capability development

Hedge with Non-Kinetic Defense

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By Connor Keating

In April 2025, Admiral Samuel Paparo delivered his annual posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee, arguing that the United States must invest in several capabilities to remain competitive in the Indo-Pacific: command, control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (C5ISRT); counter-C5ISRT (C‑C5ISRT); fires; integrated air and missile defense (IAMD); force sustainment; autonomous and AI-driven systems; and maritime domain awareness and sea control. According to Admiral Paparo, space, AI, and IAMD are critical enablers for reducing risk to U.S. forces in a conflict with China. These capabilities offer exquisite performance for roughly 95 percent of the missions the United States might face short of full-scale war, but they may not be the most cost‑effective way to reduce risk in a high‑end fight with China.

In “C-Note” #3 and in his address at the Surface Navy Association’s 38th National Symposium in January 2026, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle outlined a new “hedge strategy.”1 He explained that the Navy will build a general-purpose force—the 95 percent solution—while pursuing “tailored offsets” that augment the general-purpose force and cover the high-intensity 5 percent beyond it. Examples of hedge capabilities in his C‑Note include special operations forces to counter terrorism, ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) for nuclear deterrence, and the “Hellscape” concept to defeat a Taiwan invasion force.2 Taken together, Admiral Paparo’s requests and Admiral Caudle’s strategy suggest a gap: the Navy is investing heavily in the 95‑percent, general‑purpose force but underinvesting in simple, low‑cost hedge capabilities tailored to the most dangerous 5 percent of scenarios. This article focuses on one particularly dangerous contingency within that 5 percent—a high‑end conflict with China—and argues that the Navy should rapidly field a set of low‑cost, non‑kinetic hedge capabilities that improve platform survivability by stressing the entire Chinese kill chain and driving up adversary salvo requirements.

A Non-Kinetic Hedge Strategy

To be effective, hedge strategies must be relatively low‑cost in peacetime, sustainable over time, and quickly fielded when a high‑end scenario occurs. This makes kinetic and non‑kinetic drone‑ship solutions appealing for increasing magazine capacities and survivability. In practice, this means pairing manned surface combatants with unmanned platforms that can either shoot (kinetic) or sense, jam, and deceive (non‑kinetic). By adding more platforms that an adversary must detect and target—and by using some of them as decoys or stand‑in targets—the manned ships themselves become harder to find and kill. However, while potentially potent, drones’ rapid obsolescence and continuous upgrade cycle can drive up peacetime costs—especially if the Navy must sustain multiple bespoke designs—demanding a robust and affordable sustainment ecosystem.3

A more cost‑effective hedge for this high-end contingency is a set of modular non-kinetic defense systems that can be stored in peacetime and rapidly deployed in crisis. For the Navy, these could include an improved passive countermeasure system (PCMS) and radar reflectors for surface ships; inflatable decoys and radar reflectors for aircraft; and small-footprint jammer and dazzler packages that enable theater-wide deception. This article proposes three such hedge strategies: one for surface ships, one for aircraft, and one centered on small, mobile jammer and dazzler packages.

Surface Ship “Hedge Strategies”

The surface Navy could be at substantial risk from Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) in a high-end conflict. Missiles such as the DF-26 and soon, the DF-27 can engage ships at ranges of more than 2,000 nautical miles.4,5 Some might argue that U.S. ballistic‑missile defense (BMD) is sufficient to counter these threats. It is not, for both performance and capacity reasons. U.S. BMD has struggled against Iranian threats in defense of Israel, Qatar, and in the recently launched U.S. war with Iran, allowing multiple leaks through and expending billions in interceptors.6, 7 This experience highlights not only the operational and strategic implications of interceptor shortages, but also the tactical implications of finite shipboard magazines: every missile fired in defense cannot be used in offense.8 If U.S. and allied systems struggled to stop a limited number of Iranian missiles, they are unlikely to keep pace with large-scale salvos from the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). Even if they could, U.S. and allied BMD systems and ships are likely to exhaust their inventories faster due to the shot doctrine employed. The solution lies in exploiting inherent weaknesses in missile seekers and ballistic missile kill chains.

Missile seekers—specifically ASBM seekers—must search a significant area from a top-down angle to find a target. This forces the seeker to deal with substantial sea clutter and requires significant onboard processing.9 U.S. surface combatants help adversary seekers by presenting large radar cross sections (RCS), and existing measures to mitigate this—such as treatment with PCMS tiles—only modestly reduce RCS. Further, more seekers are incorporating multiple modes, including not only an active radar but also a passive sensor and Infrared (IR) Imaging sensors.10 Advances in radar‑ and IR‑absorbing materials—such as carbon‑nanotube (CNT) tiles and polyaniline (PANI) or vanadium dioxide (VO₂) paint coatings—could yield significantly improved PCMS, with open-source studies suggesting potential reductions in RCS on the order of more than 15 dBsm and IR signatures by roughly 20 percent.11, 12, 13 A smaller RCS and lower IR signature directly translates into a shorter detection range for an ASBM seeker and a smaller search area.14 That, in turn, forces the adversary to provide more precise targeting data or accept a higher risk of missing.15

Reducing RCS and IR signature alone, however, might not be enough to minimize the risk to surface forces. Open-source reporting indicates that China can field ASBMs equipped with both synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) and conventional radar seekers.16, 17, 18 SAR provides all-weather, fine-resolution imagery and can distinguish targets by shape, allowing a carrier to be distinguished from a destroyer. To counter this, the Navy could pair RCS‑reducing tiles with radar reflectors designed to distort a ship’s apparent shape and size in SAR imagery, making it harder to distinguish high‑value units from escorts and to achieve precise aimpoints.19 Radar reflectors have long been used as test aids for U.S. radar systems and weapons.20 By distorting the apparent size and shape of test targets to resemble adversary equipment, they help assess and improve U.S. weapon effectiveness against realistic radar signatures.21 Together, these measures would not make ships invulnerable, but they could significantly stress the entire Chinese kill chain at relatively low cost compared with hard-kill missile defenses—exactly the kind of hedge capability the Navy needs for the most dangerous 5 percent of scenarios.

Implementing these changes could be relatively straightforward because PCMS has existed as a program of record since 1998, with no significant updates. Rather than invent a new system from scratch, the Navy could reinvigorate PCMS by incorporating new CNT, PANI, and VO₂ tiles and adding several radar‑reflector configurations, delivering updates to the fleet in months rather than years. Because the new tiles would be stored and only applied in crisis or conflict, they would function as a true hedge capability—largely invisible to adversary peacetime collection yet immediately available once a conflict begins. A PANI and VO₂-based paint could also be incorporated into ship coatings moving forward, providing some degradation to seekers during routine, 95-percent, general-purpose operations. The most expensive part of the program would likely be the modeling and simulation needed to determine the correct number of tiles and their optimal placement. A similar analysis effort would be required for the radar reflectors. Even with this modeling requirement, all other parts of the implementation chain are already in place. PCMS tiles are already used in the fleet, and ship crews are trained in their employment, which removes the need for starting a new training pipeline or schoolhouse, a process that normally costs the Navy years in fielding time; the new system would be taught by existing schoolhouses and phased into the fleet’s current electronic warfare training.

Aircraft “Hedge Strategies”

Aircraft hedge strategies should mirror the surface‑ship approach in stressing the entire enemy kill chain to increase survivability: use inflatable decoys and radar reflectors at airfields to saturate adversary sensors, complicate PLARF targeting and fire distribution, and preserve high‑value air assets by stressing the entire enemy kill chain, vice relying solely on counterforce solutions to defeat attacks. Properly employed, these decoys could flood Pacific airfields with false targets, helping to preserve high-value assets such as tankers, bombers, jammers, and command-and-control (C2) aircraft.

Use of decoys as an element of deception is not new. During World War II, the United States employed a so‑called “Ghost Army” to convince German commanders that the Allied landing would occur at Calais rather than Normandy.22 More recently in Ukraine, decoys have helped protect critical air defense, artillery, and C2 assets from Russian fires.23 These examples of successful decoy use also show that decoys work best when paired with convincing signatures—radar, infrared, and electromagnetic—that can deceive modern intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, including SAR satellites. For the Pacific, inflatable decoys and radar reflectors should be tailored to replicate a range of aircraft types, with particular emphasis on the scarce, high‑value enablers—airborne tankers, long‑range bombers, stand‑off jammers, and C2 platforms—that are operationally decisive.

Pairing inflatable decoys with radar reflectors and signal deception is essential to ensure that adversary intelligence is credibly deceived; an inflatable decoy alone will not fool sophisticated SAR satellite imagery.24 Further, decoy and radar reflector configurations should cover a wide range of aircraft platforms while focusing on the assets most important to the mission, such as tankers, bombers, jammers, and C2 aircraft. The benefit of investing in and creating these decoys now is that they can be stored at critical nodes in the theater and rapidly fielded in times of conflict. The use of decoys should be integrated into regular training to keep units proficient and ready for conflict, but also to complicate adversary intelligence collection during competition by revealing a credible deception capability, which in turn supports deterrence.

Some critics might argue that overt decoy use would “reveal” U.S. capabilities and allow the PRC to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to distinguish real targets from false ones. Yet this revelation is, in many ways, a desired feature of a system designed to increase platform survivability. If Beijing believes U.S. and allied forces can rapidly flood key airfields with convincing decoys, it must either invest heavily in improved discrimination or plan to fire larger salvos at a much larger target set. Even with improved TTPs, however, finding, fixing, and tracking hundreds, if not thousands, of decoys would remain a significant challenge for any military, and would still consume time, collection assets, and munitions.

This trade-off is especially important because PLARF can fire from sanctuary on the mainland, while U.S. strikes against that sanctuary may be constrained by political decisions. Decoys and radar reflectors give the U.S. a low‑cost way to impose confusion and delay on PLARF’s targeting cycle, forcing it either to accept faster depletion of critical munitions or to slow its fires while it refines targeting. In either case, U.S. and allied forces gain time to maneuver, rearm, and reposition.25

Jammers and Dazzlers “Hedge Strategy”

Jammers and dazzlers are powerful non-kinetic devices that can act as force multipliers for the passive systems described above. In this article, “jammers” refers to small, mobile systems—such as the Space Force’s remote modular terminal (RMT)—that can degrade or deny satellite ISR.26 “Dazzlers” denotes systems that temporarily blind or degrade electro‑optical and infrared (EO/IR) sensors on adversary satellites.27 Fielded in sufficient numbers, such packages could saturate Chinese ISR coverage over key ports and airfields, forcing the PLARF and PLA Navy to guess, delay, or expend additional assets to confirm targets. In doing so, they would function as a classic hedge: relatively inexpensive in peacetime but highly effective at complicating adversary targeting in a high‑end fight.

The benefit of small, mobile jammer/dazzler packages is that they allow the United States to saturate adversary ISR and lower the risk to U.S. forces. For example, if the United States deployed roughly 100 jammer/dazzler packages across the Western Pacific—each capable of covering one‑nautical‑mile square—the U.S. could cover every major U.S. and allied airfield and port with at least one system. This could materially complicate Chinese ISR and battle-damage assessment of key nodes, or dramatically delay targeting decisions by forcing collection through human intelligence (HUMINT) rather than relying solely on satellite imagery, buying valuable reconstitution time for U.S. forces located at these key nodes. Additional units mounted on barges or ships could protect maneuvering forces at sea. In such an environment, the adversary might know the general location of U.S. forces but not their exact identity or value, a state of ambiguity that would force additional ISR sorties or demand greater acceptance of risk for fires on low‑confidence targets. Pairing ships and airfields with the non-kinetic defenses outlined above—RCS and IR reduction, reflectors, and inflatable decoys—could further enhance survivability against inbound munitions, even those equipped with sophisticated multi-mode seekers.

Ultimately, this places the adversary on the horns of a dilemma: either expend significant munitions to address every potential target, thus lowering risk to U.S. forces as exquisite munitions are depleted, or expend time and assets identifying each target, thereby allowing U.S. forces to maneuver into position to employ their own ordnance and putting Chinese forces at risk.

Why – Anecdote from a recent Halsey Alfa Wargame

In a recent iteration of the Naval War College’s Halsey Alfa China wargaming series—a campaign‑level analytic game focused on a Taiwan invasion—I served as the BLUE force commander. The game assumed a highly compressed timeline and, because of initial probabilities (rolls of chance made before game start), BLUE did not receive Japanese support. The RED commander chose a conservative “fleet in being” approach, relying on PLARF’s firepower, magazine depth, and reach to attrit BLUE while preserving his fleet for follow‑on operations.

To survive long enough to deliver munitions into the Taiwan Strait, BLUE employed layered passive deception at the land–sea interface. We used ship configurations designed to distort radar images and pulled critical air assets—tankers and bombers—out of PLARF range while strengthening air defenses at key airfields. This approach did not prevent losses, particularly among cruiser–destroyer (CRUDES) platforms, but it forced RED to expend more than a quarter of his missile inventory in a few days of fighting. Non-kinetic defenses increased the required salvo size against BLUE ships by almost an order of magnitude. The lesson was clear: had the United States possessed the layered non-kinetic capabilities outlined in this article—deception, target distortion, and ISR degradation—it could have stressed the entire Chinese kill chain, forced the adversary to expend munitions far faster, and preserved enough combat power to sustain offensive operations over a longer period of time.

A simplified example illustrates the effect. Suppose an adversary missile has a 90‑percent chance of detecting and killing a ship that lacks passive defenses. Now assume that layered passive measures—decoys, jammers, dazzlers, RCS and IR reduction, and radar reflectors—each reduce that effectiveness by about 80 percent at different points in the kill chain.28, 29 Unclassified sources suggest such reductions are realistic estimates for individual links, and when combined, they dramatically increase the ship’s probability of survival and force the adversary to fire many more missiles to achieve the same expected damage. In practical terms, if it originally took 12 missiles to have high confidence of at least one hit, after layered passive measures, it might take four times as many to achieve the same effect. Adding soft‑kill electronic attack increases this requirement even further, without the radiating signatures that hard‑kill defenses often create. In other words, layered non‑kinetic defenses substantially increase the required salvo size for the attacker.

Another way to apply this logic is to tailor passive defenses to areas threatened by specific PLARF systems, such as installations and facilities within the DF-26’s effective range. The United States could deliberately design a posture that drives up Chinese expenditure of these critical munitions. This creates a dilemma: either fire at low-confidence targets and accept faster magazine depletion, or spend more time and assets refining targeting. Either choice creates seams the United States can exploit. If China shoots early and often, U.S. forces can move in sooner as inventories fall. If China delays, BLUE can use time and maneuver to bring forces into the weapons engagement zone on favorable terms.

Conclusion

As Admiral Caudle has argued, the Navy needs hedge strategies that keep the force relevant in high‑end conflict without breaking the bank in peacetime—ways to augment the general purpose force and cover the most dangerous scenarios, which specifically includes a potential war with China. Layered non-kinetic defenses—employed as a combined system—offer one such hedge. For surface forces, the Navy should update the PCMS program with a new tile‑and‑paint system and pair it with radar reflectors that distort imaging seekers. For air forces, it should field decoys and radar reflectors, as seen in Ukraine, to cast doubt on the precise location of U.S. air assets. Finally, the Navy and joint force should combine small, mobile jammers and dazzlers to saturate adversary ISR and degrade battle damage assessment, preserving operational surprise.

None of these ideas are technologically exotic. They are relatively low-cost, can be stored in peacetime, and can be rapidly fielded in a crisis. Together, layered non-kinetic defenses would not make U.S. forces invulnerable inside the weapons engagement zone, but they would impose steep costs on Chinese targeting and munitions inventories while materially improving platform and asset survivability—precisely the kind of hedge the Navy needs for the most demanding, high-end scenarios.

Lieutenant Connor Keating commissioned from the Virginia Tech NROTC and served aboard a forward-deployed destroyer in Yokosuka, Japan. On shore duty, he was a protocol action officer to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is an integrated air-and-missile defense warfare tactics instructor and participated in the Naval War College’s Halsey Alfa Advanced Research Project as a resident student. 

Endnotes

1. Caudle, Daryl L. “C-NOte #3: World Class Fleet.” Message to the Fleet from the Chief of Naval Operations, United States Navy, December 1, 2025. https://www.mynavyhr.navy.mil/Portals/55/Messages/NAVADMIN/NAV2025/NAV25241.pdf.

2. Caudle, Daryl L. “C-NOte #3: World Class Fleet.” Message to the Fleet from the Chief of Naval Operations, United States Navy, December 1, 2025. https://www.mynavyhr.navy.mil/Portals/55/Messages/NAVADMIN/NAV2025/NAV25241.pdf.

3. “The Impact of Drones on the Battlefield: Lessons of the Russia-Ukraine War from a French Perspective.” 2025. Hudson Institute. October 21, 2025. https://www.hudson.org/missile-defense/impact-drones-battlefield-lessons-russian-ukraine-war-french-perspective-tsiporah-fried.

4. “DF-26.” n.d. Missile Threat. https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/dong-feng-26-df-26/.

5. Lariosa, Aaron-Matthew. 2025. “Chinese Forces Fielding Intercontinental Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles Capable of Reaching U.S. West Coast, Pentagon Says – USNI News.” USNI News. December 26, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/12/26/chinese-forces-fielding-intercontinental-anti-ship-ballistic-missiles-capable-of-reaching-u-s-west-coast-pentagon-says.

6. News, PBS. 2025. “Pentagon Acknowledges Iran’s Attack on Qatar Air Base Hit Dome Used for U.S. Communications.” PBS News. July 11, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pentagon-acknowledges-irans-attack-on-qatar-air-base-hit-dome-used-for-u-s-communications.

7. Cancian, Mark F, and Chris H Park. 2026. “Iran War Cost Estimate Update: $11.3 Billion at Day 6, $16.5 Billion at Day 12.” Csis.org. 2026. https://www.csis.org/analysis/iran-war-cost-estimate-update-113-billion-day-6-165-billion-day-12.

8. Rumbaugh, Wes. 2025. “The Depleting Missile Defense Interceptor Inventory.” Csis.org. 2025. https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-interceptor-inventory.

9. “Active Radar Homing.” Grokipedia. xAI. Last fact-checked January 14,2026. https://grokipedia.com/page/Active_radar_homing.

10. Bronk, Justin. 2020. Review of Russian and Chinese Combat Air Trends: Current Capabilities and Future Threat Outlook. RUSI. RUSI. October 30, 2020. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/whitehall-reports/russian-and-chinese-combat-air-trends-current-capabilities-and-future-threat-outlook#:~:text=China%20has%20developed%20J%2D11,20B%20having%20begun%20in%202020.

11. Kim, Seong-Hwang, Seul-Yi Lee, Yali Zhang, Soo-Jin Park, and Junwei Gu. 2023. “Carbon-Based Radar Absorbing Materials toward Stealth Technologies.” Advanced Science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany), September, e2303104. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202303104.

12. Zhang, Deqing, Xiuying Yang, Junye Cheng, Mingming Lu, and Maosheng Cao. 2013. “Facile Preparation, Characterization, and Highly Effective Microwave Absorption Performance of CNTs/Fe 3 O 4 /PANI Nanocomposites.” Journal of Nanomaterials 2013 (5): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/591893.

13. Jiang, Changhao, Liangliang He, Qi Xuan, et al. “Phase-Change VO₂-Based Thermochromic Smart Windows.” Light: Science & Applications 13 (2024): 255. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01560-9.

14. To illustrate with an example: Consider the basic radar range equation, which describes the received power (Pr) at the seeker:

  • : Transmitted power
  • : Transmit and receive antenna gains
  • : Wavelength of the radar signal
  • : RCS of the target
  • ( R ): Distance (range) to the target

For the seeker to detect the target, Pr must exceed a minimum detectable signal threshold (accounting for noise and other factors). If all other parameters are fixed, Pr is directly proportional to σ and inversely proportional to R⁴.Suppose a conventional aircraft has an RCS of 1 m², detectable by a given seeker at a range of 10 km. If stealth technology reduces the RCS to 0.0001 m² (a factor of 10,000 reduction, common in advanced designs), the maximum detection range drops significantly. Since range R is proportional to the fourth root of σ (R ∝ σ^{1/4}), reducing σ by 10,000 (10^4) cuts R by a factor of 10 (since (10^4)^{1/4} = 10). Thus, the new detection range might be only 1 km, allowing the aircraft to approach much closer before being detected.

15. Grant, Rebecca. The Radar Game: Understanding Stealth and Aircraft Survivability. Arlington, VA: Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies, 2010. https://secure.afa.org/Mitchell/reports/MS_RadarGame_0910.pdf.

16. Erickson, Andrew S. Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories, and Strategic Implications. Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2013.

17. Kreisher, Otto. “China’s Carrier Killer: Threat and Theatrics.” Air & Space Forces Magazine, December 1, 2013. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1213china.

18. “CM-401 Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile.” GlobalSecurity.org. Accessed January 16, 2026. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/cm-401.htm.

19. Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division. Electronic Warfare and Radar Systems Engineering Handbook. 4th ed. Point Mugu, CA: Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, 2013. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA617071.pdf.

20. Smith, Mark , Lokesh Saggam, and Shashi Saggam. n.d. Review of Trihedral Reflectors for Radar Applications. Millimeter Wave Product Inc. Mi-Wave© (Millimeter Wave Products Inc.). Accessed March 15, 2026. https://www.miwv.com/trihedral-reflectors-for-radar-applications/.

21. Leone, Dario. 2021. “How Luneburg Lens Radar Reflectors Are Used to Make Stealth Aircraft Visible on Radar Screens.” The Aviation Geek Club. June 11, 2021. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-devices-make-stealth-aircraft-visible-on-radar-screens/.

22. Murphy, Brian John. 2018. “Patton’s Ghost Army – D-Day Deception – America in WWII Mag.” Americainwwii.com. 2018. http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/pattons-ghost-army/.

23. Bonsegna, Nicola. 2024. “The Strategic Role of Decoys in the Conflict in Ukraine.” TDHJ.org. October 31, 2024. https://tdhj.org/blog/post/decoys-conflict-ukraine/.

24. SAR. “Detecting Russian Inflatable Decoys with SAR.” Synthetic Aperture Radar, July 31, 2017. https://syntheticapertureradar.com/detecting-russian-inflatable-decoys-with-sar.

25. Bonsegna, Nicola. 2024. “The Strategic Role of Decoys in the Conflict in Ukraine.” TDHJ.org. October 31, 2024. https://tdhj.org/blog/post/decoys-conflict-ukraine/.

26. US Space Force. “US Space Force to Use Three Weapons To Jam Chinese Satellites Via Remote Control.” Bloomberg, November 4, 2025. https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-04/us-space-force-to-use-three-weapons-to-jam-chinese-satellites-via-remote-control.

27. Tingley, Brett. 2024. “Space Force Tests Small Satellite Jammer to Protect against ‘Space-Enabled’ Attacks.” Space.com. April 24, 2024. https://www.space.com/space-force-ground-based-jammer-electronic-warfare.

28. Smith, Ryan M. “Using Kill-Chain Analysis to Develop Surface Ship CONOPs to Defend Against Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles.” Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2010. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA524758.pdf.

29. Cadirci, Semih. “RF Stealth (Or Low Observable) and Counter Low Observable Technology.” Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2009. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA496936.pdf.

Featured Image: An aerial view of F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft mockups parked on a fake flight line during Exercise SALTY DEMO’85. SALTY DEMO’85 is an air base survivability exercise evaluating passive and active defenses, aircraft operation and generation, and base recovery systems. (Photo via National Archives)

Future Tech

Asymmetry Rising: How Autonomous Systems Enforce Sea Denial

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By Rudraksh Pathak

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

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

Doctrinal Shifts: The Indo-Pacific Reality

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

The USV Threat: Surface Denial

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

The UUV Threat: Subsurface Friction

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

The Network: The Multi-Domain Fabric

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

The Logistics of the Interceptor Trap

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

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

Attacking the Logistics Chain

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

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

Persistent Friction and the Zone of Uncertainty

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

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

Conclusion: The End of Maritime Sanctuary

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gray Zone

Russia’s Irregular Maritime Statecraft in the Baltic Sea

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By Joe Durigan and Craig Whiteside

Since 2022, Russia has sharply increased its employment of illegal/coercive/aggressive/deceptive (ICAD) maritime tactics in the Baltic Sea, often loosely referred to as “gray zone” activities. Assessing Russian hostility toward Europe, new NATO chief Mark Rutte recently noted that “Russia is already escalating its covert campaign against our societies” and that the alliance must be prepared for a Russian attack within five years. Whether Rutte’s assessment is correct is hard to judge, but could the dramatic increase in ICAD maritime tactics be the cause for this perception? Is Russian aggression imminent in the Baltic Sea region?

Our analysis of Russian illicit maritime tactics in the Baltic Sea since 2022 leaves us skeptical of any escalation. We argue that Russia employs irregular maritime statecraft to offset declining conventional naval power, sustain sanctioned energy exports, and pressure NATO without triggering open conflict. These nefarious activities—shadow fleet operations, undersea infrastructure sabotage, and electronic interference—are disruptive but strategically limited. While effective at harassment and signaling, they cannot deliver decisive political outcomes and increasingly risk attribution, backlash, and escalation. Putting aside Russia’s robust capabilities and malign behavior in other domains, its maritime “gray zone campaign” is a defensive, compensatory strategy chosen out of weakness, not a pathway to strategic advantage. NATO’s real challenge is managing persistent disruption without over or under-reacting—the strategic analog to the Goldilocks rule.

Russian Maritime Strategic Culture and its bad hand in the Baltic Sea

Russia’s maritime behavior in the Baltic Sea is best understood through the constraints imposed by strategic culture and geography rather than through explanations of deliberate escalation or doctrinal mastery. Historically a land‑centric power, Russia has struggled to convert naval forces into reliable political leverage, particularly in confined maritime spaces. Unlike its confidence in ground operations or information warfare, Moscow has long treated the sea as an exposed domain—one where visibility is high, control is fleeting, and conventional superiority is difficult to sustain. As a result, Russia has tended to favor ambiguity, deception, and indirect methods at sea over overt demonstrations of naval power.

That discomfort has become more pronounced since 2022. Russia’s inability to move naval forces through the Turkish Straits, its lack of reliable sea lines of communication, and a shipbuilding sector that cannot replace aging vessels—combined with the Kremlin’s persistent relegation of the maritime domain to the bottom of its strategic priorities—have all contributed to this increasingly apparent weakness. These factors, combined with NATO’s expansion to include Finland and Sweden, have transformed the Baltic from a contested maritime space into one that is effectively NATO‑enclosed. At the same time, Russia’s growing dependence on seaborne energy exports has raised the strategic importance of uninterrupted maritime access through a region where its freedom of action is sharply constrained. Moscow thus faces a paradox: it must preserve the Baltic as an economic lifeline while lacking the conventional forces needed to dominate or defend it.

In response, Russia has not developed a sophisticated maritime gray zone doctrine so much as defaulted to familiar tools often employed when power projection is risky and escalation control matters. The use of civilian vessels, deniable electronic interference, and legally ambiguous undersea activity reflects adaptation under pressure rather than confidence or strategic ambition. These methods enable harassment, signaling, and limited disruption while avoiding open confrontation, but they are poorly suited to producing durable political outcomes. Russia’s irregular maritime statecraft in the Baltic is therefore best understood as a holding action—an effort to manage decline and preserve room for maneuver from a constrained strategic position, rather than a pathway to maritime advantage.

Russia’s Three-page Playbook of Maritime Irregular Statecraft

Russia’s maritime irregular statecraft in the Baltic Sea relies on a narrow, repeatable playbook optimized for deniability and persistence rather than control or coercive leverage. Far from demonstrating doctrinal sophistication, this approach reflects the limited options available to a constrained actor operating in a NATO dominated maritime environment. At its core are three mutually reinforcing tools: the shadow fleet as both economic lifeline and operational cover, selective disruption of undersea infrastructure to exploit political sensitivity and attribution delays, and low-cost electronic interference to degrade the maritime picture in the Baltic. Together, these tactics enable harassment and signaling below the threshold of armed conflict while minimizing immediate escalation risks—but they do not scale into durable strategic advantage.

The shadow fleet sits at the center of this playbook. Economically, these vessels are indispensable to sustaining Russia’s war effort by moving sanctioned energy exports through the Baltic. Operationally, they offer deniable platforms that exploit legal ambiguities, mask movements, and complicate enforcement. Yet this dual use is inherently self-limiting. The same ships Russia depends on for revenue are increasingly visible, tracked, and exposed to interdiction, legal action, and seizure. Aggressive employment of the shadow fleet for coercive purposes therefore risks undermining the very economic lifeline it is meant to protect. As a result, the fleet functions less as a tool of escalation than as a constraint on how far Russia can push its maritime campaign.

Undersea infrastructure disruption and electronic warfare act as force multipliers within this constrained approach, but they exhibit clear diminishing returns. Pipelines, power cables, and fiberoptic links are attractive targets primarily because they are exposed and politically sensitive components of energy systems and lines of communication, not because they provide decisive leverage. Damage is typically repairable, escalation tends to remain bounded, and repetition of these tactics steadily generates political backlash alongside improved monitoring and faster attribution. Electronic interference—particularly ship based Global Positioning System (GPS) and Automatic Identification System (AIS) jamming—reinforces these dynamics at low cost by degrading maritime safety and complicating enforcement in congested waters, yet such effects are fleeting and increasingly detectable. Over time, the operational signatures that these activities leave behind erode deniability rather than preserve it.

Taken together, this narrow and self-limiting playbook enables disruption without control and visibility without leverage—a strategy of management rather than momentum that raises a more fundamental question: whether Russia’s maritime gray zone campaign represents a durable form of competition with options for escalation or the early signs of strategic exhaustion.

Whither the “Gray Zone”?

Three years into Russia’s irregular maritime campaign, its strategic gains are limited and diminishing as they invite stronger legal and political backlash. These tactics do not scale well into operational advantages, and work better when maritime conventional forces can back them up. The best example of this is the Chinese navy’s support for its Coast Guard and Maritime Militia harassment of neighboring fishing vessels in East and South China Seas. Russia’s maritime capabilities are too weak to integrate power in this fashion. The backlash in Europe is producing a balancing effect, as efforts to improve attribution and legal charges against perpetrators limit Russian efforts. NATO states have boarded suspicious vessels, seized vessels involved in sabotage (e.g. MV FITBURG), and increased maritime domain awareness to identify and document future attacks. ICAD tactics are best suited for harassment, signaling, and economic necessity; they are poor tools for reversing Russia’s strategic woes.

Advocates of the gray zone concept a decade ago predicted it would eventually become the prevalent method of undermining the status quo and be difficult to combat. This does not make it an inherently low-risk strategy. The accumulation of ICAD events and the attention given to them in the post-Ukraine invasion era make it impossible for Russian acts to fly “below the radar.” Instead, the very escalation that these tactics seek to avoid becomes more likely as states react to the constant drumbeat of malign behavior.

How should NATO leverage the growing visibility of irregular maritime tactics and the certainty that Russia is behind them? First, accelerate efforts to determine attribution and expose these tactics immediately in a coordinated fashion with NATO partners. Increased maritime domain awareness at all levels is a priority; this includes investing in seabed monitoring, AIS/Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) analytics, and forensic investigation capacity. Rapid and credible attribution enables legal action, sanctions, interdiction, and future deterrence by exposure.

Secondly, NATO should transition from passive monitoring of Russia’s “shadow fleet” to a posture of active maritime containment. Under NATO’s 2025 Alliance Maritime Strategy (AMS) to uphold freedom of navigation and secure strategic trade routes, NATO should no longer treat these vessels as mere commercial anomalies. Instead, the Alliance should designate uninsured or AIS-spoofing vessels as “Navigational and Environmental Hazards,” providing the legal predicate for mandatory boardings and inspections within territorial and contiguous waters. By continuing to work towards active maritime containment, NATO can normalize interdictions that raise the insurance premiums and operational costs for Moscow’s economic lifelines, transforming its primary source of revenue into a point of strategic vulnerability.

Thirdly, NATO should operationalize its “Digital Ocean Vision” to secure critical undersea infrastructure. The defensive posture of the past three years—characterized by slow attribution and repair—is obsolete. Following the framework of Operation Baltic Sentry, NATO should scale Task Force X to deploy a persistent, autonomous undersea maritime infrastructure resiliency initiative. By integrating uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) with high-resolution acoustic sensors, NATO can create a real-time “networked ocean” that detects anomalies—such as the 2024 Motor Vessel Eagle S incident—as they occur. This capability moves NATO from a “forensic” response to a “preventative” one, utilizing automated interceptors to escort suspicious vessels away from critical nodes before damage is sustained.

Finally, NATO should institutionalize friction-as-deterrence by centralizing command authority and multi-domain surveillance within MARCOM. Russia’s irregular tactics thrive on the organizational seams between the Baltic and Arctic theaters; closing these gaps requires resourcing MARCOM to function as the singular operational hub for the Northern Flank. Under the 2025 Alliance Maritime Strategy, MARCOM should be empowered to fuse its recognized maritime picture with real-time data from the NATO Commercial Space Strategy and “Digital Ocean” uncrewed sensors, allowing the Alliance to immediately out-signal Russian electronic interference and GPS jamming. By utilizing high-intensity exercises like Freezing Winds 2025 to wargame integrated, rapid-response ICAD counter-tactics, NATO ensures that every Russian hybrid act is met with an immediate, pre-authorized operational pushback. This centralized posture shifts the burden of escalation back to the Kremlin, forcing Moscow to choose between a conventional naval confrontation it cannot win or a strategic retreat from a monitored and controlled maritime gray zone.

This is already happening in Hong Kong of all places, where Finland has pressured China to detain and prosecute civilian ship Captain Wan Wnguo, accused of dragging one of the ship’s anchors across several underwater cables in 2023 and causing $41 million in damage. Ironically, the ship had just completed the first run from China to Kaliningrad along the Northern Sea Route, a potent symbol of Russian and Chinese cooperation. China has cooperated with Finland to date, and the trial is set for this month.

Conclusion

Russia’s expansion of maritime irregular statecraft in the Baltic Sea Region is a compensatory strategy born of weakness, not strength. As Russia’s conventional naval power has eroded, accelerated by maritime losses in the Black Sea and NATO’s expansion, Moscow has turned to deniable, low-cost, maritime subversion to protect its economic lifelines, pressure NATO, and shape escalation dynamics without triggering open war.

Russia’s activities in the Baltic are best understood as a holding action by a constrained power. It enables disruption and delay but not control. These ICAD tactics at sea might provoke below thresholds of war, but they say more about managing decline, protecting lifelines, and shaping escalation in a world where ambiguity is shrinking, not increasing as gray zone proponents claim. While disruptive and tactically clever, these methods cannot compensate for declining conventional power and become less effective as NATO improves attribution, coordination, and resilience. This in turn will frustrate Russia’s ability to play a weak hand as it prioritizes provocative tactics over creating an effective strategy to improve its strategic and economic position in a post-Ukraine War future.

Joseph P. Durigan is a Surface Warfare Officer in the United States Navy and a recent graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His master’s thesis was titled “The Gray Zone Surge: Russian Maritime Subversion in the Baltic Sea.”

Craig Whiteside is a professor of National Security Affairs for the US Naval War College resident program at the Naval Postgraduate School. His recent book is titled Nonstate Special Operations: Capabilities and Effects and he has written on the strategic failures of the gray zone concept.

Featured Image: Baltic Sea Exercise 2023. (U.S. Navy photo)

Concepts of Operation

Defending Global Order Against China’s Maritime Insurgency – Part 1

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By Dan White and Hunter Stires

The international order has come under immense strain in recent years. Major wars have erupted between the great powers in Ukraine and the Middle East. The U.S.’s top geopolitical rivals have increasingly coalesced, with China and Russia both rapidly modernizing and expanding their arsenals of strategic weapons. Meanwhile, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan looms, possibly backed by Moscow. The current challenges make China’s years-old claims to the entirety of the South China Sea seem quaint and insignificant in comparison.

Hunter Stires, who served as the Maritime Strategist to the Secretary of the Navy during the tenure of Secretary Carlos Del Toro, views each of these challenges as interconnected parts of a global struggle for the Freedom of the Sea and the international order, with the central front in the South China Sea. Stires believes the future of global order rests on the extent to which China succeeds in claiming ownership to one of the world’s most important waterways and disrupting the centuries-old concept of the freedom of the seas upon which the modern global order was founded. Stires helped found the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Counterinsurgency (COIN) Project to better conceptualize and combat China’s battle to overturn the international order at sea. This interview captures Stires’ thoughts on the history of the Maritime COIN project and its ongoing relevance for intensifying strategic competition between the US and China.

Dan White: When most Americans think about China’s naval activities or aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, the predominant topic of discussion is challenging U.S. regional dominance and laying the groundwork for the invasion of Taiwan. You started the Maritime Counterinsurgency Project because you believe China’s actions in its near seas have much broader implications. Can you summarize what you believe is at stake and why Americans who may be skeptical of commitments to regional security in Asia should be concerned about China’s behavior, particularly in some of its more low-level aggressive behavior that it has exhibited towards our allies in the Philippines, or elsewhere in the South China Sea.

Hunter Stires: I think you hit the nail on the head, that when we think about China, we very often like to think about the big things. Every so often you hear about island building, although that was done about 10 years ago. You hear about the growth and the development of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, particularly in capital ships like carriers, cruisers, and destroyers.

What you don’t hear about are these lower intensity efforts to coerce and intimidate local civilian maritime populations in Southeast Asia. It bears repeating, half the world’s fishing fleet operates in the South China Sea. There are probably 3 to 4 million people who depend on access to this body of water for their livelihoods, whether as fishers, or resource extractors in the hydrocarbon industry, etc. China is subjecting this very substantial civilian population to a concerted campaign of intimidation and harassment.

What we are seeing, as you’ve noted, is that these Chinese forces will steal fishermen’s catch. They will confiscate radios and navigational equipment that are essential to safe navigation in busy waters. They will pour gasoline in drinking water supplies of Vietnamese fishermen to force them to return to shore. We see them ram and, occasionally sink or attempt to sink, not only civilian vessels, but ram Philippine Coast Guard vessels in attempts to sinks or disable them as the Coast Guard defend their sovereign rights to their exclusive economic zone as recognized under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

And so, to your point about this broader implication of these kinds of seemingly minor activities in and of themselves, what’s really being contested are actually some of the foundations of that Rules-Based International Order. And beyond international order, it’s really one of the most fundamental principles of the modern system of international law, freedom of the seas.

Freedom of the seas is a principle that is four centuries old. It started with Hugo Grotius, who popularized the idea that the seas are open to everybody. They are a global commons for all mankind. And whatever rights countries have at sea is based on what they have on land. This was a foundational principle of customary international law.

More recently, it has been codified into the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has been accepted by pretty much everyone—China included. The United States hasn’t ratified it because Congress had issues about deep-sea mining, but the rest of the time, we say this is a codification of customary international law, and therefore, we not only follow the law better than anybody else, we take the lead in enforcing it.

The freedom of the sea has been a foundational principle for the United States since before we were a country. It is a principle for which the United States has gone to war no less than six times, not counting numerous smaller constabulary actions by U.S. Naval Forces around the world over the past two and a half centuries.

China is trying to overturn this system of international law and the freedom of the seas, and replace it with its own sino-centric, hierarchical, authoritarian vision of what they refer to as “blue national soil.” As the phrase implies, this means the oceans can be claimed as if they are land. You basically fence off a patch of ocean and stick a flag in it, regardless of where that happens to be. In doing so, they seek to disenfranchise their less powerful neighbors from their rightful exclusive economic zones under international law.

There are generally two ways these two legal orders can contend with each other.

One is the conventional approach, which is where each side gets out their military, they have a fight, and then after the fight is over, the winner sequentially imposes their laws on the civilian population. That’s the sequential method, we generally refer to that as conventional war.

Now for the other option. If one side either doesn’t think they would win that fight, or if they just choose not to engage in that kind of conventional force-on-force confrontation, they have the option to decline battle with the defender of the established order and instead, seek to impose their own laws on a civilian population. That is what you are seeing China do. And we have a term for that kind of campaign design: it’s an insurgency.

Why does this matter, and why should Americans continue to care about the freedom of the seas? Taking a strictly national perspective here, the United States is dependent on the sea for its political, economic, and military access to the overwhelming majority of humanity, which lives outside North America.

If you want to reach anyone in the world in Europe, Asia, and Africa, you’ve got to travel there on or over the water. If the freedom of the sea goes away and can be overturned without so much as a shot being fired—which is a very real possibility if we allow China’s maritime insurgency to proceed unchecked—it will lead to the balkanization of the world’s oceans. This means a variety of avaricious coastal states come along in addition to China and lay claim to a patch of ocean, just because they really want to and have the means to enforce it.

This cuts against this fundamental principle of the rule of law in international affairs as opposed to might makes right. Over the last 80 years since World War II, that principle of the rule of law, has been very positive for humanity. The freedom of the sea in particular has been the foundation of the post-war international order. It is the fundamental enabler of the free and open trading regime that has lifted more people out of poverty and oppression than in any other period of time in human history. The freedom of the sea is worth defending.

In the present environment, where you have China seeking to undo the freedom of the sea without having to go to war against the guarantor of international maritime order, the challenge for the United States is to devise a strategy that can arrest China’s creeping expansionism without having to go to war ourselves, while reassuring these local civilian maritime populations that the rules have not, in fact, changed—that the rule of law remains in force and that they can continue to exercise their rights and pursue their economic interests.

Dan White: On October 28th, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee passed a new maritime law for China that will go into effect in May 2026. China is now creating a framework for settling local cases in its own courts and establishing a parallel regional system of maritime law.

Hunter Stires: That is very consistent with the way China has been pursuing its strategy in the South China Sea. As you said, China seeks to impose its own laws—made in Beijing—on the civilian maritime populations of its neighbors. They seek to do this, again, not by going to war, but by going out and imposing their laws and forcing these fishermen and oil and gas merchants to submit to Chinese dictates or face some pretty horrible consequences.

These laws are designed to intimidate. And now, by creating dispute resolution mechanisms, they seek to position themselves as the arbiter of who governs where, and how resources are allocated in the South China Sea.

The allegory of a mafia group, or a local street gang is instructive here. Imagine you’re minding your own business, living in your neighborhood, and then one day a bunch of scary-looking guys with guns decide they really like your neighborhood, too. And they have decided it’s now their neighborhood, and now nobody gets to walk down the street, nobody gets to operate or patronize a business, without acknowledging the authority of the gang.

It doesn’t matter who they are, by the way. This same story could be told about a Mafia syndicate, a street gang, a drug cartel, a terrorist group. It’s all the same modus operandi. The mafia calls it protection money, China calls it “joint development of offshore resources in the South China Sea.” And so now China is creating a court to adjudicate its protection rackets. Think about the opening of The Godfather. What is Don Corleone doing? He is receiving supplicants and adjudicating cases as a local potentate would in the old days of kings and princes. China would like to do this as well. That certainly fits with China’s vision of itself as the center of world civilization, as the Middle Kingdom surrounded by progressively expanding concentric rings of tributary states and vassals. This is very much in keeping with China’s strategic culture and its sense of itself as the hegemonic power in the region.

What is helpful for the United States and our allies and partners is that the countries that have lived for periods of their history under Chinese domination have found that they don’t like it. Now they are keen to maintain their independence, and especially from such a coercive group of international gangsters as the regime in Beijing. They don’t want to submit to that. And international law has given them rights to these resources under an international order that is fair and equitable—which, by the way, China itself substantially shaped.

The Chinese government claims that, “oh my goodness, the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea was decided before we were powerful, and we didn’t get a say.” That’s complete horseshit. The Chinese delegation was instrumental in the negotiations, particularly in the development of what has become the globally accepted concept of the Exclusive Economic Zone. So, the notion that they were not consulted, that this is like one of the unequal treaties or something that was imposed on China during its century of humiliation, it’s a load of baloney. We should all be much louder in calling it as such.

It’s a good system that is equitable, and we should stand up for it.

Dan White: The Maritime COIN Project began three years ago. How has China’s behavior in the South China Sea evolved since the project started? What changes in behavior has China exhibited in the South China Sea, and has its behavior in the South China Sea expanded into other areas?

Hunter Stires: I’ll back up a bit in terms of the origins of the idea and the project. The concept of maritime insurgency and counterinsurgency we originally put forward in a piece in Proceedings in 2019 called “The South China Sea Needs a COIN Toss,” with a companion piece called “Why We Defend Free Seas.”

The very first person to reach out after those articles was then-Rear Admiral Fred Kacher, who was on his way out to the 7th Fleet to take command of Task Force 76, the 7th Fleet’s amphibious Task Force.  Shortly after he got out there, there was this major international incident off Malaysia involving a Malaysian-chartered survey ship called the West Capella, out exploring for oil inside Malaysia’s rightful Exclusive Economic Zone—that has the misfortune of being located inside China’s outlandish claim to indisputable sovereignty the 9-dash line.

And so, this is between March and April 2020, at the moment when COVID started and both of our carriers’ readiness in the region were greatly affected by COVID. Admiral Kacher basically goes to Vice Admiral Merz, the Commander of 7th Fleet, and says, “put us in coach,” because he has a baby flat top, the USS America, which at the time is the first ship in the U.S. Navy equipped with the F-35. So he’s got this very interesting group of capabilities, and he also commands the rotationally Forward Deployed Littoral Combat ships in Singapore. They then set about essentially implementing a trial run of this Maritime Counterinsurgency playbook, where it was a highly successful operational prototype.

Unlike the legacy naval playbook of taking large surface ships, driving through a disputed area, and then leaving, the thesis of the work of this task force was, “how do you influence the local civilian mariners?” The thesis is that the relationship with the civilians and their perceptions are the decisive relationship, not the relationship between U.S. forces and Chinese forces. Under these circumstances a transient operation is not going to have an impact on civilian behavior, whereas demonstrating a persistent presence at that point of gray zone attack is going to be much more effective.

Getting back to the local street gang allegory, it is about demonstrating you have the back of locals. The decisions of the civilians in that situation are going to be based on whether or not they believe that the defenders of the established order can protect them against the reprisals of the gang, should they choose to defy them. In this situation, if the local cops say, “you don’t need to pay the gang protection money,” but the cops are only there 10 minutes out of every day, and when the police cruiser rolling through, the gang will lie low but will reappear and take charge after the cruiser turns the corner.

This is not to say the U.S. Navy doesn’t need the SWAT team, the capability to break down your door, which it very much has in the region, but it also needs that persistent low-end presence, closer to that of the beat cop. This is where assets like littoral combat ships have the potential to be a very effective beat cop in the South China Sea. It’s frankly the mission they were actually designed for.

And so, Admiral Kacher starts out with his larger forces, his big deck amphib, a cruiser, and an Australian frigate.  They show up, and they stick around. They are visible and persistent, with very clear public messaging to the world to say, “we are here in support of our Malaysian allies and partners in pursuit of their lawful economic interests.” Every level of the Pacific Fleet followed this very clear and consistent messaging, and the Chinese became quite reticent.

Eventually, Kacher’s big ships have to rotate out but in their place he starts bringing in those littoral combat ships to sustain that presence over time and to continue to demonstrate that persistence. Despite notable Chinese pressure, the Malaysians stuck it out and finished all their planned work as previously scheduled and the Chinese got noticeably de-escalatory.  Within the next year, three major regional players, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines each took a more assertive posture to stand up for themselves and their economic and diplomatic interests in the South China Sea, which is something that hadn’t been seen in years of running the legacy playbook.

The success of that operational prototype was the genesis of the Maritime Counterinsurgency Project, mobilizing the leading minds of maritime strategy to think about how to sustain this effort in a systematic way.

The effect has been fairly noticeable. The Taiwanese press was all over it and covered the Project launch in the same breath as Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island, framing both as examples of how the United States is putting serious thought into how to back up allies in the region against Chinese coercion. The Chinese were really quite displeased. There was a fair amount of coverage in both English language and Chinese language papers such as the South China Morning Post and the Global Times, basically saying “if the Americans actually do this, this is going to be a real problem for us.”

The effort coincided with the Marcos Administration coming to power in the Philippines, and the dawn of the Philippine Coast Guard’s assertive transparency campaign. U.S. naval operations have subsequently evolved in the region with increased deployments of littoral combat ships to places like Singapore, which give the U.S. Navy a cop on the beat in the South China Sea to serve as a force multiplier to our local partners.

By far the most significant positive change has been the growing strength and effectiveness of both the Philippine Navy and the Philippine Coast Guard. Over the last couple of years the Philippines Coast Guard has coupled its operations at sea with very clear messaging that they are there to protect their local civilian mariners against Chinese depredations. They are providing fuel and food supplies to fishermen and are directly challenging the China Coast Guard. They are filming it as well to show the world the brutish tactics that the China Coast Guard has practiced such as stealing fisherman’s cash, pouring gasoline in people’s drinking water, holding fishermen for ransom at several times for annual income, ramming and sinking boats. Showing the world that China is engaging in systematic maritime lawlessness, if not outright state piracy.

The Chinese have been ramping up their pressure on the Philippines in response. But the most important thing is that the Philippines hasn’t given up and as a result the Chinese have largely failed in achieving most of their objectives.

A number of other organizations have cropped up since the launch of the Maritime Counterinsurgency Project such as Project Myoushu at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation led by retired Air Force officer Ray Powell.

The U.S. Army, too, has gotten in the game in a pretty exciting way. Look at what General Charlie Flynn was able to accomplish at U.S. Army Pacific with the deployment of multi-domain task force assets and systems like the Typhon missile launcher to the Philippines. The Typhon represent a turnabout of the anti-access, area denial capabilities the Chinese had been trying to establish in the region for years. I highly recommend General Flynn’s contribution to the Maritime Counterinsurgency Project.

Rear Admiral Rommel Ong, the retired vice commander of the Philippines Navy, has made the observation based on the writings of counterinsurgency expert David Galula that the support of the population is gained by an active minority. He asserts that if you look at the entire region of Southeast Asia, and if you position the nations of the region as the population in that insurgency-counterinsurgency relationship, most of them are not going to get off the fence. There is a really long diplomatic tradition of hedging and neutrality in the region and deep relationships, economic and political and otherwise, with China. But he observes that all that is needed is an active minority to succeed here. This active minority can be the United States, Japan, and the Philippines.

I would add South Korea to this grouping as well. South Korea and Japan have played an indispensable role in the buildup of capability of the Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy. The Philippines now has a highly capable, Japanese-built coast guard and an increasingly capable South Korean-built navy.

China has attempted to reassert itself in response, recently declaring a 30-mile exclusion zone around Scarborough Shoal, declaring it a nature reserve. An ironic gesture given that Chinese activity, including dredging for giant clams, destroyed the place from an environmental standpoint.

The Philippines are holding their own, and their political will is a critical part of deterring China. Admiral Ong has also written about the importance of national will and references “The Cod Wars and Lessons for Maritime Counterinsurgency,” which discusses the brief maritime conflict between Iceland and Britain over access to fishing grounds in the Arctic.

Admiral Ong’s take away is that the Philippines is in a similar position to Iceland, and must sustain the same level of national will to afford the tactical innovation and assertiveness in the water to defend its interests against a bigger opponent. Looking at the Philippines and what they have been able to accomplish over the past couple years, I’d say they are working very assiduously to be more like Iceland in the Cod Wars, and as we know, Iceland won.

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

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

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

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.