Malaysia upgrades South China Sea defences amid Sabah row with Philippines

Malaysia is stepping up surveillance on its eastern flank, pushing ahead with plans for a long-range radar at a frontline South China Sea outpost and launching newly operational drones. The upgrades reflect Kuala Lumpur’s bid to improve its ability to detect threats as the Philippines revives its claim over Sabah state in Malaysian Borneo and Chinese patrols persist near its offshore energy fields. Defence Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin said on Sunday that the radar would be installed on Swallow Reef, known as Pulau Layang-Layang in Malay, to give the armed forces a clearer picture of aircraft movements around the Spratlys. “From a security perspective, as we all know, we have strengthened our position on Pulau Layang-Layang,” Khaled told reporters after an election campaign launch event in Negeri Sembilan. “We will also install a radar system there so that we have stronger surveillance capabilities.” The announcement came as Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan disclosed that Malaysia had recently sent a “very strong” diplomatic note to an unnamed country claiming part of Malaysian territory. “They seem to have forgotten that the people of that territory held a referendum, which was recognised by the United Nations, and a United Nations Security Council resolution affirmed that the people chose to be with us,” Mohamad said, as quoted by local media. “So there should no longer be any question of saying that the territory belongs to them.” The remarks appeared to reference the Philippines’ long-standing claim over Sabah, according to Azmi Hassan, a geostrategist and senior fellow at the Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research think tank. “We do protest it directly to Manila,” Azmi said, referring to Philippine maritime claims that “include Sabah as part of the Philippines’ territory”. The Philippine foreign ministry reaffirmed its claim to Sabah in February, maintaining that the country’s Maritime Zones Act of 2024 preserved its “existing and valid claims” over part of North Borneo, Sabah’s colonial name. The dispute flared again in March when Philippine Senator Robin Padilla called on President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr to revive the claim and take steps to assert Manila’s position. Mohamad said at the time that Malaysia would send a diplomatic note to the Philippines “as soon as possible”, insisting that Sabah’s place within the Malaysian federation was settled. Malaysia’s official position is that Sabahans exercised their right to self-determination in 1962 through the Cobbold Commission, followed by a United Nations mission that assessed public support in Sabah and Sarawak ahead of Malaysia’s formation in September 1963. Mohamad did not respond to This Week in Asia’s requests for comment on Monday about the recipient or precise subject of the latest diplomatic note. Eyes on the reef The Sabah dispute is separate from the overlapping claims surrounding Swallow Reef in the South China Sea, where Malaysia maintains a naval outpost. The 35-hectare atoll, which China and Vietnam also claim, is located roughly 300km (186 miles) from Sabah state capital Kota Kinabalu and houses the Royal Malaysian Navy’s Station Lima, established in 1984 as a forward operating base for surveillance and defence operations. The outpost already hosts a maritime radar for tracking vessels, but the new long-range air-surveillance radar, expected to be operational by 2029, will allow Malaysia to monitor aircraft across a wider stretch of the southern Spratlys. Malaysia also launched its Turkish-built Anka-S medium-altitude, long-endurance drones on the island of Labuan, a federal territory off the coast of Sabah, last month. The defence ministry said the drones, bought under a 2023 contract with Turkish Aerospace Industries, would be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions over Malaysian waters. “Thankfully, our unmanned aerial vehicles have arrived,” Foreign Minister Mohamad said on Sunday. “They are also very important assets for monitoring our area.” Further west sits Luconia Shoals and Malaysia’s energy fields off the coast of Sarawak state. Ray Powell, director of Stanford University’s SeaLight maritime transparency project, told This Week in Asia that Chinese coastguard ships had maintained “near-constant intrusive patrolling” within Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone, which extends up to 200 nautical miles from a country’s coast. “This year is no exception, with some patrols also ranging towards Layang-Layang,” Powell said, referring to Swallow Reef. “Different hulls rotate in and out, but collectively they keep Chinese state vessels on station almost all the time.” Most of the pressure was being applied off Sarawak’s coast, Powell said, with “nothing that looks like a sudden new crisis” occurring near Swallow Reef. He added the radar would complement the maritime sensors and drones Malaysia already uses to track vessels and help to overhaul its surveillance network. Collin Koh, a defence analyst and senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the radar’s location should let Malaysia’s armed forces “peer further towards the northern approaches”. The upgrade was at least partly linked to an incident in May 2021 when Malaysia scrambled Hawk fighter jets in response to 16 Chinese military aircraft detected flying near Luconia Shoals, he said. Malaysia’s foreign ministry subsequently summoned the Chinese ambassador over the incident, which it described as a breach of Malaysia’s airspace and sovereignty. Koh said the radar roll-out was long overdue as many Malaysia military sensors and systems were becoming outdated, but noted that better detection would not solve the shortage of modern combat aircraft stationed in East Malaysia. More capable Sukhoi Su-30MKM and F/A-18D Hornet fighters could be redeployed from Peninsular Malaysia, he said, but the small fleet and limited operational availability remained major constraints. “For the foreseeable future, if more modern multirole combat aircraft are not acquired, East Malaysia’s air defence will have to rely on these ground-based radars and lightweight jets,” Koh said.

Malaysia upgrades South China Sea defences amid Sabah row with Philippines

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Long-range radar at Swallow Reef and new drones in Labuan aim to give Malaysia better oversight of its eastern waters

Long-range radar at Swallow Reef and new drones in Labuan aim to give Malaysia better oversight of its eastern waters