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What America Must Change to Make Korean Shipbuilding Matter

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By Dr. Marcus Jones

For the first time in decades, the United States is being forced to think seriously about naval shipbuilding as an allied industrial problem. Years of delayed programs, strained yards, maintenance backlogs, workforce losses and shortages, and the near-disappearance of commercial shipbuilding have converged with China’s extraordinary maritime-industrial expansion; old assumptions about U.S. defense-industrial sufficiency are untenable. In its May 2026 Shipbuilding Plan, the Navy formally crossed an important conceptual threshold. It describes the failure of American shipbuilding as structural, acknowledging that requirements expanded during execution, mature designs were modified, and cost estimates and construction schedules proved chronically optimistic.

More consequentially, the plan embraces stable long-term demand, distributed construction, foreign investment in American yards, selected overseas module fabrication, possible overseas construction of some naval vessels, and maintenance support from allied shipyards. That conceptual shift makes South Korea the first serious test of whether declared American reforms can be translated into industrial practice. The growing role of Hanwha, HD Hyundai, and Samsung in U.S. maritime-industrial discussions, reinforced by the Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Initiative (KUSPI), will reveal whether American institutions can adapt their expectations, contracting practices, and production systems sufficiently to employ Korean expertise and industrial depth against the Chinese maritime challenge.

Declining Numbers, Overstretched Industry

The maritime-industrial crisis is broader than the familiar catalog of delayed ships and strained shipyards. The U.S. fleet declined from a Cold War peak of 568 battle force ships in 1987 to a low of 271 in 2015. The May 2026 plan counted 291 battle-force ships against the statutory objective of 355 and acknowledged that the shipbuilding budget had doubled over the preceding two decades without producing a larger fleet than the Navy possessed in 2003. Under the FY2027 projection, the battle force reaches only 299 ships by 2031. The plan instead introduces a broader “Total Naval Vessel Force” of 450 vessels in 2031 by adding 68 auxiliaries and 83 unmanned vessels to those 299 battle-force ships. That figure should not be confused with previous 355- or 390-ship battle-force objectives: much of the apparent numerical increase reflects a broader counting convention rather than rapid restoration of the manned battle fleet. Virginia-class submarine production, meanwhile, remains roughly 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year against the long-stated two-per-year objective.

The Navy also confronts a long maintenance backlog that compounds the effects of a smaller fleet. Ship-and-boat-building employment fell from 198,700 in June 1980 to 145,700 in June 2025, while officials and analysts have estimated that prescribed increases in submarine production alone may require roughly 100,000 additional workers and the broader maritime industrial base far more. The brute fact is that the United States lacks the commercial workload, qualified repair capacity, skilled labor, engineering depth, supplier base, and production systems needed to reproduce naval power reliably over time. Chronic construction delays and cost growth are manifestations of this wider condition, as is the maintenance dysfunction that keeps ships unavailable after they enter the fleet.

In a healthy maritime industrial system, naval shipbuilding rests on commercial and technical foundations. In the contemporary United States, those foundations have narrowed to the point that every programmatic shortfall is harder to absorb. Recent experience shows that maintenance need is not the same thing as executable workload, physical capacity is not necessarily usable capacity, and national aggregates reveal little about whether a particular facility can accept a particular vessel, in a particular place, under the necessary technical, security, and scheduling conditions. Large maintenance backlogs can coexist with idle dry docks when work packages are immature, ships cannot be released from operations, funding or material arrives late, technical decisions remain unresolved, or schedules move too frequently to support hiring and investment.

The Navy therefore needs greater productive capacity, particularly for new construction, while also using existing capacity far more coherently. The governing failure has been its inability to translate large aggregate requirements into stable, executable industrial work. The May plan attempts to address this through Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAEs), consolidated responsibility for maritime acquisition and industrial operations, and greater authority to make cost-schedule-performance trades. Whether those organizations possess the tenure, technical competence, contracting authority, and control over requirements needed to change waterfront execution remains unproven.

The plan nonetheless validates a central economic premise: aggregate national need is not the same as bankable industrial workload that is executable and durable. American capital markets will support existing firms, new entrants, infrastructure, and workforce expansion only when the expected revenue opportunity makes the investment economically rational. Shipyards, lenders, workers, suppliers, and shareholders all experience the Navy’s demand signal differently, but none can organize themselves around ships that are repeatedly delayed, canceled, redesigned, or moved after industrial commitments have been made.

China gives this problem its strategic urgency. Chinese yards rose from roughly five percent of world output in 1999 to more than half by 2024 by linking commercial shipbuilding, state finance, industrial policy, ports, logistics, and naval construction into a mutually reinforcing system. The United States neither can nor should reproduce the Chinese political economy that created that outcome. But China’s rise demonstrates that maritime power cannot be understood simply through annual appropriations or vessels counted in the battle force. It depends on whether an industrial system can generate, allocate, and execute enough work to build, maintain, and replace large numbers of ships over time.

Why Korea Matters

South Korea and Japan matter because they possess some of the few allied maritime-industrial systems relevant to this problem. Korean shipbuilding grew from roughly 15,000 GT in 1972 to more than 10 million GT by 2000 and ranked first in world ship orders in almost every year from 1999 through 2008. Its achievement rested not simply on giant yards but on the creation of a dense commercial shipbuilding ecosystem combining large-scale investment, technical learning, supplier development, workforce formation, production engineering, and repeated high-throughput construction.

That ecosystem remains formidable, although it is under pressure. Korea accounted for approximately 27 percent of global ship completions by compensated gross tonnage in 2024, remaining second only to China and especially competitive in LNG carriers, ultra-large containerships, and other technically demanding vessels. Yet Korean shipbuilding employment fell about 44 percent between 2014 and 2024, to roughly 126,000 workers, while foreign labor has become increasingly important. Korean yards attract American attention because they embody integrated supplier management, front-loaded production engineering, disciplined material flow, modular construction, and an ability to coordinate complex industrial interfaces at scale. Those are precisely the functions the United States needs to recover or modernize if commercial, auxiliary, and naval production are again to reinforce one another.

Former Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV), Dr. Donald C. Winter, receives a tour of Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipbuilding facilities.

The practical significance of KUSPI is that it provides a governmental framework for Korean participation in a U.S. maritime-industrial ecosystem that was already beginning to take shape. The May 8, 2026 memorandum between the U.S. Department of Commerce and Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources established KUSPI around commercial shipbuilding, workforce development, industrial modernization, investment, and technical cooperation. What was then prospective has since begun to become institutional. The Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Center (KUSPC) opened in Washington on July 23, accompanied by fifteen agreements covering supply chains, workforce development, joint research, and other forms of industrial cooperation. Korea has also organized the Korea-U.S. Strategic Investment Corporation, policy-finance institutions, and its three major shipbuilders around implementation of the broader $150 billion shipbuilding-investment commitment associated with MASGA.

KUSPI offers a plausible mechanism for operationalizing the Navy’s allied-industrial model beyond strictly naval considerations. The most realistic path to relevance begins with Korean capital and production expertise entering American yards, with carefully bounded overseas work where it relieves genuine bottlenecks, rather than assigning Korean firms immediate responsibility for complete construction and combat-system integration of major U.S. warships.

Korean participation should also not be understood as a simple response in which Washington identifies deficiencies, and Seoul supplies what America lacks. South Korea has its own reasons for pursuing the relationship. Its post-Cold War strategy has repeatedly sought greater freedom of action despite permanent exposure to larger powers. The U.S. alliance remains fundamental to Korean security, but Seoul also uses industrial, technological, and economic relationships to increase its influence and reduce the risk of becoming merely an object of great-power competition.

Shipbuilding investment in the United States fits that logic. For Korean firms, American cooperation offers access to a politically valuable and protected market, diversification from growing Chinese competitive pressure, and an opportunity to turn commercial production expertise into strategic relevance. For Seoul, it provides a means of becoming a producer of alliance capability rather than simply a consumer of American security. Korean participation is therefore most likely to endure where Korean commercial interests and strategic agency reinforce American requirements.

Those interests have become more urgent because Korean shipbuilding is no longer unassailable. Chinese yards have eroded Korean dominance in standard commercial vessels through scale, price, state finance, and rising technical competence. Korean firms have responded by moving toward higher-value vessels, naval work, smart-yard technologies, and advanced production systems. By June 2026, the three largest Korean builders reportedly carried more than $145 billion in orders, representing more than three years of work. Partnership with the United States is attractive because it creates opportunities for U.S.-based production and a pathway to monetize Korean production advantages in markets from which Chinese competitors are increasingly excluded.

Yet Korean involvement is constrained by the same industrial characteristics that make it valuable. Korean yards are efficient because they are busy, commercially disciplined, and embedded in supplier and workforce networks developed over decades. Those networks cannot simply be transported to Philadelphia, Mississippi, San Diego, or Norfolk. Korean capacity at home is heavily committed, labor is tighter than much American discussion assumes, and firms contemplating U.S. investment require predictable customers, intellectual-property protection, credible supply chains, and confidence that domestic politics will not render investments liabilities after capital is committed. Korean firms must become partners in reconstructing American capacity rather than convenient foreign subcontractors.

The deeper question is whether the American maritime-industrial enterprise can accept the behavioral disciplines that enable Korean performance. Korean commercial shipbuilding rests on front-loaded production engineering, high design maturity, extensive design reuse, controlled change, complete work packages, protected production sequences, and an aversion to pushing incomplete work downstream for later correction. These practices suppress pathologies that American naval construction and repair have often tolerated. If Korean firms enter the American system only to be absorbed by those pathologies, cooperation will disappoint both parties. Korean yards may find that the practices that make them attractive are precisely those least protected by the American acquisition and repair environment; American workers, contracting officers, and Navy program managers may find those same practices unexpectedly constraining. The friction will arise precisely where Korean participation is potentially most useful.

Remarkably, the Navy’s own emerging acquisition language now emphasizes many of the same principles: higher design maturity before construction, front-loaded production engineering, modular construction, and distributed fabrication with sensitive integration and final assembly concentrated at designated yards. The harder test is whether requirements authorities, designers, supervisors, and contractors will permit those principles to govern execution after construction begins.

Bringing Korean Capacity to America

Hanwha’s acquisition of Philly Shipyard in December 2024 is the bellwether of this transformation. It marked the moment a Korean shipbuilder became the owner of a U.S.-based yard already engaged in public-sector and Jones Act work. Hanwha’s subsequent $5 billion infrastructure plan calls for additional docks and quays, possible construction of a new block-assembly facility, and an increase in annual output from fewer than two ships toward as many as twenty. The company has identified LNG carriers, naval modules and blocks, and eventually naval vessels among the contemplated product lines. It has already placed orders through Hanwha Shipping for commercial vessels to create workload for the yard.

Hanwha’s commercial emphasis revives an older American pattern. Newport News began with tugs and merchant vessels before entering naval construction in the 1890s; its mixed workload eventually supported carriers, submarines, and wartime expansion. NASSCO similarly moved through barges, fishing vessels, tankers, containerships, and Jones Act construction before becoming an important Navy auxiliary builder. Commercial construction does not confer naval combatant expertise, but it sustains the industrial substrate without which naval shipbuilding becomes increasingly brittle, not least because of how unforgiving the economics are. Shipyards are high-capital, fixed-asset-heavy enterprises. When construction orders fall, or repair workload slackens, yards lose economies of scale, face higher average fixed costs, experience cash-flow pressure, and risk shedding workers and suppliers. Colonna’s Shipyard in Norfolk, for example, has reported approximately $5 million in annual preventive maintenance costs for three floating docks regardless of their utilization. Its commercial portfolio cushions Navy volatility, yet the yard’s skilled-trade requirement still moved from roughly 275 workers to 190 and back toward 250 in only a few months. Of 46 solicited 2026 availabilities examined by the firm, 21 had reportedly been moved, canceled, delayed, or placed on hold. Commercial workload has naval significance because it helps keep the industrial organism alive. If Hanwha can increase throughput at Philadelphia through commercial and government non-combatant work, it may strengthen precisely the substrate on which more demanding naval production depends.

Repair Is a Bridge, Not the Destination

Korean entry also bears directly on the Navy’s difficulty generating timely, technically competent repair capacity. But the repair problem is not a straightforward national shortage of docks or labor. Shortages of aggregate capacity combine with a chronic failure to align existing facilities, vessel schedules, mature work packages, material, and technical decisions. Public nuclear yards, especially, are badly overloaded while portions of the private surface-repair base can remain underutilized. Korean yards can therefore relieve geographic, operational, or vessel-specific bottlenecks – particularly in forward Indo-Pacific sustainment – without substituting for the domestic repair capacity the Navy still needs.

The first Korean sustainment projects are encouraging precisely because they also exposed the problems deeper cooperation must confront. Hanwha’s overhaul of USNS Wally Schirra, initially described as a three-month project, ultimately involved more than 300 work items, extensive hull deterioration, and full replacement of a rudder that Hanwha engineers reverse-engineered when usable blueprints were unavailable. The ship departed after a seven-month overhaul in March 2025. HD Hyundai encountered the same basic pattern aboard USNS Alan Shepard: an initial scope of roughly 60 items grew by more than 100 additional tasks before the ship departed in January 2026. The company subsequently won work on USNS Cesar Chavez, demonstrating that the relationship had progressed beyond a single experimental availability.

JS Akebono (DD-108) replenishing at sea with USNS Wally Schirra (T-AKE-8).

These cases reveal a procedural mismatch rather than Korean failure. Commercial shipbuilding depends on mature work packages and protected production flow; naval repair regularly discovers deterioration after induction because ships arrive with accumulated deficiencies, incomplete records, and emergent work. Korean collaboration becomes most valuable when it forces the Navy to improve technical data, configuration control, pre-availability planning, material readiness, and the speed of engineering and contracting decisions. Otherwise, an efficient allied yard merely inherits American uncertainty.

Capacity will also constrain how far overseas maintenance can expand. HD Hyundai was among the first Korean yards to be qualified to compete for Navy work but initially held back due to yard capacity concerns. Statutory restrictions, security requirements, domestic industrial concerns, and political resistance further limit how much U.S. naval sustainment can move overseas. The Navy has used recent authority for short maintenance periods abroad and has argued that in-theater repair improves readiness, but the larger discovery-driven availabilities represented by USNS Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard illustrate why short statutory windows cannot by themselves sustain a deeper system.

Offshore sustainment can relieve readiness bottlenecks, especially in the Indo-Pacific, but it will encounter justified opposition if treated as a substitute for rebuilding domestic repair capability. Framed instead as a bridge and complement to domestic revitalization – linked to Hanwha Philly, workforce development, U.S.-based investment, and more coherent workload allocation – it becomes part of a wider effort to relieve immediate pressure while developing the legal, technical, and contracting mechanisms required for deeper cooperation.

A durable shipbuilding relationship must likewise identify the areas where Korean agency, Korean profit, and American industrial need genuinely overlap. China creates powerful reasons for Seoul to cooperate with the United States and reasons for caution. Korean firms have incentives to deepen relationships where alliance-based market access offsets Chinese scale and price competition. Seoul has fewer incentives to cast every industrial collaboration as direct participation in an American containment architecture directed against China. Its firms will be especially cautious about activities that make them indispensable participants in the production of front-line U.S. combat power for a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency. Such caution reflects the position of a highly capable middle power whose security depends heavily on the United States while its economy remains exposed to China.

The United States should prefer cooperation grounded in durable Korean incentives, because it is more likely to survive political turnover and external pressure than cooperation resting on alliance rhetoric alone. Beijing demonstrated the vulnerability in October 2025 when it imposed sanctions on five U.S.-linked Hanwha Ocean entities, including Hanwha Philly Shipyard, amid the wider U.S.-China dispute over maritime trade and shipbuilding. Chinese officials suspended those measures for one year the following month as Washington and Beijing temporarily de-escalated their dispute. The episode nonetheless exposed the degree to which Korean-American shipbuilding cooperation can be affected by supply chains and political decisions beyond either partner’s control.

Beyond Repair: Investment and Distributed Production

In contrast to Hanwha’s direct investment, HD Hyundai has pursued a partnership-centered approach that may prove equally significant. Its April 2025 memorandum with Huntington Ingalls Industries began around production methods and opportunities to expand U.S. capacity. By October, the companies had signed a broader agreement covering distributed shipbuilding, potential joint investment, engineering and automation, Indo-Pacific lifecycle support, and teaming on auxiliary vessels. They also agreed to pursue the Navy’s Next-Generation Logistics Ship concept-design competition together. This remains one of the most plausible near-term construction lanes: auxiliaries are operationally indispensable and industrially demanding without carrying all the political and technical sensitivities surrounding nuclear submarines, carriers, or major surface combatants.

The Navy’s May plan already proposed allied fabrication of selected non-sensitive combatant modules while retaining U.S. control of design, final assembly, sensitive-system integration, testing, and activation. It also proposed vessel-construction-manager approaches for logistics and sealift vessels. The August 13 presidential memorandum went further. It directed the development of acquisition approaches for selected surface combatants, CONSOL tankers, and roll-on/roll-off ships modeled on the U.S.-Finland icebreaker arrangement. Under that model, qualifying foreign firms would couple limited initial overseas construction with acquisition or construction of U.S. yards, American workforce training, licensing of proprietary shipbuilding techniques, U.S. supply-chain development, and subsequent American production. It also specifically directs that mature parent designs not be subjected to iterative Navy redesign without senior approval. That is an unusually explicit recognition that foreign capacity matters only when paired with domestic industrial absorption and design discipline. The plan’s proposed Vessel Construction Manager model for the Medium Landing Ship, Next-Generation Logistics Ship, and surge-sealift recapitalization creates another natural point of entry. Korean expertise in multi-yard production planning, module control, procurement integration, and material flow could be especially useful, but only if the Navy supplies the complete and stable design on which the model depends. Vessel construction managers cannot cure immature design; they can only distribute the consequences.

Samsung’s engagements further diversify the picture. Its relationship with Vigor points toward workforce training and forward repair, while its collaboration with General Dynamics NASSCO and Hanwha Ocean suggests a potentially important role in ship design, manufacturing automation, and production technology. A July 2026 agreement with Saronic extends that pattern into autonomous vessels and production automation. The significance lies less in the proliferation of MOUs than in the emergence of several distinct channels through which Korean firms may interact with the American maritime system: ownership, investment, repair, design support, workforce development, automation, and distributed production. Different pathways solve different problems. None is a comprehensive solution, and the danger remains that political enthusiasm for Korean partnership becomes a shortcut around the harder reconstruction of the American base.

What America Must Change

The test of seriousness is therefore no longer whether Washington and Seoul can announce additional forms of cooperation. It is whether KUSPI, KUSPC, the MASGA investment framework, and emerging company partnerships can be converted into measurable American maritime-industrial renewal. Korean participation must be an instrument of targeted industrial absorption, rather than a means of evading reconstruction of the domestic base.

The first requirement is enactment, permanence, and accountable governance. Congress has not yet settled the boundaries of allied participation: the House-passed FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act seeks to bar federal funding for U.S. warships built in foreign yards, while the Senate Armed Services Committee preserves a narrower route for limited allied construction of auxiliaries tied to reshoring subsequent production and supply chains. Executive policy points further toward selected foreign construction under existing waiver authority. The resulting uncertainty illustrates the problem. American executive policy has now moved rapidly toward allied participation, but Congress has not settled its boundaries. Congress and the executive branch must establish durable rules defining which vessel classes, modules, maintenance activities, and allied facilities qualify; which certification, inspection, cybersecurity, technical-data, labor, and security conditions apply; and who possesses authority to approve and supervise each arrangement. Section 8679 governs foreign construction of naval vessels and major hull components, while 10 U.S.C. §8680 imposes separate restrictions on foreign overhaul, repair, and maintenance. Firms cannot make major long-term investments around annual waivers and shifting interpretations. Legal uncertainty ensures paralysis.

The second requirement is a standing, cleared production-engineering exchange mechanism focused on the portions of shipbuilding where the United States most needs assistance while fencing off sensitive combat systems, nuclear propulsion, classified software, and weapons interfaces. The opening of KUSPC means that Washington now possesses the institutional nucleus the May agreement only envisioned. The question is whether the center will acquire defined decision rights, milestones, technical workstreams, and responsible executive ownership rather than becoming another consultative forum. PAE Maritime should own new construction, module integration, design maturity, and the application of production-engineering practices; PAE Industrial Operations should own allied maintenance and repair integration; Commerce should continue to lead foreign investment and the broader bilateral industrial framework. The exchange should connect with Navy digital-thread and shipbuilding-operating-system initiatives while remaining focused on the production failures that most directly drive American cost and schedule outcomes.

The third requirement is to convert distributed shipbuilding from an aspiration into a governed production system. The May plan states that roughly ten percent of shipbuilding work is now performed at distributed sites and sets an objective of fifty percent. Domestic practice is already moving in this direction: in July 2026 HII installed the first grand blocks on DDG-135 fabricated by distributed partners away from Ingalls. The central risk is distributing fabrication faster than technical authority, configuration control, inspection, logistics, and supervision can be distributed with it. Korean experience is relevant because large-block construction works only when interfaces are stable, material arrives when required, dimensional control is rigorous, and late changes are suppressed. KUSPI should therefore support pilot projects in American yards that test Korean production methods under American labor, security, regulatory, and contracting conditions. The objective is to prove which approaches reduce cycle time, rework, and labor burden and abandon those that do not.

The fourth requirement is to distinguish complete-vessel responsibility from bounded participation in a wider production system. The practical near-term spectrum still runs from forward MRO, through allied-design or allied-led construction of selected auxiliaries, to controlled fabrication of blocks and modules for U.S. assembly and integration. The August memorandum adds a potentially more ambitious Finland Model in which the first one or two vessels of a qualifying class could be built at a foreign parent yard, but only as part of a package designed to move follow-on production, industrial methods, workforce formation, and supply chains into the United States. Congress has yet to accept that model in anything like its full form. That disagreement should not obscure the underlying objective. Auxiliaries and commercial ships are connective tissue of maritime power rather than peripheral vessels. Korean firms can contribute most durably when early foreign production accelerates readiness while subsequent American production acquires the methods and capacity necessary to continue without permanent dependence on overseas yards.

The fifth requirement is a binding workload compact. No workforce compact or capital-investment strategy can survive if contracted work disappears or moves unpredictably. Where vessel type and acquisition conditions permit, multi-availability contracts, class-based bundling, or longer-term assignment of ships to yards can provide continuity without relieving contractors of performance discipline. Once an availability begins, engineering and contracting authorities must be close enough to execution to resolve emergent work before indecision becomes delay. Wherever feasible, naval workload should sit alongside commercial, auxiliary, Coast Guard, and other public work capable of sustaining facilities and workers through fluctuations in a single customer’s demand. The T-AO block buy provides NASSCO with long-term workload of the kind the broader construction and repair base requires. A workload compact would not guarantee perpetual utilization or prevent operational schedules from changing. It would require the Navy to treat industrial continuity as a readiness issue rather than a private problem contractors must absorb.

The sixth requirement is a serious workforce compact. For years, American officials discussed shipbuilding labor as though workers were a variable input that appropriations could summon on demand. The Navy has begun to recognize the importance of wages, retention, childcare, transportation, training, and advanced-manufacturing skills. The May 2026 plan points to one concrete result: government-funded wage increases at Electric Boat and Newport News helped both firms meet their 2025 hiring requirements and reduced attrition by up to five percentage points. KUSPI adds an opportunity to connect Korean firms with community colleges, maritime academies, union apprenticeship systems, naval architecture and marine engineering programs, and regional workforce organizations. The July KUSPC agreements already include workforce-training initiatives, including Samsung’s planned training effort with Vigor and Hanwha-linked programs in Philadelphia. But workforce policy must include the white-collar labor routinely omitted from the discussion: production engineers, naval architects, planners, supply-chain managers, configuration specialists, and waterfront supervisors. American workers will become more productive only when organized within systems that allow skills to compound instead of dissipating through rework, material shortages, late design changes, and irregular workload.

The seventh requirement is a security architecture suited to sustained allied participation. New construction and active ship repair present different security challenges. Sensitive equipment on new ships can often be installed later or segregated by work package. Ships entering maintenance arrive with classified equipment, operational data, software, sensors, communications systems, and combat-system components already aboard. KUSPI must therefore distinguish commercial work, auxiliary construction, module fabrication, and combatant sustainment rather than applying one security model indiscriminately. Serious allied repair will require controlled-access enclaves, compartmented work packages, isolation or removal of sensitive equipment where practical, cleared personnel, inspection rights, cyber protections, supply-chain vetting, and explicit rules governing which work may occur in foreign-owned American yards and which may occur overseas. Security must be designed into the partnership before activity scales.

Finally, KUSPI should be judged by outputs rather than atmospherics. The Navy promises to move from managing programs toward delivering outcomes, but measures such as “more ships faster” or “a stronger industrial base” remain too broad to show whether Korean participation is actually changing American industrial performance. Is usable capacity increasing? Is throughput rising? Is rework declining? Are work packages more mature? Are suppliers diversifying? Are workers being retained? Are American yards learning to reproduce the production disciplines that made Korean firms valuable partners in the first place?

Most importantly, the initiative must distinguish among three things too easily conflated: Korean work performed abroad, Korean capital invested in the United States, and Korean methods implemented by American yards. All three can contribute to American maritime power. Overseas work can relieve immediate operational bottlenecks. Korean investment can rebuild physical capacity and sustain commercial workload. But only the absorption of better production methods into the American industrial system directly changes its underlying performance.

The first two should therefore be judged partly by how well they enable the third. If Korean involvement leaves American yards more productive, the supplier base deeper, workload more predictable, and the Navy more capable of converting requirements into ships, KUSPI will have mattered. If not, it will have become another sophisticated policy framework that correctly diagnosed the crisis while leaving the institutional pathologies that created it largely untouched.

Dr. Marcus Jones is an associate professor in the history department at the United States Naval Academy. 

Featured Photo: Akers Shipyard, within the Philadelphia Navy Yard [Credit: Wikimedia Commons].

Mine Warfare

Why Modern Navies Still Need a Mine Countermeasures Force in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

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By Admiral Massimo Vianello, Italian Navy (Ret.) and Master Chief Petty Officer Giovanni Giorguli, Italian Navy (Ret.)

Introduction

Throughout naval history, few weapons have demonstrated the strategic endurance of the naval mine. Despite successive advances in military technology, it remains a highly effective instrument of sea denial, enabling even conventionally inferior actors to constrain the freedom of maneuver of technologically superior fleets and disrupt critical maritime lines of communication.

In the ongoing transformation of naval power, driven by the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, and distributed architectures, mine warfare is not losing relevance; rather, it is acquiring new operational possibilities. The growing availability of relatively simple means for deploying underwater ordnance has also reinforced the role of mining within contemporary hybrid strategies. As in the past, naval mines are not merely one component of a broader combat system, used to constrain enemy forces and interdict logistical flows; they are also instruments capable of shaping maritime economic interdependence. As Professor G. Till has observed, contemporary naval warfare is concerned not only with the destruction of opposing forces, but also with control over the maritime spaces essential to the economic and strategic resilience of states.1

Paradoxically, therefore, even as navies invest heavily in autonomous systems and digitalization, the requirement for a credible Mine Countermeasures (MCM) Force remains unchanged. Freedom of action and safe access to the maritime domain — Assured Access — still depend on the ability to counter one of the oldest and most persistent naval threats.

The military value of the naval mine lies not only in its destructive potential, but also in the uncertainty it creates. Even a minefield composed of legacy ordnance can slow operational tempo, compel the adversary to commit specialized assets, and require formal clearance and verification before freedom of navigation can be safely restored.2

Source: UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2024
Figure 1. (UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2024)

This characteristic produces an outstandingly favorable cost-effectiveness ratio when the cost of a mine is compared with the resources required to detect and neutralize it, including advanced sonar systems, autonomous vehicles, dedicated vessels, and highly trained personnel.

The economic implications are equally significant. With approximately 80 percent of global trade by volume and more than 70 percent by value transported by sea (Fig. 1), any disruption — or even an increase in perceived risk — at a strategic maritime chokepoint can generate economic consequences far beyond the area directly affected by the mine threat. Given the deep interdependence of modern economies, such effects can rapidly propagate through global supply chains, energy markets, and financial systems.3

The Strait of Hormuz provides the most significant example. The recent crisis has shown how the mere perception of possible interdiction — even in the absence of confirmed mining —  can increase war-risk premiums, raise shipping costs, and discourage commercial operators. Paradoxically, a Sea Line of Communication (SLOC) may therefore remain militarily passable while simultaneously becoming economically interdicted.

From this perspective, the effective opening of a strait depends not only on the ability to prevail militarily, but also on the risk assessments made by ship-owners, insurers, and markets, as LtCol James Jackson recently observed in an article.4

Uncertainty itself can thus become an instrument of strategic coercion.

It follows that neutralizing the threat is not sufficient; an adequate level of assurance must also be re-established in order to restore confidence in commercial navigation.

Accordingly, in post-conflict mine-clearance operations — usually conducted by multinational coalitions — it is crucial to maintain a credible and deployable MCM capability able to operate effectively in conflict-affected theatres. This is a key factor in restoring the confidence of ship-owners, insurers, and markets in the shortest possible time.

The Role of Naval Mines in Recent Middle Eastern and Russo-Ukrainian Conflicts

Recent conflicts, particularly those still ongoing, have underscored the critical role of naval mines not only in denying maritime space to naval forces, but also in shaping broader geo-economic balances. Beyond Hormuz, naval mines — though their role has received comparatively less attention — have also featured prominently in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, initially as a means of deterring amphibious operations and constraining the freedom of maneuver of Russian naval forces. They have likewise been employed off Yemen’s Red Sea coast during the conflict between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition. In the latter case, also generated significant collateral economic effects by disrupting fishing activity, one of the principal sources of livelihood for coastal communities.

The Strait of Hormuz: From the Tanker War to Maritime Coercion in the Age of A2/AD Strategies

The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the clearest illustrations of the enduring strategic relevance of mine warfare in the twenty-first century. Its importance lies in the convergence of three structural factors: the concentration of global energy flows, the severe constraints imposed on naval maneuver by its confined geography, and the vulnerability of a Sea Line of Communication (SLOC) that is vital to the functioning of the global economy.

On average, between 20 and 25 percent of global oil trade transits Hormuz, together with a significant share of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, making the Strait one of the world’s principal maritime chokepoints. In a global environment shaped by high energy dependence and deeply interconnected supply chains, any disruption to freedom of navigation through this critical maritime corridor can rapidly reverberate across financial markets, energy prices, and the wider international economic system.5

The vulnerability of the Strait had already been starkly demonstrated during the Tanker War (1984–1988), when Iranian mining of key shipping routes prompted the United States to undertake Operation Earnest Will to escort commercial traffic and, later, Operation Praying Mantis in response to Iranian actions. The severe damage suffered by the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts in April 1988 further underscored the vulnerability of even modern combatants to the mine threat.

The contemporary scenario, however, is considerably more complex. The threat no longer stems solely from the potential laying of minefields, but from the integration of mine warfare into a broader strategy of maritime coercion and Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD). Naval mines, anti-ship missiles, unmanned systems, electronic-warfare capabilities, and persistent surveillance increasingly operate as mutually reinforcing elements of an integrated denial architecture, creating a highly contested and operationally demanding maritime environment.

Strait of Hormuz
Figure 2. Strait of Hormuz Under Competing Traffic Schemes (Source: Institute for the Study of War)

Iran’s recent declaration of an extensive Hazardous Area in the Strait of Hormuz (Fig. 2) has, in practice, expanded its effective area of operational control well beyond the internationally recognized Traffic Separation Scheme. While the measure does not amount to a legally recognized interdiction of navigation, it has increased uncertainty for commercial shipping and strengthened Iran’s politico-strategic leverage. In this context, the mine threat acquires an additional coercive dimension: the burden shifts to the adversary to demonstrate the absence of the threat.

This situation highlights the growing tension between the principle of freedom of navigation and unilateral measures adopted by coastal states on national-security grounds. It creates an environment in which the boundaries between military threat, navigational control, and economic coercion become increasingly blurred, thereby reinforcing the strategic importance of naval presence and persistent maritime surveillance.

In summary, the Strait of Hormuz epitomizes the dynamics of modern maritime competition. It demonstrates that, in the age of Artificial Intelligence and autonomous systems, MCM capabilities are no longer merely tactical enablers of naval operations, but an integral component of maritime deterrence and collective security. From a strategic perspective, maintaining a credible, technologically advanced, and rapidly deployable Mine Countermeasures Force is therefore essential—not only to preserve naval freedom of maneuver, but also to safeguard global supply chains, energy security, and international economic stability.

The Black Sea: Naval Mines as an Instrument of Defense

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine demonstrated that, even in a high-intensity conventional conflict dominated by hypersonic weapons, autonomous systems, and Artificial Intelligence, traditional capabilities such as naval mines can retain substantial strategic relevance. Minefields constrained the freedom of maneuver of Russian naval forces and subsequently affected commercial traffic to and from Ukrainian ports. Although mine warfare remained largely below the threshold of public attention, overshadowed by land, air, and wider maritime operations, the mine threat nevertheless generated significant military, economic, and political effects.6 Before the war, Ukraine was among the world’s leading agricultural exporters and, according to FAO and UNCTAD data, played a major role in global wheat, corn, and sunflower-oil markets, particularly for countries in the Middle East and North Africa.7

Faced with the prospect of a Russian amphibious operation along the coastline between Crimea and the Danube Delta, Ukraine appears to have adopted a protective mining strategy, focusing primarily on the approaches to its major ports and on coastal sectors suitable for amphibious landings. Russian forces, in turn, reportedly conducted exploratory minesweeping operations off Odesa, likely to assess the presence and extent of Ukrainian minefields and support potential amphibious planning.8 Once the mine threat had been established, Russian naval forces progressively increased their stand-off distance from the coast, effectively reducing the feasibility of any large-scale amphibious operation.

The subsequent drifting of moored contact mines, which caused limited damage to merchant shipping, nevertheless generated a sufficient perception of risk to disrupt commercial navigation and contribute to higher maritime insurance costs.9

The Black Sea case therefore confirms the enduring force-equalizing effect of naval mines: even relatively simple or legacy weapons can impose significant operational constraints on a technologically superior naval force.

The Red Sea: The Houthis and Naval Mines

The Houthi case provides a particularly significant example of how a non-state actor can develop a sea-denial capability capable of generating operational and strategic effects disproportionate to the resources employed. During the Yemeni civil war and the prolonged confrontation with the Saudi-led coalition10, and later throughout the Red Sea crisis following the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Houthis progressively integrated naval mines into a broader arsenal of anti-ship missiles, aerial drones, and unmanned surface systems, thereby developing an increasingly diversified maritime-denial capability.11

Bab el-Mandeb Strait
Figure 3. Bab el-Mandeb Strait (Source: Garmin Marine Map)

The strategic significance of the Houthi case is amplified by the geography of Bab el-Mandeb — Arabic for “Gate of Tears” (Fig. 3). Perim Island (aka Mayyun), divides the strait into two channels: the deeper Dact el-Mayun, used by larger commercial vessels, and the narrower, shallower Bab Iskander. In the Bab Iskander Channel and adjacent coastal waters, Houthi mining activity has caused serious disruption, including significant damage to the predominantly fishing-based economy of Yemen’s western Red Sea coast.

By contrast, covert mine-laying in the deeper and more heavily trafficked Dact el-Mayun would present a considerably more demanding operational challenge. Although external support, potentially involving Iranian Gadir – or Nahang- class midget submarines, cannot be entirely ruled out in such a scenario, the Houthis have so far appeared to favor other asymmetric options in this area, including underwater unmanned systems and sabotage against submarine fiber-optic communications cables which provide intercontinental digital connectivity between Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.12

The broader mine threat nonetheless remains significant. Soviet and Iranian-derived naval mines supplied to the Houthis, combined with the indigenous production capability developed over time, have compelled Saudi Arabia to field an MCM capability commensurate with the threat. The risks are not confined to naval operations: MASAM, the Saudi humanitarian land mine-clearance project in Yemen, has on several occasions also been required to deal with naval ordnance that broke free from its moorings and washed ashore.13

A common feature of recent conflicts involving major powers — including Ukraine and the Strait of Hormuz — is that, even when opposing mine stockpiles were struck and mine-laying platforms neutralized, Mine Countermeasures assets remained essential to determine whether minefields had been laid and to assess their extent. In the Black Sea, the Russian Navy conducted exploratory minesweeping operations, while in the Strait of Hormuz the US Navy employed unmanned systems to assess the credibility of Iranian claims, pending the possible conduct of a broader post-conflict mine-clearance effort by an international coalition.

Across the three cases examined — the Strait of Hormuz, the Black Sea, and the Red Sea — a consistent strategic pattern emerges: regardless of the geopolitical context, the naval mine remains a force multiplier for the actor that employs it and a cost multiplier for the actor required to counter it. In the age of Artificial Intelligence and autonomous systems, therefore, the relevance of a credible Mine Countermeasures Force does not diminish; rather, it increases. At the same time, Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) are progressively transforming MCM itself, enhancing its effectiveness, stand-off capability, operational reach, and survivability.

The International Legal Framework

The 1907 Hague Convention VIII, which remains the principal legal reference governing naval mine warfare, establishes the obligation to remove mines following the cessation of hostilities. This principle was applied on a particularly extensive scale in the aftermath of the Second World War, when major post-conflict mine-clearance campaigns highlighted the requirement to maintain a Mine Countermeasures (MCM) Force commensurate with the scale and complexity of the task. Today, the San Remo Manual, reflecting both technological developments and the evolution of international law, provides widely recognised interpretations of the Convention and further reinforces this principle by advocating coordination among States and alliances in the conduct of mine-clearance operations aimed at restoring freedom of navigation. It follows that the availability of an effective MCM capability remains a critical enabling factor in contributing to the restoration of safe and unrestricted navigation. It is therefore no coincidence that this recommendation has informed the numerous post-conflict mine-clearance operations conducted by multinational coalitions, whose participating nations have contributed their own assets to establish dedicated MCM forces.

Figure 4. Romanian Navy EOD operator near a drifting Ukrainian mine in the Black Sea (Credit: Ionut Felea - Fortele Navale Romane)
Figure 4. Romanian Navy EOD operator near a drifting Ukrainian mine in the Black Sea (Source: Ionut Felea – Fortele Navale Romane)

Moreover, following the reported breakaway of Ukrainian mines from their moorings on 18 March 2023, the resulting loss of control over previously laid weapons — an issue addressed by a further principle of the Convention and subsequently invoked by the Russian Federation — provided an additional illustration of the requirement for adequate MCM assets to safeguard neutral shipping and protect littoral States not party to the conflict (Fig. 4).14

Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Mine Countermeasures

Modern Navies cannot dispense with an effective Mine Countermeasures Force, and the broader shift toward unmanned systems and Artificial Intelligence is transforming MCM as well. In minehunting, the main areas of development include Automatic Target Recognition, multisensor fusion, autonomous mission planning, adaptive AUV behavior, predictive analysis, and collaborative employment of uncrewed systems.

However, while the high degree of autonomy enabled by Artificial Intelligence can significantly reduce personnel exposure to risk, a widely shared view among analysts and subject-matter experts is that current technology does not yet provide the reliability, completeness, and decision confidence required to execute the entire MCM kill chain — detect, classify, identify, neutralize — and the subsequent disposal assessment, whose purpose is to confirm that the threat has been effectively removed and that navigation can safely resume (Fig. 5).

As A. Perry, a well-known sector analyst, has highlighted, the risk inherent in digital transformation is to confuse the ability to collect information with the ability to complete the entire operational chain effectively.15

MCM Kill Chain
Figure 5.  The mine countermeasure (MCM) kill-chain. (Author’s elaboration, graphic rendering assisted by generative AI)

From this perspective, the transformation of the US Navy’s MCM capabilities provides an emblematic case study.

The Littoral Combat Ship Mine Countermeasures Mission Package was intended to support a transition toward a more distributed, stand-off, and highly automated model consistent with the concept of Man Out of the Minefield. Experience, however, demonstrated that replacing a mature specialist capability requires longer technology-maturation and integration timelines than originally anticipated. Delays in the development of uncrewed systems and difficulties in integrating individual components highlighted the risk of creating a capability gap during the transition from legacy to future systems.

The lesson is straightforward: autonomy should complement specialist MCM capability before it can progressively replace selected functions within it.

Likewise, the ability to embark autonomous MCM systems on larger, non-specialist combatants — thereby avoiding the cost and complexity of dedicated hull characteristics — does not in itself transform those platforms into minehunters.

For this reason, a broadly shared view among analysts and subject-matter experts is that only a gradual and capability-driven transition can allow Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) to mature toward the eventual objective of highly autonomous — and ultimately fully autonomous — MCM systems without compromising operational effectiveness during the transformation..

Conclusions

The Persian Gulf, Black Sea, and Red Sea all confirm that naval mines remain capable of generating military, economic, and political effects far disproportionate to their cost. A credible, reliable, balanced, and threat-proportionate MCM Force is therefore not a residual capability, but a critical enabler of Assured Access and, more broadly, of maritime power.

In the age of Artificial Intelligence, modern Navies do not need Mine Countermeasures less; they need them differently. The future MCM Force will increasingly take the form of a distributed, collaborative System of Systems, integrating crewed platforms, autonomous systems, advanced sensors, and AI-enabled decision-support tools to ensure continuity, reliability, and sufficient decision confidence across the entire MCM kill chain.

As Navies transition from the ‘conventional’ to the ‘autonomous,’ states have launched modernization programs reflecting different levels of ambition.

New MCM Approaches
Figure 6.  Emerging European approaches to Mine Countermeasures. (Author’s elaboration, graphic rendering assisted by generative AI)

It is no coincidence that European MCM modernization reflects a common imperative for transformation, although pursued through different solutions (Fig. 6). The Belgian-Dutch replacement Mine Counter Measures (rMCM) program is built around a purpose-designed, steel-hulled MCM mothership equipped with mine avoidance sonar and conceived to deploy an extensive toolbox of unmanned systems into the area of operations. These systems are intended to conduct MCM tasks autonomously, while the mothership coordinates their employment from outside the minefield.

The Franco-British Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM) cooperation program follows a broadly similar operational concept, but relies on a different stand-off MCM toolbox. These systems can be supported by an Offshore Support Vessel (OSV) or a Bâtiment de Guerre des Mines (BGDM) and, in the longer term, may also be controlled from a shore-based Command-and-Control Centre.16

The Italian Navy has adopted a more measured approach to the transition toward future MCM. Its solution retains a purpose-built minehunter featuring a non-magnetic Glass-Reinforced Plastic (GRP) hull, high shock resistance, and a dedicated mine-detection and classification sonar. While designed to integrate autonomous systems, the platform retains the ability, when operational circumstances demand, to enter the minefield and complete the MCM kill chain directly.

This approach provides a bridge from the current ship-borne/hybrid model toward collaborative MCM, with the ship-centred concept serving as an intermediate step (Fig. 7). By preserving a specialist platform throughout the transition, it reduces the risk of capability gaps while allowing emerging technologies to mature to the level required across the full range of operational conditions.

Taken together, these models — along with those being pursued by other navies — indicate that the future of MCM will be increasingly characterized by the integration of crewed platforms, autonomous systems, and distributed capabilities. This technological evolution, however, should not obscure another essential operational requirement: the ability to deploy and sustain MCM forces beyond national waters when states are called upon to safeguard the shared interest of freedom of navigation.

Evolution of MCM Models
Figure 7.  Evolution of Mine Countermeasures operational models. (Author’s elaboration; graphic rendering assisted by generative AI)

This requires platforms with sufficient range, endurance, speed, and seaworthiness to support timely redeployment to distant theatres without excessive reliance on prolonged forward positioning, which can become operationally inefficient and logistically demanding. In the twenty-first century, naval superiority will depend not only on the ability to strike an adversary, but also on the ability to keep the sea open.

Massimo Vianello is a retired Italian Navy Admiral who graduated from the Italian Naval Academy. Specializing in underwater weaponry and Mine Countermeasures (MCM), he has commanded coastal minehunters, a frigate, and the sailing vessel Amerigo Vespucci. His extensive operational experience spans critical theaters, from the First Persian Gulf War and Operation Allied Force to Operation Mare Nostrum. As a former Commander of both the Mine Countermeasures Forces and the 29th Naval Task Group, Admiral Vianello now leverages his expertise as an Analyst for the Center for Geopolitical and Strategic Maritime Studies (CESMAR), where he serves as a leading subject matter expert on sub-surface warfare and undersea security.

Giovanni Giorguli is a retired Italian Navy Master Chief Petty Officer and an Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) pioneer with almost 40 years of expertise in Mine Countermeasures and underwater technology. He is a veteran of international operations such as those in the Persian Gulf, Operation Allied Force, various NATO missions, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup security framework in Qatar. Throughout his career, he served as a key instructor and searider, shaping Italy’s national underwater tactics and doctrine. A Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, he has authored and contributed to publications on Seabed Warfare and subsea infrastructure protection. He is currently an analyst at the Center for Geopolitical and Strategic Maritime Studies (CESMAR).

References

 1. Till, G., “Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century”, Routledge, 2018.

2. San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 1994.

3. UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport, 2024.

4.  LtCol James Jackson, “The Price of Doubt: Sea Control in the Strait of Hormuz” CIMSEC, 22 June 2026.

5. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), World Oil Transit Chokepoints, 2024.

6. Tayfun Ozberk, “Is there a serious sea mine Threat in the Black Sea?”, Naval News, 27 March 2022.

7. TG COM 24, “Draghi: due settimane per sminare porti o sarà una catastrofe”, 16 June 2024.

8.  H.I. Sutton, “Russian Navy landing ships seem approaching Ukrainian coast near Odessa”, Naval News, 15 March 2022.

9. Charlie Dunlap – Raoul P. Pedrozo, “Dangerous waters: use of naval mines in the Russia – Ukraine conflict”, Duke University School of Law, 15 Juane 2022.

10. ISPI (Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale), “Houthi: chi sono e cosa vogliono i miliziani dello Yemen”, ISPI,15 Juanuary 2024.

11.  A. Mucedola, “A clear and present danger: le mine degli Houthi, la morte galleggiante”, Difesa on line, 28 December 2024.

12. S,Biagio; “Danni ai cavi sottomarini nel Mar Rosso, Si teme un attacco degli Houthi”; Il sole 24 ore, 27 Febbrary 2024;

13. Denise Morenghi; “Lo Stretto di Bab El Mandeb tra tensioni geopolitiche e nuove minacce securitarie”, CESI (Centro Studi Internazionali), 19 July 2020;

14. On 18 March 2022, the Novorossiysk coastal station issued Notice to Mariners No. 116, warning of the potential danger posed by drifting mines in the western Black Sea following reports that a storm had caused Ukrainian moored mines to break free. The notice identified the approaches to Odesa, Ochakiv, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhny as potentially affected, referred to an estimated 420 mines, and identified the devices as YAM- and YARM-type moored contact mines.

15. Perry, A., “The MCM Kill Chain: Are we deluding ourselves?”, 2023.

16.  Naval News Staff, “Belgian, Dutch and French ink agreement to adjust MCM vessel to French needs”, Naval News, 28 February 2025.

Featured image: A U.S. Navy explosive ordnance disposal technician assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 11 conducts mine countermeasures training during Exercise Rim of the Pacific 2026 off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, July 2, 2026. (U.S. Navy Photograph by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nicholas Russell)

Asia-Pacific

Hymn to Hai Kun: The Gap Between Ceremony and Capability

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By Meng Kit Tang

A Myth Before the Launch

In June 2026, the chairman of Taiwan’s China Shipbuilding Corporation’s (CSBC), announced that  the Hai Kun submarine was “on track” for delivery in 2026, but something else he said was even more telling. He added that pressure from the People’s Republic of China “has always existed,” on the program and that even after contracts are signed and parts are built, a shipment of parts can still be stopped at the last minute for political reasons.

That is an unusual thing for a shipbuilder to admit about his own supply chain. It means no deal with the suppliers behind Hai Kun is fully safe from Beijing until the part is delivered and actually installed on the boat.

As of its most recent sea trials in late July, its twentieth in all, the submarine’s delivery date remained officially unset, even as the pace of testing visibly picked up.

The submarine’s name fits this uncertainty better than anyone probably intended. Kun is a giant fish from the ancient Chinese text the Zhuangzi, so large no one can say how far it stretches, and it turns, within the same passage, into a bird whose wings blot out the sky. Taiwan named its first homemade submarine after this creature.

Before the boat ever touched water, before a single piece was welded, it already carried a story about becoming something vast, far more than a 2,500-tonne submarine could realistically live up to. A supply chain Beijing could disrupt at any point was never going to live up to it either.

That gap between the name and the actual submarine is really the whole story of this program. The launch ceremony in September 2023 built a big public celebration on top of a name that already promised too much, and in the three years since, the celebration has moved faster than the shipyard.

Delivery keeps slipping. The president has boarded the boat for photos that were later used against him. The ceremony made a statement about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, one that the submarine’s uncertain legal status, its thin and shared torpedo supply, and a follow-on fleet that mostly exists on paper have not yet been able to back up.

The Liturgy of Launch

President Tsai Ing-wen led the launch ceremony at CSBC’s shipyard in Kaohsiung on September 28, 2023. A flag was draped over the submarine’s bow. “History will forever remember this day,” she told the crowd. “In the past, a domestically produced submarine was considered a mission impossible. But today, a submarine designed and built by our countrymen is in front of you.”

Two weeks later, in her National Day speech, she went further: building a submarine at home, she said, had been the dream of Taiwanese presidents for three decades, and now Taiwan had done it. The claim had grown between the two speeches.

One boat was now standing in for thirty years of hope.

By January 2026, when the submarine completed its first dive, the crowd watching had changed too. It was no longer just officials. Ordinary people gathered and chanted “Let’s go, Hai Kun” as it went under. A government can organize a ceremony. It cannot make a crowd show up on its own to cheer a test dive. Whatever problems the program has had, public support for it is real, not just something manufactured from the top.

The ceremony is doing two jobs most countries never have to combine. Building a weapon shows what a country’s industry can do. Being recognized as a state usually needs no proof at all. Taiwan does not have that luxury. Every time the Hai Kun appears in public, it has to do both: show the submarine works, and quietly assert that the government building it has the right to build anything at all.

Three years is a long time to keep a single launch day feeling meaningful. The submarine was originally due to the Republic of China Navy in November 2025. That date has slipped again and again, most recently to sometime in the second half of 2026.

In March 2026, Defense Minister Wellington Koo told reporters the ministry would simply stop giving delivery dates. That’s an unusual thing for a government to admit about its own flagship project. The month before, President Lai told the legislature that Taiwan would be in a stronger position today if a submarine bid had passed back in 2005, when he was still a lawmaker.

It is rare for a sitting president to admit that his signature program is not really a new achievement, but two decades of catching up, done in public.

The ceremony’s own photos have since been used against it. When Lai visited the docked submarine in March 2026, the Presidential Office released photos meant to show confidence and progress. Within days, lawmakers pointed out problems visible in those same photos: missing rivets, water stains, a bunk curtain that would not slide properly.

CSBC admitted the flaws were real, blaming “incomplete restoration following work done.” That’s the shipbuilder’s own explanation, not a critic’s, and it gives away something more telling: the boat had been taken apart and put back together in a hurry, or with the assumption that no one would look too closely, and some pieces never quite made it back into place.

None of this affects whether the submarine can actually dive. What it affects is trust. The government’s own photos, meant to reassure, instead gave an already-doubtful legislature something concrete to point at.

One Hull, A Fleet Still Sung

CSBC has said plainly what these boats are for: making it costly for China to blockade Taiwan or land troops there, and pushing back Chinese carrier groups near the strait.

In short, the goal is not to control the strait outright but to make crossing it expensive. Keep that purpose in mind, because most of what follows is about how much of the fleet meant to do this job does not exist yet.

The number eight has carried a lot of weight in this program’s story ever since Taiwan formalized its plan to build eight submarines at home. CSBC’s chairman complicated that number in May. He said a US assessment of Taiwan’s situation puts the real need closer to twelve boats, based on the standard naval rule that a fleet needs about three hulls for everyone it can keep on active duty, since the rest are in training or repair.

Eight was the ceremony’s number. Twelve, according to the builder’s own account of what Washington thinks Taiwan needs, is the working number.

The torpedoes tell a similar story. Taiwan has a confirmed order for 28 Mark 48 Mod 6 torpedoes, 24 for combat and four for training, arriving in batches: four in 2026, fourteen in 2027, and ten in 2028.

These are not just for Hai Kun. They are to be shared with the two older Chien Lung-class submarines Taiwan bought from the Netherlands in the 1980s, which will likely still be in service when the new torpedoes arrive.

So a navy planning for eight modern submarines will, for years, be working with a torpedo supply sized for a much smaller, older fleet. A parallel case shows how wide that gap between paper and hardware can run: the navy has held a signed contract since 2017 to upgrade 168 lightweight MK-46 torpedoes, used by surface ships and patrol aircraft, to the newer MK-54 standard, originally due by 2022.

Audit findings released this year show it slipped to 2025 through 2027, arrived as scattered, undocumented parts the navy could not assemble into a single working torpedo, and sat for nearly three years after Washington flagged a 91 percent failure rate in the components, without the navy procuring replacements or reassessing the schedule.

Two of the seven follow-on submarines already have a signed contract, the first pair in a build sequence of two, three, and two boats, changed in 2024 from an earlier plan of three, two, and two so the navy could adjust later designs based on lessons from the first boat.

But the roughly one billion Taiwan dollars set aside for those two boats stays frozen until the Hai Kun finishes its sea trials and the defense ministry submits a full report to the legislature. The contract exists. The money does not move until the first boat proves itself.

Right now, the next stage of the fleet is a signature on paper, not steel in the yard.

None of this means the program is failing. Prototype submarines often run late and hit technical problems. Hai Kun’s technical setbacks during 2024 sea trials, and its recovery from them, are unremarkable by the standards of building a first-of-its-kind submarine.

What’s worth noticing instead is the gap between how the two sides of this story get told. The ceremony announced a fleet built to deny an enemy the strait. Three years later, the shipyard has one hull, a torpedo stock it shares with older boats, and a signed contract for two more submarines whose funding won’t move until the first one proves itself.

A state whose international standing partly depends on looking self-reliant has every reason to let the ceremony’s promises outpace the shipyard’s progress, because the political payoff comes the moment the cameras catch the launch, while the military payoff is only tested in a crisis nobody wants to see happen.

The Boats With No Liturgy

The contract for the first two follow-on submarines was signed quietly. No flag, no crowd, no presidential speech. That makes sense: there was no boat yet to photograph, and a ceremony needs something physical to celebrate, a hull, a hatch someone can climb through for the cameras.

A signature on a contract and a frozen budget line do not give a ceremony anything to work with, so nothing was held. The state stays loud about the one submarine it has and silent about the seven it has not.

That difference matters. The 2023 ceremony could afford to oversell, because the boat was real and would eventually prove the claims true or false in public, one sea trial at a time. The seven boats still on paper do not get that kind of scrutiny, because nobody is making loud claims about them yet. That sounds safer, but it might not be.

A promise made in public can be checked against reality, slowly and awkwardly, but checked. A promise never made in public can’t be checked at all. The part of the fleet we know least about is also the part we talk about least, and that’s probably not a coincidence.

A Congregation That Cannot Say Its Own Name

The ceremony has a second audience, one the launch event never addressed because it could not.

Components and technical help for Hai Kun came from engineers and firms in seven countries: Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In several cases the work had to go through arm’s-length companies, because Beijing has long warned that any country helping Taiwan build a submarine would pay a diplomatic price.

None of these governments has stood at a podium beside Tsai or Lai to say what it contributed, a silence that likely protects each supplier’s relationship with Beijing more than it protects Taiwan’s submarine.

Taiwan can claim an internationally assisted, non-Red supply chain. It cannot name who took part, and those who did are not offering.

After the Music Stops

CSBC, Hai Kun’s builder, lost money on the submarine program because of delays and warranty costs. It returned to profit over the next two quarters, supported by both its commercial shipbuilding business and follow-on submarine contracts.

The two sides of the business help sustain each other.

The 2023 launch ceremony is not disproved simply because the navy has yet to receive the submarine. Ceremonies like this are not judged immediately. They are judged over time, as events either confirm or undermine their promises. But that process cannot continue indefinitely.

Every year the Hai Kun remains undelivered widens the gap between the optimism of the launch and the submarine still sitting in dry dock at Kaohsiung.

Eventually, reality catches up. The Hai Kun enters service, joins the fleet, and validates the ceremony in retrospect. Or the follow-on submarines never materialize, leaving the ceremony remembered more clearly than the capability it promised.

Tang Meng Kit is a Singaporean freelance analyst and commentator who works as an aerospace engineer. He graduated from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU, Singapore in 2025.

Featured image: President Lai Ching-te inspects the Hai Kun. (Wikimedia Commons photo)

Ocean Governance

What Naval Power Cannot Buy

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By Hervé Auffret

Ships can deter a competitor, compel a rival, and escort a convoy. What they cannot do is build the institutions, relationships, information systems, and rules that keep maritime order running when the guns are silent. China has worked this out. Washington and most of its partners treat governance as an appendage to naval strategy, rather than a domain of competition in its own right.

The Missing Half of Maritime Competition

Counting ships, missiles, bases, and shipyards is how most would measure power at sea.1 But a second measure gets far less attention. A navy can dominate the horizon and still lose the argument over who writes the rules, who trains the officials, and who supplies the systems that decide what happens at sea on an ordinary Tuesday.

China is the proof of concept. Its satellite-navigation system, BeiDou, is quietly becoming the default across African ports and fishing fleets. Across the Pacific, police training, equipment transfers, and shifts in diplomatic recognition have bought Beijing access no carrier strike group could. In the unglamorous rooms where regional fisheries bodies argue over inspection procedures, Chinese delegates show up year after year to do the slow work other great powers often overlook. This does not replace the People’s Liberation Army Navy. It reshapes the political ground on which that navy will someday be used, resisted, or waved through.

A recent episode in the Strait of Hormuz offers another stark illustration. In spring 2026, the United States assembled a naval force to reopen it after Iran closed it to traffic. A month in, Adm. James Stavridis (Ret.) and a chorus of maritime lawyers reached the uncomfortable verdict that American firepower could not decide the outcome. Iran’s cheap drones and mines kept risk and the insurance premiums high enough to strangle traffic regardless of who controlled the water. If naval power cannot restore transit rights mid-war, it is unlikely to do so in peacetime.

So what does maritime governance produce that naval power cannot? I see four recurring effects: institutional access, security cooperation below the threshold of alliance, dependence on information infrastructure, and influence over the rules themselves. None of this makes governance benign or a fleet optional. Naval power acts on capabilities and behavior, directly and visibly. Governance works more slowly, on the institutional, informational, and normative ground beneath them: the ground on which states decide what counts as legitimate, who exercises authority, and where their interests lie.

Naval Power and Governance: A Functional Distinction

“Maritime governance” can be used to mean everything at once: law, coast guards, fisheries management, port security, and regional diplomacy. I use it more narrowly. Maritime governance organizes authority at sea: it builds the rules, institutions, professional networks, and information systems through which that authority is exercised and sustained.2

In contrast, naval power deters, compels, and projects force, performing the coercive and reassuring functions that keep the peace or break it. Governance organizes and sustains authority while naval power protects it, contests it, or imposes outcomes when necessary. A vessel can enforce a rule nobody else will, but it cannot train a prosecutor, build a chain of custody, or talk a government into years of security cooperation. Navies themselves sometimes do the governing. The distinction is not between military and civilian institutions, but between two mechanisms of strategic effect.

Latin American naval doctrine has long separated poder naval, the military instrument, from the wider poder marítimo which includes administration, commerce, fisheries, civilian institutions, and the entire apparatus of a state’s relationship with the sea.3 In states with thin civilian maritime administrations, the navy is often the whole of maritime governance because it is the only institution capable of training officials or running a surveillance network. The moment a navy starts doing those things, it stops relying purely on coercive effect and starts producing the institutional memory and working relationships that outlast any single deployment.

This suggests a more useful distinction than military versus civilian: whether presence is episodic or sustained. Deployments and port calls are visible and consequential, but temporary. A coast guard cutter returning year after year, or a navy training prosecutors because no one else can, has a different effect. Persistence turns presence into relationships and eventually institutions. That returns us to the four recurring effects outlined above. The first, and most basic, is institutional access.

Institutional Access and Socialization

Institutional access is the capacity to shape how a partner understands a threat and gets through an ordinary day. Compared with a carrier deployment, a recurring training course may be small, but it compounds over years into a habit of professional familiarity that decides whom an official calls in a crisis.

China has been building exactly this kind of access across the Pacific through police secondments, riot-control and surveillance equipment, and training programs with Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. Beijing’s language frames this as sovereign states building their own capacity, making the cooperation politically palatable in capitals that might balk at anything resembling a bloc.

A port call signals interest for a week. Institutional socialization survives the ship’s departure. It shapes doctrine, procurement, and information-sharing habits, and, more quietly, opens ministries close to domestic political power.

This does not buy permanent loyalty, as Ghana demonstrates. In April 2025, Ghana’s fisheries authorities suspended the licenses of four locally flagged, Chinese-owned trawlers for a year.4 Chinese commercial influence over Ghana’s trawl sector is extensive. But that did not stop Accra from sanctioning the vessels. Institutional strength, once it takes root locally, does not come with a remote control for the country that helped build it.

Cooperation of this kind creates access and familiarity, not compliance. Access and socialization alone leave the result intangible. There is no basing agreement or formal commitment, only influence that may later be converted into something more concrete.

Security Cooperation Below the Threshold of Alliance

Institutional access matters most when it changes what a government is prepared to negotiate. General familiarity can become a security agreement or an option on future access.

Small and mid-sized states often want assistance and expertise without the domestic backlash of “picking sides.” Police cooperation, coast-guard support, and disaster response all sit between routine diplomacy and a formal defense pact. That space has strategic value in its own right. The China–Solomon Islands security agreement, signed in 2022, shows how.

The Solomon Islands already had a 2017 treaty allowing Australian police, defense, and civilian personnel to deploy by mutual consent. What Beijing negotiated was different. The text has never been released, but a leaked draft described Chinese police deployment, and provisions for ship visits, replenishment, and transit, all with Honiara’s consent.

Beijing did not muscle its way to maritime access with a naval task force. It got there through diplomacy. Honiara switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019, and three years of deepening economic engagement and police assistance followed. That groundwork made a security agreement and future naval access negotiable. Governance created an opportunity naval power could not.

Chinese diplomacy did its part too, framing the pact as cooperation between sovereign equals, letting both governments call it domestic security cooperation even as Canberra, Wellington, and Washington read it as a geopolitical realignment.

But the arrangement also shows where the mechanism falls short. Regional pushback revived the principle that Pacific security is a “Pacific family” matter first. The Solomon Islands’ own politics caught up with the pact. In 2026 a newly installed prime minister pledged to review it, a reminder that access built on personal relationships can unravel the moment the government that built it falls out of power.5 Cooperation below the threshold of a formal alliance comes at a lower price of entry, not immunity from the ordinary demands of legitimacy and transparency.

Information-Infrastructure Dependence

The third mechanism runs through information itself. Maritime-domain awareness is often discussed in technical terms that focus on satellites and sensors. But the strategic questions sit above the hardware. They include who supplies and maintains the system, whose standards structure the data, and how easily a country can switch providers. Those questions are easy to ignore early on, when equipment is subsidized and switching still appears simple. They grow problematic only later, once training, procurement, and data formats have all been built around a single supplier.

More than thirty African countries now host BeiDou reference stations or run BeiDou-enabled services, often with subsidized equipment and training. The system reaches well beyond maritime security, encompassing navigation, mapping, transport, and fisheries monitoring. The strategic payoff is not a “kill switch” that lets Beijing blind another country’s maritime awareness on command. The real effect is entrenchment. The BeiDou information-infrastructure stack becomes an indispensable foundation. Once officials are trained and maintenance arrangements established, later choices become harder to make independently. Even with multi-constellation receivers, a state can still find its daily administrative routine dependent on Chinese hardware and technical support.

Washington built a similar mechanism inside NATO, where over 1,200 standardization agreements cover everything from rifle calibers to tactical data links, binding an alliance trained for decades on American doctrine and logistically dependent on American resupply. GPS had no serious rival for a generation. GLONASS did not match it until the 2010s, Galileo went live only in 2016, and BeiDou only in 2020. The difference is that Washington never extended its information infrastructure systematically. Outside NATO, this standardization has been improvisational. China, without a NATO-scale alliance of its own, has built something more systematic through BeiDou.

BeiDou does not leave African governments without alternatives. Ghana and Senegal are building monitoring capacity with several partners at once, Ghana through the Copernicus satellite-detection program and Senegal through joint patrols with the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission, the EU, and the U.S. Coast Guard.6 Informational dependence is rarely absolute, but entrenchment of an information infrastructure shapes technical and bureaucratic decisions for years afterward.

Normative Shaping

The fourth mechanism operates on the rules themselves, shaping the procedures by which maritime conduct is judged. A navy can enforce or contest a rule, but it cannot decide who gets inspection authority, what data must be reported, or how an international body weighs enforcement against a flag state’s consent.

Regional fisheries bodies are a good place to see this in action, since their decisions are technical, cumulative, and consequential. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission adopted its first high-seas boarding and inspection procedures in 2006 and has spent two decades refining vessel monitoring and reporting requirements. This is the plumbing of ocean governance. China has stayed at the table throughout, most recently through the Commission’s High Seas Boarding and Inspection Intersessional Working Group formed in late 2024, whose guides were adopted in 2025. That work shapes the conditions under which fishing fleets are monitored, inspected, and sanctioned across one of the most economically important fishing grounds in the world.

Normative influence rarely produces a visible Chinese “win.” More often it appears as a qualifying clause or a gradually normalized practice. These gains build slowly, and a naval deployment can do little to reverse them. Governance and coercion also coexist more comfortably than the usual distinction suggests. China participates in maritime institutions while using aggressive coast guard tactics and advancing expansive legal claims elsewhere. Rule-making can moderate competition, but it can also lend the authority of law to advantage a state has already accumulated. Chinese writing on global ocean governance says as much, openly linking institutional participation, the defense of maritime “rights and interests,” and the accumulation of national discursive power.7

For Washington, that ambiguity makes sustained engagement in these bodies more important. Rules favorable to an open maritime order do not write themselves, and reflexively treating every Chinese proposal as illegitimate can be counterproductive. What works is sustained technical presence, credible legal positions, and coalitions that can turn a broad principle into an accepted procedure.

Where the United States Can Compete

This is not a case for copying China’s model or divesting from ships and munitions. It is a case for treating institutions, information systems, and rules as strategic assets worthy of sustained investment. This is not straightforward, and no single framework captures the whole picture. But three priorities stand out.

The first is institutional relationships, where Washington simply needs to keep doing what already works. The Coast Guard is the obvious lead instrument. It is naval power built for persistence rather than pulses, turning presence into governance.8 Its shiprider agreements, now in force with a dozen Pacific Island nations, let American cutters back up partner enforcement without elbowing aside local authority. State Department peacekeeping funding has already paid for coast guard training in Comoros and Gabon. What is missing is continuity. This means extending these arrangements to Atlantic and Indian Ocean partners, and funding legal mentoring, maintenance, and recurring exchanges.

Coast guards, fisheries agencies, and prosecutors are not secondary audiences waiting for a naval visit. They are the institutions through which sovereignty is exercised daily, and the Coast Guard usually has a sharper comparative advantage in working with them than a combatant command does. The relationship persists. A task force does not.

The second priority is to build on the information architecture that already exists. The Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Action Alliance, launched with the United Kingdom and Canada in 2022, and its ties to Global Fishing Watch, already give Washington a vehicle for offering partners an alternative to a single proprietary supplier. Forcing anyone to choose between BeiDou and GPS is a battle Washington is unlikely to win. Instead, it should fund interoperability with shared standards and switching costs low enough that a partner can combine sources without replacing its system wholesale.

Finally, norm-setting requires a different kind of persistence. It involves lawyers and scientists seconded into intersessional working groups. These groups matter because this is where concrete work happens. Technical experts draft language, resolve disagreements and build consensus months before any formal vote takes place. By the time the draft proposal reaches a body’s plenary session, the focus is often ratification, not deliberation. A state that only shows up for the plenary vote arrives after the outcome is largely decided.

All three priorities demand a kind of bureaucratic coordination that a recent U.S. government assessment found consistently lacking. U.S. naval strategy, development assistance, law enforcement, and fisheries diplomacy sit in different agencies with different budgets. China does not coordinate every initiative from the center, but these instruments accumulate inside the same bilateral relationships regardless. To compete, an American approach will need to produce the same cumulative effect, while staying more transparent and less coercive.

Governing the Space Navies Secure

None of this makes naval power dispensable. Ships protect access, deter aggression, and keep governance from turning into an empty promise the moment it is tested with force. But building trusted institutions, negotiating access, sustaining an information system, and producing a rule people actually follow are things ships alone have never managed. These come from governance, or they do not come at all.

China has already combined these tools in ways that matter strategically. Police cooperation opens institutions, security agreements make access negotiable, information systems create switching costs, and participation in rule-making shapes the environment in which fleets operate. Not one of these gains is automatic, and none lasts forever. But together, they redraw the strategic map long before any naval crisis arrives.

A state can dominate at sea and still lose influence over the order built around it. The question facing the United States is not whether naval power matters more than maritime governance, but what each one does. Naval power secures access. Governance shapes the order that access is supposed to serve.

Hervé Auffret is an independent specialist in security and maritime sector governance and a retired Captain in the French Navy. He has held numerous leadership positions in security and defense institutions, including at the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF), the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, NATO Allied Transformation Command, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the French Secretariat-General for National Defence. His operational and command experience includes deployments in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. He is a graduate of the French Naval Academy (École navale) and the French War College and holds two Master of Science degrees. The views expressed are those of the author alone.

Endnotes

1. Christian Bueger and Timothy Edmunds, “Beyond Seablindness: A New Agenda for Maritime Security Studies,” International Affairs 93, no. 6 (2017): 1293–1311.

2. Christian Bueger, “What Is Maritime Security?,” Marine Policy 53 (2015): 159–164.

3. Gary Javier González Núñez, “Poder Marítimo y Poder Naval, ¿nueva definición para Colombia?,” Ensayos sobre Estrategia Marítima 2, no. 5 (2017): 31–42; Noé Cuervo Vázquez and Marcos Pablo Moloeznik, “Hacia una medición del poder naval en América Latina,” Anuario Latinoamericano: Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones Internacionales 5 (2017): 291–315.

4. “Ghana Suspends Licenses of Chinese Trawlers over Illegal Fishing,” Africa Defense Forum, May 2025; “Tackling Illegal Fishing: Fisheries Ministry Suspends Licenses of Four Industrial Trawlers,” Business Day Ghana, April 2025; Environmental Justice Foundation, China’s Hidden Fleet in West Africa: A Spotlight on Illegal Practices within Ghana’s Industrial Trawl Sector (London: Environmental Justice Foundation, 2018).

5. Matthew Wale, quoted in “New Prime Minister Says Solomon Islands Will Review Its Secretive Security Treaty with China,” NBC News/Associated Press, June 3, 2026, https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/solomon-islands-new-prime-minister-will-review-china-security-deal-rcna348216; “Solomon Islands Won’t Release Security Pact with China Because of Non-Disclosure Clause,” ABC News, June 11, 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-11/solomon-islands-china-security-pact-non-disclosure-clause/106784432.

6. European Maritime Safety Agency, “Copernicus Maritime Surveillance – Fisheries Control,” use case on EFCA-Ghana cooperation, https://www.emsa.europa.eu/; U.S. Naval Forces Africa, on USCGC Spencer deployment and combined maritime law-enforcement operations with Cabo Verde, Senegal, and the Gambia, January 2023, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2023/01/mil-230119-usn02.htm; Food and Agriculture Organization, “Senegal Shows Commitment to Fight IUU Fishing,” June 2023, https://www.fao.org/port-state-measures/news-events/detail/en/c/1641217/.

7. Luo Gang, “中国参与全球海洋治理的战略思维” [China’s Strategic Thinking on Participation in Global Ocean Governance], Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University, Brief no. 67, 2018.

8. Éric Frécon and Benoît de Tréglodé, eds., La diplomatie des garde-côtes en Asie du Sud-Est, Étude de l’IRSEM no. 73 (Paris: Institut de recherche stratégique de l’École militaire, 2020).

Featured image: 1662 Portolan chart of the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara by François Ollive. (Wikimedia Commons)