Archive for the ‘navy’ Category

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Island powers and maritime conflict

May 13, 2013

The latest issue of The Professional Geographer features a research paper from Dr. Elizabeth Nyman at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette which examines the concept of “island exceptionalism.”   Are island states really different from mainland states in their behavior on the international stage?  Nyman concludes that, yes, there are very real differences.  You will have to have access to Taylor and Francis journals in order to read the full paper at the link, but here is the abstract:

Scholars have argued that due to their special geographical circumstances, island states develop a different relationship with maritime space than their continental counterparts. This is generally attributed both to island residents’ greater access to and benefit from oceanic resources and also to the metaphysical qualities of life that uniquely develop on islands. This article investigates deeper into the phenomenon of geographically determined island exceptionality by considering whether island states and mainland states truly behave differently when it comes to their treatment of and behavior in maritime spaces. Through an analysis of disputed areas in the International Correlates of War maritime data, I consider whether island states are more likely to try and confirm sovereignty over disputed maritime waters than mainland states. My examination of disputed maritime areas in the Western Hemisphere and Europe from 1900 to 2001 shows that indeed island states are both more likely to try and settle a disputed maritime area, whether by force or by negotiated resolution. This finding is then used to raise new questions about the geographic differences that characterize island states in the world political system.

I find this interesting because, in the era of the modern world system, the hegemonic powers have (a) always been maritime powers and have usually been either insular (Great Britain), peninsular (Portugal).  The exceptions have been the Dutch and the US, which themselves have unique geographic features which push them to the sea.  I am thinking about extending Nyman’s analysis beyond island nations out to any nation on MacKinder’s “outer crescent” which has oceanic frontage.    It would not surprise me to see Nyman’s effects enhanced by this data, in which case I might be able to conclude that what is exceptional is heavy participation in maritime disputes (in which case we might be able to consider Portugal and Holland as functionally  part of the Outer Crescent).

pivot area

On another topic – from Nyman’s bio page, I read that she has a forthcoming book on maritime matters in the Arctic, which is another topic explored frequently on this blog.  I look forward to reading more of Dr. Nyman’s work.

Posted in Asian Pivot, Atlanticism, geopolitics, navy | Leave a Comment »

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The US Navy’s challenging future: balancing kinetic, electronic and cyber capabilities

April 30, 2013

Terrific article from AOL Defense on the future of the US Navy.  The Navy needs to replace aging platforms and add new capabilities at the same time, a challenging tandem in the best of time and even more so in the current financial reality.  But it has to be done.  Personally, I would beggar the Army and even (to a lesser degree) the Air Force if that is what was needed to enhance the Navy’s capability and reach.   In a globalized world, the nation with the most effective and far reaching navy will dominate.  Today, that is still the US (and our lead is large), but the game is changing and it is an open question whether we are keeping pace with that change.

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US will build down, then up to a 306 ship navy

April 26, 2013

For nearly a decade, naval planners had said they required 313 ships to meet mission requirements through the end of this century’s third decade.  In its most recent statement, the navy has adjusted that number down to 306 ships.  To meet that goal, the Navy plans to retire dozens of active ships then slowly replace them with modern platforms.  The navy will shrink to a size of 270 ships in 2015 – the lowest total since before World War One.  While many of these new ships will have enhanced capabilities and be armed with better (directed energy) and cheaper (swarms of drones) weapons, the Navy will still be covering as much area with fewer ships.  Also, the fleets will continue to be built around Super Carriers, which many believe will be an outdated platform by the end of the 2020s (and some even believe they are outdated already).  With China focused on a naval strategy and rapidly building up its own naval forces, one wonders whether 300 ships – even 300 advanced ships – will be enough.  Of course, if we share enough of our advanced technologies with local partners, we can revive something like the “thousand ship navy” concept in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Posted in geostrategy, Grand Strategy, navy | Leave a Comment »

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China’s Growing Naval Prowess

April 24, 2013

This month’s edition of Proceedings (the journal of the US Naval Institute) focuses on the growth and development of the Chinese Navy, or the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) as it is known there.    China is aggressively adding capability to its naval forces in order to meet three goals of increased scope and difficulty.

First, to secure their anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy, which is designed to upend the near 70 year US  naval domination of their waters.   This is the “first island chain” strategy, outlined in the infamous “nine-dash line” map.  China first seeks to achieve hegemony within the waters bounded by the first chain of islands off her eastern shore.

Second, to extend their own naval hegemony beyond their near waters and out to the “second island chain,” a series of small atolls farther out into the Pacific, then sweeping down to include the Indonesian archipelago.  Dominating this chain was the same strategic goal that the Imperial Japanese Navy pursued in World War Two; controlling this chain would fully isolate the US from East Asia and force its allies to seek accommodation with China.  Achieving this goal would probably require open war with the US, as it would necessitate seizing control of US territories Guam and the Marianas Islands.

second island chain

The third goal of Chinese naval strategists would be complete domination of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans.  This would seem to be relatively easy, as the US would have been defeated in the completion of the second goal.  Only India, which is also building up a formidable naval force, would be left to compete with the PLAN.

Of course, parts 2 and 3 are long term goals, and the successful completion of even stage 1 is far from a sure thing.  Especially given that the US navy is taking Chinese developments seriously.  This issue of Proceedings has a number of articles that examine Chinese seamanship, their growing blue water capabilities, their submarine forces, and other factors.  It is a must-read issue for anyone interested in the potential Sino-American naval competition in the coming years and decades.

Posted in China, East Asia, geostrategy, navy | 2 Comments »

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China: An Arctic Power? UPDATE

April 22, 2013

about a year and a half ago I posted a story about China’s desire to join the Arctic Council and its aggressive pursuit of a large fleet of icebreakers.  This is the second update on that story (the first was last August, on the completion of the first Chinese transpolar navigation of the Northern Sea Route).  By the end of the decade, the Arctic is expected to become regularly ice free for summer navigation, and the shipping routes from Asia to Europe and the East Coast of North America would be much shorter (and safer, due to the increase in piracy in the southern chokepoints).  Strategically, a seasonally ice free Arctic changes geostrategic calculations that have been in place since Mackinder, explaining China’s interest.

Recently, we read that some other other important Asian nations might join alongside China, as India and Singapore are both mentioned as observer candidates as well.   This is a good thing, as together they would help to weaken Chinese influence (India will be a strategic rival of China for the rest of the century, and Singapore is a deep and trusted ally of the United States).   Naval power will be critical in the 21st century, as the Indian and Arctic Oceans join the Atlantic and Pacific as theaters of power politics.

Posted in Arctic, China, climate change, India, navy | Leave a Comment »

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US Navy sets sights on Information Dominance

December 14, 2012

Military strategists have a growing realization that information operations – both offensive and defensive – will be critical in conflicts for the foreseeable future.  The US Navy, under the leadership of Vice Admiral  Kendall Card, is determined to seize and maintain dominance in the information spectrum of any future battlespace.  Card discusses the efforts of the Navy in the most recent edition of Signal, the journal of the Armed Forces Communication and Electronics Association (subscription required).   The “information spectrum” includes intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as the security of data and networks.  In 2009, the Navy founded the Information Dominance Corps (IDC), tasked with the missions of gaining “a deep understanding of the inner workings of adversaries, develop knowledge of the battlespace, provide naval operating forces with sufficient over-match in wartime command and control and project power through and across the network.”

The IDC is engaged in a large number of programs, one of which is the creation of an aircraft carrier based unmanned vehicle tasked with both offensive and defensive missions:

Unmanned vehicles also are critical to gaining and maintaining information dominance. Te Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program is developing a fighter jet-size UAV capable of being launched from sea. “Tis is an ISR vehicle from the sea that has good range and great endurance and persistence. It will be a multi-intelligence platform that will be critical to the warfighter because there will be some areas of the world where we need ISR from the sea,” Adm. Card offers. “The strike capability is also part of that global war against terrorists that provides insecurity to those terrorists from wherever they’re operating.”

As usual, I suggest that you read the whole thing, but as noted, the link is subscriber-only access.  Signal is a specialty publication, primarily of interest to those in the fields of defense electronics and communications, and not to a general audience.

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The Strait of Hormuz

October 26, 2012

Last month, I listed the seven Keys that Lock Up the Energy World, a list of the chokepoints that potentially constrict and therefore control the flows of oil and natural gas from producing to consuming regions.  This post presents a look at the most critical of those five keys, the Strait of Hormuz, through which as much as 35% of the world’s crude oil and 20% of natural gas must pass in order to reach markets.

Earlier this month, the Financial Times published a detailed examination of the likelihood that Iran would try to close the straits.  Iran has threatened the straits for decades, but have usually had their threats dismissed as empty bluster – they need the straits as much or more as anyone else, as most of their imports and exports must also pass through them.  However, as sanctions bite down harder and harder and internal dissent grows, the notion of closing the straits might change from strategic folly to political necessity.

Would they be able to accomplish this feat?  It would require a remarkable David vs. Goliath victory, as the Iranian Navy’s swarm tactics would try to defeat two different US Navy Air Craft Carrier Task Forces currently in the area.  Raytheon has already supplied the Navy with a new system designed to counteract presumed Iranian tactics, and one would assume that Boeing’s new CHAMP missiles would be deployed very early any such battle, shutting down much of Iran’s capability and blinding the rest.

Posted in energy geopolitics, Iran, navy, Persian Gulf | Leave a Comment »

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What would a China/America war look like?

September 19, 2012

As tensions in East Asia heat up, over at The Diplomat, they have begun what is to be a series of posts imagining what a war between the United States and China might look like.  They call it “The Nightmare Scenario.”   I will monitor the series, but I suspect the nightmare would be all China’s, now and in the near future.  The Chinese have little ability to project power beyond their immediate neighborhood, yet they are exceptionally dependent on long, vulnerable sea lines of communication.  Her “string of pearls” strategy remains an unfinished dream and, even if it were complete, would represent an isolated series of outposts unable to mutually support one another.  The US Navy could strangle Chinese commercial activity thousands of miles beyond effective Chinese military power.

Posted in China, navy | 4 Comments »

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The keys that lock up the energy world

September 13, 2012

In 1904, British Admiral Sir John Fisher proclaimed that “five strategic keys lock up the world.”  Those keys were Singapore, Capetown, Alexandria, Gibraltar and Dover, and “the world,” to Admiral Fisher, was the British Empire.   Those keys were all straits, passages or chokepoints through which British commercial and military ships had to sail to keep the Empire thriving.

The successor state to Great Britain’s global hegemony, the United States, does not have a literal empire nor, therefore, the same  constraints.    However, the global system which US power supports (and on which its prosperity depends), is heavily dependent on maritime trade and is thus also vulnerable to chokepoints.  As much as ninety percent of world trade travels by sea at some point, and between one half and two thirds of the world oil trade is maritime.   As energy is the single most important commodity in the modern global system, the importance of these chokepoints is magnified.  The US Energy Information Agency monitors the main oil transit chokepoints here. The EIA identifies seven chokepoints.  In order of the amount of oil that flows through them, they are:

  1. Strait of Hormuz
  2. Straits of Malacca
  3. Suez Canal
  4. Danish Straits
  5. Turkish Straits (Bosphorus and Dardenelles)
  6. Bab al Mandab
  7. Panama Canal

Below is the EIA map that locates these seven primary petroleum chokepoints

If you add to this a map of global maritime transit density, it is easy to see that there are other potential chokepoints – the southern tip of India, the South China Sea, and the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico:

Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue of Hofstra University has a number of better maps at his comprehenisve Geography of Transportation site, but requests that we do not republish them; I encourage readers to visit Rodrigue’s site.

It is the US Navy that provides the bulk of security for these checkpoints.  The curious thing is that, when you go through the data at the EIA and Hofstra sites, you find that most of the oil transiting the Straits of Hormuz (59%) and the Malacca (96%) are headed to Asia, not the US.  Indeed, the US gets most of its imported oil from relatively secure sources – 54.8% from North & South America, 14.9% from Africa, 11% from Europe (including Russia) and 3.1% from other regions.  Only 16.2% comes from the Persian Gulf.  Conversely, China now imports more than half of its petroleum (and that percentage is growing); about half of its imports come from the Persian Gulf and thus transits Hormuz, and up to 3/4 of Chinese imports transit Malacca.

This dovetails with yesterday’s post on Chinese naval power and strategy.  China is in a difficult spot – at the same time that they are seeking ways to weaken America’s naval advantage, they are also dependent on the US Navy to secure their energy lifeline.  Meanwhile, America’s domestic energy boom is allowing it to be less and less dependent on distant and insecure sources and lessens our interest in securing those passages.

China has the weak hand here.  Even if they develop the skills to push the US out of their immediate maritime neighborhood, they will not have the ability to surge out and protect their sea lines of communication and commerce.  China can pursue an area access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy, but the US Navy can strangle them from a distance by closing the more distant approaches.

Just as Britain and her mighty fleets controlled the five keys a century ago, today the seven (eight, nine or ten) keys that lock up the energy world are owned by the United States and her naval forces.   The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Posted in China, energy geopolitics, geostrategy, Grand Strategy, navy, strategic geography | 2 Comments »

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How vulnerable is the US Navy to Iranian countermeasures in the Persian Gulf?

July 27, 2012

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Joby Warrick detailed the new array of asymmetric weapons and tactics that Iran would bring to bear on the US Navy if a conflict erupts in the Persian Gulf:

Iran is rapidly gaining new capabilities to strike at U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, amassing an arsenal of sophisticated anti-ship missiles while expanding its fleet of fast-attack boats and submarines, U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts say.

The new systems, many of them developed with foreign assistance, are giving Iran’s commanders new confidence that they could quickly damage or destroy U.S. ships if hostilities erupt, the officials say.

. . . A Middle Eastern intelligence official who helps coordinate strategy for the gulf with U.S. counterparts said some Navy ships could find themselves in a “360-degree threat environment,” simultaneously in the cross hairs of adversaries on land, in the air, at sea and even underwater.

“This is the scenario that is giving people nightmares,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing strategy for defending against a possible Iranian attack.

. . .  Modern U.S. warships are equipped with multiple defense systems, such as the ship-based Aegis missile shield. But Iran has sought to neutralize the U.S. technological advantage by honing an ability to strike from multiple directions at once. The emerging strategy relies not only on mobile missile launchers but also on new mini-submarines, helicopters and hundreds of heavily armed small boats known as fast-attack craft.

These highly maneuverable small boats, some barely as long as a subway car, have become a cornerstone of Iran’s strategy for defending the gulf against a much larger adversary. The vessels can rapidly deploy Iran’s estimated 2,000 anti-ship mines or mass in groups to strike large warships from multiple sides at once, like a cloud of wasps attacking much larger prey.

The Navy, however, is not standing still.  Raytheon has begun delivery of its advanced Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) system which will help combat multiple threats to US warships.  The AMDR concept is illustrated below:

a Raytheon produced video of how an AMDR supplied flotilla would respond to attack by multiple weapons platforms  is also provided at the following link:

Raytheon AMDR Simulated Engagement

Posted in Iran, navy, Persian Gulf | Tagged | 3 Comments »

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Law of the Sea Treaty in trouble (again . . . still)

July 16, 2012

Three Republican Senators have made public their intentions to vote “no” on any upcoming votes to ratify the long stalled United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), colloquially known as LOST (Law of the Sea Treaty) in the US.  The treaty, first negotiated in 1982 and revised in 1994, has never been ratified by the US (it has been ratified & signed by over 160 nations including every other major industrial nation).  Many on the US right fear that the treaty represents a loss of US sovereignty,  or at least a potential threat to important sovereign rights.

I am not an expert on maritime law (nor on any law, for that matter), but I do have a good grasp of geostrategy, as well as a set of contacts in the strategic community.  By a pretty significant percentage – 60/40 would be my rough guess – these people have tended to favor the treaty.  If anything, support for the treaty is even a bit higher than that among naval personnel with whom I have communicated – maybe 65/35.   Many of them argue that UNCLOS will make American naval operations easier, and also that it will actually constrain China much more than it will hinder the US.  It’s a trade-off:  while it imposes some limits on our ability to act unilaterally, it makes it much easier for us to create and maintain the multilateral network of allies in the Western Pacific that will be necessary to counter growing Chinese strength in the region.  Commander Bradley May, writing for the US Naval Institute, last month offered yet another positive naval voice in favor of the treaty.

While it is not a perfect treaty, I trust the judgement of those most affected who believe it is a good one.  I fear that defeating UNCLOS is a classic case of allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

Posted in navy | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

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Implications of Chinese Anti-Access/Area-Denial strategy

April 26, 2012

Busy day today, not much to post, but on Andrew Erickson’s site I found a link to this recent Master’s Thesis from USMC Captain Gary Sampson.  I have read the first few pages and it is very interesting and I believe some of my readers will find it valuable or interesting or both.

Posted in China, navy | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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How should the US respond to the Chinese naval build up?

April 6, 2012

Retired Vice Admiral Doug Crowder, writing in the US Naval Institute’s April issue, offers a very perceptive take on the military – and especially the naval – relations between the US and China.  While many observers keep calling on China to be more transparent in their goals and intentions, Admiral Crowder sees a very clear picture – China is building an aggressive maritime military presence that it built for war, not for the mere protection of lines of communication:

The Houbei-class guided-missile fast-attack craft: These are of a modern design, about 225-ton vessels with long-range fourth-generation antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs). In fact, it is only that one mission for which these vessels are really designed. Recent press reports indicate that probably up to 83 of them are in commission, and this force will likely grow to about 100. Their combat range is nominally only about 300 nautical miles. The eight on-board ASCMs, the YJ-83s, have a range of 135-plus nautical miles, providing a potent offensive punch. So to recap, a force of 800 ASCMs could deploy on small, fast, cheap single-mission vessels. How much transparency is required to understand what their mission is?

It is the US, Crowder maintains, which needs to be more transparent.  US policy statements are written very carefully in language that strains not to offend the Chinese and instead hopes to prod them to more openness.  Crowder – and he represents a growing segment of the strategic community – believes the US must start more forcefully pressing China on her goals, and what she intends to do with her rapidly growing war fighting capacity.  China needs to be put on the spot – not that she will give us the answers that we want to hear, but to make it more clear to our allies in the region China is making an absolute play for regional hegemony, and that if they want to resist it, then they need to engage in their own build ups and to support more US activity in the region.

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Economic strength and naval power

February 14, 2012

The theoretical foundation for this blog lie in World System Analysis in general and in Modelski’s Long Cycle Theory in particular.  From this perspective, the world is best understood as a unitary economic system that relies on a single, powerful leader (hegemon) to set the rules and to maintain order.  Throughout the ~500  year existence of the current Modern World System, that leading nation has always been a maritime power with a relatively open society and a trading economy.   That nation is currently the US and there is no obvious successor state (I think India could fill the role in the long term, but that nation probably needs a few more decades of political, economic and especially naval development to fully take up the mantle).

The leading nation has always been challenged by a land based power operating in system that is relatively more closed both politically and economically.  If the US allows its naval power to decay or otherwise declines to maintain leadership, then the world system will undergo substantial change.  Either a continental power (China) will assume leadership and assert a new set of rules, or the system will devolve into relative anarchy.  Therefore, if the US wishes to ensure that its primary interests of liberty and prosperity are maintained, it must maintain its strategic power.  To me, that means both naval and air power, even at the expense of a large army and standing forces deployed around the globe.  Gordon England, former Secretary of the Navy and Deputy Secretary of Defense, made the case for the linkage of naval power and national economic success from a less theoretical but more grounded perspective in last month’s edition of Proceedings, the journal of the Naval Institute.

Posted in geoeconomics, navy | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

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China: An Arctic power?

November 14, 2011

As the Arctic climate changes it is becoming ever more viable as a commercial center.   Vast troves of mineral resources are believed to be held within the Arctic’s relatively shallow waters.  Of even greater consequence, the fabled Northwest Passage and the less well known but more viable Northern Sea Route are becoming open to commercial maritime traffic.  These sea routes need not be fully ice free to be navigable – ice breaker escorts can extend the period of transit beyond those few weeks or months that need no escort.

Arctic Sea Routes

 

The following chart shows the value of these potential routes – the time and distance saved from traditional shipping routes are considerable.  Add to that the fact that these routes border relatively stable political regions and do not risk the piracy and warfare dangers that hamper the southern routes.

China certainly understands the geostrategic value of the Arctic.  China owns and operates six Arctic icebreakers and is constructing six more (compare this to the woeful state of the US icebreaker fleet – just three ships, two of which are sidelined for repair and the third only useful for thin ice conditions).  China, despite its location far from the Arctic, has nonetheless been lobbying for a Permanent Observer status in the Arctic Council.  Last week, China gained an important ally in this goal as Greenland joined Denmark in lobbying for a Chinese seat at the table.    China, seemingly, has a greater appreciation of the importance of the Arctic than does the US, which actually has a physical presence in the region.  The US does not need to try to match China in icebreakers; all we need to do is to fully support Canada – our most important ally and the nation with the most total Arctic coastline (when you count all the Canadian islands) – in their Arctic policy and claims.  US naval power allied with Canadian interests should dominate Arctic discussions.

Posted in Arctic, China, navy | Tagged , | 3 Comments »

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New CNA report: China’s emergence as a maritime power

September 26, 2011

CNA’s China Studies division has issued a new report examining various aspects of China’s drive to build a more robust naval presence in the Western Pacific.  From the abstract:

China is an emerging maritime actor with expanding interests in security at sea. As a consequence, the capabilities of Chinese maritime security forces are improving, missions for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) are expanding, new actors and bureaucratic interests are emerging, and some observers feel that China is now more willing to challenge the interests of others in the maritime domain. CNA has undertaken this study to provide strategic-level context in order to foster discussion and debate about China’s maritime rise and its implications.

The United States has not faced a near-peer competitor, neither globally nor in local strategic regions, since the fall of the Soviet Union (and, arguably, not since the defeat of Imperial Japan over six decades ago).  The rise of China represents a new challenge for both nations – for China, the challenge of building and mastering a naval warfare presence; for the US, the challenge of competing in a vital strategic region without clear and unquestioned naval dominance.   This includes the need for a geo-strategic pivot of the US order of battle in the Western Pacific region.

Posted in China, geopolitics, Grand Strategy, navy | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

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The World’s Most Pirate Infested Waters

August 15, 2011

Marine Insight presents a list of the ten most troublesome piracy zones in the world.   There is a lot of double-counting in their list, which basically covers four areas:  The Straits of Malacca, the South China Sea, the Arabian Sea including the Gulfs of Aden and Oman and extending into the greater Indian Ocean, and the Gulf of Guinea.   To this you can add the legendary Spanish Main, El Caribe, as the 2010 Piracy Incident Map from the IMB Piracy Reporting Center shows, and you can see the real Top 5 Piracy zones.

This graphically illustrates that India is both the nation whose commerce faces the greatest threat from piracy, and also why that nation is most strategically positioned to take the lead in combating the threat.  Yet another reason why India’s ongoing naval buildup should continue.

Posted in India, navy | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

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India in need of updated naval strategy

August 11, 2011

Op Ed from the Asia Times that adds detail from our post yesterday.  We focused on the dangers to India’s eastern coast from the ongoing creep of Chinese naval power; Michael Kugelman’s op ed for the Times echoes that point, but expands on the strategic importance of India’s western approaches:

It is energy security, however, that most starkly illuminates the navy’s significance. With indigenous energy supplies unable to satisfy prodigious demand (the country is projected to become the world’s third-largest energy consumer by 2030), India has developed a severe addiction to overseas hydrocarbons. Today, two-thirds of India’s oil consumption originates abroad.

Most of these energy resources, along with the transit routes used to bring them home, are sea-based and situated in volatile regions. From offshore assets in the turbulent Persian Gulf to piracy-riven sea lanes off the coast of Somalia, India faces constant threats of energy supply shocks. Additionally, even as India strengthens its own offshore energy infrastructure (several thousand kilometers of pipeline have been laid to facilitate oil and gas flow from offshore platforms to onshore terminals), they remain vulnerable to attack by militants.

India has a large and impressive navy.  The convergence of interests in the Indian Ocean should compel the US to form a more active naval alliance with the world’s largest democracy.  India should be a linchpin in an alliance of the other great powers of Mackinder’s Outer Crescent – the US, Great Britain, Japan, Australia and India.

Posted in China, geopolitics, India, navy | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

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China launches 1st Carrier, Taiwan plans to sink it

August 10, 2011

On the day the the People’s Liberation Army Navy officially took to sea with it’s first aircraft carrier, named Varyag, Taiwan introduced the Hsiung Feng 3, their own version of a “carrier killer” anti-ship missile, complete with a mural depicting an attack on the Varyag.

Artist's rendition of Hsiung Feng 3 attacking the PLAN Varyag

Posted in China, geopolitics, navy | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Indian Navy, wary of China, building up it’s Eastern Fleet

August 10, 2011

The Indian Navy’s Eastern Command has nearly doubled it’s warship total from 30 in 2005 to 50 today.  They are additionally planning to build new naval facilities along the east coast, and to re-assign the navy’s lone aircraft carrier to the East once they take receipt of their second carrier, purchased from Russia.

The Indian Navy has traditionally been focused on the Western Command, where their longtime rival Pakistan sits astride the vital sea lanes from the Persian Gulf and Europe.  But the increased Chinese presence in South East Asia is forcing both an expansion of Indian naval assets and a fortification of the eastern approaches.

Report from the Calcutta Telegraph

Posted in China, geopolitics, India, navy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

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