After decades of operating legacy Soviet platforms, Vietnam’s navy is acquiring advanced new frigates from Russia and the Netherlands, capable new Russian diesel-electric submarines, and a host of modern anti-ship cruise missiles. The Philippines has nearly doubled its fleet of surface combat vessels in the last five years and is working to acquire two advanced new frigates. Malaysia was among the first in the region to add advanced submarines to their fleet and is indigenously building six new advanced French-designed frigates. Meanwhile, Indonesia is building two new Dutch-designed frigates and acquiring two improved South Korean submarines as part of an ambitious 20-year modernization and expansion program.

It is hardly a new observation that naval capabilities in Southeast Asia are surging. Harder to assess, though, is who has the advantage in a peer competition, or sufficient ability to prohibitively raise conflict costs to a more powerful aggressor. Focusing on what the region’s navies are acquiring is not that informative. It glazes over questioning the region’s strategic first principles – namely, assumptions about a country’s goals and what they think they need to achieve those goals – and whether (or to what degree) investments in naval capabilities are relevant to the ongoing disputes that appear to motivate them.

Meaningfully assessing naval capability requires more than adding up fleet tonnage or ship numbers, and even more than tabulating a collection of ship “spec sheets.” It depends strongly on the scope of analysis and an understanding of technical, logistical, human, and operational limitations in the context of the intended missions – and, most crucially, the expected adversary’s capability. Capability should not be considered a generic measure (e.g., the ability to conduct anti-surface ship operations). Rather, it must be considered in relation to an expected opponent (e.g., the ability to conduct anti-surface operations against whose surface ships).

Read more: http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/naval-buildups-in-the-south-china-sea/