Blog 4 - An Australian Trident Part2

An Australian Trident Part 2

Conceptualising Australia's Future Navy

Walls Over Blue Water

The only serious difference between Australia’s current predicament and that of the early 20th century is that the power which now threatens Australia in the Southwest Pacific, China, cannot be contained within the Western Pacific Ocean as easily as Germany was contained into the North Sea. China, while not local to the Southwest Pacific, is a hemispheric power while both the German Empire and Soviet Union faced more important military threats on the far side of the world. It should therefore be realised that Australia cannot rely on the containment of the Chinese Navy’s most powerful naval forces in the same way it once relied on the containment of the German High Seas Fleet by the Grand Fleet in the North Sea or the Soviet Pacific Fleet by 7th fleet in Northeast Asia. It is this dynamic which means that the Australian Defence Force must be prepared not only to rapidly overmatch the conventional assets of a foreign power in its near seas, but also utilise asymmetric capabilities more extensively than before to mitigate the risk of large Chinese fleet units joining expeditionary units bound for the Southwest Pacific. Some Australian defence strategists have posited that a concentrated investment into sea and area denial assets, particularly small submarines, light, missile armed warships and land based missile and airpower would be able to defeat or deter a hostile expeditionary force. These claims are correct, but such analysts have failed to heed warnings by Australian intelligence agencies that the threat of China acquiring the capacity to buildup its military presence in the Southwest Pacific is real. A force structure which prioritises area and sea denial and treats all other missions as an afterthought will not be effectively able to overrun Chinese positions in the Southwest Pacific quickly. If the Australian Defence Force lacks any meaningful force projection capability then the establishment of such bases, especially covertly during peacetime, becomes a fait accompli as soon as the Chinese military takes up its new positions. Such an overfocussed force would therefore face the prospect of waging a high intensity campaign against Chinese force projection into the region while unable to first secure its own strategic depth. For reasons already elaborated, this makes a pure anti-access/area denial force structure unworkable for Australia.

These analysts fail to take into account the additional reality of fighting an adversary who, for the first time in Australian history, may arrive in the region with capital ships, regardless of whether they have secured preestablished footholds in the region. Overinvestment into submarine capability without forcing a hostile fleet to contend with threats from the air will allow Chinese aircraft carriers to reduce their compliment of fast jets configured for air to air operations and flood their decks with anti-submarine warfare helicopters and other assets which would neuter Australia’s overconcentrated underwater capability. Overreliance on land based airpower would see Australian planes struggle to reach the most defensible parts of the Southwest Pacific, the area of decisive effect, in sufficient force. The current backbone of the Royal Australian Air Force, the F-35A, requires large sturdy runways which would either have to be constructed in too short a time following the outbreak of conflict or would be vulnerable to opening strikes by Chinese long range missiles and aircraft. Such aircraft are simultaneously better left at hardened Australian bases yet would likely be unable to operate from the kinds of airfields the ADF and allies could construct in the Bismarck Sea Littoral by the time the threat of a Chinese expeditionary force materialises. Small and agile missile aircraft would have to strike a hostile fleet which is developing increasingly mature carrier launched AWACS and EW capabilities which would detect, surveil and degrade their attack, leading to a surface engagement in which the navy would attack with a decisive sensor and awareness disadvantage.

The first phase of an Australian defence of the Southwest Pacific, the offence against Chinese bases in the region, would therefore require long range air power to severely degrade local Chinese positions. The neutralisation or defeat of such positions will also require the maritime transformation of the Australian Army and the ability to lift large formations by sea onto their land based objectives. The Royal Australian Navy will need to be able to support the army in destroying any Chinese naval assets forward deployed in the Southwest Pacific to create conditions of sea control to facilitate amphibious landings. Such operations would also require airpower be made available both to support troops landing and defeat any Chinese air assets operating from the target bases. Although the Australian Army has already been directed to transform itself into a maritime capable force, the air force has received no such direction. The Royal Australian Air Force’s F-35A fleet and hardened Northern bases are fit to defend the continent itself from hostile air attack but are not fit to provide air cover to force projection operations. Given the immense distances involved, the best plausible way to secure air superiority over the Southwest Pacific at the outbreak of conflict may be to acquire carrier based air power.

The second phase of consolidating Australia’s Southwest Pacific defences would require a shift in focus from whatever bases the Chinese operated in the region to the Area of Decisive Effect. The Royal Australian Navy and Air Force would both have to contribute sea and airlift capacity to ensure that the Bismarck Sea Littoral could be fortified with prepared positions for land and air forces and populated with naval assets ready to resist the Chinese expeditionary force. The timing and strength of this expeditionary force would depend, however, on the success of previously mentioned Australian efforts to interfere with Chinese control over East Asian waters. A Chinese Navy which takes greater losses in a battle for Taiwan or any other territory in Northeast Asia will have fewer forces to dispatch South down the Asian Maritime Condominium. This would then lead to the final stage whereby the Australian Defence Force would face a determined effort to knock Australia out of the war or neutralise it and deny its support to the United States. If the Australian Defence Force engages in this phase of the fight having failed to defeat Chinese forces already established in the Southwest Pacific, attrit the Chinese Navy during its operations against Taiwan or without sufficient forces stationed in the correct places to contribute to the battle, it will be defeated.

An Australian Way of War

Creswell’s doctrine, however, has some interesting modern day applications. Chinese miliary strength in the maritime domain is predicated in great part on shorter ranged assets. China has a large satellite constellation with orbits configured to provide coverage over East Asian Seas and the Northern Maritime Condominium. It possesses large numbers of missiles with the capacity to strike targets within these seas. China’s air force is large and can outnumber its American and allied opposition in its near abroad. China’s navy also has dozens of short-ranged corvettes and diesel electric submarines which can defeat both undersea and surface forces very close to China’s shores. This force posture, however, becomes top heavy when operating further from China’s shores. While China’s older and less capable carriers are not likely to participate in operations far from shore, its new generation of conventionally and nuclear powered carriers equipped with cutting edge catapults and increasingly capable aircraft can pose serious threats to China’s enemies across vast distances. These assets are considerably more finite, much like the large destroyers and cruisers which support their operations and the larger amphibious ships which follow them to their objectives. Australian assets which can target Chinese assets operating on the Eastern side of Taiwan and the Northern Philippine Sea could therefore strike these precious blue water assets and reduce their numbers available for operations further South. In the event that Australian long range aircraft and submarines attrit the Chinese bluewater fleet and the nucleus of the US 7th fleet remains intact as a fleet in being, the Chinese navy may only be able to spare 2 to 3 aircraft carriers at most to operate in the Southwest Pacific. Furthermore, the imminent reinforcement of the US navy and Air Force as these arrive in the Southwest Pacific theatre would place time pressure on such an expeditionary force. These factors would compromise China’s ability to attain its Southern objectives without putting its forces at undue risk to a network of strong Australian defences, increasing the likelihood the Chinese military would abandon their plans or undertake them recklessly.

The Australian Defence Force already operates or is acquiring many of the capabilities which would be required in these scenarios. The Australian Army is currently acquiring amphibious transports which will suffice to enable its maritime mobility between Australia and the Oceanic Archipelagoes. The Royal Australian Air Force is already acquiring large numbers of transport aircraft which would allow it to complete the airlift of logistics and construction assets to the Area of Decisive Effect. AUKUS will see the Royal Australian Navy acquire submarines with the range to attrit Chinese naval forces around Taiwan and the speed to return to the Southwest Pacific to blunt other Chinese fleet movements. That AUKUS will follow a very similar quid-pro-quo, industrial strategy and philosophy of force design and alliance structure that Creswell’s acquisition of a capital ship and cruisers for the navy is no coincidence – it represents the constant influence of Australia’s position in the world as dictated by both geography and Australia’s relations with Anglosphere great powers.

Forging the Trident

Creswell’s navy offers an important lesson, however, in that Australia cannot afford to neglect conventional forces in favour of unconventional assets if it seeks to hold its own in any scenario currently foreseeable. Australia has additional requirements borne out above for carrier based air power and a class of long range aircraft able to complement the nuclear powered long range submarines in travelling between the battlefields of the Northern Asian Maritime Condominium and the Area of Decisive Effect. Carrier airpower is not the sole answer to Australia’s current defence woes, it is merely one of many necessary capabilities which can be operated together to generate the cumulative effect required to defeat the threat Australia now faces. That the Royal Australian Navy currently operates two vessels of the Canberra class which could between them field a squadron of F-35Bs, a less capable but more flexible model of aircraft adapted for amphibious warfare, speaks much to the logic of this option. The Australian Defence Force should look to definitively turn down the option to acquire a fourth squadron of F-35As, as the three squadrons already in service are sufficient to guard the continent, while using recapitalised resources to acquire a squadron of F-35Bs. Long range land based airpower could also be acquired economically through an agreement to streamline supply chains and maintenance for such assets with the United States, which has begun to base its own such platforms in Australia. Australian strategists should not be fooled, however, that these American aircraft already arriving in the country can be relied upon to help complete Australian missions, that they will be ready whenever Australia needs them or that they will be deployed in sufficient strength at the outbreak of war to complete the objectives Australia must set for long range air power. Australia should therefore acquire its own fleet of B-21 bombers to ensure that it can both contribute a second survivable asset to the attrition of the Chinese bluewater fleet across vast distances in a high intensity environment and utilise massive strike capacity with the capacity to penetrate hostile airspace in its own operations closer to home.

An Australian Defence Force equipped to fight an air, land and sea battle against the following Chinese expedition is more likely to succeed than a force which limits itself to anti-access/area denial operations. Air interdiction against enemy expeditionary forces is a must for the Australian Defence Force’s current operating environment. The misuse of Australia’s largest warships must also be rectified, as although the Canberra class LHDs were acquired to facilitate uncontested power projection in low level threat environments, they may still contribute decisively to the contest for the Southwest Pacific in the event of conflict. HMAS Australia was acquired to serve as a capital ship providing overmatch against all but the most potent German capabilities, yet the modern Royal Australian Navy’s current doctrine would have seen it used as a troop carrier instead. The Canberra Class LHDs offer the exact kind of light capital ship capability that will overmatch low end Chinese capabilities and restrict the operational tempo of a high end opposing force in a conflict and, on such occasions, could play a vital role in contesting the Chinese navy’s growing airpower. Interoperability will help Australia get more out of the platforms it is currently acquiring. In the projection phase of operations Royal Australian Navy LHDs might attack hostile positions in conjunction with the stealth bombers, then either provide air cover to the fleet while the bombers engage the Chinese navy in the vicinity of Taiwan or transport additional army units while the bombers continue to degrade Chinese forward deployed forces.

While the LHDs switch from carrying fighter jets to carrying troops into battle, the squadron of F-35Bs of the Royal Australian Air Force could detach from the navy and operate from land based airfields rapidly constructed in Northern Papua New Guinea. The Australian bomber fleet will provide essential support by being able to strike targets in the Southwest Pacific which other assets such as F-35s might lack the range and missile carrying C-130s the stealth to reach, even at a standoff distance. Australia is preparing for high end conflict, and the B-21 simply offers capability amidst such intensity which no other platform can match in either the force projection or sea denial phase of a viable defence plan. Australia should also acquire cheaper land and sea assets which could be stationed in the Area of Decisive Effect without greatly increasing the cost of defence. Australian Army units, consisting of both littoral manoeuvre and missile strike brigades could therefore move from offensive amphibious operations against Chinese bases to defending the Area of Decisive Effect in the Bismarck Sea Littoral. While larger fleet units operate with the amphibious fleet to defend it from hostile air and submarine attack and launch missile strikes against hostile land targets, smaller warships could clear the littorals of smaller enemy craft ahead of the amphibious offensive and then operate alongside the bombers and submarines to interdict the sea lines of communication of the enemy expeditionary force.

Proper asymmetric strategies such as this one require both a lateral redundancy of capabilities of different types to degrade a hostile force in more ways than they can defend against at once and also mass to ensure that its weaknesses can be exploited with sufficient firepower at the right moment. Land based missile batteries, drones and small ships able to utilise high end missiles will be just as vital in a high-end conflict as more capital intensive and capable platforms, but they require the degradation of hostile capability by other more advanced and flexible units before opportunity arises for them to have an effect on the battlefield. Australia should therefore pursue a force structure which allows flexible adaption to the three state mission and a use of both high and low end capabilities in all domains to defeat the threat it faces. If the Chinese navy can be forced to operate against an Australian military which first destroys its forward bases, then fortifies itself in a strategically sound location, and finally brings to bear undersea, air and surface based assets which capitalise on its weaknesses such as anti-submarine warfare, finite blue water assets and inexperience in combined arms operations it may well fail to dictate defeat and unfavourable terms of peace. Thereafter, Australia will be free to operate as part of a broader coalition in the hemisphere, in accordance with the best practice of past doctrines, to ensure China loses the war and Australia’s security in a broader sense is restored.