Indo-Asia-Pacific

Defending Global Order Against China’s Maritime Insurgency – Part 2

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By Dan White and Hunter Stires

Dan White:

China’s behavior in the South China Sea, along with efforts to highlight it such as the Philippines Transparency Initiative, and deter it such as the Maritime Counterinsurgency Project do appear to be changing public opinion. This year 51.6% of respondents to the State of Southeast Asia 2025 Survey ranked China’s aggressive behavior as their top geopolitical concern, the highest level recorded since the survey started in 2019.

But China is learning as well. How has China’s behavior in the region evolved over the past few years of encountering resistance from the Philippines and changes in U.S. strategy?

Hunter Stires:

China is certainly learning and innovating at the tactical level. At the same time, I tend to think that China’s problem is that it is not learning and they are instead doubling down on this maritime insurgency strategy.

They are going to fail if they continue this strategy. This is a fight about who governs in a particular space. If you’re having a fight about who governs, you’re really having a fight about whose laws are enforced. Laws need to be accepted, and more importantly, adhered to in practice by the substantial body of the population that law aspires to govern. The laws civilians follow are both a metric of success as well as a mechanism of victory. Right now, Filipino mariners, both government and civilian, are still getting out on the water in defiance of Chinese actions. That is a bad sign for China.

Think of the billions and billions of dollars that China has sunk into this campaign. They have built numerically the largest Coast Guard in the world. They have spent approximately $13 billion constructing each of the three major island air bases they built in the Spratly Islands. These bases are also proving difficult to sustain due to the nature of the environment on a fake island so close to saltwater. They are also fixed assets that are highly vulnerable to attack in the event of war. They are helpful for supporting their maritime insurgency by helping to sustain Coast Guard and maritime militia forces but are less useful than investment into their broader navy. They could have bought Ford-class aircraft carriers for the money they spent constructing these islands.

After all this time, after all this effort, 51.6% of respondents, as you said, list China as the problem. And that is China’s greatest weakness here—no one likes them.

China is clearly banking that they can kind of cow everybody into compliance with their will by coercing them. But Beijing doesn’t understand that as long as the local Southeast Asian civilian mariners keep sailing, China will lose. China can keep on building ships but there are always going to be more civilian ships than there are Naval or Coast Guard forces. They will run out of money and people before they can impose their will on every civilian economic actor in the South China Sea where half the world’s fishing fleet resides.

The Philippines and other Southeast Asian states just have to stay in it. As long as they don’t give up they will ultimately prevail. The task of the United States and our allies and partners is to continue to reassure those countries’ governments and civilian maritime populations that we are with them and the rules of the freedom of the sea haven’t changed.

The U.S. also does not need to be everywhere Filipino fishing boats or other civilian mariners are either. That is what the Philippine Coast Guard is there for and has done an incredibly good job at. The U.S. is a key enabler that raises the effectiveness of local forces. Think of the Combined Action Program model that the Marines pioneered in Vietnam and which we then put to work very successfully in the Counter-ISIL campaign ten years ago. We bring heavy artillery, we bring air support, we bring helicopter medevacs, we bring logistics. And then the local force brings the commitment to defend their home, they bring local knowledge, and they bring mass. When those two things, military might and local resolve, come together they provide a very efficient economy of force for the U.S. and much more effective operations by that local home defense force than it would otherwise be able to accomplish on its own.

As the Philippine Coast Guard and Navy continues to grow and strengthen capability, it takes more and more of a leading role. The U.S. Navy is then able to remain in standby and deter Chinese aggression by conveying that an attack on one will bring the intervention of the whole group.

Dan White:

A criticism of this approach is that it is a side show that distracts from the fight China is really preparing for, which is an invasion of Taiwan. China might abandon its maritime insurgency in exchange for prioritizing all its resources for an all-out attack on Taiwan. In which case America’s naval resources will have been focused on the wrong fight. How would you respond to that?

Hunter Stires:

You absolutely have to be ready for that high-end fight. But the high end is not the only way that China could get its way.  If China is successful at overturning the freedom of the sea, it will position itself to secure control over the Eurasian continental heartland while shutting out America from access to the overwhelming majority of the world’s population and markets.  This is what Napoleon tried and failed to do to Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. France created a continental system to mobilize the resources of Europe for France’s purposes and deny Britain trade, but Britain was able to survive because they had an overseas empire and other people they could trade with.

China is similarly trying to create a continental system across Eurasia and Africa with its One Belt, One Road initiative. That is most of the world’s population. If they also succeed in balkanizing the world’s oceans they could shut the United States out of Eurasia. Seas that are no longer free become obstacles to trade and influence. China could then relegate the U.S. to the world’s economic and geopolitical periphery unless we submit to its dictates. Looking at the logical end-point of China’s actions if successful, we can deduce that this is probably Beijing’s desired end state.

Dan White:

It sounds like what you are saying is that the broader Chinese strategy is to turn its much weaker maritime geography, where it is enclosed by chains of large islands, into a geopolitical advantage by weakening open access to those seas. By getting local actors to bend the knee, China makes its unfavorable geography into a moat that it can use to seal off the world island of Eurasia, and use it as a springboard for projecting power outward. Once China controls the South China Sea it can more safely attack Taiwan and then put pressure on the U.S. across the broader Indo-Pacific. At this point the U.S.’s distance from the region becomes more of a liability than an advantage. It then becomes much harder for the U.S. to match the amount of power it can project at a distance in the Indo-Pacific than China is able to project closer to its shores. Is that a fair characterization?

Hunter Stires:

I think you got it exactly. China’s approach here is inherently continentalist. Its maritime strategy involves land-centric thinking. I would argue that’s actually a weakness of their strategy, because you can’t permanently occupy the ocean.

Think about the nature of China’s strategy here, as an insurgency, in the context of China’s strategic canon. Sun Tzu and Mao are the two most important figures. Of course, there are others, but these are the two principal writers that everybody reads. They’re both land commanders.

Sun Tzu advocates the indirect approach of winning without fighting or winning before the other side gets a chance to form ranks. Mao is the most successful insurgent in history. As a result, insurgent strategies permeate everything that China does. Insurgency is fundamental to the DNA of the Chinese Communist Party, because that’s how they came to power.

The fortunate news for us is there are a lot of different ways that we can cause that strategy to fail. Most of the targeted countries have a lot of incentives to reject Chinese domination. China has looming internal issues that will test the compact the Chinese Communist Party has with the people: how it continues to deliver prosperity while maintaining control over innovation; how it contends with upholding the social safety net while its population declines.

The key question is, will China become more outwardly aggressive once it faces these headwinds and perceives its window of opportunity to assert its power to be closing?

Certainly, there’s a lot going on here in the United States that also concerns me greatly. Developments in the United States are going to have a significant impact on China’s own calculus. But if I had to choose between America’s problems versus China’s problems. I would pick our problems every time. Ours are inherently solvable. We just have to choose to solve them. That is often hard, because we’re a big country, we’re a fractious country, and we love to argue about things. But we are generally a good, reasonable group of people and we also have the benefit of the greatest geography in the world.

There is really no reason that we could not choose to solve the major problems that we have. China’s problems are much more structural. They are going to be a lot harder for them to solve.

Dan White:

This summer, China constructed new dual-use aquaculture facilities in Yellow Sea waters shared with South Korea—complete with helicopter pads and watchtowers—then imposed unilateral closures of those waters. In September, according to the Center for Strategic International Studies, the Coast Guards of China and South Korea engaged in a 15-hour standoff in the region, as China sought to impose further restrictions on South Korean movement within the Yellow Sea. Do you see this as an early sign that China is exporting its South China Sea playbook to the Yellow Sea, or is China’s behavior in the region motivated by another set of interests?

Hunter Stires:

That’s a really good way of putting it, that they are looking to export and expand that maritime insurgency into the Yellow Sea. And getting back to China making this profound set of mistakes in terms of antagonizing all its neighbors, it’s completely in keeping with their modus operandi. They’re needlessly antagonizing South Korea.

I think people throughout the region are also connecting China’s behavior to the Taiwan conversation. People are starting to see that if China decides to go to war in Taiwan, that it is not going to be an isolated thing. Japan and South Korea are dependent on sea lines of communication that pass by Taiwan. They are increasingly of the opinion that there is no way that they could stay out of a conflict. Same with the Philippines. This behavior reinforces that belief to some extent.

I think targeting South Korea will prove to be a mistake by China. While it may be challenging for South Korea, it has the means to hold its own. They have one of the world’s most formidable shipbuilding industries, which is an element of our broader Maritime Statecraft strategy, and key means of countering China’s maritime insurgency. The South Koreans are playing an important role in rebuilding our commercial and naval shipbuilding capability in the United States, as well as for other allies. South Korea is likewise playing an enormously important role in the development of the Philippines Navy.

I would not be surprised, by the way, if China were using some of these techniques to try and pressure South Korea or at least impose costs on it for its temerity in helping the United States and Philippines to stand up to Chinese aggression.

China’s present leadership has an instinct to escalate matters, which I think is frequently counterproductive to their broader diplomatic relationships. Look at the Wolf Warrior diplomacy, or as my mentor at the Naval War College, Jim Holmes, likes to call it, “jackass diplomacy.” Being a jerk to everyone is actually not a good foreign policy. Obviously, the U.S. is in the middle of finding that out the hard way for ourselves.

God willing, our political system retains the ability to change course. Self-correction is one of the most important strengths of democratic political systems and the great weakness of authoritarian political systems. China has less capacity for self correction, and they’re going to have a much harder time than we will.

So China’s behavior in the Yellow Sea could push South Korea to play an increasingly important role in maritime counterinsurgency. South Korea is effectively an island. They have a closed border to the north that cuts them off from the rest of the continent. Their trade can’t go by land. It has to go by sea. They must be a maritime power. This prompted them to create one of the most formidable maritime industries in the world. South Korea now has a highly capable navy and coast guard. We should not hesitate at the opportunity to engage them more directly across the theater, not just in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, but in the South China Sea as well.

The prospect of bringing South Korea in to join this broader coalition to implement a maritime counterinsurgency campaign, not just in the South China Sea, but across the entire breadth of the theater, I think this has the potential to be a very positive development for us and an unforced error by China.

Dan White:

I would be remiss not to connect Japan into all of this. Over the past couple months there’s been a huge rift in Sino-Japanese relations. This was prompted by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggesting that a military invasion and blockade of Taiwan would constitute an existential threat to Japan. Do you think that’s been informed by Japan just watching this creeping expansion of Chinese maritime territorial claims?

Hunter Stires:

I wholeheartedly agree, this is an especially timely conversation. Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi is just telling the truth. If you look at the strategic geography, and you envision what Chinese control of Taiwan actually means for Japan, it very quickly becomes existential for Tokyo.

Japan is an island power. It is completely dependent on sea lines of communication for its survival. To have a hostile air and naval base just off its shores, bestriding those critical sea lines of communication, that is a big problem for Japan.

Japan is also a direct target of China’s broader maritime insurgency, with China’s challenge to the Japanese administration of the Senkaku Islands.

The Chinese clearly have a tendency and a preference t target one opponent at a time. They will escalate against the Philippines in a big way, and then they’ll potentially back off a bit, then they’ll escalate against Japan. Like a classic schoolyard bully, China tries to make everybody feel like it’s just them, that they are alone.  But of course, they are not alone.

This is again, a major opportunity for the U.S. and a major strategic liability for the Chinese. They are effectively horizontally escalating their maritime insurgency across their entire maritime periphery. They are now actively antagonizing the U.S. and this set of our allies and partners. If we can sustain the engagement and the commitment among our allies to continue pushing back on Chinese encroachment this will put China in a position where it is effectively fighting a five front war.

The bigger risk is that China gets wise and goes back to the previous strategy, of trying to appeal to countries one at a time, and isolate and peel them off individually. That worked really well for them for a long time. Thankfully, the region has really wisened up to China’s bad faith in its dealings, so a return to that previous strategy might very well be unsuccessful. The best thing that China could do for itself is moderate its positions, end the maritime insurgency and develop genuine win-win relationships with its neighbors. The United States should continue to do the same and be good friends and allies and uphold international law.

As Jim Mattis liked to put it, “be strategically predictable, be operationally unpredictable.” The U.S. should be a country everyone can rely on. The last year has not been particularly healthy on that score and we should not be antagonizing so many of our friends and allies. Ideally, Congress should start to take a more active role in the conduct of our foreign policy to ensure we remain strategically predictable.

Thankfully, the foundations of these relationships for the United States are very strong. I love the expression that Kisun Chung, the CEO of HD Hyundai, one of South Korea’s leading shipbuilders, used to describe the South Korea-U.S. relationship when the Chief of Naval Operations came to a few weeks ago. He put it very eloquently that the United States and South Korea are “blood allies.” We have shed blood together. That is powerful.

Notwithstanding the political ups and downs of any given moment, that bond endures. It endures with South Korea, it endures with the Philippines. It endures with Taiwan and Japan too. We have shed blood together. We have stood alongside each other. We would be making an enormous mistake if we harm those relationships.

I think that the foundations of our bonds, of our alliances, of our strategy are much stronger than China’s.  If we continue working together to grow our shipbuilding capability with South Korea and Japan; if we continue working with the Philippines, with Taiwan, with Korea and Japan and their world-class navies, and coast guards to protect and empower civilian mariners; if we support our friends in standing up for their sovereign rights against China’s maritime insurgency, I have great confidence that we are going to prevail.

Dan White is an independent foreign policy analyst based in the New York Metro Area. Dan is a former member of the The Wilson Center and The Kennan Institute, and a veteran of the War in Afghanistan. Dan maintains a newsletter, OPFOR Journal, which analyzes strategic competitions with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Hunter Stires served as the Maritime Strategist to the 78th Secretary of the Navy, where he was recognized for his work as one of the principal architects of the Maritime Statecraft strategy. He serves as the Project Director of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Maritime Counterinsurgency Project, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy, and the Founder and CEO of The Maritime Strategy Group. 

Featured Image: The amphibious assault ship USS America (LHD 6) transits in formation March 24, 2020.  Courtesy: U.S. Navy

capability development

Hedge with Non-Kinetic Defense

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By Connor Keating

In April 2025, Admiral Samuel Paparo delivered his annual posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee, arguing that the United States must invest in several capabilities to remain competitive in the Indo-Pacific: command, control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (C5ISRT); counter-C5ISRT (C‑C5ISRT); fires; integrated air and missile defense (IAMD); force sustainment; autonomous and AI-driven systems; and maritime domain awareness and sea control. According to Admiral Paparo, space, AI, and IAMD are critical enablers for reducing risk to U.S. forces in a conflict with China. These capabilities offer exquisite performance for roughly 95 percent of the missions the United States might face short of full-scale war, but they may not be the most cost‑effective way to reduce risk in a high‑end fight with China.

In “C-Note” #3 and in his address at the Surface Navy Association’s 38th National Symposium in January 2026, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle outlined a new “hedge strategy.”1 He explained that the Navy will build a general-purpose force—the 95 percent solution—while pursuing “tailored offsets” that augment the general-purpose force and cover the high-intensity 5 percent beyond it. Examples of hedge capabilities in his C‑Note include special operations forces to counter terrorism, ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) for nuclear deterrence, and the “Hellscape” concept to defeat a Taiwan invasion force.2 Taken together, Admiral Paparo’s requests and Admiral Caudle’s strategy suggest a gap: the Navy is investing heavily in the 95‑percent, general‑purpose force but underinvesting in simple, low‑cost hedge capabilities tailored to the most dangerous 5 percent of scenarios. This article focuses on one particularly dangerous contingency within that 5 percent—a high‑end conflict with China—and argues that the Navy should rapidly field a set of low‑cost, non‑kinetic hedge capabilities that improve platform survivability by stressing the entire Chinese kill chain and driving up adversary salvo requirements.

A Non-Kinetic Hedge Strategy

To be effective, hedge strategies must be relatively low‑cost in peacetime, sustainable over time, and quickly fielded when a high‑end scenario occurs. This makes kinetic and non‑kinetic drone‑ship solutions appealing for increasing magazine capacities and survivability. In practice, this means pairing manned surface combatants with unmanned platforms that can either shoot (kinetic) or sense, jam, and deceive (non‑kinetic). By adding more platforms that an adversary must detect and target—and by using some of them as decoys or stand‑in targets—the manned ships themselves become harder to find and kill. However, while potentially potent, drones’ rapid obsolescence and continuous upgrade cycle can drive up peacetime costs—especially if the Navy must sustain multiple bespoke designs—demanding a robust and affordable sustainment ecosystem.3

A more cost‑effective hedge for this high-end contingency is a set of modular non-kinetic defense systems that can be stored in peacetime and rapidly deployed in crisis. For the Navy, these could include an improved passive countermeasure system (PCMS) and radar reflectors for surface ships; inflatable decoys and radar reflectors for aircraft; and small-footprint jammer and dazzler packages that enable theater-wide deception. This article proposes three such hedge strategies: one for surface ships, one for aircraft, and one centered on small, mobile jammer and dazzler packages.

Surface Ship “Hedge Strategies”

The surface Navy could be at substantial risk from Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) in a high-end conflict. Missiles such as the DF-26 and soon, the DF-27 can engage ships at ranges of more than 2,000 nautical miles.4,5 Some might argue that U.S. ballistic‑missile defense (BMD) is sufficient to counter these threats. It is not, for both performance and capacity reasons. U.S. BMD has struggled against Iranian threats in defense of Israel, Qatar, and in the recently launched U.S. war with Iran, allowing multiple leaks through and expending billions in interceptors.6, 7 This experience highlights not only the operational and strategic implications of interceptor shortages, but also the tactical implications of finite shipboard magazines: every missile fired in defense cannot be used in offense.8 If U.S. and allied systems struggled to stop a limited number of Iranian missiles, they are unlikely to keep pace with large-scale salvos from the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). Even if they could, U.S. and allied BMD systems and ships are likely to exhaust their inventories faster due to the shot doctrine employed. The solution lies in exploiting inherent weaknesses in missile seekers and ballistic missile kill chains.

Missile seekers—specifically ASBM seekers—must search a significant area from a top-down angle to find a target. This forces the seeker to deal with substantial sea clutter and requires significant onboard processing.9 U.S. surface combatants help adversary seekers by presenting large radar cross sections (RCS), and existing measures to mitigate this—such as treatment with PCMS tiles—only modestly reduce RCS. Further, more seekers are incorporating multiple modes, including not only an active radar but also a passive sensor and Infrared (IR) Imaging sensors.10 Advances in radar‑ and IR‑absorbing materials—such as carbon‑nanotube (CNT) tiles and polyaniline (PANI) or vanadium dioxide (VO₂) paint coatings—could yield significantly improved PCMS, with open-source studies suggesting potential reductions in RCS on the order of more than 15 dBsm and IR signatures by roughly 20 percent.11, 12, 13 A smaller RCS and lower IR signature directly translates into a shorter detection range for an ASBM seeker and a smaller search area.14 That, in turn, forces the adversary to provide more precise targeting data or accept a higher risk of missing.15

Reducing RCS and IR signature alone, however, might not be enough to minimize the risk to surface forces. Open-source reporting indicates that China can field ASBMs equipped with both synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) and conventional radar seekers.16, 17, 18 SAR provides all-weather, fine-resolution imagery and can distinguish targets by shape, allowing a carrier to be distinguished from a destroyer. To counter this, the Navy could pair RCS‑reducing tiles with radar reflectors designed to distort a ship’s apparent shape and size in SAR imagery, making it harder to distinguish high‑value units from escorts and to achieve precise aimpoints.19 Radar reflectors have long been used as test aids for U.S. radar systems and weapons.20 By distorting the apparent size and shape of test targets to resemble adversary equipment, they help assess and improve U.S. weapon effectiveness against realistic radar signatures.21 Together, these measures would not make ships invulnerable, but they could significantly stress the entire Chinese kill chain at relatively low cost compared with hard-kill missile defenses—exactly the kind of hedge capability the Navy needs for the most dangerous 5 percent of scenarios.

Implementing these changes could be relatively straightforward because PCMS has existed as a program of record since 1998, with no significant updates. Rather than invent a new system from scratch, the Navy could reinvigorate PCMS by incorporating new CNT, PANI, and VO₂ tiles and adding several radar‑reflector configurations, delivering updates to the fleet in months rather than years. Because the new tiles would be stored and only applied in crisis or conflict, they would function as a true hedge capability—largely invisible to adversary peacetime collection yet immediately available once a conflict begins. A PANI and VO₂-based paint could also be incorporated into ship coatings moving forward, providing some degradation to seekers during routine, 95-percent, general-purpose operations. The most expensive part of the program would likely be the modeling and simulation needed to determine the correct number of tiles and their optimal placement. A similar analysis effort would be required for the radar reflectors. Even with this modeling requirement, all other parts of the implementation chain are already in place. PCMS tiles are already used in the fleet, and ship crews are trained in their employment, which removes the need for starting a new training pipeline or schoolhouse, a process that normally costs the Navy years in fielding time; the new system would be taught by existing schoolhouses and phased into the fleet’s current electronic warfare training.

Aircraft “Hedge Strategies”

Aircraft hedge strategies should mirror the surface‑ship approach in stressing the entire enemy kill chain to increase survivability: use inflatable decoys and radar reflectors at airfields to saturate adversary sensors, complicate PLARF targeting and fire distribution, and preserve high‑value air assets by stressing the entire enemy kill chain, vice relying solely on counterforce solutions to defeat attacks. Properly employed, these decoys could flood Pacific airfields with false targets, helping to preserve high-value assets such as tankers, bombers, jammers, and command-and-control (C2) aircraft.

Use of decoys as an element of deception is not new. During World War II, the United States employed a so‑called “Ghost Army” to convince German commanders that the Allied landing would occur at Calais rather than Normandy.22 More recently in Ukraine, decoys have helped protect critical air defense, artillery, and C2 assets from Russian fires.23 These examples of successful decoy use also show that decoys work best when paired with convincing signatures—radar, infrared, and electromagnetic—that can deceive modern intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, including SAR satellites. For the Pacific, inflatable decoys and radar reflectors should be tailored to replicate a range of aircraft types, with particular emphasis on the scarce, high‑value enablers—airborne tankers, long‑range bombers, stand‑off jammers, and C2 platforms—that are operationally decisive.

Pairing inflatable decoys with radar reflectors and signal deception is essential to ensure that adversary intelligence is credibly deceived; an inflatable decoy alone will not fool sophisticated SAR satellite imagery.24 Further, decoy and radar reflector configurations should cover a wide range of aircraft platforms while focusing on the assets most important to the mission, such as tankers, bombers, jammers, and C2 aircraft. The benefit of investing in and creating these decoys now is that they can be stored at critical nodes in the theater and rapidly fielded in times of conflict. The use of decoys should be integrated into regular training to keep units proficient and ready for conflict, but also to complicate adversary intelligence collection during competition by revealing a credible deception capability, which in turn supports deterrence.

Some critics might argue that overt decoy use would “reveal” U.S. capabilities and allow the PRC to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to distinguish real targets from false ones. Yet this revelation is, in many ways, a desired feature of a system designed to increase platform survivability. If Beijing believes U.S. and allied forces can rapidly flood key airfields with convincing decoys, it must either invest heavily in improved discrimination or plan to fire larger salvos at a much larger target set. Even with improved TTPs, however, finding, fixing, and tracking hundreds, if not thousands, of decoys would remain a significant challenge for any military, and would still consume time, collection assets, and munitions.

This trade-off is especially important because PLARF can fire from sanctuary on the mainland, while U.S. strikes against that sanctuary may be constrained by political decisions. Decoys and radar reflectors give the U.S. a low‑cost way to impose confusion and delay on PLARF’s targeting cycle, forcing it either to accept faster depletion of critical munitions or to slow its fires while it refines targeting. In either case, U.S. and allied forces gain time to maneuver, rearm, and reposition.25

Jammers and Dazzlers “Hedge Strategy”

Jammers and dazzlers are powerful non-kinetic devices that can act as force multipliers for the passive systems described above. In this article, “jammers” refers to small, mobile systems—such as the Space Force’s remote modular terminal (RMT)—that can degrade or deny satellite ISR.26 “Dazzlers” denotes systems that temporarily blind or degrade electro‑optical and infrared (EO/IR) sensors on adversary satellites.27 Fielded in sufficient numbers, such packages could saturate Chinese ISR coverage over key ports and airfields, forcing the PLARF and PLA Navy to guess, delay, or expend additional assets to confirm targets. In doing so, they would function as a classic hedge: relatively inexpensive in peacetime but highly effective at complicating adversary targeting in a high‑end fight.

The benefit of small, mobile jammer/dazzler packages is that they allow the United States to saturate adversary ISR and lower the risk to U.S. forces. For example, if the United States deployed roughly 100 jammer/dazzler packages across the Western Pacific—each capable of covering one‑nautical‑mile square—the U.S. could cover every major U.S. and allied airfield and port with at least one system. This could materially complicate Chinese ISR and battle-damage assessment of key nodes, or dramatically delay targeting decisions by forcing collection through human intelligence (HUMINT) rather than relying solely on satellite imagery, buying valuable reconstitution time for U.S. forces located at these key nodes. Additional units mounted on barges or ships could protect maneuvering forces at sea. In such an environment, the adversary might know the general location of U.S. forces but not their exact identity or value, a state of ambiguity that would force additional ISR sorties or demand greater acceptance of risk for fires on low‑confidence targets. Pairing ships and airfields with the non-kinetic defenses outlined above—RCS and IR reduction, reflectors, and inflatable decoys—could further enhance survivability against inbound munitions, even those equipped with sophisticated multi-mode seekers.

Ultimately, this places the adversary on the horns of a dilemma: either expend significant munitions to address every potential target, thus lowering risk to U.S. forces as exquisite munitions are depleted, or expend time and assets identifying each target, thereby allowing U.S. forces to maneuver into position to employ their own ordnance and putting Chinese forces at risk.

Why – Anecdote from a recent Halsey Alfa Wargame

In a recent iteration of the Naval War College’s Halsey Alfa China wargaming series—a campaign‑level analytic game focused on a Taiwan invasion—I served as the BLUE force commander. The game assumed a highly compressed timeline and, because of initial probabilities (rolls of chance made before game start), BLUE did not receive Japanese support. The RED commander chose a conservative “fleet in being” approach, relying on PLARF’s firepower, magazine depth, and reach to attrit BLUE while preserving his fleet for follow‑on operations.

To survive long enough to deliver munitions into the Taiwan Strait, BLUE employed layered passive deception at the land–sea interface. We used ship configurations designed to distort radar images and pulled critical air assets—tankers and bombers—out of PLARF range while strengthening air defenses at key airfields. This approach did not prevent losses, particularly among cruiser–destroyer (CRUDES) platforms, but it forced RED to expend more than a quarter of his missile inventory in a few days of fighting. Non-kinetic defenses increased the required salvo size against BLUE ships by almost an order of magnitude. The lesson was clear: had the United States possessed the layered non-kinetic capabilities outlined in this article—deception, target distortion, and ISR degradation—it could have stressed the entire Chinese kill chain, forced the adversary to expend munitions far faster, and preserved enough combat power to sustain offensive operations over a longer period of time.

A simplified example illustrates the effect. Suppose an adversary missile has a 90‑percent chance of detecting and killing a ship that lacks passive defenses. Now assume that layered passive measures—decoys, jammers, dazzlers, RCS and IR reduction, and radar reflectors—each reduce that effectiveness by about 80 percent at different points in the kill chain.28, 29 Unclassified sources suggest such reductions are realistic estimates for individual links, and when combined, they dramatically increase the ship’s probability of survival and force the adversary to fire many more missiles to achieve the same expected damage. In practical terms, if it originally took 12 missiles to have high confidence of at least one hit, after layered passive measures, it might take four times as many to achieve the same effect. Adding soft‑kill electronic attack increases this requirement even further, without the radiating signatures that hard‑kill defenses often create. In other words, layered non‑kinetic defenses substantially increase the required salvo size for the attacker.

Another way to apply this logic is to tailor passive defenses to areas threatened by specific PLARF systems, such as installations and facilities within the DF-26’s effective range. The United States could deliberately design a posture that drives up Chinese expenditure of these critical munitions. This creates a dilemma: either fire at low-confidence targets and accept faster magazine depletion, or spend more time and assets refining targeting. Either choice creates seams the United States can exploit. If China shoots early and often, U.S. forces can move in sooner as inventories fall. If China delays, BLUE can use time and maneuver to bring forces into the weapons engagement zone on favorable terms.

Conclusion

As Admiral Caudle has argued, the Navy needs hedge strategies that keep the force relevant in high‑end conflict without breaking the bank in peacetime—ways to augment the general purpose force and cover the most dangerous scenarios, which specifically includes a potential war with China. Layered non-kinetic defenses—employed as a combined system—offer one such hedge. For surface forces, the Navy should update the PCMS program with a new tile‑and‑paint system and pair it with radar reflectors that distort imaging seekers. For air forces, it should field decoys and radar reflectors, as seen in Ukraine, to cast doubt on the precise location of U.S. air assets. Finally, the Navy and joint force should combine small, mobile jammers and dazzlers to saturate adversary ISR and degrade battle damage assessment, preserving operational surprise.

None of these ideas are technologically exotic. They are relatively low-cost, can be stored in peacetime, and can be rapidly fielded in a crisis. Together, layered non-kinetic defenses would not make U.S. forces invulnerable inside the weapons engagement zone, but they would impose steep costs on Chinese targeting and munitions inventories while materially improving platform and asset survivability—precisely the kind of hedge the Navy needs for the most demanding, high-end scenarios.

Lieutenant Connor Keating commissioned from the Virginia Tech NROTC and served aboard a forward-deployed destroyer in Yokosuka, Japan. On shore duty, he was a protocol action officer to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is an integrated air-and-missile defense warfare tactics instructor and participated in the Naval War College’s Halsey Alfa Advanced Research Project as a resident student. 

Endnotes

1. Caudle, Daryl L. “C-NOte #3: World Class Fleet.” Message to the Fleet from the Chief of Naval Operations, United States Navy, December 1, 2025. https://www.mynavyhr.navy.mil/Portals/55/Messages/NAVADMIN/NAV2025/NAV25241.pdf.

2. Caudle, Daryl L. “C-NOte #3: World Class Fleet.” Message to the Fleet from the Chief of Naval Operations, United States Navy, December 1, 2025. https://www.mynavyhr.navy.mil/Portals/55/Messages/NAVADMIN/NAV2025/NAV25241.pdf.

3. “The Impact of Drones on the Battlefield: Lessons of the Russia-Ukraine War from a French Perspective.” 2025. Hudson Institute. October 21, 2025. https://www.hudson.org/missile-defense/impact-drones-battlefield-lessons-russian-ukraine-war-french-perspective-tsiporah-fried.

4. “DF-26.” n.d. Missile Threat. https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/dong-feng-26-df-26/.

5. Lariosa, Aaron-Matthew. 2025. “Chinese Forces Fielding Intercontinental Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles Capable of Reaching U.S. West Coast, Pentagon Says – USNI News.” USNI News. December 26, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/12/26/chinese-forces-fielding-intercontinental-anti-ship-ballistic-missiles-capable-of-reaching-u-s-west-coast-pentagon-says.

6. News, PBS. 2025. “Pentagon Acknowledges Iran’s Attack on Qatar Air Base Hit Dome Used for U.S. Communications.” PBS News. July 11, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pentagon-acknowledges-irans-attack-on-qatar-air-base-hit-dome-used-for-u-s-communications.

7. Cancian, Mark F, and Chris H Park. 2026. “Iran War Cost Estimate Update: $11.3 Billion at Day 6, $16.5 Billion at Day 12.” Csis.org. 2026. https://www.csis.org/analysis/iran-war-cost-estimate-update-113-billion-day-6-165-billion-day-12.

8. Rumbaugh, Wes. 2025. “The Depleting Missile Defense Interceptor Inventory.” Csis.org. 2025. https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-interceptor-inventory.

9. “Active Radar Homing.” Grokipedia. xAI. Last fact-checked January 14,2026. https://grokipedia.com/page/Active_radar_homing.

10. Bronk, Justin. 2020. Review of Russian and Chinese Combat Air Trends: Current Capabilities and Future Threat Outlook. RUSI. RUSI. October 30, 2020. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/whitehall-reports/russian-and-chinese-combat-air-trends-current-capabilities-and-future-threat-outlook#:~:text=China%20has%20developed%20J%2D11,20B%20having%20begun%20in%202020.

11. Kim, Seong-Hwang, Seul-Yi Lee, Yali Zhang, Soo-Jin Park, and Junwei Gu. 2023. “Carbon-Based Radar Absorbing Materials toward Stealth Technologies.” Advanced Science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany), September, e2303104. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202303104.

12. Zhang, Deqing, Xiuying Yang, Junye Cheng, Mingming Lu, and Maosheng Cao. 2013. “Facile Preparation, Characterization, and Highly Effective Microwave Absorption Performance of CNTs/Fe 3 O 4 /PANI Nanocomposites.” Journal of Nanomaterials 2013 (5): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/591893.

13. Jiang, Changhao, Liangliang He, Qi Xuan, et al. “Phase-Change VO₂-Based Thermochromic Smart Windows.” Light: Science & Applications 13 (2024): 255. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01560-9.

14. To illustrate with an example: Consider the basic radar range equation, which describes the received power (Pr) at the seeker:

  • : Transmitted power
  • : Transmit and receive antenna gains
  • : Wavelength of the radar signal
  • : RCS of the target
  • ( R ): Distance (range) to the target

For the seeker to detect the target, Pr must exceed a minimum detectable signal threshold (accounting for noise and other factors). If all other parameters are fixed, Pr is directly proportional to σ and inversely proportional to R⁴.Suppose a conventional aircraft has an RCS of 1 m², detectable by a given seeker at a range of 10 km. If stealth technology reduces the RCS to 0.0001 m² (a factor of 10,000 reduction, common in advanced designs), the maximum detection range drops significantly. Since range R is proportional to the fourth root of σ (R ∝ σ^{1/4}), reducing σ by 10,000 (10^4) cuts R by a factor of 10 (since (10^4)^{1/4} = 10). Thus, the new detection range might be only 1 km, allowing the aircraft to approach much closer before being detected.

15. Grant, Rebecca. The Radar Game: Understanding Stealth and Aircraft Survivability. Arlington, VA: Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies, 2010. https://secure.afa.org/Mitchell/reports/MS_RadarGame_0910.pdf.

16. Erickson, Andrew S. Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories, and Strategic Implications. Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2013.

17. Kreisher, Otto. “China’s Carrier Killer: Threat and Theatrics.” Air & Space Forces Magazine, December 1, 2013. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1213china.

18. “CM-401 Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile.” GlobalSecurity.org. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/cm-401.htm.

19. Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division. Electronic Warfare and Radar Systems Engineering Handbook. 4th ed. Point Mugu, CA: Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, 2013. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA617071.pdf.

20. Smith, Mark , Lokesh Saggam, and Shashi Saggam. n.d. Review of Trihedral Reflectors for Radar Applications. Millimeter Wave Product Inc. Mi-Wave© (Millimeter Wave Products Inc.). Accessed March 15, 2026. https://www.miwv.com/trihedral-reflectors-for-radar-applications/.

21. Leone, Dario. 2021. “How Luneburg Lens Radar Reflectors Are Used to Make Stealth Aircraft Visible on Radar Screens.” The Aviation Geek Club. June 11, 2021. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-devices-make-stealth-aircraft-visible-on-radar-screens/.

22. Murphy, Brian John. 2018. “Patton’s Ghost Army – D-Day Deception – America in WWII Mag.” Americainwwii.com. 2018. http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/pattons-ghost-army/.

23. Bonsegna, Nicola. 2024. “The Strategic Role of Decoys in the Conflict in Ukraine.” TDHJ.org. October 31, 2024. https://tdhj.org/blog/post/decoys-conflict-ukraine/.

24. SAR. “Detecting Russian Inflatable Decoys with SAR.” Synthetic Aperture Radar, July 31, 2017. https://syntheticapertureradar.com/detecting-russian-inflatable-decoys-with-sar.

25. Bonsegna, Nicola. 2024. “The Strategic Role of Decoys in the Conflict in Ukraine.” TDHJ.org. October 31, 2024. https://tdhj.org/blog/post/decoys-conflict-ukraine/.

26. US Space Force. “US Space Force to Use Three Weapons To Jam Chinese Satellites Via Remote Control.” Bloomberg, November 4, 2025. https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-04/us-space-force-to-use-three-weapons-to-jam-chinese-satellites-via-remote-control.

27. Tingley, Brett. 2024. “Space Force Tests Small Satellite Jammer to Protect against ‘Space-Enabled’ Attacks.” Space.com. April 24, 2024. https://www.space.com/space-force-ground-based-jammer-electronic-warfare.

28. Smith, Ryan M. “Using Kill-Chain Analysis to Develop Surface Ship CONOPs to Defend Against Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles.” Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2010. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA524758.pdf.

29. Cadirci, Semih. “RF Stealth (Or Low Observable) and Counter Low Observable Technology.” Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2009. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA496936.pdf.

Featured Image: An aerial view of F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft mockups parked on a fake flight line during Exercise SALTY DEMO’85. SALTY DEMO’85 is an air base survivability exercise evaluating passive and active defenses, aircraft operation and generation, and base recovery systems. (Photo via National Archives)

Future Tech

Asymmetry Rising: How Autonomous Systems Enforce Sea Denial

1 Comment

By Rudraksh Pathak

Naval warfare is approaching a point where the traditional capital ship is no longer an unambiguous asset in contested waters. For decades, naval power was measured in tonnage and platforms: the size of destroyers, the number of vertical launch cells, the quietness of submarines. That framework still matters, but it is no longer sufficient. Increasingly, the most serious threat to a multi-billion-dollar surface combatant is not a peer navy’s capital ship, but a mass of inexpensive, expendable autonomous systems that strain the ship’s ability to defend itself.

This dynamic resembles a modern incarnation of the Jeune École theory of the late nineteenth century, which argued that small, inexpensive platforms armed with torpedoes could undermine battleship dominance. What technology has changed is not the idea itself, but its feasibility. Today, autonomous systems allow navies that cannot compete ship-for-ship to impose risk at sea at a fraction of the cost. Concepts resembling Project Seawarden illustrate how sea denial can be achieved not by matching an adversary’s fleet, but by making forward operations increasingly hazardous.

Doctrinal Shifts: The Indo-Pacific Reality

This shift from theory to doctrine is currently manifesting across the Indo-Pacific, where regional powers are actively prioritizing asymmetric denial over traditional fleet matching.

The USV Threat: Surface Denial

Recognizing that matching Chinese naval tonnage is financially and logistically prohibitive, Taiwan is rapidly shifting its procurement toward sea denial capabilities. Taipei is prioritizing the development and mass production of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), such as the Endeavour Manta and Kuai Chi.1,2 These platforms are explicitly designed for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and one-way kamikaze missions. Capable of carrying explosive payloads, they present a highly expendable, low-cost threat specifically optimized to strike high-value surface combatants and enforce sea denial in the contested waters of the Taiwan Strait.

The UUV Threat: Subsurface Friction

Beneath the surface, the focus has shifted toward generating persistent friction without risking multi-billion-dollar crewed submarines. The Royal Australian Navy, in collaboration with industry partners, is rapidly producing the “Ghost Shark” Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (XL-AUV).3 This program aims to deliver a stealthy, long-range autonomous capability to conduct persistent surveillance and strike missions, effectively laying down an affordable undersea deterrence layer. Concurrently, China views the undersea domain as central to great-power competition, actively integrating seabed sensors and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) into a vast anti-submarine warfare network designed to control maritime choke points and compel adversary vessels to withdraw.4

The Network: The Multi-Domain Fabric

Physical drones, however, cannot enforce denial in isolation; they require a battle space management network capable of coordinating them across domains to overwhelm adversary defenses. Acknowledging the need to counter the People’s Liberation Army’s advantage in mass, the U.S. Department of Defense launched the “Replicator” initiative.5 Driven heavily by the operational needs of the Indo-Pacific Command, Replicator aims to field thousands of attritable, autonomous systems across multiple domains within a two-year window. By networking these small, smart, and cheap systems, the strategic objective is to penetrate heavily contested anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) environments, creating a distributed autonomous fabric that paralyzes adversary logistics and operational tempo.

The Logistics of the Interceptor Trap

The central problem is not simply that autonomous drones are cheap. It is that defending against them is expensive, finite, and logistically fragile. Modern surface combatants rely on highly capable interceptors such as the SM-2 or Aster 30, each costing millions of dollars and occupying limited space in a ship’s vertical launch system. Against a small number of high-end threats, this exchange makes sense. Against large numbers of low-cost autonomous platforms, it does not.

This creates what can be described as the “Interceptor Trap.” Defenders are compelled to expend scarce, high-value interceptors against targets that may cost only tens of thousands of dollars. The imbalance is not merely financial. Missile magazines cannot be replenished at sea, and once depleted, a ship must withdraw to reload. By contrast, an adversary can scale production of simple autonomous systems far more rapidly and with fewer constraints. Systems modeled on the Seawarden concept exploit this friction. They do not need to penetrate defenses perfectly; they need only to force defenders to consume their most capable weapons on the least valuable targets.

Attacking the Logistics Chain

Much of the discussion around autonomous maritime systems focuses on dramatic scenarios involving aircraft carriers or major surface combatants. In practice, the more consequential vulnerability lies elsewhere. Fleet oilers, replenishment ships, and other logistics vessels are essential to sustained naval operations, yet they are slow, lightly defended, and highly visible.

Disrupting these ships does not require sinking them outright. Damage to propulsion, steering, or hull integrity can remove a logistics vessel from service for months. Without reliable replenishment, even the most capable carrier strike group becomes tethered to distant ports. Autonomous underwater or surface systems do not need to breach the layered defenses of a destroyer to shape a campaign; targeting the logistics tail can achieve the same effect more reliably. It is not a dramatic way to fight, but it is an effective one.

Persistent Friction and the Zone of Uncertainty

Autonomous systems impose costs even when they do not attack. The maritime environment is already cluttered with biological noise, commercial traffic, and complex acoustic conditions. Introducing large numbers of small, low-signature platforms into this environment compounds the problem. Distinguishing a hostile autonomous system from benign background noise becomes a continuous challenge rather than a discrete event.

For operators, this creates sustained cognitive strain. Commanders must assume that any contact could represent a threat, even if most do not. Ships maneuver more aggressively, burn more fuel, and devote greater attention to defensive postures. Over time, this persistent uncertainty degrades operational tempo and increases the likelihood of error. Autonomous systems designed for endurance and persistence are particularly effective at generating this friction, regardless of whether they ever fire a weapon.

Conclusion: The End of Maritime Sanctuary

High-value naval platforms carry significance far beyond their military utility. They are symbols of national prestige, and damage to them carries political consequences even when losses are limited. By contrast, unmanned systems carry little political risk. Losing an autonomous platform does not provoke domestic backlash or escalation pressure.

As competition intensifies in regions such as the Indian Ocean, the balance of advantage may increasingly Favor those who can impose denial rather than project dominance. The decisive question is shifting away from who fields the most impressive platforms, and toward who can most effectively deny the use of contested maritime spaces. In that environment, low-cost autonomous systems are not force multipliers; they are force limiters, capable of eroding the operational freedom of even the most advanced navies.

Rudraksh Pathak is an undergraduate engineering student and co-founder of Enlir Avant Systéme. His research focuses on maritime strategy, autonomous systems, and distributed unmanned architectures in naval warfare. His current work explores ontologies for defense systems, systems engineering for unmanned battle management systems, and digital twin frameworks for autonomous operational environments.

References

[1] “Taiwanese Drone Firm Pitches Unmanned Surface Vessels for Coastal Defense,” USNI News, December 2025.

[2] Sutton, H. I. “Taiwan’s Asymmetric Capabilities: Weaponised Uncrewed Surface Vessels,” Covert Shores, August 2024.

[3]”Anduril Wins Ghost Shark Contract,” Australian Defence Magazine, September 10, 2025.

[4]”Exploring the Role of UUVs in Maritime Surveillance and A2/AD Capabilities,” Center for a New American Security (CNAS), June 2024.

[5]”Implementing the Department of Defense Replicator Initiative to Accelerate All-Domain Attritable Autonomous Systems,” Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), U.S. Department of Defense, November 30, 2023.

Featured Image: Medium displacement unmanned surface vessel Sea Hunter sails in formation during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2022., Aug. 3, 2022.  (U.S. Navy Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Kylie Jagiello.)

Gray Zone

Russia’s Irregular Maritime Statecraft in the Baltic Sea

1 Comment

By Joe Durigan and Craig Whiteside

Since 2022, Russia has sharply increased its employment of illegal/coercive/aggressive/deceptive (ICAD) maritime tactics in the Baltic Sea, often loosely referred to as “gray zone” activities. Assessing Russian hostility toward Europe, new NATO chief Mark Rutte recently noted that “Russia is already escalating its covert campaign against our societies” and that the alliance must be prepared for a Russian attack within five years. Whether Rutte’s assessment is correct is hard to judge, but could the dramatic increase in ICAD maritime tactics be the cause for this perception? Is Russian aggression imminent in the Baltic Sea region?

Our analysis of Russian illicit maritime tactics in the Baltic Sea since 2022 leaves us skeptical of any escalation. We argue that Russia employs irregular maritime statecraft to offset declining conventional naval power, sustain sanctioned energy exports, and pressure NATO without triggering open conflict. These nefarious activities—shadow fleet operations, undersea infrastructure sabotage, and electronic interference—are disruptive but strategically limited. While effective at harassment and signaling, they cannot deliver decisive political outcomes and increasingly risk attribution, backlash, and escalation. Putting aside Russia’s robust capabilities and malign behavior in other domains, its maritime “gray zone campaign” is a defensive, compensatory strategy chosen out of weakness, not a pathway to strategic advantage. NATO’s real challenge is managing persistent disruption without over or under-reacting—the strategic analog to the Goldilocks rule.

Russian Maritime Strategic Culture and its bad hand in the Baltic Sea

Russia’s maritime behavior in the Baltic Sea is best understood through the constraints imposed by strategic culture and geography rather than through explanations of deliberate escalation or doctrinal mastery. Historically a land‑centric power, Russia has struggled to convert naval forces into reliable political leverage, particularly in confined maritime spaces. Unlike its confidence in ground operations or information warfare, Moscow has long treated the sea as an exposed domain—one where visibility is high, control is fleeting, and conventional superiority is difficult to sustain. As a result, Russia has tended to favor ambiguity, deception, and indirect methods at sea over overt demonstrations of naval power.

That discomfort has become more pronounced since 2022. Russia’s inability to move naval forces through the Turkish Straits, its lack of reliable sea lines of communication, and a shipbuilding sector that cannot replace aging vessels—combined with the Kremlin’s persistent relegation of the maritime domain to the bottom of its strategic priorities—have all contributed to this increasingly apparent weakness. These factors, combined with NATO’s expansion to include Finland and Sweden, have transformed the Baltic from a contested maritime space into one that is effectively NATO‑enclosed. At the same time, Russia’s growing dependence on seaborne energy exports has raised the strategic importance of uninterrupted maritime access through a region where its freedom of action is sharply constrained. Moscow thus faces a paradox: it must preserve the Baltic as an economic lifeline while lacking the conventional forces needed to dominate or defend it.

In response, Russia has not developed a sophisticated maritime gray zone doctrine so much as defaulted to familiar tools often employed when power projection is risky and escalation control matters. The use of civilian vessels, deniable electronic interference, and legally ambiguous undersea activity reflects adaptation under pressure rather than confidence or strategic ambition. These methods enable harassment, signaling, and limited disruption while avoiding open confrontation, but they are poorly suited to producing durable political outcomes. Russia’s irregular maritime statecraft in the Baltic is therefore best understood as a holding action—an effort to manage decline and preserve room for maneuver from a constrained strategic position, rather than a pathway to maritime advantage.

Russia’s Three-page Playbook of Maritime Irregular Statecraft

Russia’s maritime irregular statecraft in the Baltic Sea relies on a narrow, repeatable playbook optimized for deniability and persistence rather than control or coercive leverage. Far from demonstrating doctrinal sophistication, this approach reflects the limited options available to a constrained actor operating in a NATO dominated maritime environment. At its core are three mutually reinforcing tools: the shadow fleet as both economic lifeline and operational cover, selective disruption of undersea infrastructure to exploit political sensitivity and attribution delays, and low-cost electronic interference to degrade the maritime picture in the Baltic. Together, these tactics enable harassment and signaling below the threshold of armed conflict while minimizing immediate escalation risks—but they do not scale into durable strategic advantage.

The shadow fleet sits at the center of this playbook. Economically, these vessels are indispensable to sustaining Russia’s war effort by moving sanctioned energy exports through the Baltic. Operationally, they offer deniable platforms that exploit legal ambiguities, mask movements, and complicate enforcement. Yet this dual use is inherently self-limiting. The same ships Russia depends on for revenue are increasingly visible, tracked, and exposed to interdiction, legal action, and seizure. Aggressive employment of the shadow fleet for coercive purposes therefore risks undermining the very economic lifeline it is meant to protect. As a result, the fleet functions less as a tool of escalation than as a constraint on how far Russia can push its maritime campaign.

Undersea infrastructure disruption and electronic warfare act as force multipliers within this constrained approach, but they exhibit clear diminishing returns. Pipelines, power cables, and fiberoptic links are attractive targets primarily because they are exposed and politically sensitive components of energy systems and lines of communication, not because they provide decisive leverage. Damage is typically repairable, escalation tends to remain bounded, and repetition of these tactics steadily generates political backlash alongside improved monitoring and faster attribution. Electronic interference—particularly ship based Global Positioning System (GPS) and Automatic Identification System (AIS) jamming—reinforces these dynamics at low cost by degrading maritime safety and complicating enforcement in congested waters, yet such effects are fleeting and increasingly detectable. Over time, the operational signatures that these activities leave behind erode deniability rather than preserve it.

Taken together, this narrow and self-limiting playbook enables disruption without control and visibility without leverage—a strategy of management rather than momentum that raises a more fundamental question: whether Russia’s maritime gray zone campaign represents a durable form of competition with options for escalation or the early signs of strategic exhaustion.

Whither the “Gray Zone”?

Three years into Russia’s irregular maritime campaign, its strategic gains are limited and diminishing as they invite stronger legal and political backlash. These tactics do not scale well into operational advantages, and work better when maritime conventional forces can back them up. The best example of this is the Chinese navy’s support for its Coast Guard and Maritime Militia harassment of neighboring fishing vessels in East and South China Seas. Russia’s maritime capabilities are too weak to integrate power in this fashion. The backlash in Europe is producing a balancing effect, as efforts to improve attribution and legal charges against perpetrators limit Russian efforts. NATO states have boarded suspicious vessels, seized vessels involved in sabotage (e.g. MV FITBURG), and increased maritime domain awareness to identify and document future attacks. ICAD tactics are best suited for harassment, signaling, and economic necessity; they are poor tools for reversing Russia’s strategic woes.

Advocates of the gray zone concept a decade ago predicted it would eventually become the prevalent method of undermining the status quo and be difficult to combat. This does not make it an inherently low-risk strategy. The accumulation of ICAD events and the attention given to them in the post-Ukraine invasion era make it impossible for Russian acts to fly “below the radar.” Instead, the very escalation that these tactics seek to avoid becomes more likely as states react to the constant drumbeat of malign behavior.

How should NATO leverage the growing visibility of irregular maritime tactics and the certainty that Russia is behind them? First, accelerate efforts to determine attribution and expose these tactics immediately in a coordinated fashion with NATO partners. Increased maritime domain awareness at all levels is a priority; this includes investing in seabed monitoring, AIS/Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) analytics, and forensic investigation capacity. Rapid and credible attribution enables legal action, sanctions, interdiction, and future deterrence by exposure.

Secondly, NATO should transition from passive monitoring of Russia’s “shadow fleet” to a posture of active maritime containment. Under NATO’s 2025 Alliance Maritime Strategy (AMS) to uphold freedom of navigation and secure strategic trade routes, NATO should no longer treat these vessels as mere commercial anomalies. Instead, the Alliance should designate uninsured or AIS-spoofing vessels as “Navigational and Environmental Hazards,” providing the legal predicate for mandatory boardings and inspections within territorial and contiguous waters. By continuing to work towards active maritime containment, NATO can normalize interdictions that raise the insurance premiums and operational costs for Moscow’s economic lifelines, transforming its primary source of revenue into a point of strategic vulnerability.

Thirdly, NATO should operationalize its “Digital Ocean Vision” to secure critical undersea infrastructure. The defensive posture of the past three years—characterized by slow attribution and repair—is obsolete. Following the framework of Operation Baltic Sentry, NATO should scale Task Force X to deploy a persistent, autonomous undersea maritime infrastructure resiliency initiative. By integrating uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) with high-resolution acoustic sensors, NATO can create a real-time “networked ocean” that detects anomalies—such as the 2024 Motor Vessel Eagle S incident—as they occur. This capability moves NATO from a “forensic” response to a “preventative” one, utilizing automated interceptors to escort suspicious vessels away from critical nodes before damage is sustained.

Finally, NATO should institutionalize friction-as-deterrence by centralizing command authority and multi-domain surveillance within MARCOM. Russia’s irregular tactics thrive on the organizational seams between the Baltic and Arctic theaters; closing these gaps requires resourcing MARCOM to function as the singular operational hub for the Northern Flank. Under the 2025 Alliance Maritime Strategy, MARCOM should be empowered to fuse its recognized maritime picture with real-time data from the NATO Commercial Space Strategy and “Digital Ocean” uncrewed sensors, allowing the Alliance to immediately out-signal Russian electronic interference and GPS jamming. By utilizing high-intensity exercises like Freezing Winds 2025 to wargame integrated, rapid-response ICAD counter-tactics, NATO ensures that every Russian hybrid act is met with an immediate, pre-authorized operational pushback. This centralized posture shifts the burden of escalation back to the Kremlin, forcing Moscow to choose between a conventional naval confrontation it cannot win or a strategic retreat from a monitored and controlled maritime gray zone.

This is already happening in Hong Kong of all places, where Finland has pressured China to detain and prosecute civilian ship Captain Wan Wnguo, accused of dragging one of the ship’s anchors across several underwater cables in 2023 and causing $41 million in damage. Ironically, the ship had just completed the first run from China to Kaliningrad along the Northern Sea Route, a potent symbol of Russian and Chinese cooperation. China has cooperated with Finland to date, and the trial is set for this month.

Conclusion

Russia’s expansion of maritime irregular statecraft in the Baltic Sea Region is a compensatory strategy born of weakness, not strength. As Russia’s conventional naval power has eroded, accelerated by maritime losses in the Black Sea and NATO’s expansion, Moscow has turned to deniable, low-cost, maritime subversion to protect its economic lifelines, pressure NATO, and shape escalation dynamics without triggering open war.

Russia’s activities in the Baltic are best understood as a holding action by a constrained power. It enables disruption and delay but not control. These ICAD tactics at sea might provoke below thresholds of war, but they say more about managing decline, protecting lifelines, and shaping escalation in a world where ambiguity is shrinking, not increasing as gray zone proponents claim. While disruptive and tactically clever, these methods cannot compensate for declining conventional power and become less effective as NATO improves attribution, coordination, and resilience. This in turn will frustrate Russia’s ability to play a weak hand as it prioritizes provocative tactics over creating an effective strategy to improve its strategic and economic position in a post-Ukraine War future.

Joseph P. Durigan is a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy and a recent graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His master’s thesis was titled “The Gray Zone Surge: Russian Maritime Subversion in the Baltic Sea.”

Craig Whiteside is a professor of National Security Affairs for the US Naval War College resident program at the Naval Postgraduate School. His recent book is titled Nonstate Special Operations: Capabilities and Effects and he has written on the strategic failures of the gray zone concept.

Featured Image: Baltic Sea Exercise 2023. (U.S. Navy photo)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.