Philippine missile marines get set to erase the ‘Nine Dash Line’ in the South China Sea

Scarborough Shoal is a ring of rocks and reefs 29 miles around that lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea west of Luzon, the Philippines’ biggest island. Unfortunately for the Philippines, the Shoal also lies within the so-called “Nine Dash Line” under which China attempts to claim that it owns more or less the entire South China Sea – in defiance of international law and international court judgement.

Prized for its rich fisheries, Scarborough Shoal is also valuable as a potential air and naval base. That’s why, in 2012, Chinese vessels illegally sailed to the shoal, sparking a maritime standoff that continues 12 years later.

And it’s why the Philippine marine corps is building a new missile base on Luzon’s west coast just 100 miles from the contested shoal. Once it’s complete and armed with Indian-made Brahmos missiles, the new base at Naval Station Leovigildo Gantioqui could tilt the Scarborough Shoal conflict in Manila’s favor.

Beijing clearly intends to do at the shoal what it has done at many other reefs in the disputed and contested waters of the China Seas: demolish the reefs, grind up the delicate corals, pile the debris into artificial landmasses and then build missile sites, radar installations, air bases and naval piers for its military forces.

China’s environmentally disastrous base-building campaign, which kicked off in 2013, anchors the country’s military expansion into the waters within the Nine Dash Line. Increasingly, the free countries in the region are pushing back – with new weapons, new alliances and a new stubbornness in the face of Chinese expansionism.

At Scarborough Shoal, this resistance rides on the Philippine marine corps’ three new Brahmos missile batteries, together valued at $375 million. The three-ton, ramjet-propelled Brahmos ranges as far as 180 miles at a top speed of Mach 3 – under radar guidance and with a 660-pound warhead. It’s an Indian-Russian collaboration based on the P-800 Oniks ship-killer (aka Yakhont when sold for export). The Brahmos is one of the most dangerous anti-ship missiles in the world.

It should have been obvious all along that Manila would position at least one Brahmos battery in western Luzon in order to extend Philippine weapons range over the Scarborough Shoal. In response to Chinese aggression, The Philippines has launched a sweeping naval modernization effort. The new missile batteries add land-based firepower to the new fleet.

To be clear, The Phillipines isn’t about to start shooting Brahmos missiles at Chinese ships around the Scarborough Shoal. Day-to-day efforts to block Chinese incursions at the shoal still fall on Philippine law-enforcement agencies, just as the Chinese Coast Guard and its “fisher militia” are, for now, the spearhead of Beijing’s aggression. In September, the Philippine coast guard cut the mooring of a floating barrier Chinese forces had installed around Scarborough Shoal.

In wartime, however, the Brahmos batteries could add lethal force to this law enforcement. And while three missile batteries, each with just a few launchers, might not seem like a lot – consider what the Ukrainian navy achieved with just a single small battery of locally-developed Neptune anti-ship missiles.

The Neptune is much slower than the Brahmos and lacks the Indo-Russian missile’s range and punch. But that didn’t stop the Ukrainian Neptune battery from dealing a devastating blow to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the early weeks of Russia’s wider invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022.

On April 13, 2022, a Ukrainian radar detected the Russian cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea 80 miles off the Ukrainian coast. The Neptune battery fired two missiles. They both hit, sinking the 612-foot Moskva – flagship of Putin’s Black Sea Fleet and one of the largest surface warships still active in the Russian navy.

It was the first big shot in a Ukrainian missile and drone campaign that has managed to push the much bigger Russian navy out of the western Black Sea and into safer waters farther to the east. The Ukrainian navy has also fired Neptunes at other Russian ships as well as at coastal targets, inflicting some damage.

It doesn’t take a lot of missiles to render huge swathes of ocean too dangerous for enemy ships to enter. And lest the Chinese military assume it can simply bombard the Philippine missile bases and destroy the Brahmos launchers, consider – the launchers are mounted on trucks, and would almost certainly disperse to hidden firing positions during times of crisis.

Philippine forces have begun placing more emphasis on anti-ship firepower. The marines are getting their three Brahmos batteries. The army is also considering buying Brahmos batteries for its own coastal regiments. For its part, the navy has armed its new South Korean-made frigates with C-Star anti-ship missiles ranging 111 miles – and recently fired one of the missiles at a decommissioned navy tanker as part of a joint “sinking exercise” alongside U.S. and Australian forces. The destroyed tanker, the former BRP Lake Caliraya, had symbolic value as a target, as it was originally built in China.

Xi Jinping will have got that message.

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