Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated (IUU) Fishing
Introduction
Illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing represents one of the leading global maritime security threats confronting policymakers today (author’s note: This paper will utilize “IUU” as synonymous with “IUU fishing”). Despite this challenge, defense and law enforcement establishments have struggled to formulate effective solutions to address state sponsored IUU because it provides malign actors with plausible deniability and represents an activity with no clear use of force standard. These shortcomings provide states, like China, the space needed to advance their strategic interests while meeting disorganized, if not minimal, resistance.
Non-lethal weapons (NLW) may present operational and tactical solutions to mitigate the strategic benefits of state sponsored IUU fishing. The US Department of Defense (DoD) defines these weapons as “[capabilities] explicitly designed and primarily employed to incapacitate targeted personnel or materiel immediately, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property in the target area or environment.” The following analysis explores the threat posed by IUU and how this activity challenges the theoretical basis which informs the deployment of US conventional forces abroad. It will then use this knowledge to frame a broader conversation that examines readily available NLW that can address IUU if employed correctly before exploring two different operational models for confronting IUU.
IUU Fishing—Why It Matters
IUU refers to activities in contravention of applicable laws and regulations, not reported to relevant authorities, and/or committed by vessels that are not actually regulated by the country in which they are registered. It not only threatens environmental sustainability and the legal fishing market, but also directly challenges the laws governing how states extract resources from their exclusive economic zones and territorial waters as well as the international system’s commitment to state sovereignty. The threat IUU poses to states’ sovereignty highlights why it can be an important tool to advance the interests of malign actors. It allows nations to pursue territorial claims, illegal resource extraction, and broader political goals against other countries without provoking a conventional military response.
China remains the leading perpetrator of IUU fishing in the world. Beijing maintains both a legally flagged fishing fleet that encroaches on states’ sovereign waters and a distant water fleet (DWF) that violates relevant international law. These fleets are often paired with Chinese maritime militia forces composed of civilian fishermen that have received additional training and equipment to pursue other extraterritorial maritime interests throughout the globe, ranging from the South China Sea to West African waters and off the coasts of South America.
The reach of Chinese IUU has led capitols and policymakers across the globe to prioritize building support and capacity to address this challenge. Recent US efforts include the passage of first of its kind counter-IUU legislation during the first Trump Administration and the issuance of executive orders under the Biden Administration. These initiatives, however, have not sufficiently prioritized adequate tactical and operational solutions that enable military and law enforcement forces to mitigate the strategic benefit of IUU.
How IUU Undermines US Deterrence
Chinese IUU is a “Gray Zone” activity that challenges the strategic logic of Washington’s forward deployed conventional forces. Traditional US defense policy focuses on two types of deterrence strategy— deterrence by denial and deterrence by punishment—to achieve desired objectives. Denial strategies seek to deter an action by making it infeasible or unlikely to succeed thereby denying a potential aggressor confidence it will achieve a desirable outcome whereas punishment threatens a severe escalation (i.e. nuclear, sanctions) if some type of violation occurs.
US and like-minded partners, such as Japan and the Philippines, possess conventional capabilities that could confront Chinese IUU. Washington could respond to credible reports of Chinese IUU by dispatching Navy platforms to relevant waters. This would signal a strong deterrent commitment but would prove costly and reduce readiness for other missions. These platforms would also face legal questions about what authorities they possess to act once on scene. Alternatively, Washington could leverage the US Coast Guard’s (USCG) extensive service-level expertise, platforms, relationships abroad, and legal authorities to effectively counter-IUU. This approach, however, would require the resources and personnel the USCG has historically not possessed.
The US could also pursue punishment type deterrence that focuses on mitigating the strategic threat of Chinese IUU via conventional and irregular means and supporting other efforts to sanction and spotlight IUU committed by China’s legal and DWF fleets. This approach could prove escalatory and degrade force readiness to support what ostensibly remains a law enforcement activity. Sanctions and spotlighting would prove problematic as well since they would complicate the international fishing market and potentially embarrass other US partners, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, which maintain fishing fleets involved in IUU.
How NLW Can Help
IUU’s threat to the strategic logic of conventional military forces and law enforcement is due, in large part, to the failure to develop effective tactical and operational alternatives to confront state-sponsored fishing fleets with an adequate level of force that does not lead to a disproportionate response. The mixture of civilian and military adjacent vessels and personnel throughout China’s DWF leaves relevant military and law enforcement forces with difficult decisions about how to escalate force, discriminate between “civilian” and military targets, and mitigate the ability of Beijing to amplify any response to create a politically favorable narrative.
NLW provide the escalatory and discriminatory force to mitigate this challenge. They also demonstrate a commitment to the preservation of life and property that undermines possible claims that China and other malign actors could make about responses to their IUU fishing. In turn, this reduces the effectiveness of Chinese IUU by restricting and potentially reversing the physical and psychological advantages of Beijing’s gray zone activity. Three specific NLW capabilities– Acoustic Hailing Devices (AHD), Active Denial Technology (ADT), and Direct Energy Vessel Stoppers– could be effective capabilities to help maritime forces respond to IUU.
Acoustic Hailing Devices
AHD’s provide directional warning tones via a parabolic dish which have a range of 500 meters and are designed to deny access into/out of an area, move personnel through an area, and suppress individuals. They are part of a broader family of sound and light directed energy intermediate force capabilities that can hail, warn, move, and disrupt with very low risk of significant injury. AHDs provide the lowest threshold of force to conventional forces across the force continuum engaged in maritime operations more options and decision space, and, in the context of state-sponsored IUU, the means to assess a vessel’s intent and enable friendly forces maneuver.
Active Denial Technology/Active Denial System
ADT can be assembled into various active denial systems (ADS). The most current ADS is a containerized design composed of two boxes that can be transported by, or operated from, a variety of tactical trucks. This system produces a focused beam of directed energy (DE) that travels at the speed of light and penetrates a depth of only 1/64th of an inch of skin. Beam exposure produces a heating sensation that forces the target to move and ceases after leaving the impacted area or when the system is turned off. ADT has a maximum effective range of 1,000 meters and extensive testing on anywhere between 12,000-13,000 subjects has only resulted in two known hospitalizations. Although DoD has not broadly incorporated ADS throughout its maritime services, it has demonstrated the capability on relevant platforms.
Directed Energy Vessel Stopper
The Directed Energy (DE) Vessel Stopper is a still in-development capability designed to support the Coast Guard’s ability to conduct measured and discriminate operations to compel the compliance of dangerous or uncooperative vessels. Much like ADT, the DE Vessel Stopper utilizes a higher power microwave/radio frequency that delivers concentrated DE. The Vessel Stopper does this with a nearly unlimited magazine that delivers DE at the speed of light.
AHD, ADT, and DE Vessel Stoppers all provide NLW capabilities that military and law enforcement forces could theoretically use to mitigate China’s state-sponsored IUU. They provide the escalation of force capabilities that law enforcement and defense organizations need while mitigating the risk of unnecessary loss of life and property or inviting accusations of disproportionate response. The manner in which policymakers employ NLW, however, remains a function of how countries assess the IUU threat. Does IUU represent a criminal activity that necessitates a response from law enforcement or a broader act of political aggression that must be answered with military force? Answers to these and related questions will influence the rules of engagement, escalation of force guidance, and other guidance that relevant forces must consider if they wish to employ identified NLW.
IUU Response Paradigms
Treatment of IUU as a defense activity, law enforcement issue, or a hybrid of both has important implications for how the US responds to the threat. Each activity can bring different resources to bear, operate under different legal authorities, confront competing opportunity costs, and raise different questions about the use of force.
A “Conventional” Approach
The conventional model utilizes national defense assets to respond to IUU and treats the threat as an act of political aggression. This aligns with recent administrations’ declarations about the need to better confront malign activity short of war or conventional conflict. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) prioritized the need to confront “revisionist powers and rogue regimes [that use] political subversion, and the threat or use of military force to change facts on the ground.” Similarly, the 2022 NDS explicitly connects its “campaigning” concept to confronting malign behavior.
Relevant DoD guidance also states that “NLW reinforce deterrence and expand the range of options available to commanders.” This may help mitigate the challenges state-sponsored IUU pose to the deterrent benefit of conventional forces. Many routine maritime operations that the US Navy and Coast Guard encounter—maritime interdiction, embargo enforcement, counterpiracy/narcotics, presence missions, and high-value vessel escort– do not require lethal force. A coordinated military response to Chinese IUU would likely require relevant vessels to implement tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) akin to interdiction, presence, and counterpiracy missions. Any combination of AHD’s, ADT, and DE Vessel Stopper technology would help the sea services reduce the coercive benefit of China’s IUU fleet while also mitigating the possibility of politically challenging collateral damage.
However, NLW’s on USN and USCG platforms is not a panacea for confronting Chinese sponsored IUU. NLW’s deployment aboard military vessels may run into economy of force challenges associated with the overuse of navy platforms that detract from their conventional warfighting mission. Similarly, it cannot be assumed that relevant commanders will allocate enough time in pre-deployment training to teach their crews relevant NLW TTP’s. Countries that may benefit from the proliferation of NLW across the US Navy also may not wish to be seen as relying on American military assets to police their waters for fear of reprisals from Beijing or domestic political considerations.
The Counter Drug Model
An alternative paradigm to the “conventional model” is to treat Chinese IUU as a threat that requires a law enforcement response. IUU shares many similarities to other drug related transboundary crime. Both have similar modes of conveyance in the maritime environment, represent global concerns, and rely on legitimate and criminal networks to deliver goods to market. China’s state-sponsored IUU utilizes both legal and illicit means to advance Beijing’s political goals and dominate the broader global fishing industry. Treatment of Chinese IUU as a law enforcement problem also aligns with the views of many partner states who consider this issue in a similar manner.
Currently, US Southern and Indo-Pacific Commands participate in joint interagency task forces (JIATF) which leverage other federal agencies and international partners to conduct detection, monitoring, and counterdrug operations within their respective areas of responsibility. JIATF’s specifically built to or incorporate counter IUU as part of their broader mission would mitigate the challenge of primarily relying on USN and USCG assets confronting the “conventional model.” JIATF’s focused on IUU could leverage international partners and other agencies to produce better economies of force throughout the joint force, build local buy-in with key partners, and possibly better mitigate China’s ability to leverage high stakes encounters in relevant waters to support Beijing’s desired narrative.
A JIATF type entity could leverage the expertise of US agencies, such as the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Commerce, and State, to prosecute China’s DWF or IUU fleets that travel into partners’ territorial waters under relevant international laws. This model would also help empower partner nation governments to take the lead in policing their own or adjacent international waters. These possibilities would place a premium on NLW because more pressure would exist to deliver offenders to relevant international authorities using the lowest possible level of force to preserve life and property needed to support a legal case and for partner nations to minimize the risk of escalation with China.
The Way Ahead
This analysis sought to consider two different models for confronting Chinese sponsored IUU—the “conventional” and “law enforcement” paradigms—to better understand the best way to confront the issue and how NLW/IFC might fit into an effective response. While the distinction between both models remains much less clear in practice, there is some evidence to suggest that a law enforcement approach modeled off existing counter drug operations may provide the stronger approach to mitigating the threat of state-sponsored IUU. The following recommendations utilize this insight to offer possible ideas to scale NLW as needed to support relevant efforts to address this illicit activity in the absence of or with minimal additional funds.
Incorporate NLW into Shiprider Agreements
Shiprider agreements allow US vessels to patrol and otherwise operate in the territorial waters of other nations so long as a representative of that country is aboard that are generally negotiated on a country-by-country basis. Different partnerships could either explicitly include the use of NLW or provide broad guidance for NLW employment in other countries’ waters as necessary. This may prove too problematic legally and politically for some foreign capitals, but it could be an important method for demonstrating the utility of NLW to those governments.
Incorporate NLW at IUU Center of Excellence
The USCG established an IUU Center of Excellence (COE) in Hawaii in 2023 with the explicit intent of “increase[ing] maritime domain awareness, exchang[ing] valuable information, increase[ing] interoperability, and shar[ing] best practices related to IUUF activities.” This COE could provide the optimal environment for the US to teach and scale NLW capabilities to relevant partners in the Pacific. The COE could also as a forum to discuss the legal implications of NLW as well.
In sum, the ability of Chinese IUU fishing to advance sovereignty claims and harvest other nations’ natural resources without triggering poses a critical national security challenge to both the US and its foreign partners. NLW capabilities may provide the US and its partners the means to confront China’s IUU fleet without triggering a larger conventional response from Beijing. The US can possibly build support for NLW’s by socializing them through shiprider agreements and introducing the Coast Guard’s new IUU COE.
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