As the Republic of the Philippines and other Asian nations chafe against the People’s Republic of China’s sweeping claims to the South China Sea, the PLA’s territorial acquisition plans are going somewhat awry. After three decades of enjoying consequence-free land grabs in the South China Sea, Beijing is finally facing widespread resistance. If China’s Communist Party wants to keep the maritime land-grab machine going, dangerous new approaches, just short of outright war, may prove difficult for China’s Party leaders to resist.
China knows the days of easily acquiring territory in the South China Sea are over.
With the Philippines fed up, carrier strike groups moving into the area, and other Asian nations openly backing the beleaguered archipelago, China may face internal pressure to move quickly, outflanking global sentiment to consolidate their illegally seized grab-bag of islets, reefs and other sea features.
The Chinese solution may rest in an abrupt closure of certain areas of the South China Sea. A soft regional blockade, employing tactics that are just short of outright war and enforced by a massive, low-tech Chinese fleet, all ready to ram and shove away interlopers, would be tough to reverse.
A short, sharp and focused Chinese maritime campaign, aimed at ramming, bashing, bending and breaking as many Philippine and allied ships as possible, may give China the room it needs to change the “facts on the ground” in the South China Sea.
For China, imposing maritime control via vessel jousting matches is a law enforcement matter and not an act of war.
Ramming is, on a tactical level, a standard Chinese operational procedure. The tactic aligns with regional practices; off the contested waters of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, in the Spratley Islands, and on the Yellow Sea, civilian and government ships regularly jostle, scrape paint and ram each other for a combination of fishing rights, economic opportunity and glory.
To date, these dangerous jostling maritime disputes have remained relatively sporadic. China, North Korea and others regularly test their maritime boundaries with maritime outrages, but the drumbeat of aggressive maritime incidents have failed to transform into a concerted, strategic campaign.
This all may change in the South China Sea.
With the Philippines desperate to resupply—and potentially even reinvigorate—their lonely outpost on the resource rich Ayungin Shoal (known to Americans as the Second Thomas Shoal), a confrontation seems inevitable.
Any imposition of an aggressive local quarantine of a region, island or sea feature in the South China Sea merits global push-back. If China is successful in the South China Sea, similar tactics will be repeated again and again as China tries to appropriate unguarded or poorly administered territories in the deep Pacific, the Polar regions and the Indian Ocean.
Maritime Pushback Is Hard:
Politically, the world is ill-prepared for an undeclared maritime fight in the South China Sea. Aside from the occasional, well-publicized deviation from the longstanding U.S./USSR Cold War-era “Incidents at Sea Agreement”, militaries have not grappled with a coordinated at-sea blocking and ramming campaign since Iceland and the UK squared off in the Cold War-era Cod Wars.
Arguably, Asian seas are rougher places, and used to a higher level of violence, but transforming occasional ramming and blocking efforts into a larger strategic campaign would be an unprecedented step.
Modern navies are also unready for a concerted Chinese maritime jousting campaign. On even a limited scale, shoving-and-pushing territorial contests at sea are exhausting. In the first 1958 Cod War, coming after Iceland enforced a modest claim to 12 miles of territorial waters, Iceland’s tiny patrol fleet forced the UK to commit over forty warships and auxiliaries to protect the UK’s civilian fishing fleet.
China isn’t Iceland. Sporting a far larger fleet of naval vessels, Coast Guard ships and maritime militia craft, only a massive opposing force—or a massive escalation—can prevail.
Large forces won’t be arriving anytime soon. For the west, raising a large multi-national fleet requires months and months of arduous advance work. In 2022, 26 nations managed to contribute 38 ships for the month-long biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises. And only a handful may race to join an undefined and undeclared joust in the South China Sea—and even fewer could sustain their participation.
Even if the U.S. and other navies came to aid the Philippines, they would be quickly beaten up and battered by China’s aggressive maritime militias.
Modern navies are simply designed for a different kind of fight. In the U.S., effete technologists at the Naval Sea Systems Command have forgotten that the simple, brutish work of ramming, shoving and shouldering is a serious business of inflicting real costs upon an aggressor. Between 1975 and 1976, when Iceland and the UK squared off in the third Cod War, Iceland’s small patrol boat fleet, in the space of seven months, forced the UK to deploy 21 frigates. During the dispute, Iceland’s tiny gunboat navy hit and damaged at least fifteen UK warships.
Though the dispute was virtually insignificant in terms of crew morbidity and mortality, the physical damage inflicted by Iceland’s patrol-boat ramming spree was often severe enough earn stricken ships a tug escort from the battlefield and long repair periods in UK shipyards. At least one UK frigate, HMS Eastbourne, was hurt so severely it was withdrawn from service.
Neither the Philippines Coast Guard, the Philippines Navy, the U.S. Navy nor any other Philippine ally can absorb similar losses. In the Philippines, modern shipyards ready to handle an influx of damaged modern combatants are few and far between. In the entire region, only a handful of companies can provide certified and credentialed workers that are ready recover and then work on damaged U.S. vessels. America’s in-region cadre of contract officials, critical for getting repair work done fast, remains undersized and overworked.
Today’s Western navies have also forgotten that stout, tough ships are extraordinarily useful in taking on ramming and ramming defense duties. While military leaders are confident that China’s low-tech maritime militia fleet can be swept aside under a hail of Quicksink bombs and cyber effects, these tools are, at this point, unlikely to be openly deployed in a territorial maritime joust.
Modern fleets simply lack old-school bruisers. In the later stages of the Cod War, an oft-forgotten fleet of ocean-going tugs supplemented fragile UK frigates. Built around the fast, 3100 ton “supertug” Lloydsman and a motley set of heavy, ocean-going defense tugs and oilfield supply ships, the UK put these unconventional combatants right up on the front line, using them to absorb hits and mete out damage.
America used to have a similar fleet of tough irregulars, but no more. The U.S systematically defunded and privatized their once-mighty tug-and-salvage force, and has, in recent years, taken every bureaucratic step possible to delay fielding a modest set of new Navajo-class replacements. Right now, only a single large ocean tug, the USNS Catawba (T-ATF 168) remains in the U.S. fleet.
Fast vessel modifications can also play important roles in a shoving fight. In the Cod War, the UK bulked up the bows of a few older frigates so they could absorb hits without fear of doing permanent damage. China, adding some nasty-looking bow anchor-type structures to their larger Coast Guard ships and Type 054 frigates, may have designed the ships from the beginning to inflict maximum hull damage during a ram, while the U.S. Navy has dithered and dodged in addressing this kind of “old school” tactical challenge, and will not move quickly to customize ships for ram-based warfare.
Take Ramming Seriously:
China has given navies outside of Asia multiple indications of the behavior to come. In 2016, 2018 and 2019 Chinese fishing boats attempted to ram Argentinian patrol craft. In 2022, off Ecuador, a squadron of three Chinese squid boats ran to avoid an at-sea inspection while a fourth charged the USCGC James, one of America’s big National Security Cutters.
While these actions are all sporadic and easily dismissed as simple maritime infractions, they suggest maritime law enforcement must prepare, procuring assets that can quickly and decisively impose costs on ships employing aggressive and unsafe maneuvers.
Fast gunboats offer a solid initial option for warding off aggressive Chinese ships. South Korea, often confronted by swarms of North Korean vessels, turned to well-armed gunboats, capable of meting out quick damage. Now transferring to Philippine service, South Korea’s Pohang-class corvettes, armed with multiple 76 mm guns, Oerlikons and Bofors cannons, have a large enough broadside to halt far larger ships and enough guns to warn off offensive-minded swarm boats.
If China is already established in an area, other options might prove a bit more useful. In the South China Sea, the Philippines could quickly contract and modify some big, super-maneuverable tractor-type tugs to carry improvisational ram-like structures below the waterline. A good fleet of modern, modified tugs would be powerful enough to mitigate China’s advantage in raw vessel size and, if modified, big modern tugs are maneuverable enough to damage any ramming-minded vessel that dares to get too close. Filled with a good compliment of armed personnel, tugs could hold their own, and even threaten to board and arrest the understaffed maritime militia craft China employs as block ships.
Others suggest more high-tech approaches, like a specially-modified fleet of remotely-operated ram craft. This might work, but a simple, low-tech approach of fielding a fleet of numerous, lightly-crewed fire ships or old-school “hellships”—all stuffed with flammables or explosives and a means for a quick getaway for the crew—may prove a more cost-effective and technically achievable means to force Chinese block ships to keep their distance.
But, finally, the best option may simply be to not play, and get about the business of imposing a global no-tolerance policy on Chinese maritime land-grabs. While late in the game in the South China Sea, the U.S. has, recently, been very direct in warning China it will defend the Philippines. Publicly moving Quicksink bombs and Quicksink-ready jets into the area, demonstrating capability in a non-aggressive or, potentially, even in a suitably deniable fashion, might be a good way to help get China to pause and think harder about their dangerous acquisition-minded Pacific playbook.
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