China And Russia Hate Indo-Pacific’s New Collaborative Surveillance Webs

The annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources is normally a sedate, low-key affair, well off the world’s diplomatic radar. But late last year, a vicious illegal fishing dispute between New Zealand and Russia roiled the meeting. The squabble revealed serious Russian and Chines discomfort at the ongoing proliferation of fast-moving, collaborative wide area maritime surveillance networks. In both the Pacific and the Antarctic Oceans, integrated surveillance data is becoming something of a shared commodity, offering like-minded partners new opportunities to bring order to otherwise lawless seas. 

As more and more wide-area surveillance assets are brought into service in the Pacific, an integrated web of collaborative surveillance-based alliances offers the prospect of constraining countries that, until now, have enjoyed a relatively free hand in the deep ocean. Given Russia and China’s affinity for diplomatic nihilism and lawless behavior at sea, collaborative wide area ocean surveillance networks offer an effective counterweight, empowering fragile island democracies as well as weak, consensus-based governing structures that Russia and China love to intimidate. 

On the surface, last year’s fishing dispute at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources meeting centered around a Russian fishing trawler, the FV Palmer. A problematic ship, the FV Palmer had already established a pattern of “illegal activity” in previous years. It was being watched, and in early 2020, a New Zealand marine patrol aircraft caught the FV Palmer illegally fishing—with an ice cage in the water—in a closed marine protected area off Antarctica. The ship was apparently spoofing electronic monitoring signals. At the time of the intercept, FV Palmer’s automated satellite-linked vessel tracking system indicated the Russian trawler was some 800 nautical miles to the north, “legally” operating in an open fishery.

As per the usual Antarctic protocol, evidence on this open-and-shut case of illegal fishing was handed over to Russia for action. But rather than take the New Zealand’s report seriously and conduct a full investigation, Russia stonewalled the Commission, rejected the evidence, and accused New Zealand of fabricating the entire incident. In the end, the Russian trawler avoided formal sanction, and, if Russia allows, FV Palmer can return to Antarctica to fish again. 

China, acting in support of Russia, offered a strained argument that aircraft intercepts and active surveillance needed better definition, and was invited to offer suggestions on how to “improve” the rules. This should be a non-starter. Efforts to constrain the Indo-Pacific’s rapidly evolving, collaborative network of active maritime surveillance systems with specious rules and regulations will only benefit bad actors. 

Kicking Sand At The “Eye In The Sky”

In the Pacific, extensive efforts by like-minded partners have made wide ocean surveillance data far easier to collect, share, analyze and act upon. Russia and China see this as a threat and are eager to tangle these collaborative surveillance partnerships in as much procedural and administrative red tape as possible. 

These tactics were on full display in the FV Palmer dispute. After being caught red-handed, Russia demanded New Zealand provide “further clarification on photographic metadata and use of aerial surveillance photography equipment.” Russia knows that any Russian request to obtain added technical information from New Zealand’s U.S.-sourced P-3K2 Orion patrol aircraft poses an administrative headache for the country’s small military as it worries over what, exactly, New Zealand can reveal. Certain technical data, if released, offers information that advanced countries can subsequently employ for their own benefit.

China, in support of Russia, focused on broader issues. The Chinese delegation stated that New Zealand’s air patrol failed to “correlate with the principles laid down in” the existing Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources rules. Despite the fact that the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, in Conservation Measure 10-04, provides basic instruction for inspection by surveillance aircraft, China lamented that the FV Palmer case highlighted a lack of rules and procedures on air surveillance.  

Better rules might be helpful, but China has a very good strategic reason to propose overly obstructive “rules and procedures” upon surveillance aircraft. In the Pacific, aerial surveillance is getting a big boost. In a few years, China’s lawless actions at sea will be on display like never before. New P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft are set to enter service in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region. Long-range U.S. Coast Guard C-130J Hercules aircraft, sporting a newly integrated surveillance-focused Minotaur mission system architecture, will be in service. The Coast Guard C-130Js will be supported by smaller Minotaur-equipped C-27J Spartans and HC-144B Ocean Sentries. On top of that, the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton
NOC
, a long-endurance unmanned broad area maritime surveillance platform, is expected to enter service in Australia and reach Full Operating Capability in the U.S. over the next few years. A range of other overhead collection platforms are set to support these assets. 

China was also concerned the Commission’s fishing rules failed to describe “active surveillance operations,” and expressed a willingness to better define the terminology. But, again, if China writes the rules, they will likely require that Western Coast Guards and Patrol Forces hand over far too many sources and methods. That, in itself, is a non-starter. At sea, intercepting units often have no idea why or how they are being sent to ogle a particular stretch of ocean. That’s because information from “active” surveillance has usually been collected by an international array of interlinked public, private and even potentially classified reporters. That information is often analyzed at a multi-national fusion center, and then sent back out as a “mission” for a patrol asset. Enumerating just how active surveillance works so that China and Russia can retaliate or get about nibbling away at the weakest pillars of the Indo-Pacific’s emerging “find, fix and prosecute” rules-based order “kill web” is not in the global interest. 

The threat that collaborative ocean surveillance poses to Russia and China is real. In January 2021, at the U.S. Surface Navy Association annual meeting, America’s Coast Guard Commandant, Admiral Karl L. Schultz, emphasized the benefits of at-sea collaboration. He noted that partner nations participate in upwards of “fifty percent of all the cases led by Joint Interagency Task Force-South, the lead U.S. agency for maritime drug interdiction detection and monitoring”. He cited three recent cases where collaborative multinational surveillance, analysis and interdiction networks deterred acts of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing throughout the Pacific, noting that, in one case, coordinated international enforcement caused “a fleet of 31 Chinese flagged vessels to stop fishing and flee several hundred nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean—raising suspicions that they, too, were involved in illicit activity.”

In short, last fall’s tawdry dispute over the fate of a single Russian trawler offers one of the first public indications that Russia and China really fear a united, global effort to impose better order at sea. Unceasing ocean surveillance, combined with swift analysis and coordinated interdictions make it far harder for China, Russia and other ocean malefactors to impose their will upon the weak and unready. In the Indo-Pacific, these collaborative networks are starting to work. Any further efforts by the lawless to impose procedural constraints upon aerial and active surveillance in the Pacific, Antarctic and beyond must be immediately dismissed by the international community.