Tag Archives: China

Capability Analysis

Desert Storm Made the PLA. What is the Iran War Making?

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By Commander Ander S. Heiles, USN

In January 1991, Chinese military officers watched CNN footage of the United States dismantling the Iraqi Army and experienced what one People’s Liberation Army (PLA) analyst later called a “psychological nuclear attack.” Desert Storm displayed every capability the PLA lacked, and China had no choice but to begin remaking its military from the ground up.

Two years later, China’s Central Military Commission codified these lessons in the Military Strategic Guidelines centered on “Local Wars Under High Technology Conditions” and acknowledged the PLA had been preparing for the wrong war. The Gulf War didn’t just scare China, it gave it direction.

Thirty-five years later, the classroom has reopened. The United States and Israel are engaged in a military campaign against Iran, and the Persian Gulf is once again the center of a maritime crisis. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Not by minefields or naval blockade, but by the withdrawal of maritime insurance and the cascading commercial decisions that followed.

Tanker traffic dropped first by approximately 70% with almost 150 vessels loitering outside the Strait. Transit has since collapsed to nearly zero within the first week, disrupting roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supply and significant volumes of liquefied natural gas. Roughly 750 vessels are now stranded within the Persian Gulf, and the PLA is paying very close attention.

The instinct is to assume Beijing is enjoying the bedlam: a distracted America, its military tied down in the Middle East, and precision munitions being expended far from the Pacific. That instinct is wrong.

What the PLA’s most attentive analysts are likely doing is war-gaming a Taiwan scenario in real-time using the Hormuz crisis as a live stress test for assumptions they have been modeling for decades. Some of what they are finding is deeply uncomfortable. The tactical lessons are significant but broadly familiar. However, the deeper strategic lessons, the ones that will reshape Chinese planning for the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, are maritime.

The Chokepoint in the Mirror

In 1991, China’s Desert Storm lesson was almost entirely about its capability gap. The maritime domain barely registered because the Gulf War was largely a land-air campaign. The 2026 crisis is fundamentally a maritime crisis, and China is learning a new lesson: chokepoints do not just threaten an enemy, they threaten anyone who depends on them.

Approximately 84% of the oil transiting through the Strait of Hormuz flows to Asian markets. China alone imported roughly five million barrels per day through the Strait, representing approximately 40%-45% of its total crude imports. The Hormuz closure does not primarily threaten Houston or Rotterdam. It throttles Tianjin, Qingdao, and Zhoushan.

Prolific naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan understood this. He spent much of his seminal work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, explaining not just how navies project power but how dependence on sea lines of communication creates strategic vulnerabilities. A nation that does not control its own supply lines does not truly control its own strategic fate.

The PLA absorbed this lesson from Mahan and filtered it through the lens of Desert Storm’s demonstration of American power projection. In response, China has been building a blue-water navy and acquiring global port access in response.

However, the Hormuz crisis is forcing Beijing to confront a gap that was not illuminated by Desert Storm nor discussed in any specificity by Mahan: China remains critically dependent on chokepoints it cannot protect and does not control. The Strait of Hormuz is the immediate problem, but the Strait of Malacca, through which 80% of China’s oil imports transit, is the permanent one.

Beijing’s Foreign Ministry has been reduced to urging all parties to “keep the shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz safe,” and reports that China has opened direct talks with Iran to negotiate safe passage for energy shipments underscores that vulnerability. A nation that must ask permission to use a chokepoint does not command it. For PLA planners gaming a Taiwan contingency, the lesson is immediate: any conflict that triggers a disruption at the Malacca Strait could strangle China’s economy before a single shot is fired.

The Insurance Blockade

If the chokepoint lesson is uncomfortable, the insurance lesson may be worse. Within 72 hours of the start of Operation Epic Fury, multiple members of the International Group of Protection and Indemnity (P&I) Clubs, which collectively insure roughly 90% of the world’s ocean-going tonnage, issued formal cancellation notices for war-risk coverage in the Gulf. Major container lines suspended operations. Lloyd’s Market Association confirmed that roughly 1,000 vessels with a hull value of over $25 billion sat anchored in the area.

The chokepoint was not closed by missiles. It was closed by spreadsheets.

The PLA is likely studying this closely because it maps directly onto a Taiwan scenario. Beijing has long assumed that the critical question in a cross-strait contingency would be whether the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) could establish sea control. The Hormuz crisis suggests a different question entirely: would commercial shipping continue to flow through the Strait of Malacca and South China Sea once insurers withdraw coverage and container lines suspend service?

The same insurance mechanism that shut Hormuz in 72 hours could shut the commercial sea lanes on which China’s economy depends. Unlike a naval blockade, an insurance withdrawal cannot be stopped by force. No navy can compel an underwriter to write a policy.

China has been building state-backed maritime insurance mechanisms and positioning its commercial fleet to operate under sovereign-risk coverage precisely to insulate itself from the kind of Western-backed market dependency that has strangled Gulf shipping. The Hormuz crisis validates that investment.

On the other hand, it also reveals how far Beijing needs to go. China’s maritime insurance ecosystem does not yet have enough depth or international credibility to underwrite the scale of coverage that a Taiwan-related disruption would demand. A harder problem still is even if China can insure its own flag vessels, it cannot compel foreign-flagged ships to continue sailing into a warzone.

The roughly 750 vessels stranded in the Persian Gulf are a preview of what the South China Sea could look like 48 hours into a Taiwan crisis. Commercial shipping frozen, supply chains severed, and the PLAN unable to restart them regardless of how many ships it deploys.

The Fleet Behind the Fleet

The Hormuz crisis is also teaching China a lesson about commercial shipping as a military instrument. When the United States declared a maritime warning zone in the Persian Gulf, it came with an unusual public admission: it could not guarantee the safety of merchant shipping. The major container lines made their own risk calculations and suspended operations. The financial architecture of global trade enforced a blockade more completely than any naval minefield.

Sinokor, a South Korean shipping conglomerate, began asking the equivalent of roughly $20 per barrel to transport oil to China. This is an extraordinary premium compared to the nominal $2.50 per barrel, and this illustrates how quickly commercial sealift becomes a strategic weapon when maritime risk spikes.

China has been preparing for exactly this scenario. Over the past two decades, Beijing has expanded its merchant fleet to over 4,000 internationally trading ships, captured over 46% of global commercial shipbuilding, and invested in the mariner training pipeline to crew those vessels. Critically, the PLA has also been integrating commercial shipping into military logistics planning. China’s national defense mobilization laws allow the requisitioning of civilian vessels, and its merchant fleet has been designed with dual-use capability in mind.

The Hormuz crisis is validating China’s investment in a state-linked merchant marine fleet while simultaneously demonstrating the cost of America’s failure to maintain one. However, it is also exposing a gap in China’s own planning: a fleet that can be mobilized for war is also a fleet that can be commercially paralyzed by insurance withdrawal, sanctioned by coalition financial instruments, or stranded at foreign ports. In a Taiwan contingency, the PLAN’s ability to move troops across the Strait may matter less than whether China’s commercial fleet can continue to feed, fuel, and supply the mainland economy under wartime conditions. The Hormuz crisis is the first live demonstration of how quick commercial architecture can collapse.

What This Means

Desert Storm inspired China spend 35 years building the military it now has. Operation Epic Fury will not trigger the same kind of wholesale structural overhaul – the PLA has already done that work. What the 2026 crisis is doing is stress-testing China’s maritime strategy against live data and finding specific, uncomfortable gaps: chokepoint dependency that blue-water naval investment has not yet solved, an insurance architecture that can impose a blockade no navy can break, and a commercial fleet that can be mobilized for war but paralyzed by the financial instruments.

Each lesson applies directly to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. PLA planners are not watching the Hormuz crisis as a distant curiosity. They are watching it as a dress rehearsal, and they are taking notes on themselves as much as on the United States.

Mahan argued that sea power rests on two pillars: naval force and commercial maritime enterprise. China has been absorbing both halves of that doctrine. The Strait of Hormuz crisis is revealing that even both halves may not be enough. The question is whether the United States, which builds less than 1% of the world’s commercial ships, fields fewer than 80 vessels in international trade, cannot crew the sealift fleet it already has, and had no war risk insurance mechanism ready when the crisis broke, is learning it too.

Commander Ander Heiles is a student at the Joint Advanced Warfighting School in Norfolk, VA. He commanded USS Monsoon (PC 4) and is the Prospective Executive Officer (P-XO) for the Naval Talent Acquisition Groups (NTAG) Empire State. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official positions or opinions of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Featured Image: Cosco Shipping Lines ultra-large container vessels at Rotterdam. (Photo via Kees Torn/Creative Commons)

Indo-Asia-Pacific

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

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By Dan White and Hunter Stires

Dan White:

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

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

Hunter Stires:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan White:

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

Hunter Stires:

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

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

Dan White:

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

Hunter Stires:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan White:

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

Hunter Stires:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan White:

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

Hunter Stires:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future Tech

Asymmetry Rising: How Autonomous Systems Enforce Sea Denial

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By Rudraksh Pathak

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

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

Doctrinal Shifts: The Indo-Pacific Reality

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

The USV Threat: Surface Denial

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

The UUV Threat: Subsurface Friction

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

The Network: The Multi-Domain Fabric

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

The Logistics of the Interceptor Trap

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

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

Attacking the Logistics Chain

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

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

Persistent Friction and the Zone of Uncertainty

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

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

Conclusion: The End of Maritime Sanctuary

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

Readiness

Archers Need Arrows: Deficiencies in U.S. Submarine Munitions

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By Alana Davis

In 2023, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wargamed a conflict between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Reflecting 24 iterations of the wargame, the study weighed if China could succeed in invading Taiwan in 2026 and examined the variables affecting the outcome. Although CSIS concluded that China is unlikely to succeed, it found the result to be highly contingent on posture, weapons, and platforms. Crucially, one of the most determinant factors is U.S. submarine dominance in the undersea domain.

The report recommended prioritizing full-spectrum undersea warfare in planning for a potential large-scale, cross-ocean military conflict. This prioritization reflects the potency of the submarine force: Fast Attack Submarines (SSNs) torpedoing adversary commercial shipping and naval forces as Guided Missile Submarines (SSGNs) strike key adversary infrastructure with long-range cruise missiles.

But what happens when the archers run out of arrows – when submarines expend their weapons in the first battle of the next war? Does the U.S. have the inventory to support necessary reloads? Are the ports, vessels, and personnel ready to conduct the rapid reloads required to maintain pressure through a protracted war? If the current munitions stagnation continues, the answer is no. The Navy should work with the Department of War (DoW) and Congress to increase weapons supply and reinforce the means to conduct expeditionary submarine weapons transfers.

Recent Weapons Production and Expenditure

The Fiscal Year (FY) 26 Defense Budget prioritizes revitalizing the defense-industrial base with a notable increase in ship and weapons production. The National Defense budget request rose 13% from last year, topping $1 trillion, while the President has called for a $1.5B topline. In December 2025 the DoW announced an expansion of an existing RTX contract to order 219 Block V Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) – the largest order in years, and a nearly 10-fold increase from the 22 planned for purchase in FY25.

Unfortunately, this sharp increase barely covers recent expenditures. The Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group alone expended 125 TLAMs against Houthi targets in Yemen. SSGNs conducted multiple strikes against Houthi Targets and enabled the B-2 Bomber strikes on Isfahan, Iran. Assuming a TLAM stockpile of roughly 4,000, U.S. naval forces in the Middle East depleted this missile’s inventory by 3% in relatively limited strikes against Iran and its proxies. This is a frightening statistic when contemplating the expenditures from all-out war with a near-peer adversary like the PRC. This troubling consideration is not limited to land attack missiles: A House-commissioned CSIS simulation estimates that in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the Navy could run out of long-range anti-ship missiles in less than a week of fighting.

Weapons production and delivery holdups reflect 1990s production halts after the end of the Cold War, unstable procurement continuing into the 2000s, and an increasing scarcity of U.S.-based manufacturing of certain critical parts like rocket motors and processors due to obsolescence challenges. The limited missile inventory is not the only problem. Diminishing submarine weapons on-load readiness stems from aging submarine tenders (ASes), which were commissioned in the 1970s, and the logistical complexities of loading weapons in foreign submarine ports.

What should the DoW and the Navy prioritize to ensure continued lethal armament of the submarine force? Action should include a two-pronged focus: one, creatively and efficiently increasing TLAM and torpedo supply, and two, investigating and investing in the ports and support vessel ability to conduct submarine weapons transfers.

Action 1 – Advance Submarine Munitions Supply

Military leadership and civilian defense experts agree that submarines are a key asset enabling U.S. victory in future naval conflicts. Instead of throwing money broadly towards munitions production, the DoW should prioritize making weapons that the bulk of both U.S. naval forces and U.S. allies can deploy.

The U.S. should focus on TLAMs because they are versatile – launched from SSNs, SSGNs, Ticonderoga-Class cruisers (CGs), and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (DDGs) – totaling approximately 55 submarines and 83 surface ships. The United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands all use TLAM – greatly increasing weapon production efficacy through scale. For similar reasons, the U.S. should also focus on Mk-48 ADCAP production, utilized by all 69 submarines in the U.S. fleet plus many Australian, Canadian, and Dutch vessels.

Additionally, efforts must be made to expedite weapons stockpile growth through manufacturing contracts and partnerships that encourage “close enough” component solutions rather than perfection. The Navy should be allowed to make minor compromises on weapon specs without compromising safety or viability. In November 2025, the DoW’s Strategic Capabilities Office announced open solicitations for a new, affordable SSN heavyweight torpedo called the Rapid Acquisition Procurable Torpedo (RAPTOR) to augment the Mk-48 ADCAP. Producing a torpedo at $500,000 per weapon vice the current $4 million per weapon is certainly enticing, given the many potential targets, but it does not mean production efforts and methods should slow on parts for the Mk-48 ADCAP. Promoting newer, cheaper technology is key, but continuing production of the tried-and-true ADCAP is also essential.  

Furthermore, if compromises must be made between TLAM and ADCAP production investment, the Navy should prioritize the Mk-48 ADCAP because of its greater efficiency in sinking enemy ships and reinforcing a strategy of deterrence by (sea) denial.

Another production avenue worth investigating is shared weapons production with allies. The U.S. continues to lean on co-manufacturing partnerships with Australia and South Korea to re-supply depleted 155-millimeter artillery shells from the Russo-Ukrainian war. Similar co-production agreements should be signed with Australia and the UK as part of the AUKUS submarine partnership, as well as with Japan for manufacturing of parts for the TLAM and/or the ADCAP. Production of critical weapons and weapons components in strategic foreign locations strengthens U.S. logistics networks and shortens operational timelines. Weapons stockpiling in strategic locations improves deterrence, as allied power projection becomes more credible with the proximity of weapons – though this forward staging must incorporate defense, dispersal, and deception to mitigate against enemy strikes.

Action 2 – Strengthen Submarine Munitions Re-Supply Capability

In the Western Pacific, the U.S. maintains three bases capable of submarine weapons handling of TLAMs and ADCAPs: Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan and Apra Harbor, Guam. Additional foreign port reload sites may include Subic Bay, Philippines; Souda Bay, Greece; Sterling, Australia; and Diego Garcia. These reloads are aided by the two remaining Guam-based submarine tenders, the USS Frank Cable and the USS Emory S. Land, which were specially designed to travel to submarines and assist in conducting weapons transfers, repairs, and nuclear-level maintenance. This small but mighty AS fleet continues to demonstrate its utility, such as in 2022 when the Frank Cable supported the first TLAM reload conducted by a U.S. submarine in Australia on the USS Springfield (SSN-761).

But these tenders are over 45 years old. They have outlived their intended lifespan and their ability to deploy safely comes into greater question with each passing year. As of July 2025, the Pentagon awarded $72.6 million to General Dynamics-NASSCO to continue developing up to three “AS(X)” class submarine tenders. With both existing tenders slated to decommission by 2030, time is quickly running out to replace these unique and valuable assets. Still, a net of only one additional tender by 2030, assuming production deadlines are met, is not enough given that by 2028 the Navy aims to boost submarine production to three SSNs a year (one Columbia Class and two Virginia Class). Further, one must carefully consider where to homeport these assets, focusing on Japan and/or Australia for maximum operational flexibility.

Besides investing in the rapid production of the new AS(X) class, the Navy should invest more in the infrastructure of the submarine bases themselves – namely Apra Harbor, Guam. Apra Harbor relies on the island’s public power authority which supplies energy via import-reliant petroleum plants with 50-year old generators susceptible to natural disaster, not to mention deliberate attacks. The unreliable power supply alone threatens the likelihood of efficient weapons transfer and maintenance stops for submarines on their way to a fight in the Pacific. Additionally, concerns over adequate equipment like heavy-lift cranes and trained personnel to conduct efficient submarine weapons reloads also remain.

The Navy should thoroughly investigate the real capacity of its overseas submarine ports to conduct efficient and safe submarine weapons transfers in a simulated wartime scenario. This analysis should answer the questions: How long does it take to move weapons inventory, re-load equipment and crews, and a submarine tender as applicable to various ports? Which ports lack critical equipment or trained personnel to conduct short-notice reloads? What is each port’s and each tender’s maximum reload ability and fastest reload pace? The last publicly documented transfer of a Mk-48 training shape to a submarine was in 2021 between the Frank Cable and the USS Hampton (SSN 767). Five years may as well be ancient history when facing today’s emerging adversary threats. There must be steady effort to test these vessels and ports in wartime conditions and pace, but compromises can also be made. For example – the Navy may be able to withstand AS(X) delays by ensuring all foreign submarine port call locations have heavy-lift cranes.

Conclusion: Make More of What Works and Make What Works Better

U.S. submarines remain a dominant and lethal force, but in the 21st century, their lethality is jeopardized by two weapons concerns: rapidly depleting TLAM and Mk-48 ADCAP inventories, and inadequate weapons reloading facilities. The solution is not just to throw more money toward the problem. Since FY24 the DoW has invested hundreds of millions into weapons development and submarine tender design. The DoW and U.S. Navy must make more of what works by continuing production of versatile and battle-proven weapons. The United States should make what works better by improving how allied foreign ports and strategic assets can perform in wartime.

For the U.S. submarine fleet to dominate in naval conflict, it must have ample weapons stockpiled in strategic locations with all enabling infrastructure ready to support time-sensitive reloads. The first steps in ensuring continued dominance include: acknowledging the submarine force has critical weapons-related shortfalls, and studying which inventories, which bases, and which production lines are most vulnerable.

Submarines can operate within Surface Weapons Engagement Zones and conduct long-range tactical fires. In a target-dense environment, submarine munitions will deplete rapidly. In a conflict with the PRC, some estimates suggest an SSN will expend its inventory of 20 to 50 torpedoes within two weeks on station, and an SSN or SSGN will launch all their 12 or 154 TLAMs, respectively, within three weeks. At such rates of fire, it is easy to see how weapons inventory and reload pace become critical to continuing, and winning, the future fight.

Archers need arrows. If Congress and the U.S. Navy do not act now to ensure submarines stay armed and ready for battle, munitions problems will only worsen – leaving the force, the fleet, and country more vulnerable.

Lieutenant Alana Davis, U.S. Navy, is a submarine officer serving as a Force Manpower Planner under OPNAV N1 in Arlington, VA. She is a graduate of Harvard University (BA ‘19) and The University of Florida (MBA ‘26). The views presented are hers alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Department of War or the Department of the Navy.

Featured Image: Conceptual drawing of the Virginia-class attack submarine from 2004. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)