How Marine Security Cooperation Can Translate into Sea Control
Brian Kerg, Anthony King, and Michael Murray
September 13, 2019
January, 2024: With the likely election of an aggressively pro-independence candidate as the new president of Taiwan, American intelligence agencies identify signs of an imminent Chinese assault on the small island nation. To deter any foreign led intervention, China activates anti-access/area denial assets on land and at sea across the theater. People’s Liberation Army-Navy fleets steam to key positions in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and Yellow Sea, prepared to engage the ships of their adversaries, while conducting live-fire missile exercises around the Taiwan Strait to intimidate. Senior planners in Beijing seem confident that no foreign forces could reasonably enter the area without assuming unacceptable risk and drastically escalating the stakes: the weapons engagement zone of China simply reaches too far. Taiwan, it seemed, would finally be reunited with its homeland. China quietly offered Taiwan its terms, with a big stick looming.
But on the coast of Vietnam, a U.S. Marine security cooperation team conducting training with Vietnamese counterparts receives an order. Terminating its training mission, the marines rapidly deploy several lethal and accurate fires platforms that the team had as a part of its training load. Launching swarms of unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater reconnaissance systems, they acquire the locations of the most critical ships of the Chinese fleet, communicating this data to American maritime operations centers. Targets are acquired.
https://warontherocks.com/2019/09/how-marine-security-cooperation-can-translate-into-sea-control/
