![]() That leaves regional law enforcement and navies reliant on coastal radar, which drops off rapidly farther from shore, or planes and ships, which are expensive and highly inefficient ways to monitor the vast waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. And even those that do can easily turn off or spoof the systems if they want to engage in illicit activity. Most ships, including fishing boats, across the world’s oceans are under no obligation to operate either system. Both systems relay identifying data, position, course, and speed by sending signals from transceivers on ships to nearby vessels and receiving stations, both on shore and in space.īut AIS is only legally mandated on vessels over 300 tons operating in international waters. Some states also require licensed fishing ships to be equipped with vessel monitoring system (VMS) transponders. Today, regional states monitor maritime activity mainly through legacy technologies from the last century: coastal radars, aerial and surface patrols, and broadcasts from automatic identification system (AIS) transponders whose primary purpose is vessel tracking for collision avoidance, not detecting illicit behavior. If properly executed, this effort could be a flagship project for demonstrating the Quad’s value to regional countries. Critically, it satisfies the desire of most regional partners for the Quad to provide public goods and address the needs of smaller states in and the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. This is a substantial addition to the Quad’s agenda and one of its most promising initiatives to date. The Quad, a grouping consisting of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, has just announced a maritime domain awareness partnership that will provide a new stream of data from commercial satellites to countries across the Indo-Pacific. The biggest announcement from President Joe Biden’s trip to Asia may be the one that got the least attention.
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