The South China Sea is among the most contested maritime areas on the earth. Smaller international locations just like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia face rising stress from an assertive and militarily highly effective Folks’s Republic of China because of overlapping sovereignty claims and important commerce routes. Beijing’s maritime power projection threatens regional sovereignty and financial rights underneath the U.N. Conference on the Legislation of the Sea via its militarization of synthetic islands, aggressive maritime actions, and widespread unlawful fishing. To handle this imbalance, claimant states ought to undertake uneven methods that enhance maritime area consciousness, defend unique financial zones, and impose prices on illegal actions. One such method is the event of maritime outposts, impressed by the Philippines’ Fort Drum in Manila Bay.
Fort Drum: A Historic Mannequin of Maritime Protection
Fort Drum, constructed by america within the early twentieth century, stands as a long-lasting instance of ingenuity in coastal protection from a bygone period. Situated on the entrance of Manila Bay, engineers reworked El Fraile Island right into a strengthened concrete battleship outfitted with 14-inch coastal cannons and designed to face up to heavy bombardment. Though now conceptually outdated, Fort Drum’s resilience throughout World Battle II reveals the potential of maritime outposts as operational deterrents towards gray-zone actions. Accordingly, its legacy offers classes for contemporary uneven protection within the South China Sea.
Asymmetric warfare goals to impose disproportionate prices on a stronger adversary utilizing dissimilar strategies and capabilities to reinforce strengths and masks disadvantages in sudden methods. Rather than mirroring China’s navy build-up, Southeast Asian states can develop layered defenses that leverage geography, low-cost know-how, and irregular operations. Current conflicts spotlight the effectiveness of this method: Ukraine’s innovative use of drone swarms and Azerbaijan’s deployment of loitering munitions within the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War each illustrate how smaller forces can offset typical disadvantages. Utilizing Fort Drum for example, these outposts ought to be seen as strategies to keep up presence and complicate adversary maneuvers, fairly than static fortresses meant to face up to and repel a direct assault. Fort Drum was carved from an island and strengthened right into a concrete battleship, constructed to face up to direct hearth and function a long-lasting deterrent on the entrance to Manila Bay. In the present day, such maritime outposts can embody related permanence, signaling sovereignty and deterrence in contested waters.
Purposes for Maritime Outposts
Maritime outposts can present uneven benefits by partaking in a contest of notion, entry, and legitimacy fairly than relying solely on pressure and finance. They will perform as launch and restoration hubs for unmanned aerial, floor, and underwater techniques, and as nodes for surveillance and digital warfare. They will additionally function ahead positions for regulation enforcement and particular operations. As an alternative of constructing costly copies of China’s gear and synthetic islands, Southeast Asian nations may discreetly occupy and improve man-made and pure terrain into multipurpose nodes. This method leverages geography and innovation with out igniting an costly arms race. The true energy of those outposts lies extra of their capacity to complicate Beijing’s calculations for maneuvering and threat tolerance than of their fight energy. If claimant states can reliably monitor their waters, publicly expose violations, and reply rapidly to gray-zone operations, they’ll start to weaken China’s gradual and uncontested expansion strategy.
Such outposts additionally serve an essential symbolic function: Their presence demonstrates sovereignty whereas their uneven capabilities problem the concept that the South China Sea is China’s to dominate. Fort Drum’s closely engineered infrastructure, armored turrets, and fortified inside areas present a historic comparability. Its resilience towards overwhelming pressure can encourage the design of recent retractable bays and restore amenities to keep up persistence and safety simply as Fort Drum protected its crew and its shores.
Drone Launch and Restoration
Low-cost aerial and maritime drones can present persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, conduct focused strikes, and overwhelm enemy defenses. By equipping such outposts with launch, restoration, and knowledge uplink capabilities for drones, claimant states can repeatedly monitor their maritime territories. These outposts can function both ahead working bases or a part of a community of nodes, discreetly deploying belongings into key chokepoints and surveillance zones, thereby lowering threat to personnel whereas complicating enemy planning.
Simply as Fort Drum managed entry to Manila Bay within the early twentieth century, the design of latest outposts may mirror the significance of sensor and fire-control integration in as we speak’s maritime protection. Fashionable equivalents may develop by deploying a dense array of digital and acoustic sensors, thereby mirroring Fort Drum’s function as a sentinel for early warning and deterrence.
Watching and Contesting
The significance of sensor fusion and electronic warfare in fashionable conflicts is immense, simply because the firepower and defenses of Fort Drum had been essential for coastal protection within the early twentieth century. Such capabilities not solely improve detection and consciousness but in addition present a significant offensive edge, as seen within the Second Nagorno-Karabakh Battle and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Using each passive and lively sensors within the maritime domain can tremendously improve situational consciousness even in degraded and contested environments.
Outposts may be outfitted with hydrophones, lively radar, and electro-optical/infrared cameras. These instruments allow steady surveillance and knowledge fusion by way of satellite tv for pc uplink to mainland fusion facilities. Impressed by Ukraine’s Sky Fortress system, a low-cost microphone array for detecting drone exercise, international locations may deploy acoustic and pressure-based sensing poles above and under the waterline to watch aerial, floor, and underwater exercise with minimal price and complexity.
The power to jam, spoof, and deceive enemy systems affords each defensive safety and offensive benefits — fashionable diversifications of Fort Drum’s armor and coastal weapons. Fort Drum’s commanding presence on the entrance of Manila Bay projected energy and sovereignty. In the present day, maritime outposts can replicate this psychological affect by combining bodily presence with cyber and informational instruments that amplify state narratives and uncover unlawful actions.
Provide and Staging
Fort Drum additionally served as a safe logistics hub for U.S. forces transferring via Manila Bay. Likewise, these outposts can act as provide depots for ships at sea and staging areas for regulation enforcement and particular operations. Maritime outposts may act as resupply factors and staging areas, increasing the operational attain of smaller navies and coast guards by offering a cheaper different to underway replenishment.
The Philippines has already expanded its coast guard and naval presence round contested waters, such because the Second Thomas Shoal, and has been repeatedly resupplying the Sierra Madre outpost, which faces fixed Chinese language stress. Close by outposts may provide different resupply choices to those more and more contested areas by lowering the visibility of sustainment vessels and slicing transit distances. These outposts also can enhance safety by rising go to, board, search, and seizure missions, thereby deterring unlawful fishing and defending civilian vessels.
Cyber and Info Operations
Fort Drum demonstrates how well-placed outposts can form the safety construction of a maritime area. Likewise, interoperable maritime outposts throughout Southeast Asia may create a distributed community that helps regional protection with out counting on conventional alliance techniques. Right here, as with Fort Drum, the notion of resilience may be simply as important as precise energy.
Like Fort Drum’s silhouette at Manila Bay, fashionable maritime outposts may undertaking resilience via their capabilities and informational affect. When correctly manned and outfitted, they’ll reinforce these international locations’ narratives by recording, publicizing, and countering unlawful actions. The Philippines has already used transparency campaigns to show Chinese language harassment of its vessels, gaining worldwide assist. A community of outposts that mixes info operations with every day actions would improve this impact, turning surveillance into strategic leverage. In any case, amplifying the success of one’s resistance while exposing an adversary’s misconduct is simply as essential as attaining these successes, particularly when going through a stronger opponent that ignores international laws and norms.
Due to this fact, these outposts ought to embody a cyber and indicators exploitation group by assigning a small, rotating group educated in utilizing industrial instruments to scan maritime communications, spoof enemy positioning techniques, and monitor unlawful fishing actions. Along with maritime area consciousness, they need to assist defend civilian vessels to advertise adherence to worldwide norms.
Sustainment Issues
Such outposts may undertake a decentralized operational method, much like Ukraine’s “flat war” idea. On this mannequin, rotational detachments ought to be empowered to behave decisively, making certain adaptability and resilience. Moreover, they need to have the independence to accumulate, modify, and deploy kinetic and non-kinetic techniques in response to quickly evolving operational wants. This may be supported by on-site 3D printing labs, fundamental drone meeting workshops, and direct procurement channels to industrial distributors, bypassing complicated procurement processes.
Safety Framework and Regional Issues
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations operates on consensus and non-interference, making collective protection or joint navy motion underneath its banner extremely unlikely. As an alternative, claimant states can construct and preserve maritime outposts inside their very own territories and unique financial zones whereas maintaining them interoperable via present partnerships. In terms of treaty allies such because the Philippines, Japan, Australia, and members of NATO with territory in Asia (most notably France), america may present funding and technical help via ongoing maritime safety cooperation applications. Bilateral and multilateral workouts that embody these outposts would present persistence and cooperation with out creating a proper alliance. This decentralized mannequin, grounded in worldwide regulation, would strengthen deterrence whereas avoiding fees of militarization.
Any effort to construct or adapt buildings in contested waters carries diplomatic dangers, since even defensive measures could also be portrayed as provocative. To scale back that threat, outposts also needs to function fisheries enforcement and environmental monitoring facilities, aligning with regional norms and worldwide commitments. Framed on this approach, they would seem as cooperative mechanisms, enhancing legitimacy and drawing exterior assist with out upsetting battle.
The result can be a community of interoperable outposts that function independently however share a typical goal. Such a system would mirror the principles of gradualism, non-alignment, and strategic autonomy whereas weaving collectively an internet of maritime sensors and surveillance platforms. This community would bolster deterrence and enhance consciousness throughout a number of domains within the South China Sea.
Fastened in Geography, But Enhancing Operational Mobility
Critics will inevitably recall many historic examples of fastened defenses failing towards extra cellular adversaries. Nevertheless, these maritime outposts should not stable fortresses designed to repel extra highly effective and agile opponents. As an alternative, they need to be considered as maritime patrol bases targeted on extending operational attain by gathering intelligence, deterrence, and focusing on. They’re uneven instruments supposed to reinforce the maneuver of maritime forces which are presently poorly matched towards Chinese language capabilities. These outposts are constructed for ongoing competitors, not a decisive battle. By internet hosting unmanned techniques, sensors, and knowledge operations items, these outposts allow Southeast Asian states to problem China’s gray-zone actions inside a sensible timeframe and with out the excessive prices and prolonged timelines for buying fifth-generation plane or increasing blue-water navies. Their energy doesn’t come from confronting pressure with pressure however from persistence, visibility, and publicity of unlawful actions. Fastened in location however versatile in perform, they flip terrain into benefit and presence into affect, demonstrating that such outposts can function successfully inside the competitors continuum at sea with out the large prices of matching pressure for pressure.
Conclusion
Fort Drum’s legacy offers a framework for uneven operations in contested waters. By reworking maritime geography into resilient outposts that host unmanned techniques, sensors, info operations, and safety forces, Southeast Asian states can impose prices on Chinese language coercion with out the excessive expense of matching its naval buildup ship for ship. Fashionable Fort Drums don’t have to be concrete battleships bristling with weapons. They need to be versatile nodes that stretch safety and complicate adversary planning. In as we speak’s contested seas, notion, resilience, and the power to detect and report are simply as essential as firepower and armor. Reimagined maritime outposts, impressed by Fort Drum’s ingenuity, can type a constellation of defenses that defend sovereignty, improve maritime area consciousness, and assist the rules-based order within the Indo-Pacific.
Ron J. Lienhardt is a Marine Corps infantry officer and Southeast Asia overseas space officer presently serving because the operations officer of the Workplace of Protection Cooperation on the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. Earlier than assuming this function, he served as a rifle firm commander and fires and results coordinator as 1st Battalion third Marines transitioned to change into third Littoral Fight Group: the infantry and fires part of the first-ever Marine littoral regiment.
The views expressed on this article are these of the creator. They don’t characterize the views, insurance policies, or positions of the Marine Corps, the Division of Protection, or any a part of the U.S. authorities.
**Please notice, as a matter of home model, Battle on the Rocks is not going to use a unique identify for the U.S. Division of Protection till and until the identify is modified by statute by the U.S. Congress.
Picture: Midjourney
