Note from Jon Solomon: The article below was written by a Systems Planning and Analysis colleague of mine, Jonathan Altman. Following my post last month regarding how sea denial might figure into U.S. maritime strategy for deterring—or if necessary, defending against—Chinese aggression in East Asia, Jonathan pointed out to me several issues and scenarios regarding the potential use of offensive mining in such a strategy that I hadn't considered. Jonathan has graciously agreed to share his observations with you here in order to broaden the ongoing debate.
Recently the concept of
naval mining, specifically the potential advantages in using naval mines to
achieve targeted sea denial, has received more publicity in naval themed publications
and the blogosphere. Mining advocates’ hopes were emboldened just before
Christmas when the “Cromnibus” was signed into law, containing a line of $10M for
naval mining research and development. However, careful consideration should be
given to just what employing mines might entail. Though not apparent from most
public analyses, there are significant potential issues with employing naval
mines offensively that need to be understood. The first of these is their
connotation and associated baggage.
When the average (but
informed) American hears the term “mine,” it generally conjures up images of a
soldier in Vietnam or WWII missing a limb, or crying in the aftermath of a mine
explosion that killed a dear friend. More historically aware Americans might think
of WWI era sailors and/or civilians drowning in the frigid North Atlantic, or
perhaps our own Sailors during the Korean War (the mine damage incurred by the
USS Samuel B. Roberts in 1988 and the USS Princeton and USS Tripoli in 1991 did
not result in ship loss). While maritime mining is quite different from land
mining, we must not overlook the baggage that mining as a term brings to the
table in the broader public sphere. Whole classes of weapons, many of which
were quite effective, have been banned by the international community at
various points in time (such as cluster munitions; despite continued US use of
these weapons). Land mines are similarly the focus of international ire. This
is not to argue that the United States should allow other countries to dictate
what types of weapons it can employ, only that using weapons such as these should
present a higher barrier to use because of the inherent perception loss that a
state receives for using them. Fundamentally, a weapon that achieves the same
effect without or with reduced baggage should be preferred.
Most recent advocacy
with respect to naval mining is written in context of use (either in terms of
notional wartime employment or latent peacetime deterrent value) against China,
so that’s where the remainder of this piece is focused. Note however that many
of the tenets enumerated in a China context could be applied to contingencies
involving other illiberal non-Western states.
The foundational issue
with employing naval mines offensively against the People’s Liberation Army
Navy (PLAN) is simply that it may not have the intended effect of keeping the
PLAN bottled up inside its ports. For offensive naval mining to be effective,
the Chinese would need to be deterred from sortieing their fleet out to sea.
However, this would require a Chinese cultural aversion to losses that may not
exist. Chinese military culture has
historically accepted exceptionally high losses as a price for victory (e.g.
Chinese Civil War and WWII), and individual sacrifice for the greater good is
respected[1]. Especially
when one factors in the ample amount of old
ships the PLAN has, there’s reason to suspect that when
confronted with a minefield (or a small number of emplaced mines), the PLAN might
manually force a Q route using low value, outdated but manned ships (this logic
could similarly be applied to Iran or North Korea). This could render the
minefield ineffective, and void the operational end that it was deployed to
achieve. It should be noted however that this approach runs some risk of
failure as narrow channels could be clogged by sunken hulls in an attempt to
force a Q route; accordingly this tactic is not likely to be employed where
maneuver space and/or water depth is restricted.
Even if offensive naval
mining was effective in that it kept PLAN assets contained in port for fear of
losses, larger concerns should exist in the mind of offensive mining supporters
about what a devious foe could do to exploit this situation given mines’
reputation as indiscriminate killers. Too often in analysis of “the other,”
whether in intelligence, military or even economic venues, we as Westerners
with our own ingrained biases export these onto those who do not share them; a
process called mirror imaging. Assuming that a foe would simply not take losses
to force a Q route is one example of this; another is imagining that they would
avoid acting in ways that are morally repugnant to Western norms to exploit a
favorable opportunity.
Recent action in the
South China Sea has shown the Chinese to be not only excellent strategists (incrementally extending their legitimacy in
a whole region without firing a shot), but also masters of information warfare
(the Russians are not too shabby at it themselves). Applying this acumen to offensive
naval mining, as soon as a minefield was discovered (or more likely announced
to meet the rules of war); there would be tremendous advantage for the Chinese
government to create the conditions where a US mine (real or perceived) kills
a large number of Chinese (or third-party country) civilians. Here is where the
tactical views of mining could become irrelevant in the face of a well-designed
strategy. For example, even if a US mine is so “smart” that there is no way it
could ever kill a civilian ship (no small feat), there would be nothing to stop
the Chinese from packing a vessel with explosives and blowing it up themselves
in the rough geographic region of the offensive minefield; preferably in full
view of cameras and with plenty of innocents on board. This situation could be
made even more challenging for the US if a legitimate mine had already sunk a
military ship in a similar location, as deniability would become nearly
impossible at that point.
The Chinese could
conceivably also create the appearance that the U.S. had mined offensively when
or where it had not. They could use the confusion that surrounded the “mine
strike” for propaganda purposes as well as to justify ‘retaliation’ that was
actually premeditated escalation. By selling the perception that they had
responded rather than preempted, they would reduce the risk of being seen as an
aggressor and would create a more favorable image to the world at large (a key
component of information warfare).
There would probably be
no way, and certainly no quick way, for the United States to prove to the watching
global public that a Chinese non-military vessel’s loss in the above scenarios
stemmed from a Chinese false flag operation as opposed to a genuine US
mine. The perception that the Chinese
were the victim of an irresponsible US weapon could also be used as diplomatic
leverage to strain US regional alliances and push neutral powers towards China.
European countries could be especially sensitive to pressure from their publics
to back out of openly supporting the US in this case.
Depending on when in a
conflict the aforementioned incident is staged, a savvy adversary may be able
to extract additional advantages. For instance, if conducted at a period of
heightened tension, China could use the incident as a casus belli and follow it with an overt (preemptive) attack. This would
be increasingly likely if the Chinese were already preparing for a major
offensive; similar to the German false-flagged Gleiwitz
incident in 1939. Any strain on the Chinese economy (the
basis of Chinese Communist Party legitimacy) would make this option even more
attractive.
Ultimately, it must be
asked “what is the intended goal of offensively employing naval mines”?
According to recent writing,
it seems to be large scale but targeted sea denial enabled through a capability
to strike targets in a discriminate fashion at a time and place of US choosing.
Certainly this is a valid and desirable military end. The only question then is
whether offensive mines are the best tool to accomplish this objective given
their stigma and assumed ability to engage targets without human intervention. Some
existing technologies that might be evaluated as alternatives to mines in this
respect could include torpedoes, long-range anti-ship cruise missiles, or
surface ship delivered anti-ship ballistic missiles. Future unmanned systems
may also provide an option for selective targeting with a man-in-the-loop that
would greatly reduce the baggage that comes with both the word “mine” and with
the idea of a self-targeting weapon. In the end, a weapon that delivers
targeted but wide area sea denial without the downsides associated with a naval
mine is likely to be a valuable and increasingly necessary military tool to
maintain United States maritime influence in many parts of the world.
Jonathan Altman is an analyst with Systems
Planning and Analysis Inc, a defense contractor located in Alexandria,
Virginia. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Security from the Josef
Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.
The
views expressed herein are those only of the author and do not reflect the
official policy or position of Systems Planning and Analysis, the Department of
Defense or the U.S. Government.
[1] Oyserman,
Coon, & Kemmelmeier, Rethinking Individualism and Collectivism: Evaluation
of Theoretical Assumptions and Meta-Analyses. In this analysis of 250 cultures,
the Chinese were found to be the most collectivist of all groups studied.
Collectivist
groups typically subordinate individual actions for the good of the group.
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