This article can be found in its original form at ASPI here, and was republished with permission.
In the past 12 months, China has provoked considerable attention with its reclamation activities in the South China Sea, particularly in the Spratlys where it controls seven maritime features.
China’s history of salami-slicing presents a dilemma to regional countries as well as external powers with regional interests: do they escalate an incident each time China slices the salami and risk open conflict, or stand down and allow China to augment its territorial claims.
The million-dollar question remains: who or what will freeze China’s reclamation in the South China Sea? The answer: nothing, really.
It has been proposed, for example, that like-minded states carve out a ‘code of practice’ that would stress the rule of law and mirror the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. Another option being considered by the Pentagon is to send US aircraft and ships within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese-built reefs in the Spratlys, to challenge its influence there.
While useful, such proposals won’t freeze or rollback China’s attempts to change the facts on the ground (or the high sea). China’s reclamation seeks to pre-empt any decision that would come from the Philippines’ challenge in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea over China’s nine-dash line claim to the South China Sea.
It’s noteworthy that China hasn’t only engaged in salami slicing; it has sought to use the attraction of its economy, trade and aid to offset its high-risk behaviour.
Following the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident with the Philippines, China launched a charm offensive in 2013, wooing ASEAN with a treaty of friendship and cooperation, stressing that it intended to take China–ASEAN relations from a ‘golden decade’ to a ‘diamond decade’.
This year, when concerns about China’s reclamation have intensified, China has offered a carrot: US and other countries would be welcome to use civilian facilities it’s building in the South China Sea for search and rescue and weather forecasting, when ‘conditions are right’.
China has also used its economic weight to deftly tilt the balance (of influence, at least) in its favor. Its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is attracting long-standing American allies such as Great Britain, Australia and South Korea. China has stolen a march on the US in the battle to win friends and influence people.
And the economic offensive doesn’t end with the AIIB. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—a free trade agreement that would involve ASEAN, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea—is seen as a rival to the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership. China’s Silk Road Economic Belt is also another lure for peripheral countries keen on leveraging on China’s economic ascent.
Concerted and effective opposition to China’s fait accompli in the South China Sea requires an astute mix of diplomacy and deterrence. It might take the form of a regional effort to get China to clarify its nine-dashed line claims based on UNCLOS principles, an ASEAN ultimatum for China to at least freeze its reclamation activities, and joint ASEAN–US patrols near the reefs being reclaimed by China. This looks unlikely to emerge anytime soon.
ASEAN was damaged in 2012, when it failed—for the first time in its 45-year history—to issue a communiqué due to differing views over the South China Sea. ASEAN has recently upped its game by underscoring the dangers of China’s reclamation, but there’s little the group can do apart from pushing for a formal Code of Conduct. A successful conclusion of the code isn’t assured; China dangles the carrot of code negotiations to buy time even as its carries out reclamation.
For all its rhetoric about the need to uphold international law and the freedom of navigation, the US is conflicted when it comes to China. It all boils down to this: will the US risk its extensive relationship with China over a few rocks in the South China Sea? As Hillary Clinton once said: how does the US ‘deal toughly’ toward its banker?
To get a sense of the effect of China’s creeping invasion of the South China Sea, one only need look at Vietnam. Faced with China’s challenge to its claims to the Paracel Islands, Vietnam has purchased Kilo-class submarines, reportedly armed with sub-launched land-attack Klub missiles that could threaten Chinese coastal targets. But Vietnam didn’t fire a shot when China towed a US$1b oil rig into waters claimed by Vietnam last year. On a recent trip to Hanoi, Vietnamese scholars told me that Vietnamese military officers urged sterner action, such as firing on Chinese ships, but senior leaders vetoed them, instead deciding to sit back and let China incur ‘reputational damage’.
Not many people in Asia would agree with what China is doing in the South China Sea. But as it stands, China’s strategy—salami slicing, using offsets to soften risky behavior and accelerating its reclamation activities in the absence of significant opposition—can be summed up in two words: simply brilliant.
William Choong is a Shangri-La Dialogue senior fellow for Asia-Pacific Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Construction on South Johnson Atoll, includes a ramp and a large enclosed storage area where China is thought to have moved PLC-09 122mm self propelled artillery, seen in satellite photos. (VietnamNet.vn.)
By Zachary Abuza
Since 2014, China has engaged in massive reclamation efforts in the Spratly islands, adding nearly 2,000 acres according to the U.S. Department of Defense. The placement, construction, and capabilities of these islands, including Johnson South, Cuateron, Gaven, Fiery Cross, Subi, Hughes, and Mischief Reefs has given China several strategic advantages and puts many Vietnamese held features in a vulnerable position. As a result of the reclamation approach, China can not only potentially control sea lines of communication and enforce an air defense identification zone (ADIZ), but challenge the status quo control of features in the Spratly Islands through anti-access area denial (A2/AD) operations.
While Chinese assertiveness and lack of transparency have driven Hanoi and Washington closer together, there remain limits to how far the relationship can grow as their strategic concerns and priorities do differ, despite US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s 31 May – 2 June visit to Vietnam where he signed a Joint Vision Statement for Operations. While the United States is focused on freedom of navigation and overflight, Hanoi is primarily concerned about how the potential for China’s reclamation to challenge their Spratly holdings. Hanoi is right to be worried. China’s Military Strategy, released on 26 May 2015, makes clear that its patience for the “militarization” and “illegal occupation” of what it deems its territory is unlikely to be tolerated as it continues to make strategic investments in its maritime capabilities in the sovereign defense of its maritime domain.
Disputed islands in the South China Sea. (South China Morning Post)
Chinese reclamation efforts and their ambiguous territorial claims threaten US interests in freedom of navigation. China has already said that “freedom of navigation definitely does not mean military vessel or aircraft of a foreign country can willfully enter the territorial waters or airspace.” On 25 May, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman put it this way: “The freedom of navigation and over-flight, however, is not tantamount to the violation of the international law by foreign military vessels and aircraft in defiance of the legitimate rights and interests as well as the safety of over-flight and navigation of other countries.” China has warned that US challenge flights and ship passages, which to date have observed a 12NM distance from China’s reclaimed islands, are “irresponsible, dangerous” and risk provoking war.
The United States has signaled that it is going to increase its freedom of navigation and overflight challenges. On 27 May, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter warned Beijing: “There should be no mistake about this: The United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world.” The establishment of territorial waters from artificial islands and the potential declaration of an ADIZ is an absolute redline for the United States.
But for Vietnam, the concern is less about freedom of navigation for the $5 trillion in international trade that passes through the South China Sea, and a more immediate concern about what Chinese reclamation efforts mean for the security of their held features.
Without naming Vietnam, China’s Military Strategy warns that “some of its offshore neighbors take provocative actions and reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied.” And in response to the international media’s focus on Chinese reclamation, their state-controlled media has highlighted Vietnamese efforts. As such, the 2015 white paper makes very clear that the China’s over-riding strategic interests are maritime in nature and that its force development will focus on “critical security domains,” maritime being the first.
China’s white paper singled out external countries that “Maintain constant close-in air and sea surveillance and reconnaissance against China,” i.e., the United States, it warned that “some of its offshore neighbors take provocative actions and reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied.” The focus on that “illegal occupation” will be driven by China’s new capabilities garnered through its reclamation efforts.
While China’s white paper reiterates Beijing’s long-held position that it only uses force defensively, Vietnam has an acute understanding of Chinese pre-emptive tactics. The white paper states a goal of “enrich[ing] the strategic concept of an active defense.” This translates into stealthy, proactive and pre-emptive tactics used to “defend” Chinese sovereignty. Their “active defense” strategy also talks about force “flexibility and mobility,” improved joint operations, “concentrat[ion] of superior forces, and the “integrated use of all operational means and methods.” The South China Sea is the proving ground for these new doctrines.
Vietnamese lawmakers are raising the concern that once China’s current reclamation efforts are completed, that it will have the military capabilities in place to renew offensive operations and grab other features, such as they did in March 1988 on Johnson Reef.
Yet that is unlikely for two reasons. First, the diplomatic fallout would be too great. A majority of the ever cautious ASEAN would be galvanized to act. There’s nothing that threatens China’s strategy more than a multilateral response and possibly even ASEAN moving forward with a Code of Conduct, without Chinese participation. Until now, as Patrick Croninput it, China has successfully “relie[d] on this risk-averseness, and resort[ed] to divide-and-conquer tactics any time the 10 Southeast Asian countries appear to be uniting on anything, even a broad statement, that might be construed as antithetical to China’s interests.”
Second, Vietnam’s own military modernization has not gone unnoticed in China. Hanoi has seen the steadiest increase in military expenditure in the region: 314 percent between 2005 and 2014. In that time it has developed the most lethal power projection capabilities in Southeast Asia, including one of the largest navies, with three advanced Kilo-class submarines already delivered and the final three due in service by 2016, two Sigma class corvettes, two Gepard class frigates, with two more with ASW capabilities to be delivered this year, Molniya class corvettes now in indigenous production. Vietnam also has the most sophisticated missile force in the region, which now includes Yakhont and Shaddock anti ship missiles in indigenous production, Brahmos anti-ship missiles and Klub submarine launched missiles that could target Chinese facilities in the Spratlys. While Vietnam could not prevail in a a protracted conflict, it does have the capabilities to significantly raise the costs for China in a short-term exchange.
As such, China will continue to build islands, but by continuing to seize un-occupied and sub-surface features. It has no need to provoke armed conflict by attacking manned islands. Scarborough Shoal, seized in 2012 from the Philippines, should be seen as the template for future Chinese action. No country has China’s capacity for making islands out of nothing. Reclamation efforts will soon be complete and their fleet of dredgers will move on to the next strategic locales.
And it is this that gives Hanoi pause. More than armed conflict and the military seizure of some of the its 19 features with military personnel, is the fear of China becoming emboldened to begin engaging in A2/AD activities, harassing Vietnam from resupplying its small and indefensible concrete structures and some 16 lighthouses and aids to navigation, until diplomatic pressure against them builds and cooling off for a period of time before resuming those operations.
One of Vietnam’s two Gerard Class Frigates. Two more will be delivered later this year.
China is increasingly poised to engage in A2/AD operations against Vietnam in two locales, the Union and Thitu Reefs. The recent reports of self-propelled artillery being deployed on those reclaimed islands, as well as ramps in new structures to store such equipment, only adds to the mounting evidence that China is laying the groundwork for A2/AD operations, should it determine the conditions to be favorable.
For example, the two newly reclaimed islands of Johnson South and Hughes, are located in close proximity (eyesight) to four Vietnamese held features: Sin Cowe Island, Sin Cowe East Island, Collins Reef, and Landsdowne Reef. Sin Cowe is the seventh largest feature in the Spratlys, an eight hectare natural island, which the Vietnamese have built several all weather facilities, a lighthouse and done limited reclamation efforts. The latter two are simply concrete structures built on submerged reefs. While neither Johnson South or Hughes will have an airfield, both have helicopter pads and ports to enforce a maritime siege. Likewise, the newly created Gaven Island poises China to be able to deny access to Vietnam’s Sand Cay, a natural island, but also its small facilities on nearby Namyit, Eldad, and Petley Reefs.
Of even greater, though longer term, concern to Hanoi is the reclamation and construction on Cuateron Reef and Fiery Cross Reef, with its 3,000 meter airstrip, which will ultimately give China the ability to project power southwesterly into the Vietnamese-dominated London Reef region.
There needs to be serious thinking in both Hanoi and Washington about contingency planning should China try to enforce A2/AD policies. To date, China has used both grey hull and white hulled coast guard ships to try to block resupply efforts to the derelict Philippine ship Sierra Madre grounded on Second Thomas shoal, east of Mischief Reef. These newly reclaimed islands give them all the more capabilities for A2/AD operations. China will likely raise the costs for others for what it terms the “illegal occupation” of its national sovereignty. Routine and concerted harassment efforts may become a cornerstone of China’s strategy.
As Vietnam and the United States continue to deepen ties, including the current visit by Secretary of Defense Carter and the June 2015 visit to Washington by Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, the two sides need to seriously discuss the strategic implications of China’s reclamation, and how they may be used to challenge the status quo. Aid for maritime security modernization, including $18 million for patrol craft are insufficient. And while the US and Vietnam have agreed to move forward with arms sales, there will always be limits to how much Hanoi is willing to and can afford to buy; though there are suggestions of some joint production. On 1 June, Secretary Carter and Vietnamese Defense Minister General Phung Quang Thanh signed their first “joint vision statement for greater operational cooperation.”
Make no mistake, Hanoi will never formally align itself with Washington against China. But it would be an important signal if this document addressed Chinese A2/AD operations, though unlikely as the bilateral defense relationship is still defined by the 2011 Memorandum of Understanding, which does not include kinetic operations.
And yet, the two sides need to have candid discussions regarding such scenarios. If China begins to engage in A2/AD activities how will the two sides respond, if at all? Could A2/AD operations against Vietnam pull in the United States? Should, for example, China try to prevent helicopter access to Vietnamese islands, would the US consider that the de facto imposition of an ADIZ? Is the harassment of Vietnamese resupply ships equivalent to trying to prevent international maritime shipping or freedom of navigation challenges by the US Navy?
Vietnam is clearly pleased with a more robust US presence in the South China Sea and its more assertive challenge to Chinese sovereignty claims. But efforts to date failed to deter China from reclamation. The next phase has to be developing a strategy that deters China from using the reclaimed islands to challenge the territorial status quo, freedom of navigation and overflight.
Zachary Abuza, PhD is an independent analyst of Southeast Asian politics and security affairs. Follow him on Twitter at @ZachAbuza.
As a closer to last week’s run of UUV articles – a publication review by Sally DeBoer, UUV week’s associate editor.
Discussion of how the world’s navies will incorporate unmanned underwater vehicles into their doctrine and infrastructure is very broad indeed. Will these technologies be complementary to existing architecture or stand-alone platforms? Will they operate autonomously (indeed, can we even achieve the degree of autonomy required?) or with a man-in-the-loop? Perhaps because the technology is so (relatively) new and (relatively) unestablished, with potential applications so vast, the conversation surrounding it blurs the line between what is and what if.
Conceptualization of the US Navy UUV concept
Thankfully, the meticulous staff at the RAND Corporation’s National Defense Research Institute, sponsored by the US Navy, produced a thorough and carefully researched study in 2009 outlining the most practical and cost-effective applications for underwater technologies. Using the US Navy’s publically-available 2004 UUV Master Plan (an updated version of this document was produced in 2011 but has not been released to the public) as a jumping off point, the authors of the study evaluated the missions advocated for UUVs in terms of military need, technical risks (as practicable), operational risks, cost, and possible alternatives. Analyzing an “unwieldy” set of 40 distinct missions spanning nine categories initially advocated in the 2004 version UUV Master Plan, the study delivers a more focused approach to how the US Navy might best and most effectively incorporate these unmanned systems. Though the UUV Master Plan document is, admittedly, quite out of date (the study itself now more than six years old), the findings therein are still highly relevant to the discussion surrounding the future of unmanned technologies beneath the waves.
Working with the very limited data available on UUVs, the authors of the study considered the technical issues inherent in developing and fielding unmanned underwater systems. Though the full complement of UUV hardware and software is considered in the study, for brevity’s sake this publication review will focus only on two technical factors: autonomy and communications. Intuitively, some missions (such as those of a clandestine or sensitive nature) demand more autonomy than others (like infrastructure monitoring or environmental surveillance). Pertaining to ISR missions, the study suggested that vehicle autonomy limitations would be a significant limiting factor. AUVs may not, for instance, be able to effectively determine what collected information is time-critical and what information is not. This potential weakness could be a tremendous risk; either the notional AUV would fail to transmit information in a timely manner or it would transmit non-useful information needlessly, risking detection and sacrificing stealth. Without significant development, therefore, lack of autonomy would present a technical challenge and, for some advocated missions, an operational risk. In the words of the authors “autonomy and bandwidth form a trade-space in which onboard autonomy is traded for reach-back capability and visa-versa.” The study also addressed perhaps the most frequently cited criticism of UUV technologies: communications and connectivity. Submerged UUVs, the study concludes, are limited in their ability to communicate by “the laws of physics,” while surfaced UUV’s ability to communicate are limited by technology (mast height, data output rates) and present yet another trade-off between stealth and connectivity. These communication systems are, in the words of the authors, considered mature, and are unlikely to be significantly improved by additional research and development.
It’s important to note (and probably obvious to readers) that development of technologies to address the challenges of autonomy and communication for UUV platforms are likely completely opaque to this author. The study’s findings, however, seem to match the challenges the US Navy is facing developing UUVs in the years after its publication. The Office of Naval Research’s Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV) program awarded a $7.3million contract to Metron Inc. to develop and field autonomy software, hardware, and sensors. The LDUUV, a pier-launched system, intended for endurance missions of more than seventy days, will need to effectively avoid interference, requiring a high degree of autonomy. A 2011 Office of Naval research brief envisioned that the LDUUV would “enable the realization of fully autonomous UUVs operating in complex near shore environments” concurrent with the development of “leap ahead” technologies in autonomy. In November of 2014, ONR unveiled a plan to develop an ASW mission package for the LDUUV, pursuing technology development in mission autonomy, situational awareness, and undersea sensors, with emphases on software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop simulations, and other ASW mission package components. Whether or not intensive R&D will produce the degree of “leap ahead” autonomy necessary for such operations remains to be seen. In the meantime, however, the RAND study’s recommended UUV missions are of particular interest and may dictate the application of funding in a time of scarcity. Put another way, the study’s conclusions provide a cogent and clear roadmap for what the US Navy can do with UUVs as they are and will reasonably become, not how it would like them or envision them to be.
LDUUV Prototype
So, then, there is the million (multi-billion?) dollar question: what missions are practically and cost-effectively best suited for UUVs, given these limitations, especially if a mismatch between desired technical functionality and funding and actual ability and allotments continues? The authors suggest (in concurrence with CIMSEC’s own Chris Rawley) that UUV technologies are first and foremost best suited for mine countermeasures, followed in priority by missions to deploy leave-behind sensors, near-land or harbor monitoring, oceanography, monitoring undersea infrastructure, ASW tracking, and inspection/identification in an ATFP or homeland defense capacity. These recommendations are based on already-proven UUV capabilities, cost-effectiveness, and demand. UUVs performing these missions, in particular MCM, have seen steady and
Conceptualization of the Knifefish SMCM UUV System
encouraging progress in the years since the study’s publication. NATO’s Center for Maritime Research and Exploration (CMRE)collected and analyzed data from four UUVs with high-resolution sonar deployed during Multinational Autonomy Experiment (MANEX) 2014. The Littoral Combat Ship’s (LCS) mine-hunting complement includes a pair of Surface Mine Countermeasures (SMCM) UUVs, dubbed Knifefish,that uses its low-frequency broadband synthetic aperture side-scanning sonar to look for floating, suspended, and buried mines and an onboard processor to identify mines from a database. The way ahead for longer-term missions demanding greater autonomy and reach-back over long distances is, for the time being, less clear.
This publication review is truly a very (very!) cursory glance at an incredibly detailed, highly technical study, and in no way does justice to the breadth and depth of the document. I encourage interested readers to download the original .pdf. However, the study’s contributions to an overall understanding of how and where UUVs can practically and cost-effectively support naval operations are significant, effectively reckoning the need to develop cutting-edge technologies with sometimes harsh but ever-present operational and financial realities. UUVs will undoubtedly have a significant role in the undersea battle-space in the years to come; RAND’s 2009 study provides keen insight into how that role may develop.
Sally DeBoer is an associate editor for CIMSEC. She is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a recent graduate of Norwich University’s Master of Arts in Diplomacy program. She can be reached at Sally.L.DeBoer(at)gmail(dot)com.
Week Dates: July 6-10
Articles Due: June 30
Article Length: 500-1500 words
Submit Articles to: nextwar (at) cimsec.org
Since the leaders of the Surface Navy unveiled the concept of Distributed Lethality in January 2015, the idea has been met with
enthusiastic support. The basic premise behind Distributed Lethality is that the Surface Navy can increase its combat power by distributing it across more platforms. By threatening the adversary with more, capable platforms, the Distributed Lethality concept forces the adversary to spread his intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets thin and complicates his targeting problem against U.S. Navy assets. As Rear Admiral Peter Fanta, Director, Surface Warfare, put it, “if it floats, it fights.”
Distributed Lethality implies a radical shift in the way we train our Sailors, deploy our forces, and equip our ships. Distributed Lethality will require a fundamental change in the way the U.S. Navy thinks about projecting firepower. For decades, the centerpiece of U.S. Naval operations has been the Carrier Strike Group. Some may see Distributed Lethality as the answer to China’s and other’s Anti Access Area Denial (A2AD) strategy, which is apparently designed to keep U.S. Navy aircraft carriers out of the East and South China Seas. Along the same lines, there are those outside the Surface Navy that suspect Distributed Lethality may be in part a way to wrest control from an often dominant aviation community. Whatever the case is – Distributed Lethality is here and moving forward.
During the first full week of July, CIMSEC will host a series focused on the implementation, opportunities, and challenges of Distributed
Lethality. Contributions may address programs already in place,
existing technology that could be reoriented toward Distributed
Lethality, new tactics or technologies that might enhance the concept, or some other facet of Distributed Lethality. How can Distributed Lethality defeat the A2AD strategy? What will Distributed Lethality Command and Control look like? How will logistics work? Should Distributed Lethality be employed only by the Surface Navy? Or should it be a Navy-wide concept of operations?
Publication reviews will also be accepted.
James Drennan is a Surface Warfare Officer and a Distinguished Graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School’s Systems Engineering Analysis program.
