Maritime defence of PNG waters vital

LET us all be clear as to what our maritime force is about.
The simple fact is that we have our own navy to preserve law and order at sea.
Firstly, we have to preserve law and order in our own waters, where our maritime jurisdiction extends out to 200 miles offshore – to detect and respond to illegal activities.
Secondly, national surveillance on the one hand, may be for defence purposes and intelligence derived from it does have a military value.
Thirdly, ship’s captains are expected to maintain a constant acquisition of information on patterns of activity, which could lead to an increase in the effectiveness of our national resources.
However, it must be realised that surveillance activity in PNG is but one of a number of defence tasks to which allocation of effort must be kept under constant review, and for which adequate fiscal and other resources must be provided.
The maritime defence of our waters is an important national security function of any government.
It is a mammoth task as the geographic environment of PNG is both a coastal and an archipelagic state, consisting of about 3.1 million sq km of water areas strewn with some 600 islands, numerous reefs and atolls.
This is a very extensive coastline out to the limits of our Exclusive Economic Zone to police and protect its resources.
PNG’s fishing grounds are relatively rich as compared to other fishing nations within the region.
This poses a great attraction for other distant fishing nations who have always had fishing interests to envy our rich marine resource.
Thus, over the years, many of them have fished both legally and illegally in our waters. Therefore, it is in PNG’s national interest, a multi-purpose coast guard force is needed, which must be capable of contributing to three broad roles now:
* A diplomatic role in which our ships become extensions of the State in the exercise of foreign policy;
* A policing role concerned with national sovereignty, resource management and the maintenance of law and order at sea; and
* A military role having an essential coast guard service function to directly relate to both national and international security in a regional context.
PNG must maintain both political sovereignty and economic jurisdiction in its own territory.
However, the limited number of ships and aircraft we have compared to the large areas to be covered limits the overall effectiveness of the surveillance contribution to the policing and naval roles.
In addition, our present maritime force’s surveillance capability is limited in coastal or archipelagic areas, due mainly to weather and the distances involved.
Some surveillance flights by our aircraft may reflect a national presence but the effect is limited in duration and has virtually no policing component.
Only our naval ships can do this. Hence, it is necessary to have ships within our waters all-year round to provide this.
While constant maritime presence may be impractical or in many cases impossible, frequent and random operations by several ships over a given period of time can have the desired effect.
For the future, our international commitments can still be capably addressed through better and effective defence strategic planning. PNG must plan to boost its major capital assets and acquire more surveillance patrol crafts in the near future.
It is time for a more rational distribution of PNG’s maritime security efforts now as it was in the halcyon days of our navy.
The bottom line now is that PNG has more to gain in a security and economic sense from a professional and well-commanded (lead) national coast guard service than the current ineffective and wasteful regime we have today.

Reginald Renagi
Port Moresby