Category Archives: Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness

“Allies, partners tap into technology to monitor maritime domain” –Indo-Pacific Defense Forum

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Winkel Tripel projection, WGS84 datum, central meridian : 150°E. Source Wikipedia Commons, Author: Eric Gaba

The Indo-Pacific Defense Forum reports,

“Maritime domain awareness (MDA) in the Indo-Pacific is moving from an abstract aspiration to a functional collective security approach for managing the region’s dynamic offshore spaces,” noted an April 2023 article in PacNet, a publication of Pacific Forum, a Hawaii-based foreign policy research institute. “Much of the cost-savings in maritime enforcement activities is due to emerging technologies including access to satellites that provide clearer and more accurate images, as well as artificial intelligence and big data platforms dedicated to vessel tracking, prediction, and anomaly detection.”

There are fusion centers in India, Singapore and Vanuatu. These fusion centers would be useful in wartime, but they are essentially a cooperative exchange of information among maritime law enforcement agencies. In addition to its importance in countering IUU and drug smuggling, better maritime domain awareness may give warning of a terrorist attack. Shouldn’t the US Coast Guard have a fusion center in Alameda under Pacific Area? Probably should be one on the West coast of South America too.

Coast Guard in Oceania in the News

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The USCGC Oliver Henry (WPC 1140) crew arrives in Manus, Papua New Guinea, on Aug. 14, 2022, from Guam as part of a patrol headed south to assist partner nations in upholding and asserting their sovereignty while protecting U.S. national interests. The U.S. Coast Guard is participating with partners to support the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency-led Operation Island Chief and the larger Operation Blue Pacific through patrols in the Western Pacific in August and September 2022. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by SW3 Victor Villanueva, NMCB-FOUR)

A couple of recent articles about the US relations with Palau and Papua New Guinea.

Map of the exclusive economic zones in the Pacific.

There has long been interest in a US base on Manus, Papua New Guinea, but this is politically sensitive. Basing cutters there that protect an important economic resource and occasionally rescue the locals when they get in trouble, would probably be most welcome.

On the map above, Manus and Guam do not look that far apart, but Manus is 1,737.88 km (938 nautical miles) SSE of Guam. That is about the distance from Miami to New York City. 

Cutters based in Manus would be closer to parts Freely Associated States (FAS) of Palau and Federated States of Micronesia than cutters based in Guam and much closer to most non-FAS Micronesian nations. It might also be a good place to site a fixed wing forward operating base (CGAS Honolulu DET).

I am beginning to think we will see two new bases in the Western Pacific, one in American Samoa and one in Manus.

If we do end up with additional Webber class based outside Hawaii and Guam, we might need a squadron support organization similar to, and perhaps even larger than, PATFORSWA, to support all FRCs based in the Pacific South and West of Hawaii, e.g. a PATFORSWPAC.

“U.N. campaign targets illicit fishing” –Indo-Pacific Defense Forum

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A picture taken on November 16, 2011 from a South Korean helicopter shows Chinese fishermen wielding sticks to stop an attack by South Korean coastguard commandoes armed with clubs aboard rubber boats during a crackdown on alleged illegal fishing in South Korean waters in the Yellow Sea off the southwestern coast county of Buan. South Korea’s coastguard mobilised 12 ships, four helicopters and commandoes for a special three-day crackdown on illegal fishing by Chinese boats this week. REPUBLIC OF KOREA OUT AFP PHOTO / DONG-A ILBO (Photo credit should read DONG-A ILBO/AFP/Getty Images)

The Indo-Pacific Defense Forum reports that today is the United Nations’ “International Day for the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing.”

The humanitarian and economic fallout of illicit fishing is significant in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere. Each year it deprives the world’s oceans of 11 million to 26 million metric tons of fish and other seafood worth an estimated U.S. $10 billion to $23 billion.

IUU fishing accounts for 1 in 5 fish caught worldwide, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports.

The short report provides an overview of the problem, identifies the Chinese fishing fleet and the most agrediuous perpetrator, and discusses what is being done to address the problem.

One of the recent steps taken is the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) discussed here. Perhaps an additional step could be something like my proposal for a Combined Maritime Security Task Force.