- A U.S. Air Force gunship sank a simulated fishing boat during Exercise Balikatan 2024.
- The exercise took place within the Philippines, where China is using paramilitary fishing boats to force its territorial claims.
- The destruction was a part of a SINKEX that saw the AC-130 train its guns on the goal ship.
A U.S. Air Force gunship shredded a fishing boat as a part of joint exercises between the US and the Philippines. While sinking a simulated civilian vessel seems in poor taste, China is using ships identical to it—which have been known to hold weapons—to bully other countries. The exercise was a transparent sign to the Chinese government that aggression, even by innocent-looking fishing boats, can be repelled in all forms.
“Shoulder to Shoulder”
The exercises, referred to as Balikatan (“Shoulder to Shoulder” within the Filipino national language, Tagalog) have run from April 22 until today, May 8, and happen within the Philippines. The exercise, referred to as Balikatan 2024, is supposed to bolster defense cooperation between the 2 countries, but additionally includes participating contingents from the Australian Defence Forces and the French Navy.
Balikatan 2024 involves the deployment of 11,000 soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen to the Philippines for exercises involving “maritime security, sensing, and targeting, air and missile defense, dynamic missile strikes, cyber defense, and data operations”.
Ghostrider SINKEX
Amongst the various events within the annual exercise was the participation of an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship from the twenty seventh Special Operations Wing, based at Hurlburt Field, Florida. The AC-130J, based on the C-130J Super Hercules, is the most recent in an extended line of transport aircraft converted into gunships that goes way back to the Vietnam War.
The Air Force operates 37 of them presently, each armed with a 30-milimeter side-firing chain gun and a direct-fire, 105mm howitzer. The gunship may also attack enemy forces with the Griffin air-to-ground missile, launched from tubes within the side of the aircraft.
The result’s a flexible platform that may attack targets in direct-fire mode, loitering over the battlefield and raining shells down on enemy positions, typically in support of conventional or special operations forces. The platform’s vulnerability to guns and missiles, nonetheless, restricts it to operating in “permissive” airspace, or airspace without advanced enemy air defenses. Even against evenly armed adversaries, it typically operates at 10,000 feet or higher, staying out of range of short-range, shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles.
Unlike previous generations of gunships, the Ghostriders can still engage enemy forces from a distance. Latest to the Air Force’s gunships are wing-mounted pylons able to carrying air-to-ground munitions, including Hellfire missiles and GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs). SDBs, launched from high altitude after which gliding toward their goal with the assistance of GPS and small, pop-out wings, can strike targets as much as 40 miles away.
Maritime Militia
On this month’s exercise, an unused fishing boat was procured by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and parked off the coast of Lubang Island, on the western fringe of the Philippine archipelago. In what is named a SINKEX, or “Sinking Exercise,” an AC-130J circled above it, firing down into the ship and quickly sinking it.
Many of the hits appeared to come back from the gunship’s GAU-23/A 30mm chain gun, although one towering explosion and shower of water, on the 10-second mark, appeared to come back from a 105mm howitzer. The hull of the ship quickly disappears beneath the waves, leaving only the dual masts above the surface.
The destruction of a fishing boat, ostensibly a strictly civilian vessel, was not an exercise in bad judgment, but a pointed demonstration to the Chinese government.
Within the 2010s, China began asserting its claim to the so-called “Nine Dash Line,” a line consisting of nine dashes that demarcated its territorial claims within the South China Sea. That wasn’t all that unusual, however the scope of the claims, including virtually 90 percent of the ocean, was more atypical. The territorial claim also ignored competing claims from China’s neighbors, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Brunei.
China’s claim within the South China Sea is so expansive it reaches greater than 500 miles from the Chinese mainland to inside 50 miles of the Philippines. The Philippines disputes this, and ships of the 2 countries have repeatedly faced off within the sea. Chinese Coast Guard ships have aggressively used water cannons and ramming tactics against otherwise peaceful Filipino ships, breaking windows and injuring crew members.
One tool utilized by China within the disputes is the so-called “maritime militia,” or China’s extremely large industrial fishing fleet. Under China’s militia system, fishing boats in private hands may be called upon to undertake paramilitary missions, including surveillance and intelligence gathering missions. Also they are used to outnumber and intimidate ships from opposing countries, and have been used against ships of the Philippines.
In accordance with the Center for Naval Analyses, the ships also receive training in direct motion missions, including “anti-air missile defense, light weapons use, and sabotage operations.” All of this makes them a deniable asset for the Chinese government, one which can perform violence, intimidation, and other unneighborly acts at sea without being an official part of presidency.
The usage of a fishing boat as a goal was not ill-conceived, or the results of getting the most cost effective floating piece of scrap possible to act as a goal. It was deliberate, and sends a message to China that the fishing boats of the Maritime Militia won’t be spared in the event that they are used for violent motion just because they’re civilian hulls. In the event that they carry weapons into combat and act as naval auxiliaries, they’re fair game.
As a big, slow-moving, converted transport aircraft, the AC-130J’s usefulness in a serious conflict has been called into query. The gunship may not have a likelihood against a Chinese carrier battle group, or an island-based, surface-to-air missile system. But when any aircraft has the patience to loiter for hours over a fleet of fishing boats, after which pick the armed ships and have interaction them with precision fire, it’s the Ghostrider.
The Maritime Militia could have met its match.