Future maritime conflict will be conducted in the grey zone. It’s a reality that New Zealand cannot ignore, and it has implications for the next generation of naval capability, writes maritime capability specialist and former Royal New Zealand Navy Officer Andrew Watts.

I once tried to explain to a very intelligent person what the Navy was for. I described how it protected our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and Extended Continental Shelf (ECS), and that 90% of our trade by value and 99% by volume travelled in ships and thus needed to be protected, as did the 90% of our information traffic with the wider world that passes along undersea cables. 

I explained how the Navy helped protect the resources of our Pacific partners, and that it held itself in readiness for disaster relief, search and rescue, and sundry other missions conducive to the public good. Having listened patiently, she asked “Yes, but what do you do every day, like, all the time? Are you just practising?” Well, no, I said, not just practising. Some of the things we do we do all the time, like protecting our EEZ. 

“What about the frigates?” she asked, “what do they do? Are they protecting the EEZ too, or just getting ready to fight wars?”. I replied yes, being ready is a large part of what they do, and our frigates give us the ability to play our part in defending the international rule of law at sea, our ability to exchange information with the wider world, and in the final analysis, protect our borders. 

I think she accepted this, but “what is the Navy for?” is a question which those of us who believe that an effective navy is essential to our country’s security had better be ready to answer if we expect our people to bear the cost of the next generation of capability, and there is a field of maritime conflict for which we need to be ready “all the time”. That field of conflict is the grey zone.

Gray zone conflict is best understood as activity that is coercive and aggressive in nature, but that is deliberately designed to remain below the threshold of conventional military conflict and open interstate war. Grey zone approaches are mostly the province of revisionist powers—those actors that seek to modify some aspect of the existing international environment—and the goal is to reap gains, whether territorial or otherwise, that are normally associated with victory in war. Yet grey zone approaches are meant to achieve those gains without escalating to overt warfare, without crossing established red-lines, and thus without exposing the practitioner to the penalties and risks that such escalation might bring… Gray zone challenges, in other words, are ambiguous and usually incremental aggression… they eat away at the status quo one nibble at a time.

Paradoxes of the Gray Zone, Hal Brands, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 05 February 2016; Paradoxes of the Gray Zone – Foreign Policy Research Institute (fpri.org)

There are other, more academic definitions of the grey zone, but the quote above from an article on the Foreign Policy Research Institute website is the most useful I’ve found yet. 

Grey zone strategies are being used in regions in which we have a critical economic stake, against countries and peoples whom we consider friends and partners, and with complete disregard for international law and for the courts that arbitrate disputes related to that law. As fisheries depletion continues and as technology makes seabed mineral extraction more practicable, the possibility that such strategies could be employed against our own resources and those of our Pacific partners must surely increase. 

This article argues that our navy is essential to the defence of New Zealand/Aotearoa and our partners against grey zone strategies, and that it must be ready to operate in the grey zone “all the time”.

In May 2009, China presented a submission to the United Nations that in effect claimed sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, negating the claims of other littoral nations to EEZs and ECS (Extended Continental Shelf) rights under the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – on which every EEZ and ECS claim, including New Zealand’s, is based. 

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague ruled in favour of most of the claims made by the Philippines in a case related to Chinese claims of sovereignty over islands within the so-called ‘nine dash line’ that delineates the Chinese claim. 

China’s nine dash line. Image: Natural Earth, ESRI, Global Security, Tufts University.

China refused to take part in the arbitration, has ignored the ruling of the PCA, and has continued with a programme of artificial island construction in direct contravention of international norms – in addition to causing what the PCA describes as severe environmental harm. It has backed up its claims with classic grey zone techniques – using civilian fishing vessels to block access to other countries’ fishing fleets and para-military coast guard type vessels to harass and obstruct lawful users of the sea, including fishermen and Philippine naval vessels. 

Some might argue that events in the South China Sea are of no real concern to us, and that even if they were, our ability to influence those events is minimal. However, we should consider the long term impact should China be successful in using grey zone techniques. 

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New Zealand has a very large EEZ, and an even larger ECS claim. It is increasingly recognised that our future economic and environmental health is bound up in our ability to exercise good governance over this massive sea space. 

Let’s suppose that at some point in the future, rare earth nodules are discovered in an accessible part of our ECS, and that another nation determines that the economic benefits of exploiting those nodules outweigh the benefits of respecting our claim and thus adhering to international norms, which have in any event been seriously weakened by the successful use of grey zone techniques elsewhere. 

To whom might we turn for help, should that nation use grey zone techniques against us? Might a failure to support those friends affected by Chinese actions in the South China Sea tend to weigh against the likelihood of support being available to us?  Might a willingness to support those friends strengthen the action taken to resist grey zone strategies by making it more multi-lateral, thus making it less likely that other actors will employ them in parts of the world much closer to home?  Might that then reduce the likelihood of New Zealand/Aotearoa having to face grey zone incursions alone?

I would argue that it is more likely than not that future maritime conflict will be conducted, at least initially, in the grey zone, and that the international community must be able to operate effectively in the grey zone to deny advantage to an aggressor and prevent the outbreak of open conflict. I also argue that New Zealand/Aotearoa cannot ignore that reality. We must therefore consider what this means for the next generation of naval capability. 

Firstly, operating in the grey zone requires sustained presence. Grey zone actors seek to normalise their actions by making them continuous; responses to those actions must be as correspondingly continuous as possible. This level of presence requires a minimum of four platforms, which must have good seakeeping, range, and endurance. Our fleet must also have sufficient capacity to respond to other contingencies while grey zone deterrence is ongoing, suggesting a minimum fleet of five.

Responses to grey zone activity will be grounded in international law – as indeed are all actions undertaken by deployed elements of the New Zealand Defence Force. Naval platforms must have excellent multi-dimensional sensing capability, so they can detect and record any and all actions undertaken by grey zone adversaries to an evidential quality standard.

Proportionality is critical. Our naval platforms must be able to respond to escalation with force, but in the court of instantaneous media courage it is important to avoid providing the aggressor with an excuse to deploy overt military strength. Platforms with armament proportionate to the grey zone threat are required. Nonetheless, escalation must be allowed for. Our force structure must contain platforms that can be armed with systems that deter military aggression.

The most important element of grey zone capability is already in place. Well trained, well educated, committed naval people able to form a nuanced view of highly charged situations are absolutely essential to any naval force, never more so than in situations where deterrence must be balanced with the avoidance of provocation (those who argue that Artificial Intelligence has already supplanted human judgment in naval operations have never planned the interception and arrest of a suspected terrorist support vessel or operated in the “Rules of Engagement” phase of a major naval exercise). New Zealand has these people in abundance, but more must be done to keep them in naval uniform.

The modular naval force outlined in my earlier article could meet these criteria. A standard platform could be acquired in sufficient numbers to ensure that one vessel can be maintained on station indefinitely (with the support of HMNZS Aotearoa, an incredible capability and an inspired acquisition). 

It could be provided with a standing suite of non-invasive surveillance systems, allowing situational ground truth to be established and recorded. It could be deployed with defensive and law enforcement weapons only, while another platform is equipped with meaningful combat capability and held ready to deploy should the situation escalate. Finally, modular capability and the new crewing concepts alluded to in my earlier article could reduce the strain on naval people, thus improving retention.

Grey zone conflict is happening all the time. In the South China Sea, it is affecting the rights under international law of nations whom we consider our friends and partners while creating significant environmental damage. There is a real risk that international norms based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea could break down to an extent that our own marine resources become vulnerable to grey zone exploitation. 

We need to be able to operate in the grey zone to support our friends and uphold the international norms on which we rely to protect our own seaborne trade and marine resources. Our future naval fleet must be designed with these requirements in mind; a fleet based on capability modularity may provide a solution. 

Author’s note: I have had the privilege of visiting China on five separate occasions, and on each visit my respect and admiration for the Chinese people became more profound. I regard the treatment of China by Europe and Japan during the century between the 1840s and the 1940s as utterly disgraceful. If ever an act of aggression provided just cause for the world to intervene, it was the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, yet apart from imposing sanctions on Japan, the world that now calls on China to respect international law did not act.

When viewed through this lens, China’s aspirations to be well armed in defence of its interests cannot be seen by a reasonable person as other than entirely justified. It is with reluctance that I single out China’s actions in the South China Sea as exemplars of grey zone aggression; nonetheless, the sad reality is that they must be recognised for what they are, and China persuaded to desist.