Timeline Links: Aug. 02, 2020 - Sept. 03, 2020
(AP) China seeks to increase influence in South China Sea by reclassifying international shipping lanes
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China Works On Undersea Cables Between Paracel Island Outposts
RFA By Drake Long
2020-06-08 |
Map showing the path of the Tian Yi Hai Gong, a Chinese ship that appears to be laying undersea cables between Chinese-occupied features in the Paracel Islands.
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A Chinese ship appears to be laying undersea cables between Chinese outposts in the disputed Paracel Islands, vessel tracking software and satellite imagery shows. Experts say the cables will likely have military uses and could potentially strengthen China’s ability to detect submarines.
The cable ship began operations in the area nearly two weeks ago after departing from a shipyard in Shanghai. If the expert assessment of the intention is correct it could signal another step by China to militarize the South China Sea.
RFA and BenarNews spotted the activity when viewing high-resolution commercial satellite imagery of the Paracels, which are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. Three U.S.-based maritime experts who have viewed the imagery agreed that the ship was doing something related to undersea cables, although exactly what is unclear from the imagery. It could be laying new cable, or repairing or upgrading existing cable, although none of the experts were aware of an existing cable network in the spots the ship is operating in.
Vessel tracking software shows the Chinese ship Tian Yi Hai Gong sailed to the Paracels on May 28. The imagery appears to show it laying cables between at least three different Chinese-occupied features: Tree Island, North Island and China’s main base in the Paracels, Woody Island.
The ship sailed southwest on June 5, visiting Drummond Island, Yagong Island and Observation Bank. As of Monday morning, it was operating on the northeast side of Observation Bank. It’s not clear if the Tian Yi Hai Gong has been laying cables at those features too, but its pattern of movement is similar to at the other features. All of the features host small, remote outposts for China and its military.
The last known instance of China laying underwater cables in the area was reported by Reuters in 2016, connecting the city and military base at Woody Island to the island of Hainan, China’s southernmost province off the coast of the mainland.
While it isn’t clear from the imagery what the function of new undersea cables would be in the Paracels, two of the experts told RFA that fiber optic connections between such Chinese-occupied features are likely meant for military purposes.
James Kraska, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said they are probably for encrypted military communications between China’s various outposts, and will connect to the hardened undersea cable system already built along China’s east coast.
“The other thing that they could be doing is that they’ve got a SOSUS-type of network, an underwater sound surveillance system, to listen for adversary submarines,” he said. “So it could be passive listening for surface ships or submarines coming into the area.”
SOSUS refers to a passive system of sonars the U.S. Navy uses to track undersea activity. China has long planned a listening network inspired by this system for use in the East and South China Seas. The state media reported in 2017 that the government has invested in research and development in undersea observation centers.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, also suspects that the cables could be for undersea surveillance.
“A sonar system would be important north of Woody Island because the PLAN’s South Sea Fleet submarine base is on Hainan Island at Yulin,” he said.
Yulin, according to Clark, is one of the most sophisticated bases for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), replete with underground tunnels and maintenance pens for the PLAN’s growing number of nuclear submarines. It is located on the southern tip of Hainan Island.
“A seabed sonar between Woody Island and Hainan Island would help find U.S. submarines that might be coming to spy on the base or its submarines in peacetime, or that may attack PLAN submarines during wartime,” Clark said. He also said such an array would be useful for ensuring PLAN submarines aren’t being followed as they leave their home base.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which is based in Hawaii, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
There is no record of the Tian Yi Hai Gong’s operator in the International Maritime Organization’s database, save for information that it was built in early 2020 and flagged by China. There is similarly no record of it with the International Cable Protection Committee, a U.K.-based standards-setting and advocacy group for the submarine cable industry.
However, vessel tracking data shows it originally left from a shipyard in Shanghai on May 18. That same shipyard houses a different cable-layer, the Bold Maverick, which is owned and operated by S. B. Submarine Systems Co., Ltd. That company calls itself “China’s leading provider of subsea cable installation services and one of the key submarine cable installers in Asia” on its website.
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Satellite photo taken June 4 shows the Chinese cable ship Tian Yi Hai Gong just north of Tree Island, a Chinese-occupied feature in the Paracels that hosts a small military outpost and harbor. Credit: Planet Labs Inc.
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Multiple companies in China work in the undersea cable industry, and frequently partner with People’s Liberation Army research centers and national defense universities. China Telecom laid fiber optic cables between Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, and Mischief Reef in the Spratlys in 2017, state media reported. Chen Ying-yu, a senior official at China Telecom and a representative to the National People’s Congress, called on China’s government to better expand, protect and strengthen its submarine cable network at the 20th National People’s Congress held in late May.
The People’s Liberation Army operates its own cable ships as well, launching the first in 2015.
Kraska did not think it mattered who was responsible for installing the cables, as it would be ultimately done at the behest of the Chinese government.
He said the transformation of remote Chinese outposts into a surveillance network was yet another indication of China entrenching its military presence on disputed rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, and seeking to control everything above and below them.
“This is further solidifying their ability to control what’s going on in what they define as the ‘near seas’,” Kraska said.
China claims virtually all of the South China Sea, including waters, islands and reefs close to the coasts of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. China says it has “historic rights” for its sweeping claims, a stance unsupported by international law.
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World
The U.S. Air Force Deployed Spy Drones in the South China Sea
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| An experimental version of a new cruise missile is fired from San
Nicolas Island, Calif., last August, part of the Pentagon's effort to
develop new intermediate range missiles that could be based in Asia. (Scott Howe / Department of Defense) |
World
U.S. seeks to house missiles in the Pacific. Some allies don't want them
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-seeks-house-missiles-pacific-100024065.html
The governor of a Japanese territory where the Pentagon is thinking
about basing missiles capable of threatening China has a message for the
United States: Not on my island.
“I firmly oppose the idea,” said Gov. Denny Tamaki, the governor of Okinawa, in an email to The Times.
Officials in other Asian countries are also signaling they don’t want them.
But
Pentagon planners aren’t backing down after the Trump administration
withdrew last year from a 33-year-old arms-control treaty that barred
U.S. land-based intermediate range missiles in Asia.
Senior
officials now say that putting hundreds of American missiles with
non-nuclear warheads in Asia would quickly and cheaply shift the balance
of power in the western Pacific back in the United States' favor amid
growing Pentagon concern that China’s own expanding arsenal of missiles
and other military capabilities threaten U.S. bases in the region and
have emboldened Beijing to menace U.S. allies in Asia.
The missile
plan is the centerpiece of a planned buildup of U.S. military power in
Asia projected to consume tens of billions of dollars in the defense
budget over the next decade, a major shift in Pentagon spending
priorities away from the Middle East.
But it also highlights the
complex relationship between the U.S and its Asian allies, many of whom
feel increasingly threatened by China but are reluctant to back new U.S.
military measures that might provoke Beijing, which has built the
biggest navy in the world in the last decade.
Australia and the
Philippines publicly ruled out hosting American missiles when the Trump
administration first floated the idea last year. South Korea is also
considered an unlikely location, current and former officials say.
In
Japan, the decision on whether to allow U.S. missiles on its territory
will be made by the central government in Tokyo. Gov. Tamaki said
officials at the Pentagon and in Tokyo have told him there are no
definite plans to put missiles on Okinawa. But Tamaki isn’t reassured.
With
a Japanese mother and an American father who served with the Marines on
Okinawa before abandoning the family, Tamaki personifies the complex
relationship between the U.S. and its allies in Asia. He was elected two
years ago after pledging to oppose expansion of the already-substantial
U.S. military presence on the island.
More than half of the
50,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan are in Okinawa, most
concentrated at a Marine base surrounded by residential areas in the
largest city. Opposition to the 70-year-old U.S. military presence has
sparked local protests for years, which would likely intensify if there
were a move to base missiles there.
“If there is such a plan, I can easily imagine fierce opposition from Okinawa residents,” Tamaki said.
For
the last year, the Pentagon has been testing several new types of short
and intermediate range missiles — those with ranges up to 3,400 miles —
including a ballistic missile that could be placed in Guam, a U.S.
territory, and mobile missiles carried on trucks.
The first of the
new weapons could be in operation within two years, though no decision
has been announced about where they will be based. Similar missiles are
now carried on U.S. warships and planes based in Asia, but there are no
land-based systems.
U.S. officials say that many allies are
privately supportive of the missile plan and may come around to
permitting them on their territory but don’t want to provoke opposition
from Beijing and their own public before decisions are on the table.
The
U.S. has a defense treaty with Japan, as it does with South Korea, the
Philippines and Australia. Taiwan is not a formal ally but has close,
unofficial defense ties with Washington.
“We are very attentive to
our allies’ concerns, and we recognized their political challenges,”
said a senior defense official, who agreed to discuss Pentagon planning
if he was not identified. “Everything that’s said in the media is not
necessarily what’s said behind closed doors.”
To lessen the
political opposition, the U.S. could rotate missile batteries in and out
of locations around the region or place them in strategic locations
without publicly disclosing it.
"It wouldn't make much sense to
announce plans now, which would stoke Chinese anger and possibly play
into the domestic politics," said Randy Schriver, who was a senior
Pentagon official responsible for Asia until his resignation last year.
A
decision to go ahead in Asia would intensify an arms race between the
region’s two biggest powers whose relations — already tense over
President Trump’s confrontational trade agenda and Chinese President Xi
Jinping’s hawkish policies — have nosedived since the coronavirus
outbreak.
“It’s naïve and dangerous,” said Alexandra Bell, a
former Obama administration arms control official and a critic of
deploying U.S. missiles. “Instead of looking at how we can prevent a
full-out arms race, that’s our opening salvo?” added Bell, a senior
policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in
Washington.
Putting land-based missiles in Asia capable of attacking China is not a new strategy.
In
the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. kept them at bases across the region,
including in Okinawa, where hundreds of nuclear-armed warheads were
stored secretly for decades even though Japan’s constitution prohibited
the presence of nuclear weapons on its territory.
The missiles
were gradually taken out of service in the 1960s and 1970s, due to
budget cuts and a shift in U.S. strategy away from defense of the region
focused on nuclear weapons. In 1987, the Reagan administration signed
an arms control treaty that prohibited the U.S. and the Soviet Union
(and later Russia) from deploying any land-based intermediate range
missiles, including in Asia.
China was not a signatory, leaving it free to build up its missile arsenal.
The
Trump administration withdrew from the treaty last year after accusing
Russia of developing new land-based missiles that violated its terms.
The exit opened the way for the Pentagon to consider reintroducing
ground-launched missiles in Asia.
With mobile missiles around the
region, the U.S. could pose an even bigger challenge for China, forcing
it to hunt for hundreds of launchers capable of targeting its planes,
ships and bases, strategists say.
“Ground-based missiles aren’t
some kind silver bullet,” said Eric Sayers, a former consultant to U.S.
commanders in the Pacific and a fellow at the Center for New American
Security, a Washington think tank. “But they are a way in the near term
... to create dilemmas for the [People's Liberation Army] planners.”
Although
the risk of large-scale conflict with China seems low, tensions have
continued to ratchet up over Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong, its
military maneuvers near Taiwan, its border dispute with India and its
offshore maritime claims in the East China Sea and South China Sea.
Nearly
a quarter of world trade travels through the South China Sea, making
the contest between Beijing and Washington over control of its sea lanes
and rich resources especially tense and certain to continue, no matter
who wins the U.S. presidential election in November.
The U.S. Navy
for decades dominated the “first island chain,” as strategists call the
area of the western Pacific stretching from Japan to Taiwan to the
Philippines that fell within America’s defense umbrella after World War
II.
But American reliance on bases, warships and airfields in the region has become increasingly risky, officials and analysts say.
China
has developed its own missiles, sophisticated radars and anti-satellite
weapons as well as a growing fleet of warships and submarines in recent
decades that could threaten American bases and other targets early in a
conflict, said Collin Koh, a research fellow in Asian maritime security
at the Rajatnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
China’s
People’s Liberation Army can project significant firepower on U.S. and
allied military installations in the western Pacific and “threaten to
overwhelm” American forces “in times of armed conflict,” Koh said.
The
Chinese weapons in many cases have ranges that exceed those on U.S.
warships, though the U.S. retains a significant advantage in attack
submarines and in advanced fighters and bombers armed with cruise
missiles that can be fired from long distances.
"Their capability
and their reach has created vulnerabilities for our legacy basing
structure," said the defense official, who agreed to discuss U.S.
planning on the condition that he not be identified.
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World
The Covert Art of China’s Military Activity in the East China Sea
Click here to read the full original article.
[This is adapted from Michael R. Auslin, Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2020)].
Faced with China’s expansion
in East Asia over the past decade, U.S. policymakers have attempted to
reassure allies over American commitments, maintain a constant presence
in the waters of the Indo-Pacific region, and ensure a superiority of
U.S. force in the region should an armed conflict break out. Yet
bedeviled by distance, global commitments, and an increasingly capable
Chinese military, Washington risks being forced over time into a
predominantly reactive stance, attempting to still the shifting tides of
the balance of power until the dangers associated with maintaining its
traditional position become too onerous to accept.
The question of upholding both American promises and interests is not a light one. As Walter Lippmann admonished in U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic
(1943), foreign commitments must be brought into balance with national
power. Writing, like the geopolitical analyst Nicholas Spykman, during
the dark days of World War II, he asserted that an imbalance was a
direct cause of war. Lippmann scathingly faulted U.S. foreign policy in
the Pacific from 1899 to 1942 with failing to recognize the imbalance
between U.S. commitments and its power in relation to the rise of Japan.
Since 1945, however, except for a limited challenge by the Soviet
Union, America has not had a credible challenger in the Pacific. Not
since Vietnam nearly a half-century ago—which was the last time it
brought localized power to bear on the Asiatic rimland—has Washington
had to ensure that its Asian commitments and its power were in balance.
America
now faces a credible challenger for local control. This challenger may
not yet be able to defeat the full force of U.S. power today, but it is
gaining in power. More importantly, that challenger has identified
control of the Asiatic Mediterranean as its goal and is acting to
permanently change the geopolitical balance, such as through the
island-building campaign. Thus, Washington is at risk of failing to meet
this challenge in two respects: in ensuring that its commitments and
its power in the region are in balance, and in appropriately recognizing
the full scope of the challenge and its holistic nature.
The concern in Washington over China’s capabilities and intentions
is a belated recognition of these facts. Policymakers are now
increasingly worried that American power is not commensurate to U.S.
commitments, especially if the commitment is understood as the continued
stability of the marginal seas and ensuring that no one power controls
them. From that perspective, Washington’s alliance structures ironically
may be secondary to the primacy of control of the marginal seas; losing
that control would make fulfilling alliance commitments even more
difficult or costly.
Effectively responding to China’s
challenge requires adopting a larger geostrategic picture of the entire
Indo-Pacific region and America’s position in it. To do so, it is useful
to exhume a concept discussed briefly during the 1940s: that of the
integrated strategic space of East Asia’s “inner seas,” or what was
called the “Asiatic Mediterranean.” The utility of this concept will
make clear that the geopolitical challenge the United States and its
allies and partners face is an emerging struggle for control for the
entire common maritime space of eastern Asia. It is helpful briefly to
review the evolution of geopolitical thought in relation to this region
if Washington is to adopt such an approach.
The
academic field of geopolitics began with Halford Mackinder and his
oft-quoted, oft-misunderstood “heartland” thesis. Mackinder’s famous
1904 article, “The geographical pivot of history,” in fact discusses
only briefly the idea of the heartland, essentially steppe Eurasia, as
the ultimate goal of any world power. Mackinder may have written
“whoever controls the heartland controls the world,” but his real
insight was into the struggle over the “rimlands” that both guard and
give access to the heartland. The rimlands properly include the European
peninsula of the Eurasian landmass, as well as the littoral areas of
Asia and the Middle East. As Wess Mitchell and Jakub Grygiel have
recently reminded us, it is the rimlands that both Vladimir Putin and
China seem to be trying to contest today.
Four decades
after Mackinder’s original thesis, during the darkest days of World War
II, the Yale geopolitical thinker Nicholas Spykman returned to the
rimland thesis and further modified it to take into account recent great
power warfare in the twentieth century. In a posthumously published
book, entitled The Geography of the Peace (1944), Spykman
provided the insight that it is in the rimlands that the real struggle
for mastery has taken place. More importantly, he argued that attaining
control of the “marginal” or “inner” seas adjacent to the rimlands,
bordered by the offshore “outer crescent” of island nations like Great
Britain and Japan, was the prerequisite to dominating the rimlands.
Thus, according to Spykman, the most crucial waterways for global power
were the North Sea and the Mediterranean in Europe, the Persian Gulf and
littoral waters of the western Indian Ocean in the Middle East, and the
East and South China Seas, along with the Yellow Sea, in Asia.
Spykman’s
claims put a new twist on Alfred Thayer Mahan’s assertion that control
of the high seas was the great goal of the maritime powers. Instead of
looking at the vast global maritime highway, like Mahan, Spykman instead
concentrated on the areas where the majority of the global population
lived, where production was most concentrated, and where trade was most
intensely conducted. In a 1943 Foreign Affairs article, “The
round world and the winning of the peace,” Mackinder himself had already
modified his earlier position. Mackinder, like Spykman, now emphasized
the importance of the rimlands and their marginal seas. The great naval
battles of World War II, except for the Battle of the Atlantic, the
Coral Sea, and Midway, were in fact fought largely in the inner seas of
Europe and Asia.
Control of the inner seas was not a new
military concept. It explains the decades-long war waged by the British
Royal Navy against Napoleon’s ships in the English Channel and French
littoral waters, as well as the Imperial Japanese Navy’s reduction of
the Chinese and Russian fleets in the Yellow Sea in both 1894 and 1904,
giving it control of access to Korea and China. As both these examples
also point out, the struggle for control of the inner seas is often the
first step to a larger contest over the rimlands, and this
maritime-based competition can last years before a move is made on land
or the issue is decided by opposing armies.
Technological
advances since the Great War had come fully to fruition by the 1940s,
and Spykman struggled to expand his thesis to incorporate the most
modern type of combat: aerial warfare. Command of the skies and the
ability to effect devastating results on the ground from the air only
became a feasible military capability in World War II. The ferocious
aerial warfare of the Battle of Britain was one example of the struggle
for the inner seas being expanded to the realm of aerospace. Indeed, due
to the limitations of the 1940s-era aircraft, aerial warfare was almost
wholly restricted to the littoral and rimlands regions. The objective,
however, remained the same: control the maritime/aerial commons that
give access to the rimlands.
Yet World War II was
the last major war where command of the sea, whether the high or inner
seas, was a strategic necessity. In the post–World War II era,
the United States dominated the oceans and most of the skies, except
over the Soviet Bloc. The new era required a new geopolitical concept,
and Spykman’s thesis was modified by the Harvard political scientist
Samuel Huntington. Prior Eurasian struggles for mastery had taken place
among Eurasian powers. Now, with the balance of global military might be
held by a nation in a different hemisphere, how could the idea of
maintaining geopolitical control fit traditional models?
Huntington provided an answer in his well-known 1954 article in the
U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings. “National Policy and the
Transoceanic Navy,” recapped the eras of U.S. naval strategy and argued
that, in the modern era, the power of the U.S. Navy would be employed
over trans-oceanic range, but for the same goals. Huntington presciently
saw that naval power in the post–World War II era would be used almost
solely for effecting land-based struggles in the rimland (and he could
have made the same argument about the U.S. Air Force). Huntington’s
insight helped explain Macarthur’s landing at Inchon in 1950, U.S.
carrier-based air operations against North Vietnam, the air and
amphibious operations of the 1991 Gulf War, and the Iraq War two decades
later. No longer was naval power concerned with command of the sea,
since the United States had it uncontested, except perhaps in the
submarine race with the Soviets during the Cold War.
Today,
America has lost a conscious understanding of the strategic importance
of the inner seas, at a moment when it faces the greatest challenge to
its control of them since 1945. Washington focuses serially on one area
when a problem crops up, and then returns to a posture of benign neglect
after taking short-term tactical action. It should instead acknowledge
the matter bluntly: China is contesting for control, not of the high
seas like Germany in World War I or Japan in World War II, but of the
marginal seas and skies of Asia, even while the United States remains
dominant on the high seas of the Pacific.
Acknowledging
this fact not only clarifies our understanding of Chinese military
activity in the region, but it also maps out the area under risk: the
Asiatic Mediterranean. The integrated waters of the Sea of Japan, the
Yellow Sea, and the East China Sea and South China Sea,
are as vital to the history, identity, and trade of eastern Asia as the
Mediterranean is to Europe. While it is geographically a stretch to
connect the Asiatic Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, the passageways
between the two remain among the world’s most vital waterways, through
which one-third of global trade passes in the form of over seventy
thousand ships per year moving into the Asiatic Mediterranean. The great
factories and workshops of China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam
and others, on which the global trading network depends, are located
along the littoral of the Asiatic Mediterranean. It forms the hinge
between maritime Eurasia and the entire Western Hemisphere. To return to
Spykman’s formulation, control of the Asiatic Mediterranean means
control of Asia.
The challenge posed by China is thus
two-fold. It threatens the maritime freedom of the Asiatic
Mediterranean, and thus ultimately of Asia’s productive and trading
capacities. It also is positioning China to have a preponderance of
power that can be brought against Asia’s rimlands, as well as against
what Spykman called the “outer crescent,” which, in Asia, includes
Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia. These rimlands and the
outer crescent, it should be remembered, are uniquely comprised of
continental, peninsular, and archipelagic landforms. Japan’s control of
Korea and Formosa (Taiwan) in the 1930s facilitated its invasion of
China, which found its greatest success in the rimland, and only became
enmeshed in a quagmire when it attempted to extend towards China’s
heartland or out into the trackless Pacific.
China
today is attaining the capability to threaten Japan and Southeast Asia,
not solely from the homeland, but from its expeditionary bases in the
inner seas. From this perspective, the air defense identification zone
that Beijing established in the East China Sea in November 2013 is
another element in its attempt to establish control over the inner skies
of Asia. Only by conceiving of the strategic environment in this
expansive, integrated sense—as the Asiatic Mediterranean—can we fully understand, appreciate, and respond to China’s long-term challenge.
America
needs to recover its appreciation of the strategic importance of Asia’s
inner seas and rimlands if it is to come up with a realistic strategy
to preserve both its power and its influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Losing one part of the Asiatic Mediterranean will certainly cause
allies and partners in other parts to consider either severing ties with
the United States or declaring neutrality, so as to preserve their own
freedom of action. A geopolitically isolated United States is an
operationally weakened United States. Being pushed out of one sea will
require the U.S. military to expend national treasure to fight its way
back in. The better course of action is to keep the Asiatic
Mediterranean whole, balanced, and stable. Only then can America be
certain that the vital rimlands of Asia will remain free from conflict.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, the Asiatic Mediterranean must
certainly hang together, or it will assuredly hang separately.
Michael
Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in
Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His
latest book is Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific.
Image: Reuters
Click here to read the full original article.
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World
Philippine defense chief flies to disputed island amid feud
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Philippines South China SeaIn this handout photo provided by
the Department of National Defense PAS, Defense Secretary Delfin
Lorenzana, 4th from right, and the other military officials are welcomed
by residents wearing masks during a short ceremony at the newly built
beach ramp at the Philippine-claimed island of Pag-asa, also known as
Thitu, in the disputed South China Sea on Tuesday June 9, 2020. The
Philippine defense chief and top military officials flew to a disputed
island in the South China Sea Tuesday to inaugurate a beach ramp built
to allow the "full-blast" development of the far-flung territory but
would likely infuriate China. (Department of National Defense PAS via
AP) |
MANILA,
Philippines (AP) — The Philippine defense chief and top military
officials flew to a disputed island in the South China Sea on Tuesday to
inaugurate a beach ramp built to allow the “full-blast” development of
the territory in a move likely to infuriate China.
Defense
Secretary Delfin Lorenzana brought journalists to witness the
ribbon-cutting ceremony on the island, internationally called Thitu, in
what he said was a milestone in efforts to make the island, long
occupied by Filipino forces and fishermen, more livable without
militarizing it.
The island, which Filipinos call Pag-asa, or
hope, lies near one of China’s man-made islands in the Spratlys, the
most hotly contested area of the South China Sea.
Lorenzana said
the Philippines has the right to develop its nine occupied islands as
other claimants have done. He played down the prospect of a hostile
Chinese reaction, citing cozier ties between Manila and Beijing under
President Rodrigo Duterte.
“This is a disputed area,” Lorenzana
told journalists on the island in remarks provided by the Department of
National Defense. “The Chinese have said that they will not attack us so
we’re safe here.”
The beach ramp will allow Philippine navy and
cargo ships to dock and unload construction materials and heavy
equipment for new projects, including the repair of a seawater-eroded
airstrip. Military barracks, more civilian homes, a school, an ice plant
for fishermen, solar and diesel power supplies and a radio station for
weather reports are also planned, Lorenzana said.
A fishermen’s
shelter is being completed with plans for it to be inaugurated on Friday
when the Philippines marks its Independence Day, he said.
With the beach ramp now usable, “we can go full blast,” the defense chief said.
China,
the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia have had increasingly tense
territorial spats in the region in recent years after China turned seven
disputed reefs into missile-protected island bases, including three
with runways. Taiwan and Brunei also have claims in the busy waterway.
Indonesia is not officially involved in the conflicts but has had
confrontations with Chinese fishermen and coast guard vessels which it
has accused of encroaching into the Natuna Sea near the disputed waters.
Lorenzana said the government has no plan to militarize the island by arming it with missiles, cannons or other heavy weapons.
Three
nearby sand bars collectively called Sandy Cay have become a new front
in the disputes after China accused the Philippines of attempting to
construct structures there a few years ago. Since then, flotillas of
Chinese fishing boats and coast guard and navy ships have kept a close
watch on Sandy Cay, sparking protests from the Philippines.
In
April, the Philippines protested China’s establishment of two districts
to administer the Spratlys and another group of islands and reefs. The
Philippines also lodged a protest over a Chinese navy ship’s aiming of
its weapons control radar at a Philippine navy ship in mid-February. The
radar locks weapons on a target prior to an actual attack, although the
Chinese navy ship did not fire, the Philippine navy said.
China
has denied it aimed a weapon at the Philippine ship, a Philippine
official said, but it has continued to warn foreign military ships and
aircraft, including those of the United States, from approaching its
island bases.
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World
America Is Using Its Navy to Deter China Around Taiwan and the Spratly Islands
Click here to read the full original article.
The U.S. Navy
has conducted a Taiwan Strait transit to “demonstrate the U.S.
commitment to a free and open IndoPacific,” according to a statement
from Naval Sea Systems Command.
Navy destroyer USS Russel
conducted the transit in the area, which borders the areas just North of
the much-disputed South China Sea. Recent Chinese maneuvers, such as moving aircraft carriers into
areas of potential threat to Taiwan, got the attention of U.S. and
allied international observers, sparking public comments regarding the
need for peaceful navigation and non-provocative exercises.
“The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” the NAVSEA twitter post states.
While stated in a non-inflammatory way, the Navy transit does appear as a clear message to Chinese maneuvers in the region to
remind the world of its commitment to Taiwan’s independence. Clearly,
the Navy does not wish to be aggressive or provocative, but does want to
express its resolve to challenge or counter Chinese activities it may
deem somewhat threatening. While being on the periphery of the South
China Sea, sensitivity regarding waterways near Taiwan to pertain to the
broader, long-standing tensions regarding the South China Sea. While
concern has never fully disappeared in recent months, it is increasing
and moving back to the forefront in light of U.S.- Chinese tensions surrounding the Coronavirus.
The area in question is a group of highly disputed islands south of China in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands.
The small islands in the area, some of which are claimed by China,
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan, are rich in resources and
of strategic geographical importance in the Pacific region.
Pentagon officials have, for quite some time, widely criticized an ongoing Chinese effort to erect artificial structures
nearby or on top of its claimed island territories in the Spratly
Islands. Called “land reclamation” by the Pentagon, the activity has
added more than 2,000 acres to island territories claimed by China. In
response to what the Pentagon regards as inaccurate and irresponsible
claims, they have made the statement that there will at times be Freedom
of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) to merely demonstrate that the U.S.
military will fly, sail and operate wherever it chooses to according to
international law. The FONOPs are explained as a peaceful way to take
issue with what the Pentagon calls aggressive or expansionist behavior
by the Chinese.
According to a United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea—an international treaty supported by, but not yet
formally joined by the U.S. —2-miles off the coast of a given territory
is considered to be sovereign waters owned by the respective country.
Therefore, on several occasions in recent years, U.S. Navy ships have
ventured into a 12-mile vicinity of some South China Sea territories
which, according to the U.S. and its allies, are erroneously claimed by
China. These exercises have, in several instances, prompted immediate
condemnation from Chinese authorities.
The ongoing “land
reclamation” by China in the area appears to be a rather transparent
attempt by China to reinforce and bolster extended territorial claims in
the South China Sea.
However, the Law of the Sea Convention does
not recognize artificial or man-made structures and legitimate island
territories to be claimed. Therefore, the U.S and its Pacific allies do
not support or agree with China’s aggressive territorial claims. In
fact, citing the definition of islands articulated in the Law of the Sea
Convention, Pentagon officials do not recognize the artificial
structures as islands—but instead, refer to the effort as “land
reclamation.” Under the U.N. Law of the Sea convention, negotiated in
the 1980s and updated in the 1990s, an island is defined as a “naturally
formed area of land above the water at high tide.” Also, article 60 of
the U.N. Convention says, “artificial islands are not entitled to
territorial seas.”
Kris Osborn is the new Defense Editor for
the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a
Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of
the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked
as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He
has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The
Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree
in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
Image: Reuters
Click here to read the full original article.
---
World
Does America Have Enough Access in the Western Pacific?
Click here to read the full original article.
“Having
therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the
ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds,
unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting places for
them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties
of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the
nation at sea.”–Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1660-1783
Since before the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the United States has determined that
“American security, economic prosperity, and values would be
fundamentally put at risk if a rival hegemonic power dominated the
Pacific.” The United States has ensured this end by various ways and
means since the defeat of the Spanish Empire in 1898. Given the vast
distances between continental North America and the western Pacific
littorals, the United States’ ability to project power and influence is
necessarily based upon expeditionary maritime capabilities and
globe-spanning military infrastructure. The cornerstone of this power
projection complex in the western Pacific is forward deployed military forces,
which are in turn enabled by the availability of proximate and friendly
basing in theater. However, the ability of the United States to
sustainably conduct expeditionary operations in the strategic
chokepoints and littorals of Asia could crumble in the absence of the
allied access it has come to rely on.
Access to the local,
dual-use infrastructure the United States enjoys today is the result of
years of sustained investment of all elements of American power to align
mutually interested states into a network that allows the United States
to project power from their shores. In recent years, these
investments have been diffused across a broad number of states, such
that the mortar is crumbling under a lack of recapitalization. This
critically enabling influence of forward partners is waning as the PRC
rapidly expands its influence, turning the political will of forward
allies into strategic choke points of another sort.
The U.S. is
therefore forced to consider whether those locations it relies on to
sustain its overseas presence – whether by formal agreement or informal
association – would still be available in the event of a military
confrontation between the United States and China. How would this sudden
loss of access affect how the U.S. fights as a force and projects power
into the western Pacific?
While there are many detractors who
will lampoon the proposition that the U.S. would ever be deserted by its
overseas partners – perhaps citing years of historic partnership and
common interest – it is important to ask if the U.S. is willing to bet
the farm on this untested and assailable assumption. If not, what must
the United States do in order to hedge against the loss of its
heretofore unchallenged access to the western Pacific littorals and
attendant infrastructure?
Access for What?
The
American military presence in the Indo-Pacific largely reflects the
vestiges of the Cold War and has its roots in the exigencies of
conflicts ranging from World War Two to Vietnam. The United States has
military relationships with nearly every country within the First Island
Chain, ranging from limited partnerships to full military alliances.
U.S. security cooperation plans keep most of those relationships on
ever-increasing trajectories of investment, but this may be more a
function of inertia than strategic acumen. American joint doctrine makes clear that
the creation of access for U.S. forces is one of the three reasons for
conducting security cooperation operations. This investment has created
an unparalleled network of ports and airfields capable of supporting
U.S. expeditionary operations and logistics in unchallenged environments
(see Table 1).
Table 1: U.S. Military access arrangements among South China Sea littoral states |
Country | Acquisition & Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) | Hosts U.S. Base or Rotational Deployments | Routine Base Access |
Brunei | x | | |
Cambodia | | | |
Indonesia | x | | |
Malaysia | x | | |
Philippines* | x | x | x |
Singapore | x | x | x |
Taiwan | | | |
Thailand | x | | x |
Vietnam | | | |
*In question after cancellation of U.S.-PHL Visiting Forces Agreement
As
the United States and China continue to jostle for position, allies and
partners are pulled in separate directions. The long-relied upon
American security guarantee is confronted by China’s growing military
and economic strength, and geographic proximity. Despite the deep
history and genuine bonhomie between the U.S. and its security partners,
this confrontation jeopardizes the carefully-laid peacetime network
built over decades, which must be carefully regarded as great power
competition in the Indo-Pacific continues to intensify.
For those
that might decry this argument as alarmist or discounting years of
partnership, consider the state of the U.S.-Philippines alliance. Linked
by a Mutual Defense Treaty,
the two states’ militaries have stood prepared to fight
shoulder-to-shoulder for decades. In February of this year, Philippines
President Rodrigo Duterte announced his intention to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement that,
in large part, undergirds that same alliance. The U.S. expectation of
access, a key planning consideration, evaporated overnight.
Looking
back three decades, we see the U.S. military evicted from its
Philippine bases in Clark and Subic Bay in a similar vein. President
Duterte has been vocal since his election regarding his intention to
rebalance Philippines’ foreign relations, with the subtext being a move
closer to China. It is easily posited that this decision is largely
motivated by the expectation of economic benefit and uncritical security assistance. And this is coming from one of the supposedly closest U.S. allies in Southeast Asia.
What
then of the defense partnership with Thailand, where the U.S. has
long-relied upon the U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield to support combat
operations, from Vietnam to Afghanistan? Thailand’s military is now led
by openly pro-China officers and their branches have recently concluded a number of high-profile purchases of
major weapons platforms from China. Should the U.S. and China enter
into hostilities, would Thailand offer the use of its strategic airfield
with the knowledge that it might be severing ties to the source of its
own military equipment? This is, of course, only the military aspect.
China is also Thailand’s largest trading partner.
If
the depth of U.S investments and shared interests with its closest
Southeast Asian allies are crumbling during peacetime, what then does
this portend for access with less formally aligned states during open
conflict with the PRC? In the face of mounting evidence to the contrary,
should the U.S. government continue to rely on the prospect of
unfettered access to logistical support and conduct offensive
operations, as it has for the past 30 years? Or is it setting up the
possibility of the Joint Force having to play a scratch game as its
forward elements are ejected by non-belligerents at the outset of a
conflict?
All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go
Spanning
from critical repair and replenishment functions to overflight
permissions and divert airfields, the premise of access in nations such
as Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere is
crucial to American operational plans. This loss will reduce the force
generation capacity in theater, constrict avenues of approach, constrain
operational flexibility, render the forward logistics chain brittle,
and introduce friction into the crucial opening hours of a conflict as
American forces potentially scramble to adjust to a new, unpracticed
reality.
One of the first and most likely casualties to a
restriction on access is the loss of crucial airfields. These airfields
enable everything from air dominance operations and anti-submarine
warfare, to battlefield awareness and transportation of personnel and
material. While their loss does not mean that the United States and
coalition partners will be unable to conduct air operations within the
First Island Chain, both the number of sorties and on-station time will
be significantly reduced as aircraft have to fly from more distant
locales. This in turn will strain the U.S. aerial refueling capability,
which will be hard pressed to sustain long range operations as well as
facilitate reinforcement transfer to the theater. Further, it raises the
specter of increased losses, as damaged aircraft or those without
return tanker support will be without a proximate place to land.
Finally, it will curtail the effectiveness of the forward arming and refueling points (FARPs),
which are currently touted by the Joint Force as a way of conducting
distributed and short duration aviation operations from non-fixed
points.
Singapore offers a multi-faceted case study. Viewed by
many as the Southeast Asian partner closest to the United States,
Singapore hosts the U.S. Navy command responsible for organizing logistics operations across the U.S. Seventh Fleet, as well as theheadquarters which
controls U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ships in the region. As a related
aside, the U.S. military presence in Singapore began when Singapore
offered its Sembawang facility to the U.S. Navy when it was evicted from
its bases in the Philippines in 1993. U.S. ships today are rotationally
deployed to Singapore’s Sembawang port facility, and the Changi Naval
Base was expanded for the express purpose of accommodating U.S.
nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. U.S. P-8A routinely fly from
Singapore’s Paya Lebar Air Base.
However, Singapore’s Prime Minister has already warned the U.S. publicly that
forcing a choice between supporting the U.S. or China would be “very
painful,” pointing out that, notwithstanding Singapore’s partnership
with the United States, its economy is far more reliant on China.
Singapore prides itself on charting a balanced course between the two
competing superpowers and in the event of a U.S.-China war, its
preferred position would be neutrality. The port, airfield, and
logistics support currently enjoyed by the United States would place
Singapore’s domestic infrastructure at unacceptable risk during a major
conflict with China. Unless Singapore’s interests were directly affected
by this hypothetical war, it seems very likely that U.S. forces would
politely be asked to relocate, and by a partner proximate to one of the
most significant chokepoints in the region.
It is not too much of a
stretch to imagine that non-belligerents, under PRC pressure and having
curtailed access to their territory, might conceivably restrict
permission to overfly their country as well. This would severely limit
the avenues of approach of air power and reinforcements flowing into
theater as they are forced to detour around the airspace of erstwhile
partners. This in turn would allow the PRC to concentrate its forces –
backed up by a mainland-basedreconnaissance strike complex (see
Figure 1) – on these narrow vectors, such as the Luzon and Singapore
straits. While coalition aircraft could overfly this previously friendly
territory, to do so might invite armed challenge in response to
violations of the nation in question’s sovereignty. It also risks
poisoning the narrative concerning the justification of the conflict.
The
issues attendant with the loss of access are further compounded by an
insufficient amount of long-range munitions. While the United States
plans to buy an additional 1,625 long range “missiles with ship-killing potential” between Fiscal Year 2020 and 2025, it has only acquired approximately 1,050 weapons since
Fiscal Year 2011. Comprising the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM),
Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), and Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST), the
latter two weapons are multi-purpose, and consequently may be in high
demand across a globe spanning force. When considered in the context of a
dearth of available shipboard launchers, the potential loss of
proximate locations for USMCexpeditionary advanced bases, a lack of a robust mining capability, a fragile logistics chain, and an inability to
conduct forward reloading of VLS, the reduced sortie rate induced by
the loss of access becomes very problematic indeed. While the Defense
Department is working to address many of the identified issues, they are
still extant today, raising the specter of the United States being
unable to achieve its stated goal of deterrence by denial.
Where Do We (Figuratively) Go From Here?
If we accept the premise that access to forward fighting positionsmay be
curtailed in the event of a conflict with the People’s Republic of
China for foreign political or diplomatic reasons, then the United
States must make prompt investments to maintain credible
deterrence. While the Pacific is primarily a maritime theater – indeed,
as Bryan McGrath wrote,
“if it is […] the desire of the United States not to be displaced,
American seapower will have to shoulder a disproportionate share of the
load” – the response will require investments across the Joint Force.
While some of these investments are already being made, not all are
being undertaken with sufficient alacrity
or scale, and are likely to be high on the divestment list in the event
of declining defense budgets. Many of these initiatives – from sealift recapitalization to additional defenses for
Guam – have been talked about for years, during which little to no
action was taken. If the United States is to maintain a credible
deterrent posture vis-a-vis the PRC, investments must be made in this “priority theater”
promptly and at scale. They will not only hedge against a loss of
access, but may sufficiently reassure regional partners to ward off such
an outcome.
The United States will have to examine the difficult
prospect of violating the sovereignty of non-belligerents in a time of
war. There may well come a point when the Joint Force will have to seize
key positions along the South China Sea periphery – for example, in the
Philippines, Indonesia, or Malaysia – for short durations in order to
facilitate operations. These operations could conceivably span from
landing covering forces for chokepoint transits, or establishment of sea denial positions, to replenishment of naval vessels in calm bays or setting up FARPs in
austere locales. This introduces a number of issues, including raising
the risk of severe reputational damage – possibly poisoning popular will
against the U.S. war effort – and the prospect of the violated party’s
forces challenging these temporary occupations with force. Preparing
informal access arrangements, messaging narratives, and seizure CONOPs
will be vital to achieving temporary operational access when it is
otherwise denied. A unified joint Foreign Area Officer team will need to
stand prepared to broker these agreements when the time comes.
Japan’s
invasion of the Malayan peninsula in 1941 perfectly illustrates the
consequence of the failure to prepare for this scenario. Britain, unwilling to
violate Thai neutrality, allowed the Imperial Japanese Army to conduct a
mostly-unmolested amphibious landing which would lead to the fall of
Malaya 73 days later.
Conclusion
Hedging
against the risk of an unexpected and unceremonious eviction from
forward positions at the onset of major war is not something to be
dismissed because it is an inconvenient scenario, nor does the response
require particularly imaginative solutions. It requires the expansion of
existing or in-development capabilities to a capacity capable of
supporting large-scale expeditionary operations by the Joint Force.
Indeed, there are many commonalities between what has been discussed,
and the effects of a first strike on U.S. forward positions by the PLA’s
Rocket and Air Forces, namely the loss of enabling shore-based
infrastructure. The key difference is that the Joint Force will not be
able to rely on surging temporary forces – ISR, logistics, strike, and
others – onto alternate or austere sites on the territory of allies and
partners in certain scenarios.
The U.S. must prepare, today, for
the possibility of a zero access environment in a western Pacific
contingency to preserve military options and avoid losing a conflict
before the first shots are fired. Failure to prepare may leave the
United States in a situation akin to that of Rear Admiral Dewey’s fleet
in 1898 when they were forced to
depart from neutral Hong Kong “without a home base or reliable source
of coal in wartime,” essentially to conquer or die. This time, the away
team won’t be facing a decrepit Spanish fleet, but the most formidable
military challenger in a generation.
Blake Herzinger (@BDHerzinger)
is a civilian Indo-Pacific defense policy specialist and U.S. Navy
Reserve officer. The views expressed in this article are those of the
author alone and do not represent those of his civilian employer, the
U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
Elee Wakim (@EleeWakim)
is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and a
Presidential Management Fellow. The views expressed here are his own and
do not represent those of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or
the U.S. government.
Their article first appeared at the Center for International Maritime Security on June 2.
Image:
Vietnamese Navy honour guard march to take position prior to the
arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama for a welcoming ceremony at the
Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Hoang Dinh
Nam/Pool.
Click here to read the full original article.
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Business Insider
In a war with China, the US Navy's warships might not be the first target
https://www.yahoo.com/news/war-china-us-navys-warships-221422509.html
US Navy/Photographer's Mate Airman Justin Lee Losack
To
fight a war in the Pacific, the Navy and Marine Corps would rely on the
military's logistics fleet for food, fuel, and ammunition.
But
that aging fleet, already taxed by technical problems, is likely to be
one of the first things China attacks, a former chief of US naval
operations said this week.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
US
Navy warships have been on the front lines in the Western Pacific,
carrying out freedom-of-navigation operations and other exercises to
counter Chinese claims and to bolster allies in the region.
But in
a conflict with China, those ships won't be the only or even the first
targets, as Beijing will seek to eliminate the logistical support on
which the US military relies, according to retired Navy Adm. Gary
Roughhead.
"We neglect logistics, and logistics is how this
country has won wars," Roughead, who was the chief of naval operations
from late 2007 until his retirement in 2011, said at a House Armed
Services Committee hearing Thursday.
"I will share an exchange I
had with Chinese admiral during the time when I was on active duty,"
Roughhead added. "He made it very clear to me that our logistics ships
were a primary target, because if he can take out logistics, he takes
out the lifeblood of the fighting ships, if you will."
US Navy/MCS 3rd Class Jordan R. Bair
As the US military
reorients for "great-power competition" with Russia and China, its
ability to sustain military operations in a conflict has gotten renewed
attention, especially in the Pacific, where vast ocean and far-flung
islands would complicate resupply and reinforcement efforts.
"The distances that we're talking about the Pacific are huge compared to what we have been used to," Roughead said.
The
military has been able to operate in the Middle East with "logistic
impunity," Roughhead added. "We've been close to ports. It's been a
benign flow on sea lanes, and we have to rethink that."
The
resupply issue goes beyond food, fuel, and mail. US warships can't rearm
with missiles underway and would have to return to port to stock up,
but China's growing arsenal of missiles
can now reach much the first island chain — which includes the
Philippines, Taiwan, and Japanese islands like Okinawa — where many US
bases are located.
"I do believe that many of the ports that we
routinely rely upon, particularly out in the Western Pacific, are going
to be vulnerable," Roughead said.
US Navy/MCS 2nd Class Richard A. Miller
A recent exercise that
saw the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land sail into the Ulithi Atoll, a
major World War II logistics hub, suggested the Navy is thinking of ways to do resupply on-the-go.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger — who has already proposed a dramatic redesign
that would make his force better equipped to fight a war in the Pacific
— has also admitted that logistical challenges need to be resolved.
The
Corps' challenge is "to develop an entirely new logistics footprint,
which includes new ships to support resupply and maneuver Marines around
the first island chain, littorals, and in a high-threat environment,"
Berger said at an event on Capitol Hill in February.
"We've got
ground to make up" on logistics, Berger added. "Because if ... you're
going to fight as a dispersed force, you've got to sustain that force.
And our supply lines have not been challenged in 70 years. We have not
worried about what's behind us. We need to focus on that now, because
... they're going to try to sever our lines."
U.S. Navy photo/Petty Officer 2nd Class Brian P. Caracci
A
major problem for the military's logistics force is the logistics force
itself, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a
former Navy officer, said at the hearing Thursday.
"There are problems in basically the two different elements of logistics force," Clark said.
The
combat logistics force, which would support operating forces deployed
overseas, faces challenges with its "fit," Clark said, "meaning it may
not be designed to support a more distributed Navy because it's composed
of a relatively small number of relatively large logistics vessels. So
we need a more distributed logistics force to support that more
distributed operating Navy."
The other element is the sealift
force, which would transport troops and equipment oversees. Its
deterioration has been a major concern among military officials for
years.
In September, US Transportation Command performed a
large-scale no-notice readiness exercise with the 61 sealift vessels
assigned to the Organic Surge Fleet — US-based ships expected to be
ready on short notice.
Photo by LPhot Dan Rosenbaum
The exercise was a disappointment,
with less than half the sealift fleet able to get fully prepared to set
sail in the allotted timeframe.
"Readiness goals aim for the
Organic Surge Fleet to have an 85% availability on any given day to
support large-scale force deployments," Transcom said in an assessment. "The low Cumulative Fleet Success Rate of 40.7% suggests the Organic Surge Fleet is challenged to meet these objectives."
Those aging sealift ships need to be recapitalized, Clark said. The Navy knows that but has so far been unable to settle on a way to do it.
Clark suggested an expansion of the maritime security program
— which gives the military access to government-owned and privately
owned US-flagged ships — to fill the gaps. Clark has also singled out a lack of tankers as a major national-security concern.
The expenditures made so far in response to the coronavirus pandemic are widely expected to take a bite out of future defense spending,
but Roughead said that investing in the defense industrial base, and on
shipbuilding in particular, could aid the economic recovery.
Referring
to his testimony to the committee, Roughead suggested that "now's the
time to perhaps jump on some opportunities that may be there,
particularly in sealift. The prices are going to be extraordinarily good
for recapitalization of that fleet, [and they] might not last very
long."
Read the original article on Business Insider
----
World
Will China Set Up an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-set-air-defense-identification-152500180.html
On May 4, Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense reportedly confirmed that China is planning to set up an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea. According to a source from within China’s military,
plans for the South China Sea ADIZ have been in the pipeline since
2010, the same year Chinese authorities told a Japanese delegation
visiting Beijing that they were considering establishing an East China
Sea ADIZ. Ever since China announced its first ADIZ in the East China
Sea in November 2013, a Chinese ADIZ has hung like a sword of Damocles
over the South China Sea. On the day China declared its East China Sea
ADIZ, the Chinese Ministry of Defense’ spokesman proclaimed, “China will establish other air defense identification zones at an appropriate time after completing preparations.”
If China sets up an ADIZ in the South China Sea, then it would not be the first in that theater. Early in the Cold War, the Philippine established its ADIZ in 1953,
and South Vietnam also had one during the Vietnam War. Today, however,
the Philippine ADIZ is inoperative, and the South Vietnamese ADIZ died
forty-five years ago with the state that created it.
On the
contrary, an ADIZ that follows China’s excessive and, from the
perspective of international law, invalid maritime claims in the South
China Sea would be highly disruptive. Thousands of flights every week,
not just military but mostly civilian, not just international, but also
domestic within Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and regional
within Southeast Asia, would be disturbed.
Will China
set up an ADIZ in the middle of Southeast Asia? If it does, then when
will it do so, and with what size and scope? More generally, how does
one predict the Chinese ADIZ?
The Animal That Is China’s ADIZ
A
dog that hasn’t barked, China’s ADIZ in the South China Sea can turn
out to be one of three animals: 1) a dog that will eventually bark, 2) a
dog that never barks, or 3) a dog that barks under the guise of a
different animal. Which of these animals is the South China Sea ADIZ?
Perhaps even China’s strategic planners do not have a consistent answer.
But it is worth considering to what extent these animals exist.
Observers
who think this dog will eventually bark have the support of two
paramount signs. In terms of official statements, China has never ruled
out the possibility of another ADIZ in the South China Sea. Occasionally, sources close to the Chinese military told foreign journalists
that China had plans and was ready to impose an ADIZ in the South China
Sea. Statements aside, China’s facilities on the disputed islands in
the South China Sea suggest their main job
is to help China turn this maritime heart of Southeast Asia into
Beijing’s own lake. Some of these facilities include four
three-thousand-meter-long runways with hangars that can hold dozens of
aircraft on Woody Island, Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, and Mischief Reef
and high-frequency radar stations on these islands and Cuarteron Reef.
China has also deployed to these islands long-range surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles that can reach 250 miles (about 400 kilometers). More recently, satellite images detected KJ-500 air-born early warning and control aircraft, as well as KQ-200 anti-submarine patrol planes on Fiery Cross Reef. Imagery also shows
a Type 071 (Yuzhao)-class landing platform dock in the harbor of the
reef. The ship could be used to seize a disputed reef in the region. If
these infrastructure and weapons systems are China’s instruments to achieve mastery of the South China Sea, then an ADIZ would provide a convenient legal ground for their deployment.
Observers
who think the South China Sea ADIZ is a dog that never barks have
different reasons to believe so. Some speculate that China has learned a
lesson from its East China Sea ADIZ and concluded that this game is not
worth the candle. As this argument goes, China’s ADIZ in the East China
Sea, which is nearly seven years old now, is as effective as nothing.
Setting up one more in the south would tarnish China’s international
image and prompt other littoral states to declare overlapping ADIZs of
their own. However, this is just one of many possible lessons China can
learn from the East China Sea ADIZ. One Chinese analyst has argued to
the contrary that the benefits it brings have outweighed the risks. If this reflects the thinking of the Beijing leadership, a Chinese ADIZ in the South China Sea is waiting in the wings.
But some argue that an ADIZ may undermine the ambiguous nature
of China’s claims in the South China Sea. Ambiguity has served China’s
interests well, so China will have to think twice before it imposes an
ADIZ in the South China Sea.
Another reason that may render
China’s plans for a South China Sea ADIZ forever plans is the
possibility of tit-for-tat by China’s neighbors. These neighbors are
holding cards that can deter China from declaring an ADIZ
in the South China Sea. Vietnam can declare an ADIZ of its own over the
Paracel Islands, which can reestablish some forms of Vietnamese
administration over the islands, thus weakening China’s position.
Vietnam and Malaysia can sue Beijing’s unilateral activities in their
exclusive economic zones (EEZs), activities that are illegal based on
the Permanent Court of Arbitration rulings of 2016. Vietnam and a
post-Duterte Philippine administration can also grant the U.S. military
regular access to strategic places on the South China Sea coast such as
Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang in Vietnam or Ulugan Bay, Subic Bay, and
Zambales Province in the Philippines, thereby equalizing several
advantages of China’s facilities on the artificial islands in the middle
of the sea. Taken together these will redress the regional balance of
power and neutralize China’s ADIZ.
But a hypothetical ADIZ
by China in the middle of Southeast Asia can also deter others. If
Beijing thinks an ADIZ works best when it is unborn, then it will keep
it unborn.
Finally, the South China Sea ADIZ may
already bark, but it is camouflaged as an exclusion zones not using the
name of ADIZ, or it may be a quasi or de facto ADIZ that is undeclared
but nevertheless actively enforced. In the view of the Philippine judge
Antonio Carpio, China has already effectively enforced a quasi-ADIZ
in the South China Sea by warning Philippine planes flying over the
Spratlys via radio to “stay away from the area.” Ships and aircraft from
Vietnam, the United States, Australia, and India, to name just a few,
have also reported to have received similar warnings. However, China’s
quasi-ADIZ appears to cover no more than twenty nautical miles from the shores of the Chinese-controlled features.
Why Does China Need an ADIZ?
People
tend naturally to assume that an ADIZ is what its name implies—an air
defense zone or a military tool of territorial control. But like any
things invented by humans, it can perform many functions beyond the
original one.
In the original function, an ADIZ is an
early warning mechanism. When the United States created the first ADIZs
during the Cold War, it wanted to reduce the risk of a surprise aerial attack
from the Soviet Union. China today may be more concerned about
surveillance and “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs) conducted
by the United States than a surprise attack, but an early warning is
always better than no warning.
In a second function, an ADIZ
is an exclusion zone. China’s ADIZ in the East China Sea has taken this
function, among others. By requiring even aircraft that transit the
international airspace and not bound to China to identify themselves,
that ADIZ provides a legal basis for denying foreign aircraft access to
almost the entire East China Sea.
As China is engaged
in intense sovereignty disputes with most of its maritime neighbors, an
ADIZ can serve as a sovereignty marker. Although an ADIZ is itself not a
territorial claim, it can be used to exercise some forms of sovereignty rights and administration
over the airspace of a territory. Acceptance or acquiescence by foreign
aircraft of an ADIZ may then be interpreted as recognition of the
ADIZ-declaring state’s effective exercise of sovereignty over a
territory.
While effective enforcement is a prerequisite for
an ADIZ to function as an early-warning mechanism or an exclusion zone,
it is unimportant for an ADIZ as a sovereignty marker. Some poor
enforcement may be enough to register the exercise of sovereignty and no
actual enforcement is required to elicit recognition by foreign states.
As with everything else in the diplomatic realm, an ADIZ can be used as a bargaining chip, specifically to boost the position
of the state that declares it in some game it plays with foreign
states. This is also one of the functions of China’s East China Sea
ADIZ. It has strengthened China’s position against Japan’s in their
disputes over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands by 1) giving a legal basis for China to scramble its jet fighters against Japanese planes, 2) broadening the domain of physical dispute to include not just the islands’ adjacent waters but also their airspace, and 3) creating new facts on the ground. As two analysts have argued,
“The PRC would acquire strategic advantage by asserting a maximalist
position, then seeming to back down, while preserving some incremental
gain—akin to a ‘ratchet’ effect.”
In a fifth utility, an ADIZ is a
signaling device. Declaring an ADIZ in the face of foreign opposition
or in violation of international law may signal resolve, even strength.
It may also signal anger when responding to a preceding event that hurts
the ADIZ-declaring state. All this can signal formidability, while the effective enforcement of an ADIZ signals capability.
Some suggest that an ADIZ can be employed to reassure others of the declaring state’s cooperative intention. One observer argues
that China tried to use its East China Sea ADIZ as an “instrument of
engagement, not aggression.” However, the international opposition to
China’s ADIZ is proof that only a fool would use it to signal
cooperation.
The sixth function of ADIZ is that of a
deterrent. By signaling formidability and capability, one can deter
others. But even when an ADIZ is still unborn, a hypothetical ADIZ can
also serve as a threat to deter others. China has developed a consistent narrative
on the South China Sea ADIZ, saying whether it will declare an ADIZ in
the South China Sea depends on the threat level it faces. In this sense,
China’s South China Sea ADIZ has already been employed.
When Will China Impose an ADIZ in the South China Sea?
If
China wants to use a South China Sea ADIZ for military purposes (early
warning and anti-access/area denial), then effective enforcement is a
key requirement. With several large artificial islands equipped with
four long airstrips and many support facilities in the middle of the
sea, China already has sufficient infrastructure needed for this job.
Each of the four airbases on these man-made islands has enough hangars to accommodate
twenty-four combat aircraft and four to five larger planes such as
reconnaissance, transport, refueling, and bomber aircraft. Adding to
these well-located air bases, China has since December last year homeported its second aircraft carrier,
the Shandong, at Sanya on Hainan Island. While the airfields on the
man-made islands at the middle of the South China Sea can accommodate up
to ninety-six air-superiority aircraft, the Shandong can add thirty-six
more to the number of frontline fighters China can operate at one time
in the South China Sea.
Note that of the countries with comparable coastline along the South China Sea, Vietnam has a total of fifty frontline aircraft for its entire territory, Malaysia has thirty-eight, and the Philippines
has zero. When a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier of the United States
enters the South China Sea, it can add ninety aircraft, including
typically sixty-four air-superiority fighters, to the challenges a
Chinese ADIZ has to face. Still, supported by the airfields on China’s
mainland, Hainan Island, Woody Island, Subi Reef, Fiery Cross Reef,
Mischief Reef, and the Shandong, aircraft under China’s Southern Theater
Command, including about 198 air-superiority fighters, can more than
match the combined air forces of all the major Southeast Asian claimants
plus one U.S. aircraft carrier.
Three years after the completion of the major artificial island-building
in the South China Sea, China already has the capability to effectively
enforce an ADIZ as large as its territorial and maritime claims in the
region—the illegal “nine-dash line.” The question for China in the South
China Sea is not whether it has the capability to enforce an ADIZ, but
what utility it wants to get from an ADIZ and, if it needs to declare an
ADIZ, when is the best time to do so.
If China employs its
ADIZ as a sovereignty marker (to register sovereignty over the South
China Sea territories and get international recognition or
acquiescence), then a bargaining chip, or a signaling device, a
declaration is more important than de facto enforcement. China does not
need an ADIZ to signal its strength and resolve in the South China Sea;
its coast guard, militia, and survey ships alone are able to perform the
job, as demonstrated repeatedly in its ability to halt Vietnam’s drilling of new oil and gas wells within Vietnam’s EEZ since 2017 and its ability to unilaterally conduct a survey
in large areas within the EEZ of Vietnam and Malaysia since 2019,
activities that are illegal based on the 2016 rulings of the Permanent
Court of Arbitration. An ADIZ can add more to this signaling but its
risks appear to outweigh its value-added.
As a sovereignty marker, an ADIZ can be better than the nine-dash line since the latter was invalidated by the international arbitration court
in 2016. An ADIZ can also be a weighty bargaining chip in China’s
negotiation of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) with the
ASEAN members. China’s endgame
in the South China Sea is a new normal where it is in charge, and the
job of the COC, from Beijing’s perspective, is to freeze that new
normal. Since China has told the ASEAN members that it wanted to conclude the negotiations
of the COC by 2021, Beijing needs to race against this deadline to
create new facts on the ground and solidify the new normal. This
accelerated aggression in turn will put pressure on many members of
ASEAN to finish the negotiation. It is in this context that China has
stepped up aggression in the South China Sea in the last years,
including the survey activities
by the Haiyang Dizhi 8 within the EEZ of Vietnam and Malaysia since
last summer. Although Beijing can save an ADIZ to use in the future, its
value as a bargaining chip may be highest in the COC negotiations.
If
ADIZ is used as a deterrent, then it will lose its value the moment it
is declared. With its growing capability, China can impose its early
warning systems and exclusion zones under names other than ADIZ, or it
can enforce them undeclared on a de facto basis.
Size and Scope
China
can manipulate the risks—and with them, the benefits—of its ADIZ by
selecting different scopes and sizes for its coverage. Generally, a
larger scope will affect more neighbors directly and thus provoke more
opposition. The benefits of an ADIZ, however, do not always grow in line
with the size. An ADIZ would bring the most benefits for China if it
hugs the nine-dash line, China’s invalid claim in the South China Sea. A
larger scope will cause much additional opposition while bringing
little additional utility.
There are four groups of
islands within the nine-dash line—all are disputed. They give China
five major options in terms of the scope of a South China Sea ADIZ. The
cost-benefit ratio of an ADIZ varies with its scope, depending on the
number and opposition of the states that lay sovereignty claims on the
territory it covers.
Option 1 would cover the
Paracel Islands, which lie between China’s Hainan Islands and Vietnam’s
central coast and are disputed by China and Vietnam. The island group
has been occupied by China since 1974 but it was administered by
successive states from Vietnam, including France as the protector of
Vietnam, at least from the eighteenth century until then.
Option
2 would encompass the Pratas Islands, which lie 180 nautical miles
southeast of Hong Kong and are currently under Taiwanese administration.
Option
3 would be the sum of option 1 and option 2, hugging China’s South
China Sea coast and covering both the Paracel Islands and the Pratas
Islands.
Option 4 would stretch out from China’s
southern coast and involve the Pratas, the Paracels, and Scarborough
Shoal. The latter lies within the Philippine EEZ about one hundred
nautical miles off the coast and had been administered by the
Philippines at least since the eighteenth century until China seized it
during the 2012 Scarborough Shoal standoff.
Option 5
would hug the nine-dash line and contains roughly all the area China
claims in the South China Sea, including the Pratas, the Paracels,
Scarborough Shoal, the Spratly Islands, including the waters between and
surrounding them. The Spratly Islands are claimed entirely by China,
Taiwan, and Vietnam, and partly by the Philippines and Malaysia. Brunei
claims Louisa Reef to the south of the archipelago. This option will
have the largest number of opponents but also the largest benefits among
the different versions of a South China Sea ADIZ.
All Things Considered
China’s
decision to set up an ADIZ will most likely be the result of its
cost-benefit calculation. If China has plans to declare an ADIZ in the
South China Sea, then it will likely make the announcement when the
anticipated benefits exceed the anticipated costs. The benefits derive
mainly from the utility of an ADIZ; the costs depend largely on foreign
reaction.
The coronavirus pandemic and the last stage
of the COC negotiation, which are incidentally concurrent, offer an
opportunity for China to announce its South China Sea ADIZ. The low
number of flights over the South China Sea caused by the travel bans to
restrict the spread of the virus and the focus of everyone on the
coronavirus outbreak would greatly reduce foreign reaction. Except for
Vietnam, the hands of Malaysia and the Philippines
are additionally tied by China’s aids to help them fight the virus,
which ironically originated from China. At the same time, the deadline
of the Code of Conduct urges China to maximize its advantage in a new
status quo that would be frozen for a while after the Code of Conduct is
signed.
The current balance of power also suggests that
other countries cannot do much more than largely symbolic actions to
challenge China’s ADIZ in the South China Sea. Several governments, most
notably the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia, Britain,
and France, will flatly reject the Chinese ADIZ. But most other
countries, including some ASEAN members, will acquiesce to Chinese
power. The United States will fly some military aircraft into the
Chinese ADIZ within the first hours of its declaration, but the Pentagon
will have to think twice when deploying a carrier strike group to
waters under the Chinese ADIZ. Vietnam and Malaysia may or may not
declare an ADIZ of their own.
But a Chinese ADIZ
will aggravate the animosity between China and most of its maritime
neighbors. It will also intensify the strategic competition globally
between China and the United States and regionally between China on one
hand and Japan and India on the other. Less internationally but no less
strategically, it will hit a big nail on the coffin of Chinese influence
in Vietnam and mark a point of no return in Sino-Vietnamese relations.
Vietnam’s top defense diplomat, Nguyen Chi Vinh, noted in a January 2014 interview that a Chinese ADIZ “would be more dangerous than even the nine-dash line” and it would “kill” Vietnam.
If
China declares its South China Sea ADIZ this year or the next, then it
can win more than it loses—in the short term. In the longer term,
however, that coup will be a Pyrrhic victory.
Alexander
L. Vuving is a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center
for Security Studies. The analysis in this article is based on a primer on the South China Sea ADIZ
by the same author, published in The National Interest four years ago.
The author wishes to thank Harry Kazianis for his encouragement and
Carleton Cramer for his valuable comments. The views expressed in this
article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the
U.S. government, the Department of Defense, or DKI APCSS.
Image: Reuters
Click here to read the full original article.
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World
U.S. military commander says China pushing territorial claims under cover of coronavirus
TAIPEI, June 5
(Reuters) - A U.S. warship sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on
Thursday, the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries said, on the same day as
the 31st anniversary of China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy
demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square.
China, which
considers Taiwan its territory, has been angered by the Trump
administration's stepped-up support for the self-ruled, democratic
island, such as more arms sales and nearby U.S. patrols.
Taiwan's
Defence Ministry said on Friday the U.S. warship had transited the
narrow Taiwan Strait that separates the island from the mainland,
heading south.
Taiwan's armed forces monitored the ship, which it
described as being on an "ordinary mission", the ministry added, without
providing further details.
The U.S. Pacific Fleet, in a post on its Facebook page, named the ship as the USS Russell, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
The
United States has in recent months stepped up its sailings through the
Taiwan Strait, to China's anger, adding to tensions over everything from
Beijing's response to the coronavirus pandemic to trade and human
rights.
Public events took place in both Taiwan and Chinese-ruled Hong Kong on Thursday to mark the 1989 Tiananmen anniversary.
Police
pepper-sprayed some Hong Kong protesters on Thursday who defied a ban
to stage candlelight rallies in memory of the crackdown, accusing
Beijing of stifling their freedoms too.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
-----
The National Interest
Keeping Watch: America's Drones Just Got Better at Keeping an Eye on China
 |
| Image: Reuters |
The Air Force is now flying B-1b bombers and Global Hawk spy drones
over the South China Sea and other areas within the Pacific theater as
part of a broader strategy to sustain surveillance and deterrence
missions in the region, following the increased U.S.-Chinese tensions.
The
B-1bs are flying out of Guam in support of Indo-Pacific Command and,
according to an Air Force report, they are specifically conducting
missions over the South China Sea. At the same time, the Air Force is
rotating its Global Hawk drones to an Air Base in Japan called Yokota,
a move which further bolsters a U.S. operational presence in the
region. Such missions are likely taking on a new urgency in light of
reports that China has been conducting two-carrier exercises in the
South China Sea, something making Taiwan increasingly nervous about a
potential Chinese invasion.
The Globalhawk surveillance drones,
in tandem with their Guam-based Navy Triton maritime partners, are
increasingly engineered with advanced algorithms bringing new levels of
autonomy. Pre-programming mission objectives wherein an aircraft can
autonomously make adjustments to emerging circumstances and quickly
process large volumes of information at one time, allows U.S. Commanders
to improve and extend mission scope in the region and possibly overcome
the much discussed “tyranny of distance” characterizing the vast,
geographically expansive Pacific theater.
One such technical
program, engineered for greater airborne autonomy, is called Distributed
Autonomy (DARC), enables unmanned systems to better form “mesh”
networks through air and ground nodes to perform a greater range of
functions without needing to have each small move coordinated by a
ground-based human decision-maker. The Northrop made DARC system seeks
to distribute greater measures of autonomy into the aircraft itself. “
instead of flying it, you tell it what effect you want in an area,”
Scott Winship, Northrop Program Manager, told TNI in an interview.
For
example, a Global Hawk could draw upon onboard processing speed to
gather, organize and analyze large volumes of ISR data such as video
feeds, determine the relevance of specific information and transmit
streamlined data to human decision-makers. Better networked aerial
surveillance assets can offer another way to address the geographical
challenges presented by the Pacific, by enabling drones to exchange data
of great relevance across otherwise disparate areas of operation.
“Now
our processing capability is so fast and we have so much storage that
we are meeting that mission. Algorithms run fast enough so that if we
watch our track, it will dump that data if nothing is happening. We only
concentrate on the things we want to concentrate on,” Winship
explained.
If one drone in a family of interconnected airborne
surveillance assets encounters weather obscurants or veers off course,
other air “nodes” can help offer direction and enable aircraft to
autonomously make the proper adjustments. This not only decreases a
“cognitive burden” or human workload, but massively improves latency or
combat-critical sensor-to-shooter time.
Much of this is made
possible by real-time analytics; for instance, onboard computers can, in
some instances, utilize machine learning programs to bounce new mission
data off of existing information to make rapid determinations of
consequence to a mission before sending organized data to commanders.
In
tactical terms, this amounts to having a Globalhawk stare at a
strategically relevant portion of the South China Sea and instantly
identify moments of importance such as a Chinese surface ship passing
through.
“We have finally broken through the barrier of the
amount of processing power you can have and get information processing
aboard the airplane. We can hit 18 targets in one pass,” Winship added.
Kris
Osborn is the new Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn
previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the
Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics
& Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air
military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest
military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The
History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature
from Columbia University.
Image: Reuters
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World
Taiwan Wants Harpoon Missiles to Counter China's Growing Naval Might
Last week the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense announced that
it is seeking to purchase Harpoon coastal batteries from the United
States. Deputy Defense Minister Chang Che-ping confirmed the military’s
intentions to lawmakers at a committee meeting, which was reported by the local media in Taiwan.
The
island nation, which the government in Beijing sees as a breakaway
province, has already developed its own anti-ship missile, the Hsiung
Feng II (HF-2), which was developed in the 1990s. As far back as 20
years ago there were plans to replace the HF-2 with the American made RGM-84 Harpoon. It serves in dozens of countries on a number of platforms.
Taiwan has also developed its Hsiung Feng III,
a supersonic missile that uses solid-fuel propellant as a booster and
liquid fuel to power a ramjet. It was originally conceived as an
anti-ship missile, but its range is limited to just 75 to 90 miles. With
that in mind, Taipei has taken another look at the American Harpoon—and
it isn’t the only power in Asia that sees the potential of the aging
U.S. missile platform.
In April, the United States Department of
Defense (DoD) Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced that
the State Department had approved the foreign military sales of the AGM-84L Harpoon to India.
Taipei
will still have to make a formal request to Washington, but given that
the weapon was sold to India, it is largely suggested that such a sale
could be quickly approved. The Taiwan military seeks to acquire the
missiles by 2023.
According to a report from The Drive,
Chang wasn’t clear exactly which type of Harpoons that Taiwan was
seeking, but it would likely be the Block II variants. The Taiwan Air
Force already has air-launched Block II AGM-84L Harpoons in its arsenal,
while the island nation’s Navy has submarine-launched UGM-84Ls. Two
former U.S. Navy Kidd and Knox-class ships serving with Taiwan also are armed with the older surface-launched RGM-84 variants.
Tensions have increased in the region in recent months.
In April, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) aircraft carrier Liaoning, sailed past Taiwan in a show of Chinese naval strength in the region while the American aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) was sidelined in port in Guam due to an outbreak of the novel coronavirus among its crew.
Also
in April, to mark the 70th anniversary of the PLAN, Beijing announced
that it had created a new unit of marines, even as China had approved
the reduction of its army by 300,000 soldiers. That signaled a shift in
military strength from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to the PLAN Marine Corps—and according to reports, the latter force could grow by 400% from 20,000 marines to more than 100,000.
Given
that Beijing is ramping up an amphibious force, has a second carrier
that is undergoing sea trials and continues to expand its presence in
the region it is no wonder that Taipei seeks to ensure that it has the
right counter-measures in place.
Peter Suciu is a
Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen
magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on
military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.
Image: Reuters
Read the original article.
-----
World
Philippines' Duterte U-turns on scrapping of U.S. troop deal
 |
| FILE PHOTO: U.S. Marines officer Lt General Lawrence Nicholson and his
counterpart from the Armed Forces of the Philippines Lt General Oscar
Lactao unfurl the "Balikatan" flag in Quezon city Metro Manila |
By Karen Lema
MANILA (Reuters) -
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has suspended his decision to scrap
a two-decade-old troop deployment agreement with the United States due
to political and other developments in the region, his foreign minister
said on Tuesday,
The termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement
(VFA), which is central to one of Washington's most important alliances
in Asia, was due to take effect in August and was Duterte's biggest move
yet towards delivering on longstanding threats to downgrade ties with
the Philippines' former colonial ruler.
Foreign Secretary Teodoro
Locsin said the news that the Philippines was no longer abandoning the
pact was well received by the United States.
The mercurial
Duterte, known for his stinging rebukes of Western powers, has clashed
with Washington over numerous issues and has been open about his disdain
for his country's most important diplomatic ally and main provider of
military hardware and training.
His embrace of historic rival
China, a country deeply mistrusted by his U.S.-allied defence apparatus,
has attracted considerable criticism, with opponents accusing him of
gambling with sovereignty in pursuit of massive investments that have
not materialized.
The VFA provides the legal framework for which
U.S. troops can operate on a rotational basis in the Philippines and
experts say without it, their other bilateral defence agreements cannot
be implemented.
Duterte pulled the plug on the VFA on Feb. 11 in
an angry response to the revocation of a U.S. visa held by a former
police chief-turned-senator who led his war on drugs.
The official reason for Duterte's withdrawal was to enable the Philippines to diversify its foreign relations.
The U.S. Embassy in Manila welcomed the suspension.
"Our
long-standing alliance has benefited both countries, and we look
forward to continued close security and defense cooperation with the
Philippines," it said.
Critics had said the suspension was a
knee-jerk reaction that would weaken the Philippine military, denying it
access to scores of annual training exercises, including expertise in
tackling Islamist militants, natural disasters and maritime threats.
The
official notice of the suspension said the decision was taken "in light
of political and other developments in the region". It did not specify
what those were.
(Reporting by Karen Lema; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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World
Cambodian leader denies China's navy granted basing rights
 |
| Cambodian leader denies China's navy granted basing rights |
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia’s leader
declared Monday that China has not been given exclusive rights to use a
naval base on the country’s southern coast, and that warships from all
nations, including the United States, are welcome to dock there.
Prime
Minister Hun Sen was responding to persistent news reports and concern
expressed by Washington that Beijing had been granted basing privileges
at Cambodia’s Ream naval base on the Gulf of Thailand.
Speaking at
a road construction ceremony in the coastal city of Sihanoukville, Hun
Sen said he recently received a message from foreign envoys in Cambodia
about the issue.
He repeated denials he issued last year after The
Wall Street Journal reported that an early draft of a reputed agreement
seen by U.S. officials would allow China use of the Ream naval base for
30 years, where it would be able to post military personnel, store
weapons and berth warships.
Hun Sen pointed out that Cambodia’s
Constitution does not allow foreign military bases to be established on
its soil, but visiting ships are welcome.
“If one country’s
warship is allowed to dock at our navy base, the other countries’
warships will be able to dock, too. We are not going to close it to
anyone,” he said.
Hun Sen questioned what benefit Beijing would
get from having a base in Cambodia while it already has bases in the
South China Sea, to the east. China’s bases were established in waters
that are also claimed by other Southeast Asian countries.
Many
analysts believe basing rights in Cambodia would extend Beijing’s
strategic military profile considerably, and tilt the regional balance
of power in a manner that would pressure adjacent countries in the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations whose security concerns
traditionally have been aligned more closely with the United States.
Hun
Sen also said Cambodia was open to holding joint military exercises
with all foreign countries, but they would have to be conducted after
the threat from the coronavirus has passed. Cambodia has been only
mildly affected by the virus, according to official figures.
In
2017, Cambodia informed the United States that it was canceling an
annual joint military exercise that year and the next. It has not been
resumed. Cambodia hosted a joint military exercise with China in March
as the coronavirus crisis was growing.
China is Cambodia’s biggest
investor and closest political partner. Chinese support allows Cambodia
to ignore Western concerns about its poor record in human and political
rights, and in turn Phnom Penh generally supports Beijing’s
geopolitical positions in international forums on issues such as China’s
territorial claims in the South China Sea.
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World
China home-built aircraft carrier conducting sea trials
 |
| China home-built aircraft carrier conducting sea trials |
BEIJING (AP) — China’s Defense Ministry said
the navy’s only entirely home-built aircraft is carrying out sea trials
to test weapons and equipment and enhance training of the crew.
Ministry
spokesperson Ren Guoqiang said Friday the exercises were being
conducted as planned, apparently unaffected by the country’s coronavirus
outbreak.
The Shandong's commissioning last year by Chinese
President Xi Jinping underscored the country’s rise as a regional naval
power at a time of tensions with the U.S. and others over trade, Taiwan
and the South China Sea.
It is the second Chinese aircraft carrier
to enter service after the Liaoning, which was originally purchased as a
hulk from Ukraine and entirely refurbished.
Both are based on a
Soviet design with a ”ski jump” style flight deck for takeoffs rather
than the flat decks used by much larger U.S. aircraft carriers. It is
powered by a conventional oil-fueled steam turbine power plant, compared
to the nuclear fuel American carriers and submarines use.
China
is seen as striving to overtake the U.S. as the dominant naval power in
Asia and already boasts the world’s largest navy in numbers of vessels.
Beijing
says aircraft carriers are needed to protect its coastline and trade
routes, but they are also seen as backing up its claims to
self-governing Taiwan and the South China Sea.
The highly
secretive Chinese military was credited with aiding in the response to
the epidemic in the epicenter of Wuhan earlier this year, but no
information has been released about cases among military personnel or
any change in the armed forces’ readiness status.
The U.S. Navy,
in contrast, saw a public controversy over the spread of the coronavirus
aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the firing of the aircraft
carrier’s skipper in April.
The Roosevelt was operating in the
Western Pacific when the first crew members fell sick in late March.
About 1,100 crew members eventually tested positive for the cornonavirus
and one died. The ship was sidelined on Guam for nearly two months.
----
Home
| News
| China
US Conducts 2nd Freedom of Navigation Operation in Paracels in a Month
2020-05-28
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/usa-southchinasea-05282020143930.html
 |
An MH-60R helicopter lands aboard the flight deck of the
guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin as it sails near the Paracel
Islands, May 28, 2020.
US Navy photo
|
The U.S. Navy on Thursday sailed a guided missile destroyer close to
the Paracel Islands, its latest freedom of navigation operation in the
disputed South China Sea, drawing a furious reaction from Beijing.
The USS Mustin passed within 12 nautical miles of Woody Island
and Pyramid Rock, which are both occupied by China, according to an
unnamed U.S. Navy official cited by CNN.
The operation took place at an extremely delicate time in
U.S.-China relations after Washington declared that Hong Kong no longer
qualifies for special status under U.S. law, after Beijing moved to
impose national security legislation on China’s freest city.
It was also the second freedom of navigation operation, or
FONOP, the U.S. has conducted near the Paracels in a month, and follows
weeks of elevated tensions in the South China Sea as Beijing has moved
to assert its sweeping territorial claims, drawing U.S. criticism and
diplomatic protests from other claimants in Southeast Asia.
Lt. j.g. Rachel Maul, a spokesperson for the 7th Fleet, said in
a statement to RFA that the USS Mustin “asserted navigational rights
and freedoms in the Paracel Islands, consistent with international law.”
The exercise was not aimed at only China but also Vietnam and Taiwan, which also claim the Paracels, she said.
" Unlawful and sweeping maritime
claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of
the seas, including the freedom of navigation and overflight and the
right of innocent passage of all ships,” the spokesperson said.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, which is responsible
for China’s military conduct in the South China Sea, called the U.S.
operation a “naked act of hegemony” and claimed to have sent aircraft
and warships to monitor the USS Mustin’s passage.
The statement said the Mustin passed through the “territorial
waters” of China’s claimed features in the Paracels. Territorial waters
typically refers to the 12 nautical mile limit around an island or
coast.
DESRON 15, the Destroyer Squadron that the USS Mustin belongs to, released two photos of its transit through the Paracels
with an accompanying caption, stating the USS Mustin “is underway
conducting operations in support of security and stability in the
Indo-Pacific.” DESRON 15 describes itself as “U.S. 7th Fleet’s principal
surface force,” the 7th Fleet being the U.S. Navy force based at Yokosuka, Japan.
The FONOP follows a bilateral exercise between the U.S. and
Singaporean navies on Sunday and Monday, also in the South China Sea.
The USS Gabrielle Giffords joined the RSS Steadfast for the first ever
drill involving a U.S. littoral combat ship alongside the Singaporean
navy.
The USS Gabrielle Giffords is currently based at Singapore’s
Changi Naval Base. In mid-April it patrolled the South China Sea near
the site of a Chinese pressure campaign against a Malaysian-contracted
drillship in Malaysian waters. That stand-off has since ended.
“Meeting our partners at sea gives our navies the opportunity
to practice maritime proficiencies, and further strengthen the bond
between both countries,” said Capt. Ann McCann of the U.S. Navy’s DESRON
7 in a press release. “Engaging with our network of partners in the
region is essential to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
The last FONOP near the Paracels was on April 28. The maneuvers
are meant to exercise the right to innocent passage even in disputed
waters, and underline the U.S. position that China’s sweeping maritime
and territorial claims in the South China Sea are unlawful. Brunei,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the
area overlapping China’s.
On Tuesday, Philippine Defense Chief Delfin Lorenzana discussed
the South China Sea with his counterpart in Japan, Defense Minister
Taro Kono, the Philippine News Agency reported. That same day,
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte spoke by phone with Vietnam’s Prime
Minister Nguyen Xuan, according to Vietnamese state media. Both leaders
agreed to a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea issue and to
continue the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Code of Conduct
negotiations with China.
UPDATED at 7:20 P.M. EDT on 2020-05-28
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Defense News
Inhofe, Reed back new military fund to confront China
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/mco/XNWETOBTWFFWRN5AVGLLOHGQGY.jpg) |
The Liaoning aircraft carrier is accompanied
by frigates and submarines on April 12, 2018, conducting exercises in
the South China Sea. (Li Gang/Xinhua via AP) |
WASHINGTON ― As the U.S. Congress hardens against Beijing, two key
lawmakers publicly added their support for a new military fund to boost
deterrence against China in the Pacific, virtually assuring a Pacific Deterrence Initiative of some kind will be in the next defense policy bill.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and
ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., announced their new stance in a War on the Rocks op-ed
Thursday. They said their version will back investments in land-based,
long-range strike capabilities, but also “theater missile defense,
expeditionary airfield and port infrastructure, [and] fuel and munitions
storage,” to enable new modernized platforms, rather than buying more
of the platforms themselves.
“With the stakes so high, the time for action is now,” Inhofe and Reed
wrote. “The Pacific Deterrence Initiative will enhance budgetary
transparency and oversight, and focus resources on key military
capabilities to deter China. The initiative will also reassure U.S.
allies and partners, and send a strong signal to the Chinese Communist
Party that the American people are committed to defending U.S. interests
in the Indo-Pacific.
“The Pacific Deterrence Initiative will focus resources on these
efforts and others with the aim of injecting uncertainty and risk into
Beijing’s calculus, leaving just one conclusion: ‘Not today. You,
militarily, cannot win it, so don’t even try it.’”
The Senate leaders follow House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam
Smith, D-Wash., and ranking member Mac Thornberry, R-Tex in supporting
the idea of a PDI. Smith has backed the idea in concept but has not
publicly disclosed his priorities for the fund, while Thornberry has proposed spending $6 billion
in fiscal year 2021 on priorities that include air and missile defense
systems and new military construction in partner countries.
As Congress looks to replicate the multi-year European Deterrence Initiative
— which consumed $22 billion since its inception after Russia invaded
Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 — it has yet to be
negotiated how much could be spent in the Pacific, what it would buy
there and how long the fund would endure. Those questions will likely be
part of talks within the Armed Services and Appropriations committees.
“I expect to see some new money applied to these priorities in the
budget,” said Center for New American Security analyst Eric Sayers, who
has advocated for the fund.
“The real challenge now will be convincing the appropriators to join
them and then the Pentagon building it into their 2022 budget.”
Though Defense Secretary Mark Esper
has said China tops DoD’s adversaries list, the Pacific spending
proposals reflect some frustration within the Armed Services Committees
that the Pentagon has not prioritized the region in line with the
National Defense Strategy’s emphasis on great power competition. Inhofe
and Reed’s op-ed criticized the Pentagon’s emphasis on platforms when
they argue it should be emphasizing missions and the force posture,
capabilities and logistics that would enable those missions.
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World
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