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Indo-Asia-Pacific

Cooperative Maritime Law Enforcement and Overfishing in the South China Sea

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By Michael Perry

Introduction

Fish are the primary source of animal protein for populations bordering the South China Sea (SCS) and overfishing in the region has emerged as a major threat to food security.1 Over the past 30 years fish stocks have declined by one-third and are expected to decrease an additional 59 percent by 2045 if current practices persist.2

The threat is recognized by all SCS nations but hasn’t been curtailed for three primary reasons. First, the migratory nature of fish requires all SCS nations to jointly agree on constraints. Disagreements have not only made cooperation difficult, but have led to increasingly frequent confrontations between rival Maritime Law Enforcement (MLE) forces and fishermen. Second, even if nations could agree, the presence of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing creates an MLE challenge. Lastly, the first two challenges coalesce to form a third – disparities in MLE capabilities affect perceptions of fairness and the perceived benefits of cooperation. That is, a nation asked to carry a heavier MLE burden may demand an increased share of fish stocks.

There may be a solution. U.S. MLE assistance can set the conditions for a fair, fully cooperative fishing agreement among SCS nations with minimal risk of escalating the present situation to the level of war.

Challenges to Cooperation

Fisheries economists agree that when nations cooperate to optimize the use of depletable resources, total catch increases because stocks are maintained at high levels.3 However, economists have also demonstrated that nations deviate from this total catch maximization model because there is no clear way to divide the “cooperative surplus” among nations, defined as the excess catch above what’s attained under noncooperation.4 As a consequence, noncooperation leading to overexploitation has been observed time and again.5 The reasoning behind this is simple. If nations unilaterally pursue policies not agreeable to others, the sum of these policies will exceed the optimal cooperative policy, and stocks will become depleted.

The concept of a fair allocation of the cooperative surplus is particularly challenging in the SCS. Expansive claims based on historical discoveries and interpretations, United Nations-defined exclusive economic zones, and the occupation of islands and reefs afar from mainlands leads to a large degree of overlapping jurisdictions.6 The most extreme claim is that of China’s “nine-dash line,” encompassing 80 percent of the SCS.7 Aside from tangible issues of geography and historical discovery, a nation’s ideology can contribute to what’s perceived as “fair.” China views itself as a Middle Kingdom that ought to govern affairs in its area of the world, if not globally. This conflicts with the U.S. view that it occupies the position of global leadership and must “contain” China from becoming too influential.8 Thus, even if China could make a case that its geography, population, MLE capabilities, and so on, warrant a “fair” allocation encompassing its claimed 80 percent of the SCS, established U.S. policy would be to exert influence to alter this balance, which would enrich other SCS nations to the detriment of China.

Were the challenge of a fair allocation of the cooperative surplus to be solved, SCS nations would still face an MLE challenge as IUU fishing is prevalent in the SCS. The current situation under noncooperation is informative for understanding the extent of IUU fishing. The Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center, an intergovernmental organization including all SCS nations other than China, estimates IUU fishing currently accounts for 8-16 percent of total catch.9 Much of this is Chinese fishing which China doesn’t consider IUU, but it would be naïve to assume that were China to enter a cooperative agreement that curtails its allowable catch, there would be a corresponding decrease in IUU fishing.  A cooperative agreement will place increased constraints on fishing, thus decreasing supply and increasing the incentive to fish illegally. For fishermen suddenly forced out of the legal fishing business, IUU fishing will be a logical, even if risky, line of work. Empirically, past agreements outside the SCS have seen this phenomenon occur.10 Thus, to address the MLE requirements brought by a constrained fishing environment, nations must also engage in security cooperation so MLE effectiveness can be maximized. IUU fishing can only be assumed to decrease following a cooperative agreement if SCS coast guards fully integrate their MLE efforts so there are no weak spots IUU fishermen can exploit.

The final challenge to cooperation is a conglomeration of territorial disputes and IUU fishing, along with China’s supremacy in MLE. China’s coast guard easily surpasses all other SCS nations combined in gross tonnage, with 190,000 tons of coast guard vessels of multiple types.11 In contrast, Vietnam and the Philippines possess 35,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively, while Indonesia possesses about 400 vessels compared to China’s 1,300.12 ISR and aircraft are both force multipliers in MLE and China has superiority in each of these.13 Thus, China possesses great leverage when bargaining over the cooperative surplus. 

Presently, noncooperation persists because China has calculated it is better off using its MLE strength to unilaterally impose its own laws in the SCS, rather than submitting to terms acceptable to the other bordering states. This strategy is evident in repeated instances of the Chinese Coast Guard intervening in fishing disputes with Vietnam near the Paracel Islands, with the Philippines near the Scarborough Shoal (approximately 472 NM from the Chinese mainland), and with Indonesia near Natuna (1151 NM).14 The problem with this unilateral Chinese strategy, aside from a lack of fairness, is that it has failed in the sense that overfishing persists. Despite its superiority in MLE, China hasn’t been able to reverse the observable trend of depleting stocks in the SCS.

In light of these issues, while geography and historical claims are immutable sources of conflict, MLE capabilities are mutable and can be employed by the U.S. to mitigate the threat of overfishing in the SCS. By providing MLE assistance to non-Chinese coast guards, the U.S. can, at minimum, assure China’s attempt to unilaterally control the SCS no longer appears feasible, and may even bring about a fully cooperative agreement.

Shaping the Conditions for Cooperation

An important notion from cooperative game theory is that when the right incentive structure is in place, players who would otherwise be in competition will form a “cooperative coalition” that is beneficial to all. The first objective of U.S. MLE assistance in the SCS should be to provide non-Chinese nations sufficient capabilities to police an area of the SCS that can provide a sustainable level of fish to all nations in the coalition. Lacking this, some nations may acquiesce to Chinese unilateralism as the best option. A fully cooperative agreement would include China, whose MLE capabilities would partially offset needed U.S. assistance to combat IUU fishing, and per economic theory total catch will increase as well. While Chinese cooperation can’t be assumed, it is highly desirable and MLE assistance should be directed toward convincing China the coalition can be an ally vice adversary.

While the coast guard figures cited earlier show a clear capabilities advantage for China, it is not an overwhelming one. Consider, for instance, disparities in population and hence demand for fish. Non-Chinese nations account for only 25 percent of the population bordering the SCS, so coalition MLE may only need to control a comparatively small section of it.15 Further, while China does possess superior air and ISR assets than other SCS nations, they still lag the U.S. in these areas.16 Aircraft and ISR are comparatively cheap relative to large end surface vessels. These facts make it seem promising the U.S. can cost-effectively close the MLE capabilities gap; looking at current coast guard and military aid budgets provides a useful heuristic to assess this more fully. China spent approximately $1.7 billion per year from 2011 through 2015 to modernize its coast guard. In contrast, the U.S. currently spends over $10 billion per year on its coast guard, while Vietnam and the Philippines each spend about $200 million.17 U.S. military aid for fiscal year 2019 allocated $30 million, $12 million, and zero dollars to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia, respectively. The global mission to improve food security was allocated $518 million.18 Active participation by U.S. Coast Guard assets in the SCS has been virtually nonexistent, though in May 2019 they participated in a combined exercise with the Philippines, perhaps signaling willingness by the U.S. to invest more in MLE assistance.19

Given these figures it is clear a relatively small investment in the modernization of regional coast guards could go a long way. While federal budgeting is competitive and slow to change in the U.S., there are strong reasons to justify increased funding for MLE in the SCS. Aside from the general notion throughout the Department of Defense of a shift in emphasis toward INDOPACOM, there is a growing trend towards gray-zone operations where coast guards are better positioned than navies to play the central security role.20 Further, MLE assistance is ultimately intended to induce security cooperation with China to combat IUU fishing; successful cooperation on the comparatively benign issue of overfishing may pay dividends in resolving contentious issues closer to the level of war.

The above analysis makes it appear feasible the U.S. could provide the necessary MLE assistance to cordon off a section of the SCS sufficient to supply sustainable levels of fish to partners, and at a moderate cost. The problem, however, is that due to the migratory nature of fish this cordoned off area must be larger than what a simple calculation of fish per capita would suggest. Fish stocks intentionally left uncaught by the coalition will migrate to waters not policed by the coalition. In an idyllic world China wouldn’t deplete these migratory resources, but realistically overfishing should be expected as China disagrees with the fairness of the coalition’s policy. To account for expected Chinese excesses the coalition’s area must expand, so not only does required MLE assistance increase, but there is a risk of becoming too provocative and causing China to escalate hostilities to the level of conflict. It is therefore critical to assess the likelihoods of China joining an expanding coalition, and alternatively escalating to war.

The rationale for China joining the coalition in the face of U.S. MLE assistance is that, given the strengthened ability of the coalition to defend its waters, China’s strategy of unilaterally imposing its own laws for sustainable fishing will become clearly impractical. Under the current state of affairs China’s strategy isn’t working yet there’s still no sign of a shift, indicating they still believe aggressive unilateralism can work if they further advance their MLE capabilities. By advancing a regional coalition’s MLE toward first-world standards, U.S. partners can impose costs on Chinese unilateralism and hopefully encourage China to see cooperation as the best option. The suboptimality of unilateral MLE on the part of China is, however, not sufficient to assure cooperation. China has a third option, which is to escalate the dispute over fishing to the level of war. Fortunately, there are multiple reasons to believe China won’t take such action.

A comparison to a similar dispute over fishing laws involving China is informative. In the East China Sea (ECS), China and Japan have an ongoing dispute over fishing rights near the Senkaku Islands. While each continues to proclaim ownership of the Senkakus and surrounding waters, there have been far fewer provocative actions by China than seen in the SCS, and zero instances of the Chinese Coast Guard detaining Japanese fishermen.21 The limited hostilities in the ECS are likely the result of Japan fielding a peer coast guard to China’s.22 In fact, far from leading to war over the Senkakus, Japan’s ability to resist Chinese unilateralism led to an agreement between the two nations on both fishing constraints and MLE cooperation, which was signed in 1997.23

Despite the datapoint that Japan’s peer coast guard successfully curtailed Chinese unilateralism in the ECS, there is a justifiable fear that the interactive effects of China being curtailed in both the ECS and SCS would push it over the edge. It may consider failure to control either the SCS or ECS an unacceptable threat to its aim of becoming a global superpower and opt for war rather than cooperation.24

This is, however, unlikely due to the multitude of internal problems China currently faces that hinder its ability to wage a conventional war against U.S. partners. For example, China is facing a workforce crisis where cheap labor, which was the catalyst for its “economic miracle” that began in the late 1970s, is disappearing. Mortality rates, once in decline, are now on the rise in China.25 The United Nations’ Human Development Index for China also lags far behind first-world standards.26 All these factors negatively effect China’s ability to fund a prolonged, large-scale war. China does have escalation dominance over other SCS nations, so to signal to China that war would in fact be “prolonged” and “large-scale,” the U.S. must maintain its strong naval presence in the region as a sign of its commitment to fight a war if necessary.

Conclusion

U.S. MLE assistance in the SCS can mitigate Chinese unilateralism on fishing rights without provoking war, establish sustainable levels of fishing without Chinese cooperation, and may lead to a fully cooperative agreement with China to combat overfishing. Full cooperation has three key advantages, including a greater total catch, a reduced requirement for the U.S. to provide MLE assistance, and a reduction in the threat of war, even if this is small in the noncooperative case. It is therefore in the U.S.’ and partners’ interests to provide fair terms for an agreement with China rather than one that appears exploitative and pursuant of a containment policy. An agreement that is most likely to be accepted is one that has clearly defined rules on who can fish where and how much, how random fluctuations in catches will be remedied through trade, as well as complete transparency in how these determinations are made.

Michael Perry is a PhD student at George Mason University studying applications of game theory in the security environment. He is also a U.S. Navy Reservist and has deployed to Singapore, Bahrain, and Rota, Spain. The views expressed in this article are his own.

References

1. Zhang, “Fisheries Cooperation in the South China Sea: Evaluating the Options.” Marine Policy 89 (February 2018): 67–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2017.12.014.

2. Hsiao, Amanda. “Opportunities for Fisheries Enforcement Cooperation in the South China Sea.” Marine Policy, June 2019, 103569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2019.103569.

3. Munro, Gordon R. “Game Theory and the Development of Resource Management Policy: The Case of International Fisheries.” Environment and Development Economics 14, no. 1 (February 2009): 7–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355770X08004671.

4. Kaitala, Veijo, and Marko Lindroos. “Sharing the Benefits of Cooperation in High Seas Fisheries: A Characteristic Function Game Approach.” Natural Resource Modeling 11, no. 4 (1998): 275–99.

5. Munro, Gordon R. “Game Theory and the Development of Resource Management Policy: The Case of International Fisheries.” Environment and Development Economics 14, no. 1 (February 2009): 7–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355770X08004671.

6. Stearns, Scott. “Challenging Beijing in the South China Sea.” Voice of America. State of Affairs (blog), July 31, 2012. https://blogs.voanews.com/state-department-news/2012/07/31/challenging-beijing-in-the-south-china-sea/.

7. “Coastguard Here to Help, US Says to South China Sea Nations.” South China Morning Post, July 11, 2019. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3014006/coastguard-here-help-says-us-south-china-sea-nations.

8. Goodman, Melvin. “The Twin Dangers of Exceptionalism and Mindless Bi-Partisanship.” Counter Punch, June 13, 2019. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/13/the-twin-dangers-of-exceptionalism-and-mindless-bi-partisanship/.

9. “Catch Documentation and Traceability.” Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center, n.d. https://www.seafdec-oceanspartnership.org/catch-documentation-and-traceability/.

10. Zhang, Hongzhou. “Chinese Fishermen in Disputed Waters: Not Quite a ‘People’s War.’” Marine Policy 68 (June 2016): 65–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2016.02.018.

11. Morris, Lyle J. “Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty – The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia.” Naval War College Review 70, no. 2 (2017): 38.

12. Morris, “KPLP Director Asks for Effective and Efficient Patrol Boat Management.” Berita Trans, May 7, 2018. http://beritatrans.com/2018/05/07/direktur-kplp-minta-pengelolaan-kapal-patroli-efektif-dan-efisien/. 

Erickson, Andrew S. “Numbers Matter: China’s Three ‘Navies’ Each Have the World’s Most Ships.” National Interest, February 2018.

13. Morris, “The Era of Coast Guards in the Asia- Pacific Is Upon Us”; Morris, “Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty – The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia.”

14. “Are Maritime Law Enforcement Forces Destabilizing Asia?” ChinaPower: Unpacking the Complexity of China’s Rise, 2019. https://chinapower.csis.org/maritime-forces-destabilizing-asia/.

15. “World Population Prospects.” United Nations, 2019. https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/.

16. Morris, Lyle J. “Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty – The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia.” Naval War College Review 70, no. 2 (2017): 38.

17.Ibid.

18. “Congressional Budget Justification:  Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, Fiscal Year 2019.” U.S. Department of State, February 12, 2018.

19. Jennings, Ralph. “Coast Guard Gives US New Tool in Disputed South China Sea.” Voice of America, May 20, 2019. https://www.voanews.com/east-asia/coast-guard-gives-us-new-tool-disputed-south-china-sea.

20. “The Era of Coast Guards in the Asia- Pacific Is Upon Us.” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), CSIS (March 8, 2017). https://amti.csis.org/era-coast-guards-asia-pacific-upon-us/.

21. Morris, Lyle J. “Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty – The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia.” Naval War College Review 70, no. 2 (2017): 38.

22. Ibid.

23. Hsiao, Amanda. “Opportunities for Fisheries Enforcement Cooperation in the South China Sea.” Marine Policy, June 2019, 103569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2019.103569.

24. Phillips, Tom. “Xi Jinping Heralds ‘new Era’ of Chinese Power at Communist Party Congress.” The Guardian, October 18, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/18/xi-jinping-speech-new-era-chinese-power-party-congress.

25. Chomsky, Noam. “‘Losing’ the World: American Decline in Perspective, Part 1.” Tom Dispatch, February 14, 2012. www.tomdispatch.com/post/175502/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky%2C_hegemony_and_its_dilemmas/.

26. “Global Human Development Indicators.” United Nations, 2018. http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries.

Featured Image: Fisherman Shi Renping sails a fishing vessel towards a deepwater fish farming base near Meiji Reef of the Nansha Islands of China, July 17, 2016. (Xinhua/Zhao Yingquan)

History

The Advent of Naval Dazzle Camouflage

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By Mark Wood

During WWI, maritime artist and naval officer Norman Wilkinson proposed that the answer to the growing U-Boat threat, rather than concealment, was for a ship to expose itself to the enemy.

At the commencement of WWI, anti-submarine warfare theory was still in its infancy. There were no instruction manuals on submarine tracking, nor had sub-surface weapons been developed to counter the threat posed by submarines. The initial German U-Boat campaign of 1914 against Britain’s Grand Fleet proved highly successful, resulting in the sinking of nine British warships by the end of the year, including the cruisers Aboukir and Cressy, and the battleship Formidable.

This disastrous beginning to the war forced the Royal Navy to seek safer anchorages off Donegal on Ireland’s North Atlantic coast. The following year, Germany’s campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare saw a dramatic escalation of attacks, and corresponding losses to the Allied merchant fleets. During the first six months of the war only 19 merchant vessels had been lost to U-Boat activity, however in January 1915 alone, the same amount of tonnage was sunk as was destroyed in the previous six months of conflict.

Allied navies resorted to arming trawlers and merchantmen, and some basic tactical instruction was disseminated detailing ideas to counter the U-boat threat, including heading into the line of attack, and attempting to ram hostile submarines.

It was not until 1917 that a Royal Navy officer wrote to the admiralty in London with what he considered might be a possible solution. Norman Wilkinson was a successful painter of maritime seascapes, and an artist for the Illustrated London News, who had set his career aside in 1915 to join the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. After submarine service in the Mediterranean, he was transferred to mine-sweeping duties in home waters and it was at this point that his idea for a radical form of effective camouflage began to take shape.

Naval camouflage was not a revolutionary idea. The ancient fleets of the Greeks and Romans had experimented with painting their vessels in shades of blue and green to blend with the surface and horizon, and in the early 20th century, navies of the United States and Europe stipulated shades of grey or off-white in accordance with shipping regulations in an attempt to do the same.

Wilkinson’s idea for dazzle camouflage ran contrary to previous thinking. Instead of attempting to hide vessels from enemy view, he intended that they should be highly visible with the key aim of sowing confusion in the mind of the attacker.

During early submarine operations, the task of computing a fire control solution for a U-Boat commander was a manual process. The target intercept course for a torpedo was calculated using slide rules and based on visual tracking of the current position, course, speed, and range of the vessel to be attacked. This problem was further complicated by the fact that the average speed of a torpedo was between 35 and 45 knots, only moderately faster than most warships of the age, therefore plotting information from a visual fix could be inaccurate at best.

Wilkinson reasoned that geometric dazzle patterns painted on ships would take advantage of the complexity in gauging the optimum firing solution for a torpedo by masking a vessel’s true course and speed, thereby confusing the commanders of German U-Boats and deceiving them into miscalculating the submarine’s fire position.

Submarine commander’s periscope view of a merchant ship in dazzle camouflage (left) and the same ship uncamouflaged (right). (Wikimedia Commons)

The bold patterns and extremes of color used in his designs, particularly at the bow and stern would disrupt the visual shape of a vessel, distorting perspective and falsely suggesting that a ship’s smokestacks or superstructure pointed in a different direction than it truly was.

Painted bow curves suggested a bow wave and oblique lines in stripes at the corresponding angles of bow or stern could give the illusion of shortening the vessels length, again confusing the computations of a ship’s attacker. Wilkinson’s ideas borrowed from modernist art concepts of cubism (indeed Picasso, in conversation with the American poet and novelist Gertrude Stein, claimed that the Cubist movement should take credit for its invention), the school of futurism, and its short-lived offshoot, vorticism.

The admiralty initially considered a number of proposals for camouflage schemes, including those from U.S. artist Abbot H. Thayer, whose theories of what he termed “concealing coloration” and “counter shading” were published in 1896 in the Journal of the American Ornithologists Union and are now known as Thayer’s Law. This law was based on the scientist’s many years of observing fauna across the continents of North and South America and concludes that animals are generally dark on top with white under surfaces. Seen from a distance this tends to cancel out the bright sunlight from above and shadow beneath, thereby effectively concealing an animal from potential predators. Thayer demonstrated his ideas to the Department of the U.S. Navy in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, however hostilities came to an end before his proposals could be acted upon.

A Scottish zoologist, John Graham Kerr, developed a keen interest in Thayer’s theories and after meeting in London during the 1890s the two remained lifelong friends, with Thayer forwarding a copy of his book Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom to Kerr in 1914. Kerr’s own approach focused on two main interpretations of his own zoological studies combined with Thayer’s. In compensated shading, a theory he elaborated as “All deep shadows should be picked out in the most brilliant white paint and where there is a gradually deepening shadow, this should be eliminated by gradually shading off the paint from the ordinary grey to pure white.” He suggested a further camouflage scheme he named “parti coloring” which anticipated modern “disruptive pattern” concealment by emphasizing the need to break up the outline of ships by using “strongly contrasting shades.”

 Models of the British passenger liner Mauretania demonstrate the effects of dazzle camouflage in comparison with a plain grey color scheme, when seen from the same line of direction. Photographed circa 1918. The camouflage scheme seen here was eventually not used on Mauretania. (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.)

While both Thayer and Kerr clearly pioneered the ideas that formed the basis of dazzle camouflage, it was the ideas of Norman Wilkinson that the admiralty board eventually adopted. In recognition of his efforts a post-war award of £2000 was given to him, acknowledging him as the inventor of dazzle camouflage.

The Second World War

Despite the evidence, there was at the time no consensus as to the advantage of using dazzle camouflage, however, Allied naval authorities were sufficiently impressed to continue to employ the idea on both warships and their respective merchant fleets in WWII. The Imperial German Navy had shown little interest in camouflaging their vessels during the Great War and it wasn’t until the Second World War during the invasion of Norway in 1940 that the Germans embraced the possibility of employing the dazzle concept. Photographic evidence of the period shows the hull of the Bismarck painted in a monochrome pattern of dark grey or black and white stripes continuing up onto the superstructure, with the prow and stern area painted black. The intention was to disguise the length of the battleship, creating the impression of a smaller vessel. The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was almost identically camouflaged along the waist with extremes of the bow and stern also painted in black, and the battleships Scharnhorst and Admiral Scheer adopted individual dazzle patterns to mask their identities from Allied naval forces. For whatever reason the Kriegsmarine returned to the format of light or dark grey overall for all warships after 1941, whether the senior staff of Oberkommando der Marine were skeptical of the capabilities of geometric camouflage, or whether there were other reasons for the return to pre-war coloring, remains open to debate.

German battleship Bismarck in a Norwegian fjord, 21 May 1941, shortly before departing for her Atlantic sortie. Photographed from the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Location is probably Grimstadfjord, just south of Bergen. Bismarck’s camouflage was painted over before she departed the area. (NHHC # NH 69720)

While the German navy discarded dazzle camouflage in the early stages of the war, the Allied navies continued its widespread use throughout hostilities until 1945. After continued analytical and evaluative groundwork at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., dazzle camouflage was deemed to be of merit and a phased roll-out was endorsed across respective fleets. In contrast to the Kriegsmarine’s employment of marine camouflage, as an anti-ship/submarine initiative, the U.S. Navy and to a lesser extent the navies of Britain and Canada attempted to use the bold patterns to disrupt attacks by enemy air assets as well as surface ships and submarines. By continuing the geometric shapes across the decks and superstructures of warships. Each ship was painted in its own distinctive camouflage to prevent the enemy from identifying a class of ship, resulting in a diverse array of patterns which made it considerably more difficult to evaluate its effectiveness.

The U.S. Navy implemented the scheme across most classes of vessel from minesweepers and patrol craft to aircraft carriers. Rigorous design, planning and testing was applied to each pattern and a standardized range of colors and shapes were instituted and applied across all theaters including the Pacific, specifically against the Kamikaze threat.

Camouflage pattern sheet, Measures 31- 32-33, Design 3A, for Essex (CV-9) class carriers. (U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships/Wikimedia Commons)

The Royal Navy’s use of dazzle commenced at the beginning of 1940 and was considerably less organised. The admiralty adopted a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to the idea and paint schemes were unofficial and individual to each vessel. It was not until later in the war that the admiralty saw fit to take a more serious view of dazzle camouflage and the navy’s concealment specialists devised geometric patterns which became known as the Western Approaches Schemes, to be employed against the sub-sea threat in the Atlantic. The initiative was developed, and the Admiralty Intermediate Disruptive Pattern was employed in 1942 and was superseded in 1944 by the Admiralty Standard Schemes.

The proliferation of black and white photographic images which have been left to historical posterity, while starkly delineating the vivid lines and curves of dazzle camouflage, are unable to convey the range of color and tone so important to the process of deception. Striking shades of blues, reds, greens and purples contrasted with the light and dark grays which made the experiment so effective.

Eventually post-war technological advances in rangefinding equipment and radar rendered dazzle camouflage largely obsolete, and it fell out of favor in post-war naval thinking.

Was Dazzle Camouflage Effective?

Establishing the effectiveness of Wilkinson’s ideas is almost impossible, not least due to the sheer number of variables to be considered such as color, pattern, and the combination of sizes of ships, vessel speed, and the anti-submarine evasion tactics used. An article in the April 1919 edition of Popular Science considered dazzle camouflage an effective tactic in confusing U-Boat commanders although only at short range and less so than what it termed “low visibility” camouflage.

Arguments continue into the present as to the results of gaudy geometric shapes in protecting ships at sea, but it might certainly be considered the most striking example of art being used to develop a solution in war.

While the United States Navy declared in 1918 that statistical evidence suggested less than one percent of merchant vessels painted in dazzle were sunk, these claims are difficult to substantiate. The testimony of U-Boat commanders who had launched attacks against merchant vessels painted in dazzle camouflage suggests that it was a highly effective countermeasure, even to the point of confusing the issue of the type of ships being attacked and the number of vessels in a convoy. Those convoys that were hit suffered less serious damage than those  that were not camouflaged.

While debate over the capabilities of dazzle camouflage continues among naval historians, perhaps the final word should come from the man who officially invented the concept. In an article published in 1920 in the Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts, Norman Wilkinson stated that “The German Admiralty had dazzle painted a liner and had attached her to the submarine training depot at Kiel,” while at the close of hostilities, “a number of the surrendered submarines were painted in precisely the same manner as our merchant vessels.” It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it is this observation by Norman Wilkinson that may answer the question of the worth of dazzle camouflage.

Mark Wood served 15 years in the communications branch of the Royal Navy, with further service in HM Coastguard. After leaving the military he qualified as a history teacher and divides his time between the education sector and working as a freelance writer for military history magazines and websites. Mark is also currently engaged on the Royal Navy First World War Lives at Sea project as a volunteer with the UK’s National Archives.

Featured Image: French cruiser Gloire in dazzle camouflage. (Department of the Navy, Naval Photographic Center)

Current Operations

Why the Sudden Drop in Armed Robbery of Ships off Venezuela?

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By Lydelle Joubert

Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves in the world, with 302 billion barrels of proven reserves reported in 2018. Production has however declined from 3.5 million barrels a day in 1997 to 1.4 million barrels in May 2018 due to the persistent economic crisis the country has been facing.

Anzoátegui state is traditionally one of the largest oil production centers in Venezuela. Two thirds of Venezuelan oil is exported through Puerto Jose in Anzoátegui. The concentration of oil industry-related infrastructure in Anzoátegui combined with the declining economic situation and lack of security make it a hotspot for armed robbery at sea in the Caribbean region. Several anchorages lie off the coast of Anzoátegui, such as Bahia De Barcelona Anchorage, Puerto Jose Anchorage and Puerto La Cruz Anchorage. Due to the collapse of the fishing industry, the economic hardship that coastal communities are facing and insufficient security measures at these anchorages, men in small boats approach mostly tankers waiting to load oil and board vessels in order to rob them.

According to the definition of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, 1982: 61) piracy is limited to acts outside the jurisdiction of the coastal waters of a state. Acts committed in territorial waters are considered armed robbery of ships. As these anchorages are located in Venezuelan territorial waters, it is classified as armed robbery of ships.

For unknown reasons, reports of armed robbery at these anchorages stopped in the middle of 2019. Between January 2016 and the end of April 2019, 36 robberies and attempted robberies were reported at anchorages off Anzoátegui, of which 29 were on tankers. Six incidents were reported in early 2019, but in April 2019 robberies on commercial ships at these anchorages ended abruptly. No robberies were reported for the next ten months, until the end of February 2020.

Robbery of Vessels at Anchorages off Anzoategui, Venezuela (via Stable Seas Database)

What happened in late April or early May 2019 to account for this change? Understanding the cause of this change is important for predicting whether this sharp fall in armed robbery is sustainable or likely to be reversed in the future. Before analyzing potential causes of this sharp decline in armed robberies, it is useful to review what happens in a typical armed robbery at sea in this area.

What Happens in an Armed Robbery at Sea?

Most robberies on ships at these anchorages can be classified as petty theft where a ship’s stores and its crew’s possessions are stolen. Three to seven robbers in small boats approach anchored vessels under darkness and board via the anchor chain and hawse pipe or via a grappling hook and rope. Robbers are usually armed with knives, but guns were observed in a few cases. In a few instances the crew was tied up, threatened, or assaulted and minor injuries were reported.

During a more brazen robbery on 14 October 2018 the bulk carrier Shi Zi Shan was boarded just after midnight by four armed men in national guard uniforms under the ruse of an anti-narcotics inspection. Once aboard they threatened the crew with handguns and commanded them to be taken to the captain’s cabin. They stole all the cash and crew’s valuables.

Most yachts have long since departed this coast, ever since the attacks on these ships turned violent when the Dutch captain of the yacht Mary Eliza was shot and killed at Marina El Concorde in September 2013. These incidents, combined with recent kidnappings of Trinidadian fishermen on the coast of Venezuela, created fear (although unfounded) that piracy and armed robbery off Venezuela could turn into a situation similar to Somalia where crew from commercial vessels are kidnapped from vessels for ransom.

What Contextual Changes Might Account for the Fall in Armed Robberies at Sea?

In January 2018 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro temporarily closed maritime borders with the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao). Fresh fruit and vegetables from Venezuela were transported to these islands, but the same routes were also used to smuggle gold, silver, copper and coltan from Venezuela.  In February 2019 maritime borders with the ABC islands were once again closed, this time to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching Venezuela from these islands. The measure applied to commercial and fishing vessels. This led to a larger military presence in ports and an increase in vessel inspections on vessels entering ports in an effort to stem the smuggling of aid from the neighboring ABC islands.

At the same time, other economic factors may have reduced shipping traffic and could have reduced opportunities for armed robbery at Puerto Jose. Venezuela suffered from power outages that affected oil production and shipping operations. On 5 April 2019 the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on tankers and shipping companies transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba, which could have further reduced arrivals of vessels at the anchorages. Tankers looking to evade the sanctions would have strong incentives to turn off transponders near Venezuelan water, making it difficult to obtain accurate counts of vessels at these anchorages. This could also dissuade reporting of armed robberies.

Armed robbery of ships at anchorages off the coast of Anzoátegui, 2016 to February 2020. (Stable Seas Database)

However, these explanations are not satisfactory because not all countries adhered to the call for sanctions and Venezuelan vessels were still operating from the port and anchorages. Armed robbers had ample opportunities to commit crimes near Puerto Jose. A closer look reveals that one specific incident may have initiated a chain of events that led to this decline in armed robberies.

How One Act of Defiance May Have Changed Incentives for Armed Robbery

There was one incident that fit the timeframe coinciding with the end of robberies on vessels at these anchorages, but the fact that it spelled a halt of these crimes was quite unintended.

It appears that dissatisfaction is growing amongst mid-level Venezuelan officials who are unhappy with the government for supplying Cuba with oil while severe shortages are experienced within Venezuela. In previous months, nationwide protests were reported at Venezuelan state-owned, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) facilities, leading to a loss of 30 percent in production. On 1 May 2019 a captain of a PDVSA tanker, Manuela Saenz, defied orders to deliver oil to Cuba and notified PDVSA of his intent. 

Members of the Bolivarian intelligence service (Sebin) allegedly boarded the products tanker near the Amuay terminal and took control of the vessel. The captain was replaced and Sebin members remained onboard while the delivery to Cuba was made. AIS was also switched off for most of the trip.

Since then, Venezuelan Armed Forces (FANB) have been deployed on 15 PDVSA-operated tankers to ensure that fuel is delivered to Cuba and that crew would not sabotage tankers or divert the product. It is also speculated that armed personnel are placed on the vessels in case the U.S. blocked shipments to Cuba.

This added armed security on these tankers is in all likelihood the determining factor why armed robberies off Anzoátegui stopped at the end of April 2019, but this lull in attacks was short-lived. On 24 February 2020, six armed men wearing balaclavas boarded the tanker San Ramon anchored near Isla Borracha, north of Puerto La Cruz notwithstanding the presence of a coast guard armed guard onboard. This time violence escalated. The captain, Herrera Orozco, resisted the robbers and was shot in the face and killed. Another crewmember is still missing after he jumped overboard, and a coast guard sergeant was injured during the attack.

Conclusion

While we cannot know what caused these armed robbers to be more violent than those involved in previous incidents, it is plausible that this is related to increased security on ships, and the situation escalated. Ships at these anchorages are harder targets than they once were, but the root causes of piracy and armed robbery in Venezuela – including poverty and weak state governance – remain. So long as they do, it is possible that attacks on ships at these anchorages will be dissuaded only as long as criminals can be deterred from employing escalating levels of violence.

Lydelle Joubert is an expert on maritime piracy at Stable Seas, a program of One Earth Future. She has an MA in International Relations from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Featured Image: Venezuelan military policewoman in a presidential meeting. (Wikimedia Commons)

Future Tech

Don’t Neglect the Easy Wins for Military AI

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By Christian Heller

The defense community is captivated with artificial intelligence (AI) and its possible impacts on warfare. There has been much debate on AI’s impact on offensive and defensive operations, nuclear command and control, and information warfare. AI experts worry about the dangers of ultrafast AI decision-making, the U.S.-China AI arms race, the level of autonomy granted to robots, and the overall threat to humans with increased AI independence.

The Department of the Navy (DoN) has responded with building organizations to help integrate AI into the military services. Most prolific of these groups are the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (also known as Project Maven) and the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Project Maven’s efforts focus on using AI to support the processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED) of video and imagery intelligence. These efforts also include using AI to exploit captured enemy material (CEM), acoustic intelligence (ACINT), and publicly available information (PAI, also known as Open-Source Intelligence, or OSINT). The JAIC’s first two initiatives were predictive maintenance and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. Later last year, they expanded to include cyberspace and robotic process automation.

While these lines of effort are important, they pursue difficult, hard-to-achieve tactical goals while ignoring the easy, low-hanging-fruits of AI implementation within the bureaucracy. Self-targeting drones, deep fakes, and global integrated predictive analytics platforms are worthwhile, but the Navy can achieve better and faster returns on its investments by pursuing unglamorous AI efforts in the fields of manpower and administration. With a renewed willingness to rebuild the services to face the threats of the future, now is the ideal team to embrace AI.

Manpower

Existing uses of AI in the private sector can be implemented by the DoN to support recruiting, training, retention, promotions, and billet assignments. Numerous companies are using AI to help their hiring managers identify and recruit employees. Recruiting commands could adopt these services to reduce their personnel burden and increase their effectiveness. Montage combines AI, process automation, and analytics to personalize the recruitment process toward specific candidates. Textio helps recruiters choose the right words and language to attract the right people. Firms like Koru use predictive AI to better match candidates to available positions and could change the way the services assign personnel to specialties and units.

Many companies have already implemented cost-saving AI measures such as these. Google worked with American Eagle to customize their marketing to individual consumers, similar to how the services could customize efforts for individual recruits and better manpower management. Amazon, Starbucks, and Nike all use AI to personalize customer engagement and marketing. LinkedIn uses AI for its LinkedIn Recruiter platform to identify the best candidates for hiring managers, and Home Depot and Dyson use AI programs to identify candidates based on their internal databases, social media, and public job boards.

The lack of continuity of knowledge is endemic to the DoN where service members continuously change billets and commands. Turnover is high and leads to a severe lack of institutional knowledge. This turnover means the time-cost of retraining a replacement detracts from time spent advancing a project forward. AI training systems can help. IBM has partnered with firms to help departing employees document their knowledge for future workers. AI then indexes and sorts the information to make it more easily available, and successful efforts have already reduced the search times for previous knowledge by 75 percent.

The Navy and DARPA already proved the relevance of AI to training service members. A combined project in which a digital AI tutor led new sailors though their training saw AI-trained students “frequently outperform Navy experts with 7-10 years of experience.” AI startups like Bakpax aid teachers with their grading to identify specific personal needs for students and speed up the corrective process. A study by Johns Hopkins University found that students using Knewton, one of the original AI education startups which personalizes learning plans and materials for students, performed better compared to peers. Improvements in training may not seem like a critical requirement for the services, but training and development is viewed as the primary job benefit by millennials in choosing their employer.

AI also can help reform promotion processes with are plagued with inefficiency. Analytics firms like Palatine are helping leaders make better personnel decisions to identify strengths, weaknesses, and future potential. Well-meaning efforts within the Navy and Army are attempting to combat this issues, but AI can help eliminate recurrent human problems like bias from hiring and advancement.

Companies like Adecco are already able to prescreen candidates based on skillsets, geographic preferences, experiences, and availability to open locations. Its scale is massive: AI manages their timesheets, payroll, and work prioritization for its 700,000 workers and recruiters. A similar process could be applied to initial training and follow-on unit assignments to better meet the needs of commands and services while still satisfying the lifestyle demands of individuals and families.

Retention is a problem in both the government and the private sector, but AI solutions exist which can help. This increased level of human resources personalization towards recruiting, training, and billet assignments could drastically improve morale within the services and help retain talent for the DoN. Dissatisfaction with supervisors and a lack of appreciation are two of the main reasons employees quit, and AI and sentiment analysis can help manage those effects. AI management tools also help manage workloads and burnout, which, in a military environment, could prevent catastrophes.

Administration

The routine tasks of administration with the DoN and services can be significantly augmented by existing AI services. Document preparation, completion, and handling; payment and voucher processing; policy and guidance administration; and archival storage and retrieval are all carried out by AI at varying levels within the private sector. A Harvard Business Review study found that the majority of AI projects implemented by businesses involve automating back-office tasks. These tasks include updating personnel files from e-mails and call centers, as well as extracting and updating records between multiple systems. These examples found that process-automation is the cheapest and easiest of AI technologies to implement. Administrative programs can significantly reduce the time required for manually processing high numbers of different paperwork with inaccuracies or inconsistencies, and other government agencies like NASA have already adopted these practices in some departments.

Paperwork and process automation is well-established. For instance, the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte has automated thousands of forms and saved thousands more hours of labor for its clients in the financial sector. The accounting firm KPMG partnered with IBM and Watson to learn from 10,000 documents and help its tax advisors better serve their clients. Google’s Vision OCR detects text, character, and images in documents of various file types to extract, organize, and process the relevant information. Amazon’s Textract claims to go further by creating “smart search indexes” and automated workflows for processing documents through various departments.

Today’s tech leaders – Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft – each have their own AI-powered assistants which businesses can implement to streamline management and coordination. Routine work like task management, calendar management, and emails and communication can be augmented by these tools.  Businesses can also use these tools to manage facilities and systems. These same tools can be used to engage leaders and commands with their service members using 24/7 assistance. Major companies like General Electric have adopted these tools, and IBM’s Watson Assistant has led to 40 percent reductions in time spent on administrative tasks.

Transitioning these types of workloads to, or augmenting them with, AI services can reduce the time burden currently placed upon staff officers and administrative specialists. In addition to large companies like Google and Amazon, start-ups like x.ai, Voicea, and Sigrid all perform a variety of tasks like coordinating calendars and meeting schedules, setting up conference calls, managing receipts and travel processes, scheduling transportation, and scanning and saving relevant files. Communications platforms like Zoom already auto-transcribe meetings and then publish the results as text-files for easy searches.

One key way AI is changing administrative work is aiding companies in their legal and regulatory compliance. With overlapping, always changing, and sometimes contradictory sets of policies and guidance, the DoN and the services could benefit from AI tools to assist leaders at both the senior and junior levels with policy adherence. AI has allowed insurance firms, one of the most highly-regulated and complex industries in the world, to analyze documents and process claims 25 percent faster.

Savings and Possibilities

Despite the difficulties which government agencies often have when implementing new technologies, examples of effective AI adoption already exist in some areas: the review and validation of 50,000 PDF records for a federal healthcare agency, state governments achieving 100 percent compliance for land lease payments and management, and state health insurance marketplaces responding to over 1,500 customers per day. In the United Kingdom, both the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Transport have implemented AI tools to provide better services to their citizens.

Adopting AI services to aid in manpower and administrative functions will pay for themselves with an outsized return-on-investment, and free up manpower and time which the services can redirect to other specialized needs. Even a small reduction in cost can provide substantial returns. For example, a 1 percent savings in the recruiting and training budgets for the Army ($5.1 billion), Navy ($2.1 billion), and Air Force ($2.4 billion) would result in $96 million in savings. A 1 percent savings in the services’ combined administrative budgets would result in over $200 million saved. Manpower can also be reduced in these respective areas to free personnel numbers for different MOS’s or operations. For example, decreases in administrative, training, and departmental management manpower for the Army (195,500), Navy (103,800), Marine Corps (56,100), and Air Force (125,100) could allocate thousands of billets for other duties.

Conclusion

These savings and efficiency measures are even more important considering the DoN’s increased emphasis on re-allocating funding toward research and innovation. AI support for tactical military purposes certainly deserves its own attention and prioritization, but the services and their leadership must not be quick to reject the immediate benefits to be gained by AI-services in the routine and familiar worlds of manpower and administration. These implementations can provide the highest near-term benefit and make additional funds and resources available for tactical AI research or other battlefield capabilities.

Christian Heller is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the University of Oxford. He currently works as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, and can be followed on Twitter @hellerch.

Featured Image: Server room of BalticServers (Wikimedia Commons)