NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Amid growing tensions with China, the U.S. military lacks adequate sealift capabilities to support a war in the Indo-Pacific, according to the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Republican, noted in a letter to Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, leader of the U.S. Transportation Command, that American forces are heavily reliant on a fleet of ships to move equipment in the event of a major conflict in Asia.
“However, while China has undertaken a historic buildup of both military and commercial ships, the United States’ sealift fleet has continued to age and go underfunded, appearing woefully inadequate for the daunting task of providing logistical support to troops thousands of miles away from the homeland,” Mr. Gallagher said in the letter sent Tuesday. The letter was also sent to Ann C. Phillips, head of the Maritime Administration within the Department of Transportation, which plays a key role in military sealift.
The chairman said the military sealift shortfalls are a “screaming national security vulnerability” that must be remedied.
Currently, the Pentagon would rely on mobilizing 45 ships of the Ready Reserve Forces, under control of the Maritime Administration, and 15 ships of the Military Sealift Command in a conflict. Other commercial ships could be called upon to move goods to Asia, but the sealift capability is not enough.
The problem is made worse by the decline of the U.S. merchant fleet, which includes just 177 ships, down from more than 600 in the 1990s.
In 2019, a military exercise revealed that the small and aging U.S. sealift fleet may not be ready to respond to a crisis in the Indo-Pacific.
The Navy also stated in a fiscal 2024 budget estimate that current theater logistics are inadequate to support operations in a contested environment.
“Thus, even if the United States has the weapons and equipment to fight, it faces the alarming risk that it may lack the sealift capabilities to sustain the fight,” Mr. Gallagher said. “The potential impact of such a logistical deficiency on our deterrence posture at this perilous moment cannot be understated.”
Strengthening the military’s ability to deny a Chinese invasion of Taiwan requires a comprehensive plan of both offensive and defensive forces and improved military logistics, including sealift, he said.
“We are quickly running out of time to implement meaningful changes, many of which will take years to fully execute,” Mr. Gallagher added.
Mr. Gallagher then asked Gen. Van Ovost and Ms. Phillips a list of questions, including whether the current sealift system can support a war in the Indo-Pacific. Adm. Sam Paparo, President Biden’s nominee to be the next commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, was asked about the logistics problems in a hearing last week.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, said the logistics problems “could be the real chokepoint in terms of operations in the Pacific.” Adm. Paparo said the command is working to identify gaps in logistics systems.
“We talk about contested logistics as if it never were contested. Logistics are always contested, and executing the joint function of sustainment comes under all of the same pressures and all of the same fog and friction that maneuver, that fires, that all of the joint functions come at,” he said.
War games have provided important lesson for sustaining military forces in a conflict, he said.
Asked what is needed for U.S. forces to prevail in a war with China, Adm. Paparo said in written responses to questions from the committee that the Indo-Pacific Command is postured to deter and, if needed, defeat the Chinese forces. Areas that need strengthening include logistics, as well as air superiority, sea control, undersea warfare dominance, space control, and integrated air and missile defense, he said.
Transportation Command spokesman Scott D. Ross said that Gen. Van Ovost will provide a response to the letter to Congress.
“That said, the letter aptly captures the general’s concerns about maritime readiness,” he said. “Maintaining an adequate fleet of seaworthy ships is critical to U.S. Transcom’s ability to deploy and sustain forces in a major conflict, as nearly 90% of U.S. military equipment would move by ship.”
A spokesman for the Maritime Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
House chairman decries ‘rot’ at global media agency
The U.S. government’s official broadcasting agency is facing an “extraordinary crisis of leadership,” according to the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, which oversees the agency.
Rep. Michael McCaul, in a recently published magazine article, described the problems at the U.S. Agency for Global Media as a “recent rot of dysfunction formed on a bed of groupthink, political bias and self-dealing.”
A USAGM spokesman said, “This is the subject of an open investigation.”
“We have worked cooperatively with Chairman McCaul’s staff on this matter for some time, and have been in close communication regarding their inquiries,” the spokesman said. “We will continue to be responsive and compliant with congressional oversight,” he said, declining to comment further.
The Texas Republican lawmaker said a forthcoming report by his committee will lay out a critique that reads like a detective novel: “A top-level executive is accused of verbally harassing staff, mismanaging funds and lying about educational credentials from an elite European university,” he said in National Review.
After whistleblowers in the agency filed a complaint, the allegations were confirmed, and the official was fired at the tail end of the Trump administration. But before the action could take hold, the incoming Biden administration reversed the firing and kept the official on — and took no disciplinary action, Mr. McCaul said.
“The larger story here is the dangerous power of institutional inertia: the refusal by the agency, charged with serving the American people and maintaining the public trust, first to take whistleblowers seriously, and then to admit it blundered by not doing so,” Mr. McCaul said.
“At worst, these failures evince a deliberate effort to protect a loyalist insider and cover up her wrongdoing.”
Mr. McCaul did not name the official.
The Washington Times, however, first disclosed the case involving Voice of America manager Setareh Derakhshesh Sieg, director of the Persian-language radio service.
An internal Voice of America report obtained by The Washington Times revealed that on Jan. 5, 2021, Ms. Sieg was recommended for firing for “waste of agency/government funds” and “lack of candor” in response to questions about alleged corruption. Among the charges in an internal Agency for Global Media investigation was that Ms. Sieg falsely claimed on employment documents to holding a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris.
Mr. McCaul said the French Embassy investigated the case and found that Ms. Sieg did not have any doctorate from the French university as she had claimed. Agency managers, he charged, “refused to take very simple steps: demand a diploma, search the relevant educational database, and do more than Google ‘the Sorbonne.’”
“Through a mix of incompetence, willful blindness, and deliberate obfuscation, senior officials did everything possible to protect their own, even if it meant misleading and obstructing Congress,” he said.
Dutch military network compromised by China
Chinese government hackers broke into Dutch government computer networks and penetrated a military network of the NATO ally, the Netherlands intelligence agency disclosed this week.
The agency revealed the Chinese hacking for the first time in highlighting continued Beijing cyberespionage — despite blanket denials of computer spying by the Chinese government.
“It is important to ensure that espionage activities of this nature committed by China become public knowledge since this will help to increase international resilience to this type of cyber espionage,” Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said, the Reuters news agency reported.
The Dutch intelligence service agencies, known as the MIVD and AIVD, discovered the breach and said the hackers placed malware in a military network used by 50 people for unclassified research.
The agencies said in a report that “this incident does not stand on its own but is part of a wider trend of Chinese political espionage against the Netherlands and its allies.”
The malware, known as “Coathanger,” escaped detection for a time. The software can remain on a computer after updates or reboots and is able to shield its identity from antivirus hunts.
“The malware has been developed specifically for FortiGate devices, which are used by organizations as a firewall to protect their systems,” the report said. FortiGate is produced by Fortinet, a California-based cybersecurity company.
In 2019, Fortinet agreed to pay the U.S. government a $545,0000 settlement payment following claims the company illegally sold Chinese-made equipment to the U.S. military.
The Justice Department said in announcing the settlement that Fortinet had violated the U.S. Trade Agreements Act by falsely marking its product “made in the USA” that were allegedly made in China.
Fortinet said at the time that the fraudulent activity was an isolated incident by a single employee.
The operation uncovered by authorities in the Netherlands reflects a global pattern of Chinese government hacking despite Beijing’s statements that it does not engage in cyberespionage. Despite the Chinese hacking operations, the United States and its allies have yet to impose economic or other consequences on China for the behavior.
• Bill Gertz can be reached on X @BillGertz.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.