Romeo Squared

Defense with a Baltic edge

Posts by Anders Puck Nielsen

How China modernized its fishing fleet in the South China Sea

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Ryan D. Martinson in a piece titled Xi likes big boats (coming soon to a reef near you) on War on the Rocks:

Photos the Philippine government released in March show nests of Chinese fishing vessels moored in the lagoon of the disputed reef. Aside from the sheer number of craft present, one is struck by the size of individual vessels. Satellite images reveal many boats 60 meters (almost 200 feet) in length — dwarfing the Philippine Coast Guard vessel (BRP Cabra) sent to monitor their activities.

Chinese fishers did not buy these boats out of mere love for Xi. Even if that were their motive, they could not afford these expensive craft without some help. Rather, the more than 200 fishing vessels seen congregating at Whitsun Reef are largely a product of policies that China has designed to prioritize Spratly fishing vessels in a national program to modernize the country’s fishing industry. This program has provided China’s maritime militia with potent new tools with which to exert influence and control in disputed maritime space — posing significant new challenges for Southeast Asian states.

Fascinating account of how China under Xi’s leadership around 2012 initiated a massive upgrade of its fishing fleet in the South China Sea. Small wooden boats have been replaced by massive steel-hulled ships that dwarf the coastguard vessels of neighboring states.

Obviously, these “fishing” ships are organized in China’s Maritime Militia, which arguably is a hybrid force designed to challenge the rule of international law in the South China Sea. It is worrisome that both China and Russia seem to have their crosshairs fixed on UNCLOS.

No turning back

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Sam Greene on his blog:

By the summer of 2019, it should have been clear that this prediction was wrong. The Kremlin ramped up arrests and street violence (albeit not to American levels on the latter count), culminating in the arrest of some 11,000 people in January 2021. Since then, they have moved to bar autonomous political activity writ large: Navalny is in jail, his organizations are on the verge of being declared ‘extremist‘, media outlets and even individual journalists are declared “foreign agents” and largely deprived of income, and the lawyers who stand up to all of this in court are — for the first time anyone can remember — themselves subject to prosecution.

Why did I get this wrong? My only explanation is that I misunderstood the cost-benefit analysis from the Kremlin’s point of view.

Interesting perspective on the Kremlin’s much harder line against the opposition.

Russia challenges international law with Black Sea prohibition zones

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Over the last month we witnessed a massive Russian mobilization on the Ukrainian borders. The exact purpose of the show of force is still uncertain, but the immediate risk of war seems to be over as most of the soldiers are now back in their barracks. However, the closed areas in the Black Sea that Russia established remain in place.

There has been much confusion as to what exactly it is that Russia is doing with these zones. For example there are reports like this one saying that the Kerch Strait is closed for Ukrainian vessels, while others say that the Kerch Strait will stay open. So I thought it would be useful to look into the question.

What is Russia doing?

Russia has announced that from 24 April until 31 October 2021, the right to innocent passage of Russian territorial waters is suspended for foreign warships and other state ships in three defined zones in the Black Sea. The coordinates are listed on page 28 in the Russian navigational warnings 17/21.

I have marked the three zones in the image below. As can be seen, one of the zones covers the southern approaches to the Kerch Strait. This means that in practical terms the Kerch Strait is closed for Ukrainian warships and other government ships. The two other zones cover the westernmost and southernmost areas of Crimea.

Prohibited zones off Crimea
The areas that Russia says are closed for foreign warships and government vessels. Map from OpenSeaMap.org.

Innocent passage is defined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) articles 17-19. The gist is that all ships have the right to navigation through the territorial sea of another state. The passage must take place in a continuous and expeditious manner, and it is not allowed to engage in activities other than those related to the passage such as weapons practice or intelligence collection.

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From a Baltic Commanders Conference to a maritime component command in 10 years

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Sebastian Bruns and Julian Pawlak on CIMSEC:

As early as 2015, the Baltic Commanders Conference (BCC), a consultation format, was launched in response to altered security policy constellations and was intended to strengthen communication and cooperation between the neighboring navies – including non-Baltic state Norway, but without Russia.

The German Maritime Forces Staff (DEU MARFOR), established in 2019, bundles together the previous smaller task forces in Germany and, with German and international posts, will form the core staff of the Baltic Maritime Component Command (BMCC), which is currently being set up. From 2025 the German Navy intends to develop key maritime skills with the BMCC and seeks to be able to take over the tactical leadership of multinational units in the Baltic, the North Sea, and the North Atlantic. For this purpose, NATO’s unique “Baltic Sea Headquarters” will be offered as a command center for national and allied defense operations on the northern flank.

Remarkable how much can change in one decade.

Interview with Corporal Frisk about military reductions in UK

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I recently published an interview on YouTube with the Finnish defense blogger Robin Häggblom aka Corporal Frisk about the United Kingdom’s new integrated review and the plans for force adjustments outlined in the Defence in a competitive age report.

Robin Häggblom wrote an insightful and critical analysis on his blog, where he raised many question marks about the details in the plan. Ostensibly, the goal is to create mobile, deployable, and lethal forces that will support a “Global Britain” approach to warfighting. Beneath the surface there seem to be many inconsistencies, though, and one could fear that the result will be weaker and less coherent capabilities.

I asked Robin if he would elaborate on his thoughts in an interview, and the was this video:

As a sidenote, one of the reasons this blog hasn’t received so much attention lately is that I have been busy with a podcast and a YouTube channel. It’s a lot of fun, but unfortunately time is a limited resource and there just hasn’t been enough time for everything.

Since both the podcast and the YouTube videos have been in Danish, there has been little potential for cross-posting content. That might change now that I have discovered YouTube’s subtitle function. I intend to post regular new videos in English, and I trust that YouTube’s algorithms will make sure only to suggest content in the right language for subscribers. So feel free to subscribe to my channel on YouTube if you are interested.

Clausewitz may help us understand why forever wars take forever

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David Betz has written an article in Military Strategy Magazine titled In Search of a Point: The Blob at War on the importance of Clausewitz in modern war theory:

[Consider] that the greatest military power in the world today has not won a war in seventy-five years. So accustomed now is the world to this fact that it seems unremarkable when statesmen and commanders regularly voice the most astonishing garbage. ‘There is no military solution’, they say while deploying military force somewhere to do something, with a fig leaf of ‘whole of government’ other means—almost always badly-organised, ill-conceived, and under-skilled, though surprisingly often well-funded.
[…]
In other words, the situation is that we frequently use military force as a tool of policy; the complication is that we have policy desires that are often strategically ridiculous, usually because they are props in domestic political theatre more than anything else, and/or hubristic and not actually achievable by military force. We have lost track of what war is for, and that is the case because (crazy as it sounds) we have lost track of what war is. Hence, the contemporary relevance of Clausewitz because for all of his faults he had a distinct view on that point.

The whole article is a delightful read. Betz delivers an eloquent and scathing critique of the theoretical understanding of war expressed by figures like Jim Mattis.

Bonus points for getting the sentence “provides a little more lubricant before administering the suppository” into a peer reviewed article.

Armenia’s over-confidence and the catastrophic defeat in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War

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Great article by Michael A. Reynolds for War on the Rocks about Armenia’s painful defeat in the recent war with Azerbaijan:

This second conflict came as no surprise. With peace talks stalled, Azerbaijan had, for over a decade, been threatening war and ostentatiously arming for one. Nor was the war’s outcome any surprise. The bigger and better equipped Azerbaijani army, backed by Turkey, overwhelmed the smaller and obsolescent Armenian force. What is a surprise is the way Armenia’s leadership for over two decades remained stubbornly blind to the likelihood of such a debacle ― and even contributed to it by alienating allies and needlessly provoking enemies. One might have expected that as a tiny, isolated, and resource-poor country with a tragic history stamped by violence, Armenia would have taken a more realist approach to diplomacy, displaying hardheaded pragmatism, cunning, and shrewd cynicism. Yet to the contrary, Armenian statecraft has revealed itself as a mix of delusional self-confidence and naïve sentimentality.

Why Small Navies Prefer Warfighting over Counter-Piracy

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I recently published an article in a the book Maritime Security: Counter-Terrorism Lessons from Maritime Piracy and Narcotics Interdiction, edited by Edward R. Lucas, Thomas Crosbie, Samuel Rivera-Paez, and Felix Jensen, ISBN 978-1-64368-088-0.

The final publication is available at IOS Press through http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/NHSDP200055. Fortunately, the publisher makes it possible for authors to publish their work on personal or institution websites, which is great because open access to research is important. Therefore, I have also published the article below to make it accessible to a broader audience, or you can download a watermarked version of the final article.

In the article, I use recent operational history of the Royal Danish Navy as a case study into the particular challenges that small navies face. Denmark provides a useful lens because the long counter-piracy mission from 2008–2015 consumed a substantial amount of the navy’s collective warfighting resources. The experience was that it was impossible to maintain a sufficient level of warfighting skills while also committing so many resources to a maritime policing operation. From the literature on small navies it is identified that they typically struggle with problems related to critical mass of materiel, maintaining a sufficient training and education system, limited bureaucratic strength, and a tendency of their leaders to be over-ambitious. It is shown that the requirement to prioritize resources has enticed the Danish Navy to find innovative solutions, but that in the process some choices may have led to an unconscious acceptance of lower standards and disregard for the complexity of less prestigious tasks.

Introduction

In this chapter I examine how small navies manage conflicting requirements when forced to prioritize between maritime security operations and high-intensity warfighting. All navies face the challenge of balancing ambitions and means, but small navies are particularly obliged to make hard choices. For them, setting priorities is often a matter of abandoning tasks altogether, whereas larger navies have more resources to shuffle around.

I use a case study of Denmark as a prism into the problem. Denmark provides a good example because the country has combined a lean military structure with an impressive willingness to commit naval forces abroad. This means that the Royal Danish Navy (RDN) has had to display flexibility to make ends meet. Between 2008 and 2015, the counter-piracy mission around the Horn of Africa absorbed most of the resources for the country’s larger warships. Then, in 2015, a dramatic shift in focus occurred, as the Navy removed its ships from the counter-piracy effort and instead focused on regaining lost abilities in high-intensity warfighting. The consensus was that the counter-piracy effort had influenced negatively on the performance of the warships in traditional naval disciplines, and that it was time to “get back to basics.”

The Danish example is profound, but it is also characteristic. All small navies face similar dilemmas of balancing tasks and resources. It is also common to experience that a long counter-piracy mission makes it hard for a crew to remain sharp at high-intensity warfighting. But the Danish case is particularly useful, because Denmark committed so wholeheartedly to the operation against Somali piracy for six years and then quit abruptly.
First, I lay out the theory about small navies. I elaborate on the theoretical aspects, as the goal of the chapter is to say something general about small navies and not particularly about Denmark. I examine different standards by which navies can be categorized, and I show why it is reasonable to say that Denmark has a small navy. This may seem like a commonsense argument, but indeed by some of the popular categorization models the RDN is not small. Then I move on to describing the particular challenges that small navies face. I particularly draw on Geoffrey Till’s (2003, 2014, 2016) writing to derive a model that can function as a framework for analysis. This model identifies critical mass, training and education, and political influence as the three areas that particularly cause problems for small navies. I also expand on a point by Basil Germond (2016) to show that small navies gravitate toward overstretch in order to overcome the inherent unpleasantness of “smallness.”

Then I move on to describing the history of the Danish engagement in the counter-piracy mission off Somalia. I show that it was a hard mission, and that it took time before the RDN and the bureaucracy at home mastered the challenges. I also describe the costs that counter-piracy had for the Navy in regard to retention problems and training standards. To solve these problems, the RDN contracted with training institutions in the United Kingdom and Germany to bring the ships back up to standards. To this day, this training and certification effort remains the most pronounced commitment for the Danish warships.

In the last section of the chapter, I analyze the Danish counter-piracy endeavor from a perspective of small navy theory. I identify patterns and problems related to critical mass, training and education, and political influence, and I point to instances where the desire to overcome smallness has led the RDN to make compromises. I apply the theory with a critical approach to investigate assumptions and explanations. In all areas this leads to distinctive explanations and warnings about possible pitfalls, and especially within the category of training and education the critical approach indicates some areas where unconscious assumptions may have led the RDN to make choices that probably aren’t helpful in the long run. This contributes with particular (and hopefully useful) knowledge about the RDN, but it also provides an example of how small navy mechanisms play out more generally, and how such an analysis could be performed with a different case study in mind.

Theory about small navies

The first problem in a theoretical discussion about small navies is how to define them. Several classification systems have been developed to group navies into conceptual categories. One of the more popular models was created by the naval historian Eric Grove in 1990. The system was mainly based on quantitative data about a navy’s capabilities, and its nine categories were defined by the ability to project power abroad (Germond, 2016, pp. 35–36). Grove later revised his system and optimistically included Denmark as a rank three navy because of the improvements in force structure (Grove, 2016, p. 18). This places Denmark as a “Medium Regional Force Projection Navy.” Grove notes that small navies are from level four and smaller, so by this standard, the RDN is not a small navy.

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Russia is up to something: Probably about Belarus

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Russia is up to something. These last few weeks we have seen a variety of bold military moves by Russia. Individually, they are all noteworthy but could be explained as expressions of local dynamics. However, when viewed together, it is too remarkable to be a coincidence.

First there was the confrontation between American and Russian forces in Syria, which left seven U.S. soldiers injured after their vehicle was rammed by a Russian vehicle.

Then Sweden found it necessary to raise the military readiness level for the first time since 1991 in response to what appears to be large-scale Russian exercise activities including operations with amphibious forces in close vicinity to the island of Gotland.

Then Russia held substantial naval exercises in the Bering Strait close to Alaska. The Russians had apparently chosen an exercise area that brought them into close contact with American fishermen. There was much talk on the internet about a Russian nuclear submarine submerging close to Alaska, but that may have turned out to be a false story. Nevertheless, it was a remarkable exercise that included firing of cruise missiles from the nuclear submarine Omsk and the Slava-class cruiser Varyag. Also in Alaska, the US Air Force has been scrambled six times in the month of August to intercept Russian aircraft, which is a lot considering that it normally happens about the same number of times in a year. 2020 is well on its way to setting a new record for such interceptions in Alaska.

Finally, last Friday a Russian Su-27 Flanker performed some rather braindead maneuvers in front of an American B-52 bomber over the Black Sea. NATO later announced that on the same day, another Su-27 violated Danish airspace close to the island of Bornholm. This is the first time since 2014 that a Russian aircraft has violated Danish airspace, so it is a rare incident.

A Russian Su-27 performs dangerous maneuvers in front of an American B-52 bomber. Watch the video to the end to see the second time it happens, which is much closer than the first.

So what is going on? Viewed in isolation, each of these incidents could be explained as reasonably within or just slightly beyond a normal pattern of operations. But when held together, it is clear that something extraordinary is happening. So many noteworthy things don’t just happen by coincidence. It has got to be a coordinated effort on the part of the Russian military to increase tensions.

The New York Times have also noticed the remarkable level of Russian assertiveness, and they conclude that it must have something to do with U.S.-Russia relations. I don’t think so. This much military saber rattling within a few weeks indicates that there is something more specific going on, and the unusually intensive Baltic connection suggests that this region has particular significance.

I say it is about Belarus. The message is that the West should keep the heck out no matter what Russia choses to do in that country. They are reminding us the many ways it can become unpleasant if we continue to interfere. Foreign minister Lavrov has indicated that in Russia’s view, EU and NATO carry the blame for the current turmoil in Belarus, because the West keeps enticing the protesters.

What we are witnessing is a military shaping operation that creates the conditions for Russian interference in Belarus. This does not mean that Russia will actually interfere, and in fact they’d probably rather avoid committing forces in Belarus. But they are preparing the environment to make it possible if need be.

Oh, and the Navalny poisoning may be a part of this operation too. The only reason to use the novichok nerve agent is if you want people to know who did it. It is a friendly reminder of how ruthless the Russian authorities can be, and that the real losers in Belarus will be the protesters that the West supposedly cares about.

Operational countermeasures against Russian A2/AD – My contribution to new FOI report

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Better late than never. Almost a month ago the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) published a report about Anti-Access and Area Denial warfare (A2/AD), and I had the privilege of contributing with a chapter. However, I have been so busy doing other things that I just didn’t get around to writing a plug here on the blog before now.

The new report is called Beyond Bursting Bubbles, and it is a sequel to their much acclaimed Bursting the Bubble report from last year. In the original report, FOI pointed out that Russian missile capabilities and A2/AD assets are widely overrated in Western defense debates. As they pointed out, there are several obstacles to effective A2/AD, and there are several things the West can do to counter such moves. This piece of truth earned FOI a lot of publicity, as it challenged the widely accepted practice of drawing definitive red circles around Russian strongholds to indicate impenetrable A2/AD bubbles.

The new report is an anthology with contributions from a panel of scholars and practitioners. The list of authors is impressive, and I am humbled to be included:

  • Michael Jonsson and Robert Dalsjö, FOI (Sweden)
  • Justin Bronk, Royal United Services Institute,(United Kingdom)
  • Douglas Barrie, International Institute for Strategic Studies (United Kingdom)
  • Jamie Meighan, Royal Air Force (United Kingdom)
  • Sam J. Tangredi, US Naval War College (USA)
  • Anders Puck Nielsen, Royal Danish Defence College (Denmark)
  • Ilmārs A. Lejiņš, Latvian Army (Latvia)
  • Robin Häggblom, Independent Analyst (Finland)
  • Alexander Lanoszka, University of Waterloo (Canada) and Luis Simón, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium)
  • Keir Giles, Chatham House (United Kingdom)
  • Ben Hodges, Center for European Policy Analysis (USA)

My own chapter approaches the problem of A2/AD from an operational angle. It is a refined and much improved expression of the argument in this blog post. The essence is that we need to look at A2/AD not only from the angle of what is possible, but also considering if it makes any sense. Russia will only attempt A2/AD if it helps them achieve some desirable political goal. If establishing A2/AD is politically unattractive, they are not going to do it. FOI did a great job last year of debunking some of the myths about Russia’s missiles, but their focus was mainly tactical, and I felt the argument would be even stronger if it included political and strategic perspectives. This leads to what I have chosen to call operational countermeasures against A2/AD, which is basically just a moniker to describe ways to turn A2/AD into a counterproductive political headache for Russia.

One of the benefits to being late with this advertisement is that I get to comment on some of the feedback I have received. If I could write it all over, I would probably spend some more energy on a theoretical discussion about the difference between A2/AD and air combat in general. A surprising number of people seem not to distinguish between these two things, which just goes to show how commoditized the concept of A2/AD has become. I doubt that Russia could use A2/AD as a meaningful tactic in the Baltic region, but obviously I am not arguing that they would avoid using their missiles for air combat in general.