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00:00How is the U.S. with the strongest navy in the world
00:03There's nothing in the world like it
00:04Struggling against a much smaller adversary
00:07The contest of who controls the Strait of Hormuz
00:10is exposing the vulnerabilities of shipping lanes
00:13and also big navies
00:15You don't need a navy to do naval warfare anymore
00:18Modern warfare has already changed
00:20For decades, bigger always seem to be better
00:23But is size the only thing that matters when dealing with modern threats?
00:27Why can't the U.S. just dominate the seas?
00:31There's nothing like the fighting force that we have
00:34Rome the seas, it's called the United States Navy
00:38and there's nothing in the world like it
00:40That's true, the United States does still have the strongest navy in the world
00:45based on how much destruction its ships can deliver
00:48even though it has fewer ships than China
00:50It's the battle-tested one
00:52The L.A. Navy is larger than the U.S. Navy
00:56This is Brian Clark, an expert on the U.S. Navy
01:00at the conservative Hudson Institute and former Pentagon advisor
01:04A lot of its ships are smaller ships that are designed for
01:07what they would call near-seas defense
01:09It's all about the type of ships the country has
01:12Aircraft carriers are considered the most powerful warships on the seas
01:16The U.S. has 11
01:18More than any other navy in the world
01:21And each one costs billions
01:24Take the U.S. as Gerald R. Ford, the biggest ship the country has ever put to sea
01:29The Pentagon describes their nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
01:32as the most capable, adaptable and lethal combat platform in the world
01:38And no country has a global military presence like the U.S.
01:43Around 750 military bases in 80 countries
01:48Built over decades with U.S. partners and allies
01:51Washington doesn't disclose the location of all of them
01:55These are the naval bases we know of
02:01Military bases are the backbone of any overseas operation
02:05Ships, jets and troops all need somewhere to refuel and rearm
02:09Commercial ports can serve that role too
02:12If host nations allow military vessels to dock
02:15In theory, this global network of bases should equate to U.S. dominance at sea
02:21And that used to be true
02:23But the contest over the Strait of Hormuz shows
02:26It doesn't take a big navy to disrupt global trade routes
02:30That most of us had taken for granted
02:32We sort of accepted the fact that all these choke points
02:35Were pretty much accessible
02:37Really never got closed
02:39And short of a natural disaster
02:41Or a shipping accident
02:43You could always transit around the world
02:45And ship things around the world
02:47And so we built a whole
02:50Supply chain architecture around the world
02:52That assumed that
02:53More than 80% of world trade moves overseas
02:56At least 25% of that is oil and gas
03:00So just having a lot of bases
03:02Isn't enough to control the seas anymore
03:05What matters just as much
03:07Is who controls the shipping lanes
03:09And above all, the choke points
03:12For major power, they all have aircraft carriers
03:15But aircraft carriers normally
03:17Are just for force projection
03:21Far away from your own coast
03:23That's retired senior Colonel Zhou Bo
03:26From the Chinese military
03:28Now a senior fellow at the Center for International Security
03:31And Strategy at the Tsinghua University
03:33We will hear more from him later
03:35Any choke point can suddenly be controlled by a power or an entity that doesn't even have a navy
03:40And creates challenges for navies that they can't solve
03:45With their traditional blue water aircraft carriers
03:48And submarines and destroyers
03:51Which brings us back to the Strait of Hormuz
03:53Following U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran
03:56The Iranian regime moved to close the strait
03:58Unleashing a global energy crisis
04:01With the world's most powerful navy at its disposal
04:04Shouldn't the U.S. be able to reopen it quickly?
04:07Iran is able to control that choke point
04:09Without really any navy whatsoever
04:12Most of Iran's main navy has already been destroyed
04:16By the U.S. and Israeli attacks
04:17But the IRGC has used small boats
04:20Missiles shot from land
04:22And sea drones to attack ships trying to pass through
04:24Plus, Iran likely has sea mines that could be somewhere in the strait
04:29And even though Iran doesn't have a really substantial anti-ship threat
04:34It still has anti-ship ballistic missiles
04:35And it could attack carriers out hundreds of miles away from the coast
04:39So you've seen the U.S. carriers operate pretty far away from Iran
04:43And only the destroyers maybe go closer because they have air defense systems
04:47But even they don't get that close to the Iranian coast
04:50Because they anticipate they would face the Shahed threat
04:53The anti-ship maritime drone threat
04:56Geography matters here
04:58The U.S.'s large blue-water navy is ill-suited to this kind of confined asymmetric fight
05:04By the way, blue-water navy describes a navy that can deploy ships across the open ocean
05:09And that's exactly what the U.S. is still doing
05:12A country that does have a traditional navy
05:15Can operate in the open ocean
05:18And control that choke point from the sea
05:20And that's what the U.S. navy is doing
05:22So while
05:23The U.S. navy can also use that same choke point
05:30As a place that they can
05:33Create a blockade
05:35So you've now seen the U.S. be able to blockade
05:38Most of Iran's exports and imports
05:41At least at scale
05:43Using blue-water forces that are operating in the Arabian Sea
05:47For commercial vessels, even the threat of an attack is often enough to deter them from the route
05:53That's also for insurance reasons
05:55That means that to block the choke point, Iran doesn't need to attack every ship going through to hold shipping
06:02And this isn't the only choke point blocked in recent years
06:05Remember the Bab al-Mandeb Strait that was virtually closed because of attacks by the Yemeni Houthis?
06:12A non-state actor with limited resources managed to rock the global economy
06:17Many commercial ships still avoid that route through the Red Sea today
06:21So what changed? How did actors with no navy suddenly get so much influence over waterways?
06:28What is changing the game?
06:31Asymmetric naval warfare has never been so accessible
06:35The big change has been the advent of these one-way attack drones
06:39With the advent of drones and the advent in multiple domains
06:43So not just the airborne drones but also maritime drones
06:46We saw a shift to where these non-state actors and even smaller states
06:51That were proximate to a choke point could take advantage of that fact
06:56And now cut off access to a vital choke point without a navy
07:00Without a formal even government in the case of the Houthis
07:03So it was really that shift driven by technology
07:07That created the potential for these shipping lanes to be cut off
07:12Drones, sea, air and underwater
07:14Low-cost missiles and sea mines have all seen major advancement in recent years
07:20And they cost a fraction of a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier
07:24But major navies are adapting to the new threat
07:27So if you're a country that depends on
07:31Freedom of navigation and access to the open ocean
07:34Then you have to have a way to defeat these threats
07:36And that creates a need for basically the counter-drone type of capabilities
07:41I mean you're seeing some real innovation there in terms of laser weapons
07:45And gun-based systems and even drones that shoot down other drones
07:49So a lot of innovation is happening there
07:51As naval warfare is changing, raw size seems to matter less
07:56But one country has been expanding its navy at full speed
07:59What lessons is the country with the world's biggest navy drawing?
08:05Well size certainly matters
08:06But it's not the only decisive element
08:09China's navy already outnumbers the US fleet in total ships
08:13And Colonel Zhou says it's also closing the quality gap
08:17China's strong shipbuilding capabilities
08:21Is much bigger than that of the United States
08:25A big focus of China's bet, technology
08:28I think Chinese military would be among the best developed military
08:33In terms of application of AI robots, drones in the future
08:39Because if you talk about drones for example
08:42China and the United States are just dominating, right?
08:45So what does China actually want with this expanding technology-forward navy?
08:51One of the country's priorities
08:53Protecting the shipping routes that China's export-driven economy depends on
08:58The tone, deliberately, sounds nothing like Washington's
09:15Kerner Zhou frames it as a matter of global responsibility
09:19Yeah, because to protect our own ships, this is your national interest
09:23But to protect the ships of other countries, this is China's international responsibilities
09:30Critics, however, point to China's increasingly expansionist behavior in the South China Sea as evidence of a more aggressive agenda.
09:38But China's overseas naval footprint doesn't come close to the U.S. navies.
09:43In terms of PA Navy, we do have a problem of not having a lot of military bases.
09:49Officially, it has only one overseas naval base on the Horn of Africa in Djibouti.
09:54Though there are credible reports of an expanding Chinese military presence in Cambodia and across the South China Sea at
10:02the facilities China has built there.
10:04It's worth noting that China has bought, invested in and built a lot of civilian ports around the globe,
10:11some of which could be used for military purposes in the future, according to experts.
10:16China is pursuing a different model from the U.S.
10:19But as its global interests grow, it too is counting on size and speed.
10:24There is still a long way to go to catch up with the U.S. military or the U.S.
10:30Navy.
10:31The Chinese military aims to become a world-class military by 2049.
10:37So where is naval warfare headed?
10:40Asymmetric threats are growing, technology is advancing faster than doctrine, and the world's major navies are racing to keep up.
10:48So the modern warfare has already changed.
10:52We have yet to see a real combat at sea making use of drones.
10:57But given the fact that China and the United States are two leaders in AI, and AI will definitely be
11:05used militarily.
11:07And what's in store for the U.S. Navy?
11:08We are seeing this shift in Navy force design away from kind of a carrier-based or even, you know,
11:16destroyer-based fleet of crewed surface combatants and ships and submarines
11:22to a mix of uncrewed vessel and crewed vessels where the uncrewed vessels are a growing percentage of the fleet.
11:30You still need humans in the loop or commanders in the loop to make decisions and be accountable for those
11:35decisions.
11:35But a lot of the fighting might end up being done by unmanned systems.
11:40The U.S. is adapting, investing in counter-drone systems, autonomous vessels, and new tactics, and hoping to overhaul its
11:47ability to build new ships.
11:49China has been doing the same, arguably faster, and is continuing to add more ships to its Navy.
11:55The war in Iran has exposed some of the vulnerabilities and is an ongoing test of how ready any Navy
12:01can be.
12:02Control of the world's choke points has never been more consequential or more unpredictable.