Sea Control - Sea Control 313 - Chinese ASW Sorties with Dr. Olli Suorsa

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Links1. "The Anti-Submarine Warfare Component of China’s Sorties in Taiwain’s ADIZ," by Dr. Olli Pekka Suorsa, The Diplomat, November 4, 2021.

Hey folks, Jared here. Today I'm joined by Dr. Ali Swarza. This will be the first of two appearances on the podcast for him over the course of the next month. Today we'll be discussing a series of Chinese anti-submarine warfare sorties and what those sorties may mean. This episode was edited and produced by Alexia Boulaghi. Speaking of audio editors, we're looking to add to our team, so if you're interested, please email us at ccontrol at simsec.org with your resume. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts.

On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, Shoemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Dr. Oli Sforza, and we're going to be discussing his article in The Diplomat, the anti-submarine warfare component of China's sorties in Taiwan's air defense identification zone. So, Olli, thank you for joining us. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners? Yeah, certainly. Thank you, Jared, very much, first of all, for inviting me to the podcast. I'm a big fan of this podcast. So, yeah, I am an assistant professor at the Raptan Academy

in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates at the moment and I teach among other subjects maritime security and before joining RAPTAN this August I was research fellow in the maritime security program of the S. Raja Ratnam School of International Studies or RSIS in Singapore and that's basically moving from the Strait of Malacca in Singapore to the Strait of Hormuz So from one critical maritime choke point to another. Yes, I have lived, studied and worked in Asia for the better part of the past 10 years and received my PhD from the City University of Hong Kong and Masters from SOAS in London, UK and BA from Estonia.

So been quite a bit all over. Prior embarking on my academic career, I worked in defense industry in Finland and that is also where I come from. Well, thank you for joining us. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not representative of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. Your article addresses People's Liberation Army air intrusions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone, or ADIZ. What is an ADIZ and why do you think the Chinese are conducting these operations? firstly I have to say that there has been a lot of confusion about what constitutes sovereign airspace and ADIS and in some cases also the flight information region of the FIR

so let's make the most important point for the starters that ADIS is in no way sovereign airspace and ADIS is in international airspace so a state's sovereign airspace extends only over the land territory within the legally recognized borders, as well as our territorial sea which extends the 12 nautical miles from the state's coastal baseline. So this is also to say that many of the news headline-grabbing claims that Chinese aircraft have flown into Taiwan's airspace are not correct and they are not really helpful in any way in understanding the PLA's air incursions. Moreover, many of these articles also claim that Chinese aircraft are crossing the median line between China and Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait. But based on Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense's data, this is really not the case.

So the last actual incursion that has crossed the median line took place in September, October 2020, so more than one year ago now. So these kind of intuitions are much more dangerous, of course, and would send much more stronger signals as well. But going back to the Addis question itself. So Addis is an air defence identification zone that is unilaterally established by a country and is based on national regulations. So it has a meagre basis in international law, but is also not prohibited by international law. So interestingly, a big number of all Addises today are in the Indo-Pacific, with China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, for example, having one. And depending on the country, Addis involved requirements for foreign aircraft to establish two-way radiocomps, identify themselves, and provide typically periodic positional reports, and in many cases, file a prior flight plan notice to the country. Addis is where basically established during the Cold War to provide early warning against nuclear bombers, for example.

So importantly, addys are supposed to be also proportional, and this is an important point. But in case of Taiwan, for example, Taiwan's addys is hardly proportional and extends well over the mainland China's Fujian province. That said, however, Taiwan's MND has not reported any addys violations that happen across the median line in the mainland China. So that's an important point. The great majority of these incursions that we have observed have taken place in the southwestern part of the Taiwan's ADIZ or over the northern part of the South China Sea. But for all the practical purposes, ADIZ is international airspace. And due to the area's strategic significance for China, PLA aircraft would likely operate in that same geographical area regardless of Taiwan's ADIZ. And that same goes with Chinese incursions actually into Japan and Korea's ADIZs as well. Now, what comes into the reasons behind these incursions?

so there are clearly multiple reasons for these incursions so just to highlight a few most important elements are that some flights seem to indeed be purely for harassment reasons but that we can go into more detail later many are likely associated with just normal training including more realistic training including over water and nighttime training then there's the annual PLA's exercise routines. There's likely some training that is associated with growing PLA Air Force involvement in the maritime strike role. There's strategic and operational rational, as we have discussed in case of the Chinese ASW aircraft, as well as the strategic signaling in case of sort of defaulted responses to United States carrier strike group movements in the

region, as well as responses to formal political engagement between Taiwan and the United States. What aircraft are being used for these intrusions and why do you believe that's significant? Okay, this is a very good question and could easily actually take up the entire duration of this podcast to go into details. But for me personally, the composition of each intruding formation is of particular interest in assessing the actual purpose and rationale of these incursions. So what can be said about the various types used is that they typically demonstrate the rapidly evolving PLA as well. So especially the different special mission aircraft that we have seen, including the KQ-200, are clearly well established in the PLA Air Force and PLA Navy

air force service especially newer types like y9 based electronic warfare platforms electronic intelligence airborne early warning and control platforms they deserve a definitely a special mention and why because these kinds of capabilities used to be a big capability deficiency in the pla before but today as we can see in these intruding formations into taiwan's added such in these kinds of enablers if you will are increasingly well established in service and often accompany other aircraft including the kq200 um moreover we can see how other new types are also establishing themselves in the pla service including the j16 multi-role combat aircraft which as we know is also anti-shipping capable platform. Other than these newer types, PLA has

effectively flown all major combat aircraft types available to the Southern Theater Command into Taiwan's ADIS like J-11s, J-10s, Su-30s, etc. I would say that the careful study of these incursion patterns have then given interesting insights into PLA Air Force and naval aviation tactics and operations and some of these information has revealed indeed the roles and missions for each type in a typical intrusion like escort of strike aircraft or escorting of the high value assets provision of early warning and stand of jamming capabilities for the intruding formations and the likely maritime strike role itself so all this information actually gives us more nuanced and accurate picture of the rationality of these

PLA incursions into Taiwan's eddies, and not least whether they should be considered high risk or not as well. Your article really focused on the KQ-200. What are the capabilities of that aircraft? Okay, so the KQ-200 is roughly analogous to the famous American platforms like the P-3 or the P-8 in terms of their mission and capabilities. So most data about the type reference emission endurance for the KQ-200 is about 10 hours, which of course depends on the flight altitude and emission profile. What is also publicly known about the type is that something you can, of course, see in the photographs is that it is fitted with a surface search radar, which is visible in the pictures under the type's nose. In addition, the type also sports an electro-optical and infrared sensor that is under the fuselage, helping, of course, in visual recognition of any surface vessels of interest. And distinguishing the aircraft's anti-submarine warfare mission is, of course, the magnetic anomaly detector, the MADBOOM, at the aircraft's stern, which allows detection of submarines underwater. The aircraft is also very likely to have some signals intelligence capabilities based on the fact that the type shares several antennas that we also can see in other electronic intelligence gathering types in the PLA service.

So, in addition, we have also imagery evidence of the aircraft carrying and dropping sonobus depth charges and likely also capable of carrying light torpedoes and it would also make a lot of sense if the type, we would see the type armed with anti-ship missiles in future as well. what's the pattern to the where are these sorties being conducted you were able to identify some patterns in your uh in your research yeah so there are clear patterns to these sorties so as i discuss in the in the latest diplomat piece i wrote that the kq 200s are almost always seen patrolling over roughly the same geographic location. So that is roughly halfway between the great Taiwanese port city of Kaohsiung, as well as the Pratas Islands that belong to Taiwan in the northern part of the South China Sea. So this geographic area falls within the southwestern part of Taiwan's abyss.

So this is the same area where the majority of all the Chinese air incursions take place. Secondly, when we have seen Chinese aircraft flying further out, flying across the Pashi channel in the first island chain between Taiwan and the Philippines, the island of Luzon, this maneuver looks actually in these maps provided by the MND, it looks like a hook that the aircraft is conducting. so in all of the almost all of these hook maneuvers that cross the pashi channel at least one kq 200 has typically been part of these formations so this also demonstrates really the significance of the type to many of the most common intrusion types that we have observed and it also then deserves to mention that when it comes to identifying these uh geographical locations that when we look at another aircraft type, the KJ-500, which is the airborne early

warning variant, it is also almost always spotted at almost the exact same geographic spot, very close to the Pratas Islands and basically the furthest from the mainland Taiwan, providing probably early warning against any ROKA fighters scrambled to intercept the Chinese formations. And what can then also be said is that in many larger incursions involving more than 10 aircraft, we can see a strong directional focus toward the Luzon Strait and the Pashi Channel, which is clearly of great interest to Chinese. Why are these locations significant from an anti-submarine warfare perspective? Yeah, so this is indeed something that I tried to provide a little bit more light on in the Diplomat article. So when we look at the

geographical area where the KQ 200 most often patrols between, roughly halfway between Kaohsiung and the Pratas, this is exactly the same geographical location where the South China Sea slope uh and south china sea shelf come together so basically where the south china sea meets the the actual land mass of of mainland china so this underwater topographical and bathymetric reasons actually make this finding indeed very significant so this is a area where any foreign submarine that comes to the either taiwan strait or comes to the south china sea needs to ascend to the shallower waters and becomes much more easier to intercept so that is also area where the chinese submarines can dive to deeper waters after the

south china sea slope when we look at the bashi channel and loosen straight this is also another point where the waters are rather shallow and easier for uh easier points for submarine warfare where uh aircraft like aq200 or b8 can more easier find and prosecute any any foreign submarines so that is a important point and why i also think that this finding is very significant is that when When we don't only focus on the Chinese flights, but we use a lot of the available OSINT data, we can actually see that there's near daily flights by United States Navy's P-8, Poseidon aircraft or other ISR aircraft over these exact same locations. So that is quite telling to me. And on some occasions, it seems that the US and Chinese aircraft are actually operating over the same spots almost simultaneously. So that raises further interesting questions actually about the underwater activity at these particular times.

And just another quick point, as I mentioned in the Diplomat article, is that when we look at this, as I mentioned, this hook that the aircraft sometimes execute when they fly through the Pashi Channel. And they typically either turn towards east, toward the Western Pacific, or they turn toward northeast, which is exactly the direction when we look at the maps where the sea lines, critical sea lines of communication that link Japan to the South China Sea. And that is also to say that from which direction any U.S. Navy vessels coming from Yokosuka Naval Base would also enter the South China Sea from that direction. So that is clearly of great interest for Chinese maritime patrol aircraft to monitor U.S. Navy and probably Japanese naval activity in that area. so kq 200s other maritime patrol aircraft are typically flying around with uh what you mentioned before the surface search radar on which is can be an effective way to find a submarine operating at periscope depth or if it happens to be surface and you can also do a lot of surface quality of life or not quality but pattern of life monitoring uh for surface vessels that are

passing through there and kind of figure out what is going on in a given area do you have any indications the kq 200s are doing anything beyond radar sweeps as part of their sorties yeah unfortunately we do not have any concrete information about what the aircraft are actually doing they're doing those sorties because all the basic information that we we can gather comes from the ministry of national defense in taiwan so that is the rough flight path data rather than any anything more detailed. Sometimes other OSINT platforms have been able to track for a while these aircraft when they have the ADSP on so then we have some altitude information as well which very often shows that they are flying at medium altitudes which would not point to

submarine warfare sorties but rather indeed maritime surveillance maritime patrol sorties. The big problem, of course, with any data like this is that it's really difficult to really say that what has been the actual purpose or the mission at that particular point when this OSINT information has been found. So has the aircraft been in transit at that point or conducting its actual mission? That's very difficult to discern from that data. However, now, some of the MND data can be, of course, cross-referenced with various other sources, and that gives a little bit more, indeed, light to these issues. But what we have been able to gather is that the KQ-200s, especially when flying across the Pashi Channel, have integrated with other PLA Navy ships operating in the Western Pacific. So this is already quite significant finding. And sometimes there is also more accurate flight path data coming from the different OSINT sources, highlighting very likely indeed anti-submarine screening missions.

And so with all that in mind, it is likely that the type has been using the full suit of capabilities in its disposal against different surface and subsurface targets for training and other reasons, like prosecuting, of course, foreign likely U.S. submarines entering the South China Sea, very much like indeed what the United States Navy is doing for Chinese submarines in the same very same geographical areas. You touch on this a little bit, but I'm going to ask it anyway. What other types of sorties are you seeing in conjunction with the KQ-200 flights? This is indeed a good question. Besides these flights that have clear strategic and operational reasons, so many other incursions resemble various kinds of training sorties involving two or more different types of aircraft. So many incursions also resemble maritime strike training, which is actually quite significant, because that would suggest a growing role for PLA Air Force in China's maritime anti-access strategy.

Yet, other sorties are likely indeed surveillance and ISR collection flights. However, the targets of such ISR collection flights may not be what we think as in Taiwan, but again, something else. And this is because the geographic location of those flights raises more questions in this regard than it provides any answers. So that is quite a question mark still in my mind and requires much more research. And in at least four cases where we have seen some of the largest incursions, like in the early October, the most likely explanation for many very large incursions has been the simultaneous presence of United States carrier strike groups passing through the Barshi Channel. And this has been quite significant as a matter of fact. And in other times, the reasons can be linked with formal political engagements between the U.S. and Taiwan. And I must really stress that based on my own research, rather rarely are these incursions actually directly about Taiwan. They can be indirectly about Taiwan, but more directly about the United States rather than Taiwan.

so as we've discussed all these different topics here i we're talking about sortie locations composition of the sorties hydrography bathymetry can you explain a little bit about your methodology and how you get all this data and then sort of synthesize the data to come to some of the conclusions that you're able to draw yeah definitely so i use very empirical methods in my research looking at this particular topic and a lot of cross-referencing to understand what we are actually looking at. A big part of this also has to do with my own previous professional experiences working indeed in aerospace industry and a lifelong passion actually looking at military aviation. But when we look at this particular topic, so the most important data is provided

by the Taiwan's MND. So that really makes any of this analysis possible. And it is then the countless hours spent looking at the hundreds of flight path maps and other data made available by the MND and identifying those patterns that we have been discussing and trying to link especially the larger incursions with any external stimuli, if you will, like the presence of U.S. carrier strike groups in the Straits or any formal political engagement between Taiwan

and the United States. The MND information is also cross-referenced then with any other OSINT data available. And fortunately, nowadays, we have quite a few sources that we can indeed cross-reference and try to verify some of the information. And that has really allowed me then to identify, for example, in multiple cases where the Chinese incursions have likely been a response to similar US flights in the very same area, involving those, as we discussed, the Navy's ASW and SIGINT aircraft. And furthermore, when it comes to identifying and understanding Chinese intrusions and formation compositions. I very often try to actually compare them to similar missions conducted in historically or currently by the United States,

Soviet Union or today Russian air forces and that also helps a lot in indeed identifying and understanding different types of formations and the composition that what types of capabilities are typically involved and for me it is indeed the careful studying of each of these formations aircraft involved the flight paths as well as understanding the possible external stimuli together that helps to give a more critical and really a political look at these incursions well thank you unfortunately we're out of time for today so i want to thank my guest Dr. Olli Suarza. Olli, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? I actually,

I think you're going to come on another of our podcasts with Walker Mills. Is that correct? Yeah, that's, yeah, that's correct. I work with my great colleague at RSIS on a topic on lightning carriers. So I will be looking very much forward to discuss that topic next. And yes, you can, You are able to find me in LinkedIn and Twitter by my name, Olli Suorsa, so you can definitely find me there. And I used to be quite active in Twitter as well, but now when I'm teaching again, there's a little bit less time for that as well. And research-wise, I continue to work heavily on, especially on these more hard security side issues. So defense, and in particular related to naval warfare technology, and also air power, which is another really big interest of mine. So anything to do with navies and air forces, that's pretty much my area. Thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

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