Think Tank: Sea, air and land updates (29-MAR-2016)

Australian Collins class Submarine

Dione Hodgson, Ashleigh Sharp and Lachlan Wilson

Sea State

Tensions in the South China Sea continue to escalate, with around 100 Chinese ships detected in Malaysian waters near the Luconia Shoals on 24 March. In response, Malaysia sent its Maritime Enforcement Agency and navy to monitor the area, and Malaysia’s Minister for National Security, Shahidan Kassim, said it may take legal action if the ships enter Malaysia’s EEZ. China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said in a regular briefing that he ‘did not understand the details’ of the matter, but wanted to point out that it was currently fishing season in the South China Sea. For some interesting background reading, The National Interest takes a look at the evolving role of Chinese coastguards here.

One of the USN’s most enduring naval mysteries has finally been solved, with a USN tugboat missing since 1921 discovered sunk off the coast of San Francisco. According to a statement released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Navy on 23 March, the wreck of USS Conestoga was found about 50km west of San Francisco. The boat, the last USN ship to be lost without a trace during peacetime, left San Francisco on 25 March 1921, and was bound for American Samoa—via Hawaii—with 56 officers and sailors on board, when it disappeared in bad weather. The Telegraph has a video of the wreckage here.

Think Tank: ANZUS and the US Asian alliance network

Elsina Wainwright

The US presence in the Indo–Asia–Pacific is transforming, and Australia has a major interest in how it unfolds. That transformation is driven in large part by China’s rise, and has several important features.

First, US alliances with Australia, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea are being updated according to each ally’s changing strategic outlook. The US is helping to build up allied maritime, cyber and space resilience capability.

Second, the US is moving beyond the hub-and-spoke alliance framework, and encouraging spoke-to-spoke linkages and allied interoperability. Australia–Japan maritime security and defence/technology cooperation is growing, for example, and Japan is providing maritime security assistance to the Philippines.

Third, the US is strengthening ties with Southeast and South Asian partners and supporting linkages between US allies and those new partners. An extraordinary array of strategic relationships have been forged or enhanced over the last few years, including India–Vietnam and Singapore–Vietnam defence agreements, Vietnam–Philippine, Singapore–India, and Australia–Singapore strategic partnerships, and minilateral frameworks such as the US–Japan–Australia trilateral strategic dialogue and an India–Japan–Australia trilateral dialogue.

AUS: Landing craft move to a new home

HMAS Balikpapan in 2011 (Image: Wiki Commons)

LEUT Des Paroz (author)

The Royal Australian Navy’s final three Landing Craft Heavy – ex-HMA Ships Balikpapan, Betano and Wewak – were officially signed over to the Philippines Navy at a ceremony held at Darwin’s HMAS Coonawarra naval base recently.

As workhorses of the Australian Navy for some four decades, the vessels supported a wide range of military, peacekeeping and humanitarian exercises and operations around Australia and the Indo-Pacific region, and following the gifting of two of their sister ships last year, the Philippine Navy has also found the ships to provide an important operational capability.

The Commander of the Philippine Navy’s Sealift Amphibious Force, Commodore Rene V Medina, AFP, lead a small team to Darwin and Cairns to officially take ownership of the three craft.

USA: LCS Crew 101 Commanding Officer Relieved in Singapore

Image: Flickr User - U.S. Pacific Command

From U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs

PEARL HARBOR - The commanding officer of Crew 101 for the littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) was relieved March 28.

Cmdr. Michael L. Atwell was relieved by Rear Adm. Charles Williams, commander, Task Force 73, due to loss of confidence in Atwell’s ability to command.

The loss of confidence followed an investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding an engineering casualty that occurred on Jan. 12 in Singapore. While the investigation is still under review by leadership, sufficient findings of facts emerged during the investigation to warrant the relief of the commanding officer. Atwell has been temporarily re-assigned to Littoral Combat Ship Squadron (LCSRON) 1 in San Diego, California.

Cmdr. Lex Walker, Deputy Commodore, Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 7, will assume temporary duties as commanding officer until a permanent relief is assigned.

Fort Worth is a littoral combat ship rotationally deployed to the 7th Fleet area of responsibility since November 2014, and is homeported in San Diego.

No decision has been made yet on the options for follow-on repairs to Fort Worth related to the Jan. 12 engineering casualty. As Fort Worth demonstrated through continuous operations in 2015, littoral combat ships provide an important capability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region and planning continues for future LCS deployments.

US Pacific Fleet

USA: U.S., Cambodian Forces Close Angkor Sentinel 2016

By Army Master Sgt. Mary E. Ferguson, 8th Theater Sustainment Command 

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

KAMPONG SPEU PROVINCE, Cambodia, March 28, 2016 — As Angkor Sentinel 2016 drew to a close March 25, U.S. and Cambodian forces wrapped up two weeks of bilateral training and relationship-building with a ceremony and a Royal Cambodian Army capability demonstration at the Training School for Multinational Peacekeeping Forces here.

This year marked the seventh iteration of the annual bilateral military exercise hosted by the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and sponsored by U.S. Army Pacific. The exercise is designed to collectively strengthen the two countries’ humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities and improve military-to-military cooperation.

“The men and women of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have again and again demonstrated their commitment to serve,” said U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia William Headt. “When storms or floods have affected Cambodia, service members have responded. The Cambodian military is a critical government asset in providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and I’m proud that the United States has been able to support Cambodia in this important task.”

News Report: Don’t Miss the Boat on Australian and U.S. Policy in the South China Sea

China’s shifting definition of the Nine-Dash Line
Image: US State Dept (Click Image to enlarge)

By: James Kraska and Pete Pedrozo

Australia’s 2016 Defense White Paper expresses concern over “friction” in the South China Sea (SCS) arising from U.S.-Chinese naval interactions, and it worries that territorial disputes have created “uncertainty and tension.” Those statements, which show Canberra (like the rest of the states in the Indo-Pacific region) is slowly coming around to the gathering threat posed by China to freedom of the seas.

Predictably, the Mandarins in Beijing harshly criticized Australia, as did reliably pro-Chinese scholars such as Sam Bateman in an article in East Asia Forum. Those antagonists view Australia’s new White Paper as a move by Canberra to support U.S. naval operations in the region and a deepening of the Australia-U.S. Alliance.

Bateman, for example, accused the United States of ignoring the “carefully balanced regime of exclusive economic zones (EEZ) established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) when conducting naval operations in the SCS. Adm. Harry Harris, commander, U.S. Pacific Command, for example, recently pledged that the U.S. Navy “must continue to operate in the South China Sea to demonstrate that water space and the air above it is ‘international’ in character.”

While the EEZ is sui generis—neither territorial seas nor high seas —the balance of rights and interests in the zone inure to the international community and not the coastal state. While it is true that coastal states enjoy limited rights in the EEZ, the term “international waters” is an accurate shorthand reference used by navies to describe all waters seaward of the territorial sea. While the coastal state has rather limited and circumscribed rights in the EEZ, the ships and aircraft of all nations enjoy all the high seas freedoms and other internationally uses of the seas, except those that interfere with narrowly prescribed coastal state rights, such as fishing. The EEZ was cut out of the high seas in order to grant coastal states a handful of limited rights, and it is correct as a matter of law to describe the zone as “international waters” for military purposes.

News Report: Trump’s Asia Security Criticisms Set Off Talk of Nuclear Arms Race

Donald Trump (Image: Wiki Commons)

Brian Padden

SEOUL—Donald Trump, the front-running U.S. presidential candidate for the Republican Party, is not winning a lot of friends among America’s key allies in Asia after criticizing their contributions to regional security and suggesting they develop their own nuclear arsenals.

In an interview with The New York Times, the Republican front-runner called for a complete reassessment of longstanding U.S. security pacts with Japan and South Korea.

Trump has in the past criticized both Asian allies as “free-riders” for paying Washington too little for contributing 50,000 American troops in Japan and 28,500 in South Korea to maintain peace and security.

Saying the U.S. “cannot afford to be losing vast amounts of billions of dollars” to support peace and security in the region, Trump told the newspaper he would also consider withdrawing troops if Tokyo and Seoul did not agree to increase security reimbursements to Washington.

Trump said he would be open to allowing Japan and South Korea to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves against potential nuclear threats from North Korea and China, adding, “if the United States keeps on its path, its current path of weakness, they’re going to want to have that anyway.”

Trump’s position has drawn harsh rebukes from officials and analysts who say such radical changes would greatly undermine U.S. credibility and alliances in the region, would likely lead to a nuclear arms race in Asia and would undercut international efforts to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

“It would be extremely damaging and plays right into the hands of the hardliners in Pyongyang,” said Daniel Pinkston, a lecturer in international relations with Troy University in Seoul.

News Story: N. Korea nukes Washington on video, threatens South

North Korea released a new propaganda video Saturday showing a nuclear strike on Washington and then threatened South Korea with a "merciless military strike" for slandering leader Kim Jong-Un.

Pyongyang has been ramping up the bellicose rhetoric and propaganda for weeks, since the launch of annual South Korea-US war games that it views as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

Seoul and Washington made the already large-scale joint drills bigger than ever this year in response to the North's nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch a month later.

Menacingly titled "Last Chance", the video released on Saturday shows a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington and concludes with the US flag in flames.

The four-minute video romps through the history of US-Korean relations and ends with a digitally manipulated sequence showing a missile surging through clouds, swerving back to Earth and slamming down in front of Washington's Lincoln Memorial.

The US Capitol building explodes in the impact and a message flashes up on the screen in Korean: "If US imperialists budge an inch toward us, we will immediately hit them with nuclear (weapons)."

Read the full story at SpaceDaily

News Story: Pakistan protests to India after 'spy' arrest

Pakistan on Friday protested to India after arresting a man suspected of being an Indian spy, sparking a new diplomatic tiff between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

The man was arrested during a raid in the southwestern province of Balochistan, Pakistani media reports said quoting local security officials, calling him an agent with India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence agency.

A Pakistani foreign ministry statement described the incident as the "illegal entry into Pakistan by a RAW officer and his involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi".

Read the full story at SpaceWar

News Story: Military cooperation plays key role in boosting Vietnam-China ties, Vietnamese party chief

HANOI, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Cooperation between the Vietnamese and Chinese armies has played a key role in developing relations between the two parties and countries, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong said.

When meeting with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan on Sunday, Trong expressed his gratitude for the support of Chinese party and people during Vietnam's struggle for independence and reform.

Vietnam attaches great importance to developing the friendly cooperation with China in all fields, said the Vietnam party chief, adding that military cooperation has played a pillar role in pushing forward relationship between the two parties and countries in a healthy and stable way.

He expressed his belief that the Chinese defense minister's visit will further contribute to developing bilateral ties, and enhancing friendship between the two peoples.

Read the full story at Xinhua