came up with submarine tracking and trailing. “It is really a mixture of manned-unmanned fleet,” said program manager Scott Littlefield. The big challenge was not related to programming the ship for missions. Rather, it was more basic – making an automated vessel at sea capable of driving safely. DARPA had to be certain the ship would not only avoid a collision on the open seas, but obey protocol for doing so.

As further evidence of the Navy’s progress toward computer-driven drones, the Navy and General Dynamics Electric Boat are testing a prototype of a system called the Universal Launch and Recovery Module that would allow the launch and recovery of unmanned underwater vehicles from the missile tube of a submarine. The Navy is also working with platforms designed to collect oceanographic and hydrographic information and is operating a small, hand-launched drone called “Puma” to provide over-the-horizon surveillance for surface platforms.

Both DARPA and the Office of Naval Research also continue to create more sophisticated Unmanned Aircraft Systems. DARPA recently awarded Phase 2 system integration contracts for its CODE (Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment) program to help the U.S. military’s unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) conduct dynamic, long-distance engagements against highly mobile ground and maritime targets in denied or contested electromagnetic airspace, all while reducing required communication bandwidth and cognitive burden on human supervisors.

An artist's rendition of DARPA's CODE concept, designed to enable operations in a electromagnetically contested environment. Illustration: DARPA
An artist’s rendition of DARPA’s CODE concept, designed to enable operations in a electromagnetically contested environment. (DARPA)

CODE’s main objective is to develop and demonstrate the value of collective autonomy, in which UAS could perform sophisticated tasks, both individually and in teams under the supervision of a single human mission commander. The ONR LOCUST Program allows UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) to stay in formation with little human control. At a recent demonstration, a single human controller was able to operate up to 32 UAVs.

The Networked Machine…

The principle by which individual UAVs are able to stay in formation with little human control is based on a concept called “swarm intelligence,” which refers to the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, as introduced by Norbert Wiener in his book, Cybernetics. Building on behavioral models of animal cultures such as the synchronous flocking of birds, he postulated that “self-organization” is a process by which machines – and, by analogy, humans – learn by adapting to their environment.

The flock behavior, or murmuration, of starlings is an excellent demonstration of self-organization. (Video: BBC via YouTube)

Self-organization refers to the emergence of higher-level properties and behaviors of a system that originate from the collective dynamics of that system’s components but are not found in nor are directly deducible from the lower-level properties of the system. Emergent properties are properties of the whole that are not possessed by any of the individual parts making up that whole. The parts act locally on local information and global order emerges without any need for external control. In short, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

There is also a relatively new concept called “artificial swarm intelligence,” in which there have been attempts to develop human swarms using the internet to achieve a collective, synchronous wisdom that outperforms individual members of the swarm. Still in its infancy, the concept offers another approach to the increasing vulnerability of centralized command and control systems.

Perhaps more importantly, the concept may also allay increasing concerns about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence without a human in the loop. A team of Naval Postgraduate researchers are currently exploring a concept of “network optional warfare” and proposing technologies to create a “mesh network” for independent SAG tactical operations with designated command and control.

…And The Connected Human

Adm. Girrier was quick to point out that the strategy – aimed primarily at enabling submarines, surface ships, and some land-based operations to take advantage of fast-emerging computer technologies — was by no means intended to replace humans. Rather, it aims to leverage human perception and cognitive ability to operate multiple drones while functioning in a command and control capacity. In the opinion of this author, a major issue to be resolved in optimizing humans and machines working together is the obstacle of “information overload” for the human.

Rear Admiral Girrier, Director of N99, delivers a presentation on the future of naval unmanned systems at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Rear Admiral Robert P. Girrier, Director of N99, delivers a presentation on the future of naval unmanned systems at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 29, 2016. See the presentation here. (CSIS)

Captain Wayne P. Hughes Jr, U.S. Navy (Ret.), a professor in the Department of Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School, has already noted the important trend in “scouting” (or ISR) effectiveness. In his opinion, processing information has become a greater challenge than collecting it. Thus, the emphasis must be shifted from the gathering and delivery of information to the fusion and interpretation of information. According to CAPT Hughes, “the current trend is a shift of emphasis from the means of scouting…to the fusion and interpretation of massive amounts of information into an essence on which commanders may decide and act.”

Leaders of the Surface Navy continue to lay the intellectual groundwork for Distributed Lethality – defined as a tactical shift to re-organize and re-equip the surface fleet by grouping ships into small Surface Action Groups (SAGs) and increasing their complement of anti-ship weapons. This may be an opportune time to introduce the concept of swarm intelligence for decentralized command and control. Technologies could still be developed to centralize the control of multiple SAGs designed to counter adversaries in an A2/AD environment. But swarm intelligence technologies could also be used in which small surface combatants would each act locally on local information, with systemic order “emerging” from their collective dynamics.

Conclusion

Yes, technology is going to enable increased autonomy, as noted by Adm. Girrier in his interview with Scout Warrior. But as he said, it will be critical to keep the human in the loop and to focus on optimizing how humans and machines can better work together. While noting that decisions about the use of lethal force with unmanned systems will, according to Pentagon doctrine, be made by human beings in a command and control capacity, we must be assured that global order will continue to emerge with humans in control.

Marjorie Greene is a Research Analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses. She has more than 25 years’ management experience in both government and commercial organizations and has recently specialized in finding S&T solutions for the U. S. Marine Corps. She earned a B.S. in mathematics from Creighton University, an M.A. in mathematics from the University of Nebraska, and completed her Ph.D. course work in Operations Research from The Johns Hopkins University. The views expressed here are her own.

Featured Image: An MQ-8B Fire Scout UAS is tested off the Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf near Los Angeles, Dec. 5 2014. The Coast Guard Research and Development Center has been testing UAS platforms consistently for the last three years. (U.S. Coast Guard)

Sea Control 121- An American Foreign Fighter in Kurdistan

pokemon-go-iraqi-mosul
Louis Park on Facebook.

By Matt Hipple

We interview Louis, the Marine Veteran of “PokemonGO in Kurdistan Meme” fame, and an independent foreign fighter with the Kurds in Iraq. We discuss his motivations for heading out to the fight, about his process of joining, integrating, and operating with the Kurdish forces in the field. We also discuss how he and his fellow western fighters coordinate their operations and regulate themselves, as well as the day-to-day realities of life in the Kurdish war zone.

Louis hopes that the popularity of his meme draws public interest to the on-the- ground realities of the fight against ISIS. He also hopes it can bring attention to those carrying on that fight. That is what we have endeavored to do with this interview.

DOWNLOAD: American Foreign Fighters in Kurdistan

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.