Cloak of Power: Thailand's Affinity for Unarmed Warships
History repeats! Thailand's newest flagship HTMS Chang was commissioned in 2023. This multifunctional carrier cost the Royal Thai Navy fifty per cent of its annual budget - without weapons, of course!
These are to be installed at some point as soon as there's money left over - in other words, never, if we take Thailand's previous command flagship as reference.
This one is called HTMS Chakri Naruebet and was commissioned in 1997. It's also a multifunctional vessel and spends an average of one day a month sailing around Bangkok Bay largely unarmed.
They were never liquid, which is why they were forced to forego the luxury of owning a warship with full armoury.
Really?
What stratagem does the Royal Thai Navy use?
Number 1, “Fool the emperor by crossing the sea”. The aim is to distract from the actual target (Leonhardt 2023).
The Royal Thai Navy has no money. This sentence can be carved in stone, as the organisation has an annual budget of USD 400 million to maintain 130 ships and 70,000 personnel (Axe 2021). This must be enough for everything from cleaning rags to gun powder, while at the same time they have big plans to buy more (expensive war) ships (Chacko 2023; Wassana 2024).
Therefore, Covid or the Asian financial crisis do not play a major role in the fleet's budget planning: although they lead to temporary budget reductions, these crises are mainly used to justify internationally why it's currently not possible to upgrade the ships with military equipment.
Instead, they do business as usual: new warships are bought or built that are equipped with everything except the weaponry required for combat missions. On the one hand, this saves a lot of money, and on the other hand, neither the Chinese nor other neighbouring states perceive them as a threat, while still treating them as a regional power (On Demand Journalism 2023; The Cove 2021; SCMP Reporter 1998).
The important thing for Thailand is not whether it can fight at any time, but that it possesses the necessary infrastructure and can upgrade it relatively quickly and easily. After all, all the connectors are there.
It was exactly the same with the Chakri Naruebet: they bought an aircraft carrier without anything but the basics (Pike 2021). Aircraft ready for scrap were supplied cheaply at the time. They were maintained until there were no spare parts available. The Matadors were then decommissioned and mothballed (Suttichart 2017). It wasn't a loss, they weren't required anyway.
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The Chakri Naruebet and the Chang pursue the same mission objectives: to provide humanitarian aid in the event of climate disasters. Otherwise, they rescue shipwrecked refugees or tackle smugglers and pirates (Chacko 2023; On Demand Journalism 2023; Asian Military Review 2023).
There isn't much to do, as the ship is almost always anchored in Sattahip's harbour (Wassana 2015), where it serves as a tourist attraction and thus earns a few bucks, while at the same time being kept operational and in good condition (Newdick 2022). After all, you never know what tomorrow will bring.
Conclusion
To summarise, Thailand is pursuing a defensive, reactive strategy that allows it to adapt and expand its military capabilities without causing unnecessary provocation or stirring up regional tensions. This gives Thailand a certain flexibility in its defence policy, making it possible to react tactically to internal and external changes. The Royal Thai Navy thus positions itself as a potentially strong but cautious force that conceals its true strength and intentions until really needed.
Stratagems
Thailand's policy of using economic crises as an excuse to plausibly avoid equipping its warships is in line with Stratagem 5, “Exploit a conflagration for a heist”. In doing so, you use chaos to your advantage (Senger 1993: 67-74). Their procedure of neutrally observing the external political situation and keeping their own capacities concealed corresponds to number 9, “Observe the fire on the opposite shore”. This means passively observing what's happening in order to draw conclusions and, if possible, gain advantages (Senger 1992: 156-161).
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