China has just signed a contract for its largest patrol ship (424 foot, 5,418 ton) and they expect it to be delivered in July 2012 (note that is less than two years away–and I don’t expect they will build just one).
Thanks to http://combatfleetoftheworld.blogspot.com/ for the heads up.
The Coast Guard will be on the National Geographic Channel’s Border Wars tonight, as they follow the USCGC Cushing (WPB 1321), as it is sent to relieve a boarding team from another Coast Guard unit on board an 87 ft Panamanian F/V with 1.5 tons of Cocaine, while negotiations are ongoing with the government of Panama.
A recent pirate attack may signal changes in the nature of Somali Piracy. The European Union Naval Force reports, during the night, November 6, the Spanish corvette INFANTA CRISTINA, escorting an African Union Military Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) supply ship, the MV Petra I, was attacked by a vessel identified as the MV IZUMI, a ship that had itself been pirated on Oct. 10. (“Since…December 2008, EU NAVFOR has conducted 86 World Food Programme escorts and 71 escorts for AMISOM.”)
The best analysis I have found is here. This post includes photos of the three ships involved. The things that made this attack different were:
If pirates start staging attacks directly from larger ships, it will allow them to attack larger ships with greater freeboard. It may make it possible to conduct attacks in weather that precludes attacks by boats. It will almost certainly require different countermeasures on the part of the merchant ships.
Its possible these events may be being misinterpreted. Its possible the encounter was unintentional, that the choice of a AMISON ship was random, and that the small warship was not recognized in the dark. However, if it is proven an Al Queda associated group is using piracy to further its aims, it will radically change US perception of the importance of Somali piracy, which in economic terms, has been more nuisance than major problem.
The Navy is shrinking and will have to make some hard choices. How will this effect the Coast Guard?
March 1, 2010 the Center for Naval Analysis published a now widely read and quoted treatise, discussing how the Navy can best reorder its priorities to deal with the new realities of a shrinking fleet and the rise of new potential competitors, particularly China, ” The Navy at a Tipping Point: Maritime Dominance at Stake?” It is available as a pdf and can be downloaded here.
It accepts that the Navy will shrink to approximately 230 ship from its current level of approximately 285 and outlines five alternative futures.
In the sparest terms their impact on the fleet are outlined below (ref. p 43):
Relative to their emphasis on the high end to low end spectrum the resulting fleet looks like this:
High End–2 Hub, Surge, Shrinking Status Quo, 1+ Hub, Shaping–Low End
Observations:
The study doesn’t explicitly address some missions.
The USN doesn’t seem to regard coastal defense of the US as a mission that it needs to concern itself with. (I suppose that’s why we have a Coast Guard.) It is mentioned in the study only as a “wild card” that might constrain future options (page 22).
The Coast Guard performs many of the missions that Navies do in most countries. This has relieved the Navy of the requirement to maintain large numbers of low end assets. Unlike most countries, the US essentially has two Navies–the High End Navy and the low end Coast Guard. Since the USN has abdicated the low end tasks, expecting the Navy to mentor low end Navies around the world may be unrealistic anyway.
What I think will happen:
The Navy will make every effort to keep their high end assets–Carriers, Aegis equipped Guided Missile Cruisers and Destroyers and Submarines–exemplified in the “2 Hub” option, perhaps with deployments pulled back from the Asian mainland in recognition of the dangers of a Chinese first strike.
Amphibs and low end forces will be cut back further. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will be truncated far short of the originally planned 55 units.
Navy support for drug enforcement will be reduced, as will “engagement” in terms of interaction with small navies and coast guards. The Coast Guard will be asked to fill in, in the engagement role.
In wartime, the need for small vessels to do inspections for contraband, either as a quarantine or blockade or off the shores of friendly countries, as we did in Vietnam in Operation Market Time, or to protect offshore assets, as we are doing now off Iraq, will fall increasingly on the Coast Guard.
What I think we should do:
That the Coast Guard has a defense role needs to be more widely recognized, planned for, equipped, and appropriately funded, meaning a marginally larger force.
While I personally doubt its effectiveness, it can be argued that reduced Navy commitments in support of drug enforcement will need to be replaced by less expensive Coast Guard assets.
The Coast Guard can do engagement missions cheaper and possibly better, but they need to be properly funded, because they do effect our force structure. The same may be true of counter piracy.
To make it happen, we really need the Navy to strongly support the Coast Guard, and if they choose the high end option, they have an incentive to do so, as a way of explaining why they can reasonably walk away from some of the things they have done in the past and “let the Coast Guard do it.”
A couple of blogs allow us to see new equipment and concepts (mostly in model form) being shown at the EURONAVAL 2010 Exhibition. One of my regular reads, http://combatfleetoftheworld.blogspot.com/, has a four part series of photos. Clicking on the image gives you a better view and the blogger, Mike Columbaro (he’s French, but the blog is in English), was good enough to label the photos.
There are four pages of additional pictures and discussion here as well (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?188289-Euronaval-news). Unfortunately the pictures are not as well labeled.
If you are interested, I would suggest you start by going directly to the Combat Fleet blog first and then moving on to the militaryphotos site. Because over time the combatfleetoftheworld posts will get buried by newer posts, I’ll provide links for each of them separately, here, here, here, and here.
Related posts:
There are more signs that tension between China and Japan is ratcheting up, and that their Coast Guards are the instruments of choice. The Chinese are reinforcing their Coast Guard in the Disputed area. The Chinese have disputes with a number of their neighbors, but I think they have several reasons for choosing to confront the Japanese first.
Sidbar, Handicapping the contenders: If it came to blows between the two Coast Guards, I would put my money on the Japanese, but winning that particular battle may not be in the plan. Pointedly the Chinese are sending their “fastest marine law enforcement vessel.” This ship, “China Sea monitoring 75,” is slightly smaller than a 270 and only about one knot faster. The balance is changing rapidly, but the Japanese Coast Guard is still far larger and better equipped than their Chinese counterpart. In fact the Japanese Coast Guard (JCG) has more patrol vessels over 1,000 tons than the US Coast Guard, including eleven that are as large or larger than the National Security Cutter (go here and click on “pamphlet” for a pdf which includes information about the missions, organization, and assets of the Japanese Coast Guard)
In all probability, units of the nine ship Hateruma class (292 ft long, 1,300 ton, 30 knots, armed with the Mk44 Bushmaster II 30mm autocannon with laser-optical fire-control system), specifically intended to police of Senkaku Islands, will be among several vessels that will respond to any Chinese challenge.
The requirements that shape the latest vessels of the Japan Coast Guard seem to have been influenced by their experience in the “Battle of Amami-Oshima.” To call it a battle might be an exaggeration. It was a running gun-fight between an armed North Korean trawler and 20 vessels of the Japanese Coast Guard in 2001. In spite of intense machine gun fire from both sides, the North Korean vessel appears to have been scuttled, rather than sunk by fire from the Japanese vessels, the trawler’s crew choosing death rather than surrender. I find it hard to understand, in view of our experience in Vietnam, but the Japanese felt their 20mm Gatling guns were out-ranged by 9K38 Igla MANPADS and B-10 and recoilless rifle fire from the trawler. As a result they have built ships specifically intended to counter North Korean spy ships that have stabilized heavy machine guns from 20 mm M61 Gatling guns to Bofors 40mm/70s with associated fire control systems and for “High-speed, high-functionality” large patrol ships such as the three ships of the Hida class, 1,800 tons and three ships of the Aso class, 770 tons, hulls that are “bullet proof” (presumably against machine-guns up to 14.5mm–protection against anything larger would require great weight of armor).
It’s interesting to compare the JCG choices for ships of the Hateruma class and Hida class with the projected OPC. The JCG ships are much faster at 30+ knots. They have no hanger, but they can handle very large helicopters. USCG ships tend to be small naval combatants, while JCG ships appear to be built more along the lines of merchant ships. Armoring hulls is apparently not something the USCG has considered. USCG ships tend to be armed to fight at relatively longer ranges (gun ranges to 9 miles) against adversaries with sophisticated weapons including cruise missiles, while the JCG ships seem to be optimized more for combat at relatively close, but not extremely close range (beyond 2000, but certainly less than 10,000 yards), ranges where crew served weapons and small arms are essentially useless, but their heavier weapons under electro-optic fire control can still dominate.
Sidebar, The Aftermath: Against the JCG the Chinese Coast Guard would probably loose a fight, but that might be best outcome from the Chinese point of view. If this is more about national unity and justifying sacrifice for additional weapons, nothing promotes national resolve like seeing stretchers come off a ship with wounded men to be greeted by their wives and girlfriends, followed by body bags met by grieving widows and children. In any case, the Japanese will be portrayed as bullies–easy for the Chinese people to believe–and a strong military reaction justified. Both sides will have their cameras ready, because any encounter will be played out thousands of times on YouTube by battling videos, as we saw in the Gaza flotilla incident.
(Thanks to DER for bringing this to my attention.)
D. E. Reddick was good enough to point me to this site, which seems to have good information on various vessels that narcotics trafficers used or apparently intended to use to smuggle their product.
Some of the other pages on the site might also be interesting, particularly if you might be involved in harbor defense some day.
The Beluga Fortune, one of the three ships we reported taken by pirates over the weekend, has been retaken as a result of the crews use of recommended countermeasures.
The US Naval Institute Blog has more details on the recapture, facilitated by HMS Montrose (a 4300 ton British Type 23 frigate–same size as the NSC). They also discuss the latest information on best practices for mariners to avoid being taken by pirates, now published as a 78 page pamphlet entitled “BMP3, Best Management Practice 3, Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and Arabian Sea Area.” A pdf copy of the manual is available here: http://www.mschoa.org/bmp3/Documents/BMP3%20Final_low.pdf
Related Posts:
Ryan Erickson’s blog pointed out an article in the Vancouver Sun reporting that the Canadians are considering arming their icebreakers as a way to “bolster Arctic sovereignty.”
This was in response to “recommendations in a report from the Senate fisheries committee about strengthening Canada’s presence in the North.”
“The government also has indicated that it will review new shipping regulations in the Northwest Passage and other Arctic waters with an eye to extending mandatory registration of foreign vessels, which currently applies only to large freighters and other heavy ships, to all foreign-ship traffic in the region, regardless of size.”
Ryan links the report to the 1985 transit of the North West Passage by the Polar Sea, in which the USCG icebreaker transited what the Canadians consider their internal waters and what the US considers an international strait, after the US gave notification of our intention, rather than asking permission.
Since then, basically the US and the Canadians have agreed to disagree. Currently the US and Canada have an agreement that allows access to US military ships. They have given us blanket permission and we have said we will give notification.
For the US Navy this is a matter of avoiding a precedence that could close off access elsewhere.
For the Coast Guard, our interests are a little different, perhaps closer to that of the Canadians. We want Maritime Domain Awareness. We want ships to give notice of their intentions, and ultimately that has to mean we need some options to deny access, but the international norms are still being set.
The talk of arming Canadian icebreakers leads to the question, will the Canadian Coast Guard be transformed by it’s new mission to more closely parallel the military organization of the USCG. There has already been a question about whether the Canadian Navy or their Coast Guard would man the proposed Arctic Patrol Ship since they would be armed, unlike current Canadian cutters.
NATO reports three vessels October 23/24, a Dhow; the YORK, a Singapore flagged 5,076-ton LPG tanker en route from Mombasa, Kenya to the Seychelles, was carrying 17 crew, including a German master, two Ukrainians and 14 Filipinos, and the BELUGA FORTUNE a cargo ship under charter to a German company bound from the United Arab Emirates to South Africa have been seized in two days.
It appears a South Korean flag crab boat, the GOLDEN WAVE, seized on October 9, was used as the mother ship for seizure of the YORK. When the GOLDEN WAVE was seized, she had on board 43 people, two S. Korean, two Chinese, and 37 Kenyans.
Reportedly pirates are currently holding 20 vessels and and 428 hostages.
If you would like to keep up with what is happening with regard to piracy in the Indian Ocean, it looks like “Eagle Speak” is a good source.
Raw Data is available from the NATO site here.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 