Romeo Squared

Defense with a Baltic edge

Navy

The future of the Russian Navy – Last episode of interview with Jonas Kjellén

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Here is the third and last episode in my interview with Jonas Kjellén. Here we discuss the future trends and developments for the Russian Navy.

According to Jonas, the future looks bright for the Russian Navy. They now have lead ships ready for many classes, and in the coming years we will see serial production of these units. This will ensure that the Russian Navy gradually overcomes the shortcomings created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the coming years we should therefore expect to see a more harmonious Russian navy that is more active on the world’s oceans, including in the Arctic and the Mediterranean.

The risks of outsourcing merchant shipping to foreign owners

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Sal Mercogliano has a thoughtful look in CIMSEC on the grounding of MV Ever Given that blocked the Suez Canal for six days:

Today, international corporations, with ships flying the flags of open registries, dominate the world’s oceans but with little means of protection. This is readily apparent to the Indian crew, onboard the Taiwan-based Evergreen vessel, managed by a German firm, with an American classification society, owned by a Japanese company, with insurance in Great Britain, and trapped in Egyptian waters. That is the situation facing world trade and maritime infrastructure today that is largely absent from most military and naval discussions but essential to the world’s economy and the military’s logistics. Failure to invest in domestic infrastructure and trade will place nations at the mercy of forces beyond their control. While that may be sufficient for many nations, any country wishing to be considered a sea power should heed the words of Mahan, as recently recapped by Andrew Lambert in “What is a Navy For?” and consider, “What is a Merchant Marine For?”

The article also contains a fascinating account of the history of container ships. It’s just incredible how big they have grown and how quickly.

Decarbonization raises capacity questions for shipbuilding and wartime repairs

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Benjamin Clark discusses in CIMSEC How the Decarbonization Dilemma Will Impact Shipbuilding and Great Power Competition:

A decline in shipbuilding capacity is a clear and troubling trend, especially for those working in the U.S. maritime industry, and it is critical to assess the challenges this decline creates for the country’s ability to wage a protracted maritime war. It may not be possible in a crisis situation to execute a rapid ramp-up of shipbuilding capacity to support military operations.

Planned decarbonization could put this possibility out of reach, because industries relying on traditional fossil fuel sources will feature greater reliability and output compared to industries undergoing an uneven transition toward more novel renewable energy sources.

This is not an anti-renewable energy piece, but it does raise an important warning mark as the shipbuilding industry makes this transition.

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.

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.

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 signs contract for new versatile helicopter carriers

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A few weeks ago, TASS announced that Russia has signed a contract for two project 23900 large universal landing ships. These are very large ships able to carry up to 20 heavy helicopters, small boats, and up to 900 naval infantry soldiers.

This is not particularly surprising, but it is still an interesting confirmation that Russia is on track with this project. Last fall, it was confirmed that Russia was close to beginning the actual construction of such ships, and in January we even learned the names of the two helicopter carriers: They will be called Sevastopol and Vladivostok. (Update: Turns out they will actually be called Ivan Rogov and Mitrofan Moskalenko.) These are the same names that were intended for the two Mistral-class ships that were canceled by France after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. It is thus somewhat ironic that the two new ships will be built at the Zaliv shipyard in Crimea.

In a piece for Forbes, David Axe notes that the sketches of the Russian ships look very similar to the Mistral-class, and he goes so far as to hint that Russia more or less blatantly has copied the design. He also notes that “just because Russia plans to copy the Mistral design doesn’t mean it will succeed in doing so. The Russian shipbuilding industry in recent years has struggled to build any vessel larger than a frigate.” This article caused some indignation in Russia, and Gazeta.ru found the need for a rebuttal. They mobilized professor Boris Usvyatsov to explain why Russia absolutely hasn’t stolen design clues from the French. The rebuttal seems weak, though. Usvyatsov explains that there is a fundamental difference in philosophy between Russia and the West in the design of amphibious ships, and therefore it is certain that Russia has nothing to gain from copying. In the West, amphibious operations are mostly conducted with helicopters, whereas the Russian approach is to roll amphibious armored vehicles off the ship through a bow visor. He also explains that maritime operations are conducted differently in Russia and the West, and for that reason Russia has no benefit from the command facilities that the Mistral-class offers.

One has to wonder whether Usvyatstov has even seen the sketches of the new ships. He claims so, but it is hard to follow his logic while comparing to the pictures. It unmistakably looks like a Mistral-class, and it obviously is designed primarily for helicopter operations. But his comments do emphasize one important thing about this class of ships: They are not primarily meant for amphibious assaults. This is also why I object to the classical Western classification of them as amphibious assault ships or amphibious assault carriers. Sure, that is one thing they can do, but they are an extremely versatile maritime platform that is optimized for pretty much any kind of interaction with land, and they benefit from a large size and endurance. They are useful for amphibious assaults, but they are also perfect for tasks like disaster relief, logistical support, special operations, and operational command. Therefore, I find the Russian classification as “universal landing ships” more accurate than the Western “amphibious assault ships”. It is ironic that the Russian professor is the one to focus narrowly on amphibious assaults.

These ships are the future of Russia’s maritime global power projection capability. Forget the Shtorm-class aircraft carriers or the Lider-class cruisers. Russia can’t afford them, and frankly their money is better spent on more frigates and destroyers. But the universal landing ships provide unique capabilities that cannot be compensated for with smaller platforms or longer range aviation. They are the multi-tool of giant warships, and they will give Russia the ability to project power onto shores in a variety of different ways in almost any scenario. Just imagine the forceful message it would send if Russia had such a ship lingering off Tripoli these days.