From the galleasses at the Battle of Lepanto to the aircraft carriers of today, the capital ship has been that ship type that is capable of defeating all other types. That is the general and simplistic definition of the term, but to speculate on the future capital ship, we must understand the underlying characteristics of a capital ship and its role in fleet architecture and design. We will start with the ship itself and then move outward to its context and implications for maritime strategy.
The Core of the Fleet
The adjective “capital” is used because the ships to which it has applied have been the biggest and most expensive of the naval vessels of their day. This was the case due to the armament they carried; the most and biggest guns available and later the most and most capable aircraft. Whether smooth bore cannon versus rams, number of guns available for a broadside or the caliber of rifled guns, the name of the game has been weight of fire and hitting at distance. The protection of capital ships required significant amounts of investment, first in armor, then in escorts. The expense and the difficulty of building capital ships meant that they were the least numerous ship type. However, their number was important in determining overall naval power. Generally, the capital ship inventory of the most powerful navies was in the dozens.
The physical characteristics just discussed had a powerful influence on fleet design and by extension on maritime strategy. The capital ship was the tool by which a nation could contend for command of the sea, either globally or regionally. Thus a nation’s fleet was designed around the capital ship in various ways.
First, they had to be supported by a variety of lesser ship types that performed functions such as scouting and protection. In this sense the capital ship was the pivot of fleet design. Given the existence of other, potentially hostile capital ship fleets, distribution of capital ships was a key issue. If there was a sea invasion threat to the nation, a “home fleet” of capital ships was necessary. On the other hand, depending on the threats to a nation’s maritime commerce, there was frequently a need to deploy capital ships, individually or in small squadrons, to counter or eliminate these threats, but that raised the danger that they would be caught by a larger force and destroyed. The British concept of the battle cruiser, a heavily armed but lightly armored and fast ship, was intended to address this dilemma. As additional threats such as the torpedo boat, submarine, and aircraft emerged, additional protective measures had to be taken such as escorts and design changes including torpedo bulges and dense anti-aircraft secondary batteries.
The capital ship has been the ultimate arbiter of command of the sea, both in war and peace. Command of the sea can be most usefully thought of as the balance of strength among contending navies. The navy with command of the sea is free to disperse its forces to exercise control in various localities and more broadly, has various strategic options open to it that are closed to the navy and nation that has lost command. The expense of capital ships and their consequent relative scarcity, the time required to replace losses and their intimate connection with command of the sea, coupled with the strategic importance of such command, led national leaders and admirals to be cautious about committing their capital ship fleets to the test of battle. Even a small perceived imbalance of power has caused admirals to try and avoid pitched battle; like going “all in” in Poker, one must be very confident of one’s hand.1 Thus decisive naval battles have been rare and most of those that have occurred involved the weaker force being surprised, cornered or forced into battle by their national leader.
Since the age of sail, the capital ship has been the unit of measure for naval power. When a nation seeks great power status, it starts building a powerful navy, this being true even of historically continental powers such as Germany, the Soviet Union, and now China. This has produced naval arms races and wars. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 was an attempt to suppress naval arms races by limiting the total tonnage of warships and imposing a hiatus on building capital ships among the U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.
Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Kaga (Colorized by Lootoko, Jr.)
After World War II, the U.S. Navy found itself with near absolute global command of the sea but retained a significant number of its capital ships for the purpose of exercising command of the sea in peacetime. Such exercise consisted of deploying carrier battle groups around the periphery of Eurasia in order to enforce the international order the U.S. desired. In this case the necessary number of capital ships became a function of the combination of deployment demands, maintenance requirements, training, and personnel tempo.
Capital Capabilities
The large deck aircraft carrier has been the capital ship since the start of World War II. Its hold on this status is based on the effectiveness and utility of its embarked tactical aircraft. The question is whether it will retain that status or be replaced by something else. We will take on this question based on the characteristics and factors that have been discussed.
Let’s start with weapons. The advent of micro circuitry, new forms of sensing and artificial intelligence have transformed missiles, in all their forms, into perhaps the dominant and decisive type of weapon at sea, both for offense and defense. Most ship types carry them and countries such as China have developed land-based ballistic missiles of very long range that can seek ships. Advanced surface-to-air missile systems now constitute a lethal threat to any aircraft except perhaps those possessing the most advanced stealth technology. Modern anti-ship missiles are increasingly sophisticated and hard to defend against.
All of this has difficult if not dire implications for the continued status of the aircraft carrier as capital ship. Certainly, additional measures can be taken to enhance the defense of both tactical aircraft and the carrier, but these will add to the expense of the total system to the point that it could outweigh the value of the offensive capability it possesses. At that point, according to George Friedman, it becomes “senile.”2 If indeed the missile becomes the key weapon, many different ship types can carry them, for both war at sea and shore bombardment. The question then becomes whether missiles are best concentrated in a large “arsenal ship” or distributed out among a lot of different ships. If concentrated in a few large hulls, it is possible that these “missile battleships” (BBM?) would be the new capital ship. Such concentration would certainly make it easier to coordinate missile salvos.
However, looking beyond the ship itself reveals some factors that militate against concentration. The first is the inherent risk in concentrating offensive firepower in a single ship. Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski articulated the concept of tactical stability which states that as we pack more offensive capability into a ship, there is a point at which its defensive capability ceases to increase proportionately. At that point, escorts are needed.3 Moreover, if a task force has a key capability installed on one or a few ships, their loss would neutralize the whole force, and thus it is tactically vulnerable and subject to catastrophic failure rather than graceful degradation. For this reason, the Navy is developing the concept of distributed lethality: mounting offensive missiles on as many ships as possible in order to complicate enemy targeting and reducing the risk of catastrophic degradation to the force as a whole.
Another issue is the distribution dilemma. For today’s Navy, it takes two forms: global and regional. Globally, having only ten available aircraft carriers limits the presence the U.S. can generate in multiple regions simultaneously. Moreover, strategic adjustments to deployment patterns must be made on the basis of carrier groups, which is a rather coarse methodology, sort of like trying to draw a precise, detailed picture with a large-tipped magic marker. Regionally, deploying carrier groups must “starburst” into individually operating ships to accommodate all the Geographic Combatant Commander’s engagement commitments. This prevents routine training to maintain combat readiness skills and of course opens individual ships, especially the carrier, to surprise attack. There is also the risk involved in operating carriers in the threatened littoral. This risk is manifest not only at the tactical level in which attacks are more likely to be successful, but in the strategic risk of losing a precious capital ship. Again, the emerging concept of distributed lethality promises a way to avoid or at least moderate the dilemmas and risks.4
The emergence of the missile as the “weapon of decision” both at sea and ashore has a couple major implications. First, since missiles can be mounted on almost anything, the relationship between ship size and characteristics and weapon power is broken. It would seem to make little difference if a salvo of missiles is launched from a single ship or many. Second, the distribution of offensive power among a lot of different ships promises to reduce both operational and strategic risk in various ways and eases the distribution dilemmas.5 This would seem to spell doom to the capital ship concept, and in this writer’s opinion, it does, at least in the conventional sense of a single ship type.
There is, however, another way to look at the matter. The key capability of a capital ship has been to deliver a superior weight of fire at a longer range than anything else. Certainly, our “BBM” would have plenty of missiles to fire, but that is not enough. Those missiles must be fed targeting information to be of any use. International law doesn’t permit firing missiles down a line of bearing and letting them open up their sensors at a certain point and hit the juiciest-looking contact. That makes them “indiscriminate” and therefore illegal. So, without targeting, the BBM or any missile ship intending to fire over the horizon, is useless.
Guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70), during a joint Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Navy ballistic missile flight test. (U.S. Navy photo)
Missiles are getting smarter, but there are a couple of reasons that it is tactically and operationally inadvisable to just light off a salvo with incomplete targeting and identification. First, if facing sophisticated defenses, the salvo must be timed precisely to saturate or at least confuse defenses so that at least some missiles get through. Second, missiles themselves will likely be at least somewhat scarce resources and so must be used efficiently. To achieve both objectives, an area-wide network of sensors, processing and decision making must exist beyond the hulls of the fleet. Granted, individual ships will have their own targeting capabilities, but these likely will not be sufficient for getting full kinetic range from their missiles.
Merging Capital Ship and Networked Force Concepts
Putting it all together, it seems useful to regard the fleet battle force network as the future equivalent of the capital ship. It and it alone allows the delivery of a useful weight of fire at long range in a naval fight. The application of the capital ship term may not be absolutely necessary, but it does confer some useful organizational effects.
First, if the network becomes the pivot of fleet design, certain new perspectives emerge. A key one is a fresh understanding of how existing and potential ship types relate to each other. There isn’t room in this essay to tease out all of these threads, but there are several insights that can be mentioned.
First, since the network consists of physical nodes and connectors (sensors, communication relays, etc.) it must receive physical as well as cyber protection. This is an important potential new role for aircraft carriers. Using a new air wing composition, the carriers can provide air superiority over distributed lethality forces and protect airborne assets like P-8s and Tritons, provide communications relay in the event that satellites are knocked out, and perhaps provide targeting services to missile ships. Thus, carriers would become escorts for the network. An advantage of this new function is that they would not have to operate as close in to the enemy shore as they would if their air wings constituted the key offensive strike capability and the risk to aircraft is reduced. This would allow carriers to remain viable and useful for the foreseeable future.
Second, since physical concentration would not be necessary for combat effectiveness, the risks associated with the regional distribution dilemma would be substantially avoided. Globally, since combat power would be distributed among a larger number of ships, a finer strategic distribution picture could be drawn, assuming that each forward fleet has its own battle force network established.
A network-enabled distributed lethality force would also mitigate the strategic risks associated with the traditional capital ship concept, especially in an era of renewed naval competition. A fight for command of the sea using such a force would not necessarily entail an “all in” decision, providing some strategic decision making flexibility for fleet commanders. Crises or perhaps limited conflicts that occur within the range arcs of major power denial systems could produce a risk dilemma for the U.S. if its offensive power remains concentrated in traditional capital ships. This is precisely what, for instance, the Chinese hope to create if conflict breaks out over any of their contested island claims or even war on the Korean Peninsula.
Missile technology appears to give a decisive edge to the tactical offensive at sea – the historically normal state of affairs. In the early years of the Pacific War, aircraft carriers dealt with this condition by attempting to strike effectively first, the paradigm being the Battle of Midway. However, if the enemy’s offensive power (missiles, say) is dispersed and hidden, then such a remedy is unavailable. Thus capital ships, in attempting to intervene in some littoral conflict would be excessively vulnerable; that is, their loss would be incommensurate with the strategic gains promised by the operation. Capital ships should only be risked when the potential strategic gain, usually command of the sea, is worth such risk. The point is that in the emerging world it may not be worthwhile to employ traditional capital ships even when regional command of the sea is at risk, as they could be lost without prospect of meaningful gain. Network-enabled flotillas would substantially obviate the dilemma.6
Without going into the murky world of cyber warfare, it is worthwhile to point out that the network has offensive and defensive potential beyond supporting missile warfare. Offensive cyber attacks can disrupt enemy command and control and targeting. It would make sense to have such capabilities inside the lifelines of a fleet battle force network in order to achieve effective coordination with missile and other forces. In terms of network design, we may yet be in the “pre-Dreadnought era” awaiting that breakthrough concept that makes all other approaches obsolete. Applying the capital ship framework to the battle force network may help us develop or at least recognize that breakthrough when it comes along.
There are other capital ship-related concepts such as staying power7 that could be useful when applied to the design and operation of battle force networks. Capital ships were built to take hits and still fight. Obviously no ship can endure multiple hits indefinitely, so the notion of staying power helped designers figure out how much protection was needed and make the necessary tradeoffs with armament, speed, sea keeping, magazine capacity, etc. How long the ship needed to hang in there was a valuable determination and so it might be with the network. Staying power might not be measured in minutes as it was with battleships, but some other criterion such as confidence or available bandwidth might be adopted.
Conclusion
This article does not advocate reducing the number of aircraft carriers or for constructing any new class of ship; the designation of the battle force network as the modern instantiation of the capital ship is a way of establishing a new logic that underpins fleet design. If fleet design is regarded as the prerequisite and precursor to fleet architecture, the logic of network-enabled missile warfare will clarify what kinds and numbers of ships the Navy should have.8 There are, of course, many other considerations and influences on fleet architecture, but achieving institutional focus via the network as capital ship concept would go a long way in helping the Navy rapidly enhance its offensive lethality and use its available resources efficiently.
Emerging technology and shifting geopolitical conditions are changing how naval warfare will be conducted in the future. The U.S. Navy must adapt or find itself strategically outmaneuvered. Effective adaptation will require more than updates to current ship types; it will require totally new approaches to fleet design. Instead of thinking outside the box, it might help the Navy to think outside the hull.9 Adopting the network-as-capital ship idea is one way to do that.
Professor Emeritus Rubel is retired but serves as an advisor to the CNO on fleet design and architecture. He spent thirty years on active duty as a light attack and strike fighter aviator. After leaving active duty he joined the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College, serving as Chairman of the Wargaming Department and later Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. In 2006 he designed and led the War College project to develop the concepts that resulted in the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. He has published over thirty articles and book chapters dealing with maritime strategy, operational art and naval aviation.
1. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Lessons of the War With Spain and Other Articles, (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1899), p. 31. Mahan discusses the effect of the loss of a single ship on the naval balance with Spain before the war.
2. George and Meredeth Friedman, The Future of War, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), p. 26 and Chapter 8, “The Aircraft Carrier as Midwife,” pp 180-204.
3. Wayne P. Hughes Jr, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 2000), pp. 286-291. Prof. Hughes influenced Admiral Cebrowski’s thinking, and the discussion of massing for defense on the cited pages provides a more in-depth look at the logic of instability.
4. Robert C. Rubel, “Deconstructing Nimitz’s Principle of Calculated Risk,” Naval War College Review, Autumn 2015, (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press), pp. 31-45. The article contains a detailed discussion of the various risks and distribution dilemmas inherent to aircraft carriers using the Battle of Midway as a case study.
5. Hughes. Chapter 11, “Modern Tactics and Operations,” pp. 266-309. Prof. Hughes offers a detailed and mathematical discussion of modern missile combat through the lens of operations research.
6. Rubel, “Cede No Water: Naval Strategy, the Littorals and Flotillas,” Proceedings, September 2013, (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute), pp. 40-45.
7. Hughes, pp. 268-274.
8. Hughes, “The New Navy Fighting Machine: A Study of the Connections Between Contemporary Policy, Strategy, Sea Power, Naval Operations, and the Composition of the United States Fleet” (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School).
9. Rubel, “Think Outside the Hull,” Proceedings, June 2017, (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute), pp. 42-45.
Featured Image: USS Yorktown (CV-10) Crew stands at attention as the National Ensign is raised, during commissioning ceremonies at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia, 15 April 1943. (Photographed by Lieutenant Charles Kerlee, USNR. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives)
This week CIMSEC will be featuring articles that discuss future capital ship concepts in response to a Call for Articles from the U.S. Naval War College’s Institute for Future Warfare Studies. Below is a list of articles featuring during the topic week that will be updated as the topic week rolls out and as prospective authors finalize additional publications.
By Chris Demchak, Keith Patton, and Sam J. Tangredi
These are exclusively the personal views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Naval War College or the Department of Defense.
Security researchers do not believe in coincidences. In the past few weeks, a very rare event – a U.S. Navy destroyer colliding fatally with a huge commercial vessel – happened twice in a short period of time. These incidents followed a collision involving a cruiser off Korea and the grounding of a minesweeper off the Philippines, and have now resulted in the relief of a senior Seventh Fleet admiral. Surface warfare officers (SWOs) look to weather, sensors, watchstanders, training requirements, leadership and regulations (COLREGS) as possible contributing factors to the collisions.
Cyber security scholars, in contrast, first look to the underlying complex technologies trusted by the crew to determine the proper course of action. With the advancements in navigational technology, computer-aided decision making and digital connectivity, it is human nature that seafarers become more dependent on, as well as electronic aids for navigation and trusting the data the systems provide. While the U.S. Navy emphasizes verification of this data by visual and traditional navigation means, the reality is the social acceptance of the validity of electronic data is a feature of modern culture. The U.S. Navy, with an average age in the early 20s for sea-going sailors, is not immune from this effect. But what if the data is invalid or, as an extreme possibility, subject to outside manipulation?
In directing a pause for all warship crews (not currently conducting vital missions) during which to conduct assessments and additional training, the Chief of Naval Operations – Admiral John Richardson – was asked whether the Navy was considering cyber intrusion as a possible cause. The CNO responded that concerning cyberattack or intrusion, “the review will consider all possibilities.”
The truth could be that only mundane factors contributed to the accident, but as an intellectual thought experiment, what follows are explanations following the logic of open-source information. The first set of explanations will focus on the human in the loop to argue that the fundamental cause is likely human miscalculation rather than intentional distortion of data. The second explanation will focus on the criticality of accurate data provided to humans or their technologies. The pattern suggests a lack of ‘normalness’ as the ‘normal accidents’ of complex systems deeply integrated with cyber technologies – in frequency, locations, and effects. In the case of the destroyers, a credible case—based on analysis of land-based systems–could be made for a witting or unwitting insider introduction of malicious software into critical military navigation and steering systems. The conclusion will offer motivations for timing and targets, and some recommendations for the future.
Similarities in the Scenarios
There are similarities in recent collisions. Both happened in darkness or semi-darkness. Both happened in shipping lanes in which literally hundreds of major ships pass per day, to say nothing of smaller ships and fishing vessels. Crew manning of both vessels approach 300 sailors, with approximately one-eighth of the crew on watch involved in controlling/steering, navigating, as lookouts, and operating propulsion machinery when the ship is at its lowest states of alertness, known as peacetime steaming. It is logical that both ships were at peacetime steaming at the time since they were not conducting military exercises. In contrast, when USS JOHN S. McCAIN conducted a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the vicinity of the artificial islands China has created to buttress its territorial claims to the South China Sea on August 9, her crew was likely at high alert.
In looking for possible explanations, we have downloaded and examined readily available open-source data concerning the two recent collisions, including identified locations of the incidents, vessel characteristics, crew manning, weather, proximity to land, automatic identification system (AIS) ship tracks, and shipping density data. We have consulted with naval experts on ship handling and on the Sea of Japan and Strait of Malacca.
Collision avoidance on Navy vessels can be roughly cast into four elements, three technical and one human. On the bridge, the watchstanders have (1) the AIS system which relies on tracking ships that broadcast their identities, (2) the military radar systems linked into the ships combat systems, (3)the civilian radar and contact management systems, and (4) the eyes of sailors standing watch on lookout normally posted port, starboard, and aft on the vessel. All these systems are complementary and overlapping, but not exactly delivering the same information.
The AIS system – in which merchant vessels transmit their identities and location data – is an open and voluntary system relying on GPS. In principle, keeping the AIS on is required for the 50 thousand plus commercial vessels over 500 GRT (gross registered tons). As of 2016, 87 percent of merchant shipping uses satellite navigation and 90 percent of the world’s trade is carried by sea. Nonetheless, ship captains can turn it off and travel without identifying themselves (at least until detected by other means). U.S. Navy vessels do not routinely transmit AIS but each bridge monitors the AIS of ships around them in addition to the military and civilian radar systems and the eyes of the sailors.
In quiet or tense times, the bridge watch and the Combat Information Center (CIC) teams of naval warships must synthesize this information and make sound decisions to avoid putting the ship into extremis. This is a continuous, round-the-clock requirement and a tough task for even the most skilled.
In this photo released by Japan’s 3rd Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, the damage of Philippine-registered container ship ACX Crystal is seen in the waters off Izu Peninsula, southwest of Tokyo, on June 17, 2017 after it had collided with the USS Fitzgerald. (Japan’s 3rd Regional Coast Guard Headquarters/AP)
In contrast, merchant ships such as the Alnic MC, a chemical tanker (which hit JOHN S. McCAIN) have tiny crews with great reliance on autopilot. Depending on the circumstances, possibly only three people would be on the watch as the ship’s commercial navigation autonomously follows the route that the captain set initially. One of the indications that the ACX Crystal, the cargo vessel colliding with the USS FITZGERALD, was on autopilot was its behavior after the collision. Having been temporarily bumped off its course by the collision, it corrected and resumed steaming on the original course for about 15 minutes before stopping and turning to return to the collision location. While nothing is yet published about what was happening on either bridge in the June FITZGERALD collision, one can surmise that it took 15 minutes for the small crew to realize what had happened, to wrest control back of the behemoth, and turn it around.
Possible “Normal” Explanations
Flawed human decision-making
U.S. Navy warships maintain teams of watchstanders in order to mitigate the effects of a flawed decision being made by any one individual. Ultimately, one individual makes the final decision on what actions to take in an emergency—the Officer of the Deck (OOD) if the Commanding Officer is not available—but recommendations from the others are assumed to help in identifying flaws in precipitous decisions before they are actually made.
In contrast, in merchant ships with only two or three deck watchstanders, there is less of a possibility that flawed decision-making is identified before incorrect actions are taken. These actions can also be influenced by unrelated disorienting activities. Alcohol is not permitted on U.S. warships, abuse of drugs at any time is not countenanced, and U.S. naval personnel are subjected to random urinalysis as a means of enforcement. On a merchant ship these policies vary from owner to owner, and inebriation or decision-making under-the-influence has contributed to many past collisions.
Common tragedy from fatigue in an inherently dangerous environment
Collisions at sea happen. U.S. warships have collided with other warships, including aircraft carriers and with civilian vessels. USS FRANK EVANS was cut in half and sunk in 1969 when it turned the wrong way and crossed the bow of an Australian aircraft carrier. In 2012 the USS PORTER, a destroyer of the same class as the FITZGERALD and McCAIN, was transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The PORTER maneuvered to port (left) to attempt to get around contacts ahead of it, passing the bow of one freighter astern and then was hit by a supertanker it had not seen because it was screened behind the first freighter. Many of the previous collisions involved a loss of situational awareness by an at-least-partly fatigued crew. It is hard to avoid such conditions in an inherently dangerous, around-the-clock operating environment.
Mechanical Failure
There has been no report of a problem with the FITZGERALD prior to her collision. The Navy, however, has acknowledged the MCCAIN suffered a steering casualty prior to the collision. While backup steering exists in the form of manual controls in aft steering or using differential propulsion to twist the ship in the absence of rudder control, such control methods are not as efficient as the normal controls. Additionally, there would be a brief delay in switching control unexpectedly or transmitting orders to aft steering. In normal conditions, this would not be serious. In a busy shipping lane, with the least hesitation due to shock at the unexpected requirement, the brief delay could be catastrophic.
Quality of training for ship handling by young Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs)
One can look at the U.S. Navy Institute Proceedings (the premier independent naval journal) and other literature to see signs these incidents may be symptoms of a larger issue involving the training of watchstanders. In March 2017, LT Brendan Cordial had a Proceedings article entitled “Too Many SWOs per Ship” that questioned both the quality and quantity of the ship handling experience that surface warfare officers (SWOs) received during their first tours. Later in a SWO’s career track, the focus of new department heads (DH) is tactical and technical knowledge of the ship’s weapons systems and ship’s combat capabilities, not necessarily basic ship handling. Ship handling skill are assumed. But such skills can atrophy while these officers are deployed on land or elsewhere, and individual ships have unique handling characteristics that must be learned anew.
In January 2017, CAPT John Cordle (ret.) wrote an article for Proceedings titled “We Can Prevent Surface Mishaps” and called into question the modern SWO culture. Peacetime accident investigations rarely produce dramatic new lessons. They simply highlight past lessons. Errors in judgment, lapses in coordination, task saturation, fatigue, a small error cascading into a tragedy. Those who have stood the watch on the bridge or in the CIC read them, and frequently think, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” However, unlike in the aviation community, near misses and accidents that almost happened were not publicly dissected and disseminated to other commands. Officers have always known how easy it is to be relieved for minor mishaps, but they do not have the community discussion of all those that nearly happened to learn vicariously from the experiences.
Pace of forward operations – especially for the MCCAIN after the FITZGERALD event
Both destroyers are homeported in Yokosuka, Japan, the headquarters of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. While only the line of duty investigation has been released for the FITZGERALD collision, one can assume that the officers and crew of the McCAIN would have heard some of the inside details from their squadron mate. Logically the CO of McCAIN would be doubly focused on the safe operation of his ship as he approached the highly congested traffic separation scheme (TSS) in the straits of Malacca and approach to Singapore harbor. But the loss of one of only seven similar and critical ships in a highly contested environment would almost certainly increased the tempo and demands on the MCCAIN as it attempted to move into the Singapore harbor just before sunrise.
In this case, tempo should have been accommodated adequately. While technology is a key component of U.S. warships, it is only one of many tools. Lookouts scan the horizon and report contacts to the bridge and CIC watch teams. The officer of the deck (OOD) uses their professional skills and seaman’s eye to judge the situation. If in doubt, they can, and should, call the Captain. Indeed, close contacts are required to be reported to the Captain. The bridge and CIC have redundant feeds to display contacts detected by radar, sonar, or AIS. The computer can perform target motion analysis, but crews are still trained to manually calculate closest points of approach and recommend courses to avoid contacts via maneuvering boards (MOBOARDs). This is done both on the bridge and in the CIC so even if one watch misses something critical, the other can catch it. When ships enter densely trafficked areas, additional specially qualified watchstanders are called up to augment the standard watch teams. Yet, it is possible that—under the theory of “normal” accidents—somewhere in this multiply redundant sensor system, misread or misheard information led to the human equivalent of the “telephone game” and the wrong choice was dictated to the helm.
But along with the “normal” explanations, the possibility of cyber or other intentional distortion of critical data does remain a possibility.
Cyber Misleads and Mis-function
If one argues that neither the Navy nor commercial crews were inebriated or otherwise neglectful, accepts that the weather and visibility were good for the time of day with crew in less stressful routine sailing postures, finds serendipitous mechanical failure of severe navigational significance on both ships difficult to accept as merely normal accidents, and questions if tempo distraction alone could explain both events, then – as Sherlock would say – the impossible could be possible. It is worth laying out using unclassified knowledge how cyber intrusions could have been used to cause warships to have collisions. This is not to say the collisions could not have multiple sources. But for the purposes of this thought experiment, however, this section will focus on cyber explanations.
Cyber affects outcomes because it is now a near universal substrate to all key societal and shipboard functions. Either cyber errors mislead humans, or its digitized operations malfunction in process, action, or effect, or both while buried inside the complex systems. To make this point, one of the two major classes of cyber assaults – the distributed denial of service (DDOS) – works by using what the computer wants to do anyway – answer queries – and simply massively overloads it into paralysis. It has been shown in a number of experiments that large mechanical systems integrated with electronics can be remotely made to overload, overheat, or vibrate erratically into breakdown by hackers or embedded malware. In several reports, the McCAIN may have suffered failures in both its main steering system (highly digitized) and its backup systems (more mechanical). Less information has been released on the earlier collision between the FITZGERALD and the ACX Crystal cargo ship so steering issues there cannot be known at this time.
However, that the two collisions involved large commercial ships with similar crews and technologies, and that two U.S. Navy vessels were sister ships close in age and technologies suggests commonalities that could be more easily exploited by adversaries using cyber means rather than humans. In particular, commonly shared logistics or non-weapon systems such as navigation are more likely to have vulnerabilities in their life cycles or embedded, routinized processes that are less sought by – or discernible to – the standard security reviews.
In a complex socio-technical-economic system like that involved in both circumstances, the one-off rogue event is likely the normal accident – i.e., the FITZGERALD incident. But too many common elements are present in the McCAIN event to suggest a second, simply rogue outcome. Hence, it is necessary to explore the three possible avenues by which the navigation could have been hacked without it being obvious to the U.S. Navy commander or crew in advance.
First, external signals (GPS, AIS) can be spoofed to feed both navigation systems with erroneous information for any number of reasons including adversary experimentation. Second, the civilian contact management systems on the civilian or military bridge (or both) could be hacked in ways either serendipitously or remotely engineered to feed erroneous data. Third, insider-enabled hacks of one or both of the destroyer’s combat systems could have occurred in the shared home port of Yokosuka to enable distortion of sensors or responses under a range of possible circumstances.
Spoofing GPS inputs to navigation
It does not take much technical expertise to spoof or distort GPS signals because the GPS system itself is sensitive to disruptions. The 2016 removal of one old satellite from service caused a 13.7 microsecond timing error that occurred across half of the 30-odd GPS satellites, causing failures and faults around the world in various industries. Anything that can be coded can be corrupted, even inadvertently. Anything so critical globally which does not have enforced, routine, and rigorous external validity tests, defenses, and corrective actions, however, is even more likely to attract the hacks from both state and nonstate actors.
Major national adversaries today have indicated interest in having the capability to arrange GPS distortions. With their already large domestic units of state-sponsored hackers, the Chinese, Russians, and North Koreans have already sought such capabilities as protections against the accuracy of largely U.S. missile guidance systems. Hacking GPS has been reported for some years, and while some efforts to harden the system have been pursued, spoofing mechanisms located on land in tight transit areas or even on other complicit or compromised vessels could mislead the autopilot. The website Maritime Executive reported mass GPS spoofing in June 2017 in the Black Sea, impacting a score of civilian vessels and putatively emanating from Russian sources most likely on land nearby.
However, it does not have to be a matter of state decision to go to war to have this kind of meddling with key navigation systems, especially if land or many other vessels are nearby. In a cybered conflict world, state-sponsored or freelance hackers would be interested in trying to see what happens just because they can. Not quite a perfect murder because of the external sources of data, however, the spoofed or spoiled data would provide misleading locations in real time to autopilot software. Vessels and their bridge would operate normally in their steering functions with bad data. They go aground or collide. So might airplanes. And the distorted signals could then stop, allowing normal GPS signals to resume and indicate that something went wrong in navigation choices but not in time to stop the collision or with the attribution trace necessary to know by whose hand.
In these two cases, the DDG FITZGERALD looks like it failed to give way to the ACX Crystal which appears by the tracking data to have been on autopilot. If the ACX Crystal’s navigation was operating on false data, and the equivalent civilian system on the U.S. ship was as well, then the watch team of the FITZGERALD would have had at least two other sources conflicting with the spoofed information – the military systems and the eyes of the sailors on watch. For the moment assume no deliberate hack of the military systems, its radars are correctly functioning, and the alert sailors have 20-20 vision, then the watch team of the FITZGERALD clearly miscalculated by believing the civilian system. Or, the overlap in relying on GPS is so profound that the military system was also fooled and the human eyes overruled. In that case, the FITZGERALD watch team trusted the civilian system over other inputs.
AIS data map of course of container ship MV ACX Crystal around the time of collision with USS Fitzgerald near Japan on June 16, 2017. (Wikimedia Commons/marinetraffic.com)
In the McCAIN case, if one assumes all the same conditions, the Navy ship had the right of way and the oil tanker plowed into it. Presumably the tanker autopilot – if it was on as one could reasonably assume – was coded to stop, divert, warn, and otherwise sound the alarm if it sees another ship in its path. Presumably, its code also embeds the right of way rules in the autopilot’s decision-making. A convincing GPS spoof could, of course, persuade the autopilot navigation that it is not where it was, thereby seeing more time and space between it and the Navy ship.
Hacking civilian navigation radars shared by all vessels
According to experts, commercial navigation systems are remarkably easy to hack quite apart from GPS spoofing. The cybersecurity of these bridge systems against deliberate manipulation has long been neglected. In the same unenforced vein as the voluntary identification requirement of AIS, the global maritime shipping industry has relied on requirements by maritime insurance companies and specific port regulations to control individual shipping firms’ choices in vessels technologies (and level of compliance). Myriad reports in recent years discuss the increasing sophistication of sea pirates in hacking commercial shipping systems to locate ships, cherry pick what cargo to go acquire, show up, take it, and vanish before anything can be done. That is more efficient than the old brute force taking of random ships for ransom.
In addition, shipping systems tend to be older and receive less maintenance – including time-critical patches – more likely to be scheduled with infrequent overall ship maintenance in port. In the recent “Wannacry” ransom-ware global event, the major shipping company Maersk – profoundly and expensively hit – reported its key systems used WIN XP unpatched and unsupported by Microsoft. Hacking groups are also targeting ports and their systems as well.
If systems are compromised, hacks could have opened back doors to external controllers or at least inputs when the commercial ship crossed into locations close enough to land or adversary-compromised surface or submerged vessels. Then the misleading inputs could be more closely controlled to be present when U.S. vessels have been observed to be traveling nearby or are in a particular position. Navy vessels may not transmit AIS, but they are detectable on radar as ships. A radar contact without an AIS identity could be a trigger for the malware to at least become interested in the unidentified vessel, perhaps sending pre-arranged signals to remote controllers to track and then wait for instructions or updates. The autopilot would then act on the inputs unaware of the distortion.
An interesting aspect of corrupting code is that exchanging data across commercial systems alone can provide a path for corrupted code to attempt to install itself on both ends of the data exchange. Stuxnet traveled through printer connections to systems otherwise not on any internet-enabled networks. If the civilian navigation systems are proprietary – and that is likely the case on commercial ships – then it is likely that the U.S. vessels’ bridges also have ‘hardened’ COTS civilian systems whose internal software and hardware are proprietary. That means a hack successful on the commercial side could open an opportunity to hack a similar or targeted civilian system that happens to be found on a U.S. Navy vessel. Furthermore, it is possible the two systems share vulnerabilities and/or have exchanges that are not visible to external observers.
Navy IT security on vessels might also regard the civilian proprietary systems as less a threat because they are not connected to internal military systems. They presumably are standalone and considered merely an additional navigation input along more trusted and hardened military systems. The commercial systems are (ironically) also less likely to be closely scrutinized internally, because that would mean the U.S. Navy is violating contractual rules regarding proprietary commercial equipment. Outside of war – in which such holds are likely to be ignored in crises – there is little incentive to violate those proprietary rules.
One can conceive of a Navy bridge hosting a commercial navigation system that at some point along its journey is compromised with nothing to indicate that compromise or the triggering of the software now interwoven with the legitimate firmware inside the equipment. By happenstance, the Navy vessel comes in to the vicinity of an appropriately compromised large commercial vessel. At that point, the adversary hackers might receive a message from the commercial vessel to indicate the contact and have the option to distort the navigation inputs to help the commercial vessel’s autopilot plow into the warship.
Of course the adversary is helped if the Navy equipment is also hacked and, perhaps, the vessel loses its digitized steering right before the impact.
Hacking U.S. Navy military navigation systems
Remotely accessing and then changing the triggers and sensors of military systems – if possible – would be very hard given the Navy’s efforts in recent years. That possibility is tough to evaluate because the open source knowledge regarding such systems is likely to be third party information on proprietary subordinate systems at least five or six years old – or much more. Both major U.S. adversaries in Asia – North Korea and China – already show propensities for long-term cyber campaigns to remotely gain access and infiltrate or exfiltrate data over time from all military systems, including shipborne navigation. We deem this less likely simply because this is where the cybersecurity focus of the Navy and DOD already is.
However, the history of poorly-coded embedded systems, lightweight or incompetent maintenance, and deep cyber security insensitivity of third party IT capital goods corporations is appalling across a myriad of industry supply chains, even without the national security implications well-known today. While commercial vessels could be hacked remotely, a more likely avenue for entry in Navy systems would be through these corrupted supply chains of third parties, shoddily constructed software, or compromised contractors creating or maintaining the ship’s navigation and related systems. Using insiders would be especially easier than remotely hacking inside when the vessels were in a trusted harbor nestled inside a long-term ally such as Japan. Using insiders to access the systems during routine activities would be less likely to be detected quickly, especially if the effects would not be triggered or felt until particular circumstances far from port and underway.
An especially oblivious contractor engaged in using specialized and proprietary software to patch, check, or upgrade equipment could inadvertently use compromised testing or patching tools to compromise the vessel’s equipment. For example, a Russian engineer carrying in a compromised USB stick was reportedly the originating source of the Stuxnet malware in Iran – whether he was witting or unwitting is unknown. The actions would have been the same. Furthermore, Navy systems are built by contractors with clearances of course, but the systems would have deeply buried and often proprietary inner operating code. Corrupted lines of code could rest inactive for some time, or be installed in the last minute, to lie dormant during most of the deployment until triggered. None would visibly display any corruption until the programmed conditions or triggers are present.
In hacked systems, triggers are really hard to discern in advance. In part, the skill of the adversary deftly obscures them, but also the objectives of adversaries can vary from the classic “act on command of national superiors,” to “see how far we can get and how,” to pure whimsy. With no real personal costs likely for any of these motives, the game is defined by the skill, patience, and will of the adversary, especially when proprietary commercial code is involved. While it is safer in terms of attribution for hackers to have more automatic triggers such as those used in the Stuxnet software, the action triggers do not have to be automatic. In navigation systems, data is exchanged constantly. Conceivably there can be a call out and return buried in massive flows of data.
Without extensive AI and rather advanced systems management, how massive data flows are monitored can vary widely. While it is more and more common to secure a system’s outgoing as well as incoming communication, a multitude of systems that are not particularly dated have been shown to allow rather subtle communications to go on for some time without any event or external revelation. One can imagine code calling home or acting autonomously when triggered by something as mundane as a sensor noting the presence of a large commercial cargo ship within X nautical miles, moving in Y direction, and responding to encrypted queries from its own navigation system. Highly skilled botnet masters are able to detect anomalies across thousands of infected computers and, in a pinch, de-install huge botnets in minutes. It is not difficult to imagine something buried in these otherwise secured systems, especially if the adversary is willing to wait and see when it would be useful. For North Korea, the latest ratcheting of tensions between the Hermit dictatorship and the U.S. could easily provide a reason.
Hacking seems more of a possibility when considering how both destroyers failed to navigate under circumstances that were, to most accounts, not that challenging. It is possible that the first such event – the FITZGERALD collision – was a rogue event, the kind of complex system surprise that routinely but rarely emerges. What is less likely is that a similar ship in broadly similar circumstances shortly thereafter proceeds to have a similar event. Exquisitely suspicious are the reports of the failure of the steering system and possibly its backups on McCAIN, though not on the FITZGERALD. That effect is not spoofed GPS or hacked civilian systems, and it would take much more reach of the malware to achieve. In keeping with the presumption here that a successful insider hack occurred on both ships and the malware was waiting for a trigger, the lack of steering failure (at least no reports of it) on the FITZGERALD could also mean the malware or external controller was smart enough to know collision did not need additional failures to ensure damage. The ship was already in the wrong place having failed to cede right of way. Holding fire like that would be desired and expresses sophistication. Typical technique in cybered conflict is deception in tools; adversaries do not burn their embedded hacks unless necessary. Once shown, the cyber mis-function becomes unusable again against an alert and skilled opponent such as the U.S. Navy.
Furthermore, the Aegis destroyers – of which both Navy vessels are – suffer from a rather massive knowledge asymmetry with a major adversary. At some point in the early to mid 2000s, the Chinese stole the entire design of the AEGIS systems on which the Navy spent billions across contractors and subcontractors. While built to roughly the same specifications as a class of ships, each vessel reflects the upgrades and systemic changes of its particular era, with the older 1990s ships like the FITZGERALD and McCAIN having more patches and bolt-ons than the newer versions of the ship. Fundamental ship elements are hardwired into the vessel and hard to upgrade, while more modular and likely proprietary modern systems are plugged in and pulled out as time goes on. The adversary who stole those comprehensive plans would know more about the older AEGIS ships than they would about the ships completed after the plans were stolen and newer systems used in the installs. Anyone who has ever faced the daunting prospect of rewiring a large house knows by ugly personal experience that the new wiring is forced to work around the existing layout and limitations. Ships are even more rigid and, quite often, the more critical the system, the less flexibly it can be changed.
Thus, vulnerabilities built into the highly complex earlier AEGIS systems would be both known to the thieves after some years of study and perhaps covert testing on other nations’ AEGIS systems, and be very hard to definitively fix by the Navy itself, especially if the service is not looking for the vulnerabilities. Unnerving, but not inconceivable, is the failure of the digitized steering system on the McCAIN – if it happened. Exceptionally telling, however, is the presumably near-simultaneously loss of backup systems. If the steering and contact management systems were compromised, steering could be made to fail at just the right time to force a collision. A good insider would be needed to ensure both, but only an adversary with considerable engineering design knowledge could reliably hazard a successful guess about how to disable the more likely mechanical backup systems. The adversary to whom the original AEGIS theft is attributed – China – is known to be very patient before using the material it has acquired.
Both Civilian and Military Systems
Why not put hacks on both systems? Commercial vessels are easier and could be left in place for some time pending being used and, in the meantime, slowly embedding Trojans via maintenance in port or third party access to remove and replace proprietary boxes or upgrades in software. Preparation of the cyber battlefield occurs – as does the ‘battle’ – in peacetime well before anything or anyone is blown up. China and North Korea have thousands of personnel on the offensive and value extraction cyber payroll. Careers could easily be made by such coups of installing such software as potential tools and have them still in place ready to be used months or years later.
Furthermore, Westerners are routinely afflicted with the rationality disease of believing that all actions – especially if adversaries are suspected – must be intentionally strategic and logically justifiable. Otherwise, why would the adversary bother? There is also a tendency to underestimate the comprehensive approach of most adversaries working against the U.S. Silence does not mean compliance or concession on the part of adversaries, especially not China or North Korea. Installing access points or triggers on all possible systems within one’s grasp is a basic long-term campaign strategy. Even now, when a major hack of a large corporation or agency is found, it has often been in place for years.
Motives for the Collisions
Timing may be serendipitous, but at least one adversary – North Korea – has already sunk a naval vessel of a U.S. ally, South Korea, with no public punishment. Certainly, North Korea has been loudly threatening the U.S. in the region and has cyber assets capable of what has been described above. However, one difficulty in determining culpability is that, while China is an ally of North Korea, neither will readily share information so valuable as the AEGIS design plans or even what each other may have hacked. One can readily ascribe eagerness to hurt the U.S. physically to North Korea, but attributing the same motivation to China at this point is problematic.
There are other possibilities, however. Both nations – like most nations – are led by individuals with little technical comprehension. In particular and most unfortunately, in a world of ubiquitous cybered conflict where ‘just because one can’ or ‘just to see what could happen’ operates equally well as a motivation, adversary states with a large army of hackers and technically ignorant superiors could easily have their own cyber wizards working in ways their superiors can neither discern nor realistically curtail. In this vein the McCAIN case (and possible FITZGERALD), these over eager technically skilled subordinates could have gotten quite lucky.
Why a DDG that happens to be sailing around Japan? Why one near Singapore? Why now? Well, “why not” is as good a reason, especially if the U.S. Navy publicly fires the ships’ leadership and declares the incidents over. In that case there are no consequences for adversaries. Perhaps the FITZGERALD was the rogue event, but—following that—the N.K. leaders then asked their wizards to take out another as signaling or retribution for recent U.S. “insults.” That motivation has some persuasive aspects: no publically apparent risks; a nifty experiment to see what can be done if needed in larger scale; and the public turmoil alone puts North Korea with a smug secret while the U.S. twists trying to figure it out. Cyber offensive capabilities in the hands of technically incompetent leaders have serious implications for misuse and, critically, inadvertent outcomes that are strategically more comprehensive and potentially destabilizing than ever intended.
Implications for the Navy
If it is leadership that failed in both cases, the Navy has a long history of responding and clearing out the incompetence. If it is cyber that undercut that leadership and killed sailors, the Navy has an uphill battle to definitively establish all the avenues by which it could have and did occur, including fully recognizing the multiple sources of such deliberately induced failure. The literature on complex large-scale system surprise and resilience offers means of preventing multisource failures in socio-technical systems. However, these means may not be compatible with current Naval thought and organization. The literature recommends parsing larger systems into self-sufficient and varying wholes that are embedded with redundancy in knowledge (not replication or standardization), slack in time (ability to buffer from inputs routinely), and constant trial and error learning. Trial and error learning is particularly hard because it routinely involves violations of current practices.
The current organization of the U.S. military seems incompatible with the concept of easily decomposable units engaging and disengaging as needed in collective sense-making. Neither can it accept constant systems adjustments, pre-coordinated but dynamically flexed rapid mitigation and innovation, and whole systems discovery trial and error learning. The truth is that in the cybered world, nothing can be trusted if it is not reliably verified by multiple, independent, and alternative sources of expertise. USS FITZGERALD did not discern its error and correct fast enough to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The McCAIN may have trusted its right of way entitlement too long, or made a traffic avoidance maneuver and suffered a steering casualty at the worst possible moment. Or perhaps both ships encountered something unexpected: a commercial ship operating on corrupted code. In the future, we should expect that any merchant ship controlled by digital information technology can be hacked.
This is a new idea for the Navy, that merchant shipping can be used as proxies for adversary intentions. With over 50,000 of such large vessels sailing around and next to U.S. ships all over the world, the adversary’s tools of coercion would be both effective and effectively obscured to visual or other indicators of malice. The world of cybered conflict is deeply riven with deception in tools and opaqueness in origins, and now it is clearly on the seas as well. Even if the Navy rules that both incidents were simply bad shiphandling, adversaries have already seen the great impact that can be had by making relatively fewer Navy ships collide with big, dumb, large commercial vessels. Even if cyber did not play the deciding role in these events, there is every reason to assume it will in the future. Just because they can try, they will.
Dr. Chris C. Demchak is the Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Professor of Cybersecurity and Director of the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies, Strategic and Operational Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College.
Commander Keith “Powder” Patton, USN, is a naval aviator and the former Deputy Director of the Strategic and Operational Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College.
Dr. Sam J. Tangredi is professor of national, naval and maritime strategy and director of the Institute for Future Warfare Studies, Strategic and Operational Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College.
Featured Image: Damage is seen on the guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald off Japan’s coast, after it collided with a Philippine-flagged container ship, on June 17, 2017 (AFP)
Join us for the latest episode of Sea Control for a conversation with Professor Kate Walsh of the U.S. Naval War College about the Blue Economy, ocean clusters, and their relevance for maritime security. It’s a conversation about innovation, organization, and competition between the U.S. and China.
A transcript of the interview between Professor Walsh (KW) and Matthew Merighi (MM) is below. The transcript has been edited for clarity. The views in this interview do not reflect those of the U.S. Naval War College, Navy, Department of Defense, or Federal Government.
MM: As is Sea Control tradition, please introduce yourself.
KW: I teach at the U.S. Naval War College as an Associate Professor of National Security Affairs. I teach officers and others policy analysis, which is basically policy decision-making in the U.S. and how it works or doesn’t work in some cases. I am also an affiliate with the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) where I do research on China.
I came to the Naval War College as a former think tanker and consultant in Washington, DC. In 1997, I was offered a project in the Commerce Department to look at China and issues of technology transfer. That’s where I started on a different area of research focusing on science, technology, and innovation in China. I’ve stuck with it since then. In 2013 or thereabouts, I started to find references to the Blue Economy in that research. I started asking around what the was and didn’t get any good answers. I found since then that this idea is one which China and others are developing.
MM: Let’s dive into the idea of the Blue Economy. I’ve noticed that there’s a general lack of awareness on what the Blue Economy is. Tell us more about what it is, what industries are involved, and how is it relevant to your maritime work.
KW: One of the challenges is the different terminology whether you call it the Blue Economy, Ocean Economy, or Marine Economy. The definitions are not set yet so it’s hard for the U.S. and China to know what the other is talking about.
It’s organized around clusters where industries, such as fishing and shipbuilding, ones which deal with marine issues, are clustered together in a coastal area. It follows on earlier research done in the 1990s on innovation clusters in Silicon Valley. The ocean clusters build on that original research because it’s not just about innovation but also conservation. There’s the industry, innovation, and conservation aspects in ocean clusters. Some of the industries involved include oil and gas, shipbuilding, fishing, fisheries, conservation NGOs, government departments including navies and coast guards, and anyone having to do with anything wet or ocean or coastal or water. But the terminology differs in different areas.
MM: You mentioned different time periods. From your research, how long has this ocean cluster concept been around? Is it new or is it new branding for an existing trend?
KW: I’m still investigating this as I know you and others are as well. My best understanding is that they build on earlier research but focusing on an area which doesn’t get a lot of attention. My sense is that the cluster concept only goes back to about the late 2000s or 2010. Iv’e been focusing mostly on China’s Blue Economy concept which dates to a policy from Hu Jintao in 2010. China’s concept was built on earlier work in Europe and the U.S., so dating it is difficult. It’s definitely still new, which is what makes the terminology so difficult. That terminology is a real world problem. Just recently I was at an event and these definitional issues were raised because it hasn’t really been decided what they mean even in the U.S. It’s a new field in early days, which is exciting.
MM: Have you discovered why the Blue Economy is going unnoticed? A lot of our listeners are likely already literate in ocean issues but why is the broader academic enterprise ignoring this area?
KW: I don’t have the definitive answer but my sense is that a lot of the actors and interest is there but that the cluster idea is new. What I’m seeing regionally in Rhode Island is people saying they already have the parts that go into clusters: the academics, industries, and entrepreneurs. What they don’t have is an approach to network and connect these different players in a way that is beneficial to all of them.
There’s a natural resistance with some of these actors, such as ocean researchers and fishermen who are in competition with each other over use of water resources nearby. It takes work to overcome these differences; they don’t happen organically most of the time. I think there’s an interest, as globalization is progressing, to connect people together in ways which promotes cooperation, new ideas, and new opportunities. When I look at China, it’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ), which in itself was a cluster, dates back to 1979. The focus on the ocean and adding of blue conservation in a way that serves everyone’s interest in the long term is the new part. The ocean is already under threat due to climate change and overfishing which I think has increased the focus on the ocean as an area of study.
MM: You mentioned geopolitical entities of various sizes ranging from China to Rhode Island. Clearly the cluster concept is happening in a lot of different places. Which areas, whether its counties, cities, or regions, have the most dynamic ocean cluster systems?
KW: I started my research with China and I would put them high on the list because they’ve been thinking about this for almost a decade now. Other countries are looking to China for their expertise, including countries in Africa. China is a big player there not only because of their size but because of their interest in this issue for such a long period of time. Under Xi Jinping, it’s been enhanced. Also of course the U.S.
We have a very different approach from China but the idea is not new here; in San Diego, L.A., and Monterey, they’ve been studying this idea for a while. San Diego is particularly strong. They have a virtual network of companies called The Maritime Alliance to foster and collaborate on opportunities. They’re providing a lot of advice to other countries now in Europe and elsewhere. Europe is the birthplace of the Blue Economy concept, so a number of countries there are pursuing this in their own way. Iceland comes up quite a lot and is prominent, along with other Scandinavian countries. Ireland has a Blue Economy effort underway. There are other countries in Asia beyond China, particularly in Small Island Developing States. It’s a global enterprise and the attraction is universal. I think this will be a growing area of study. In the U.S., there’s a number of different pockets: Maine, parts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Alaska, among others.
MM: You mentioned different approaches in these different clusters. You said the U.S. and China models have the largest different. What is the biggest difference between them?
KW: I alluded to China’s system, which is top-down like most of their innovation programs. The plan comes from Beijing and trickles down to the province and local level. It’s the same with the Blue Economy. In the U.S. it tends to be more organic, more locally driven. Many of them start because something was already happening and there was a clear opportunity for more. It comes from an opportunity to be entrepreneurial and seeing that the actors are there. All that’s missing is the coordination and collaboration. It just takes one person to start that.
For example, in San Diego, The Maritime Alliance started when its founder, Michael Jones, started talking to people and trying to get people connected. In Rhode Island, there’s an effort to develop a cluster with an international linkage between a local city with a sister city relationship in China. At the end the day, it’s all about global networking.
MM: What is the most pressing or relevant aspect of the cluster model for maritime security and national security?
KW: Building on the idea of global networking, this is a cooperative opportunity, but also a competition in terms of who does this better. Because global population is increasing and food and energy are depleting, the ocean is being looked at as more of a resource but one which is very unexplored. There’s competition to be the one who exploits the resources more effectively. I use the term exploit very carefully here to mean “understand what opportunities the ocean provides.”
One of the differences between the U.S. and China I’ve found is how they look at the ocean. Americans see the ocean as tourism, as recreation, and beach-going as well as industry. In China, it’s very different because they had a land-based mentality for a long time. They look at the ocean as an extension of the land. Conservation is the last priority. It is a part of their model but it’s not a priority; the priority is industry and innovation. There’s opportunity for cooperation but there’s going to be competition. And whoever competes better is going to have an economic advantage.
On the science and technology side, this is part of the consideration when evaluating the South China Sea or Arctic or Antarctica. What comes back is about Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), mineral rights, and economic rights with these zones. Part of the Blue Economy efforts have to do with planning who will be able to use which parts of the ocean and who can’t. Of course, in the Asia-Pacific much of this is under dispute. There’s a lot of uncertainty in that relationship and that has to do with the nature of the ocean itself. The ocean connects us whether we like it or not. And if countries start to fight over ocean spaces, this could become more a conflict driver than cooperation driver. On the positive side, we’re involved with a number of Track 2 discussions with our Chinese colleagues. I think we have similar goals but different approaches to developing the the Blue Economy, especially for disputed EEZs.
MM: For those who are interested in ocean clusters, what are the short and long term trends to see how this concept develops?
KW: I’m going to be a bit parochial with my interest in China. One of the things I’ve seen that is important to the U.S. government and U.S. Navy is China’s plans for the Maritime Silk Road. Xi Jinping announced in 2013 a new One Belt, One Road plan; a very ambitious plan to connect China to parts of the old Silk Road on both land and sea. The maritime part of that plan includes the Blue Economy and ocean clusters along the way. If you look at the map, there are dots along the route where China hopes to develop the maritime road. There’s an action plan that came out March 2015 that has considerable detail. These includes developing ocean clusters, SEZs, and Blue Economy zones along this route. It takes China’s model and develops them overseas.
There’s a question as to whether or not the U.S. and its allies, partners, and friends will be able to be a part of this effort as collaborators and investors. China just recently announced a new maritime vision which is even more ambitious than the original plan. That’s important because it puts Xi Jinping’s stamp on what was originally Hu Jintao’s concept. This new maritime vision has a number of different initiatives which have the word blue attached to them: Blue partnerships, Blue carbon efforts, and Blue conservation efforts. The Blue Economy idea will be a carrot to other countries along the Maritime Silk Road. I don’t see anything in competition with this coming from the U.S., so it’s something to keep an eye on.
It seems to me that these zones and cluster are to be driven by Chinese investment, developed by Chinese infrastructure, using Chinese telecommunications, possibly with Chinese labor, all along the Chinese cluster model. This is not necessarily bad but it opens questions on how much the U.S. and its allies could be able to be involved. This is going to be somewhat of a race to see who can exploit these opportunities in a way that doesn’t undermine conservation. The ocean is a lot of ungoverned space with a lot of unknowns. We’ll have to work hard to make sure that, if it is a competition, that it’s a benign economic and industrial competition.
MM: What things would you recommend to learn more about the Blue Economy and ocean clusters? Beyond that, are there any other interesting things you’re reading now?
KW: There’s a great study by the OECD from 2016 which looks at the Blue Economy through 2030. It’s quite long but it is a good introduction and those with a strategic mind will find its future orientation useful. Those interested in the economic aspect, the Center for Blue Economy at the Middlebury Institute in Monterey, has a journal which is worth looking at. They’re trying to come up with economic metrics to measure what the Blue Economy is and how much it contributes to GDP.
Those interested in the China question, CMSI held a workshop in late 2014 addressing U.S. and Chinese perspectives on the Blue Economy to understand the similarities and differences. The Center for American Progress, a think tank in DC, has done a number of studies on the Blue Economy and U.S.-Chinese issues. They’ll be coming out with a report soon from a June dialogue which focused on the Blue Economy, fisheries, and the Arctic.
Those interested in the Maritime Silk Road should read the maritime vision white paper which China put out on 20 June to get a sense of how they promoting new blue partnerships not just domestically but in the entire region. In terms of other things, because I teach policy analysis, I picked up John Farrell’s new Nixon biography. I’m also just starting The Beautiful Country by John Pomfret.
Kathleen (Kate) Walsh is an Associate Professor of National Security Affairs in the National Security Affairs Department at the US Naval War College (NWC), where she teaches Policy Analysis. She is an affiliate of the China Maritime Studies Institute and participates in NWC’s Asia Pacific Studies Group
Matthew Merighi is the Senior Producer of Sea Control and Assistant Director of Fletcher’s Maritime Studies Program.
