The government has just scrapped one of the many troubled defence projects it inherited: the Sea Sprite helicopter. It may yet cancel Brendan Nelson’s Super Hornets. But with budget pressure still tight, it might be worth looking at more radical options. The obvious candidate is to abandon the long-standing tradition that our armed forces should include a surface navy.
It’s been argued ever since the development of the submarine in the late 19th century and the airplane in the early 20th (along with torpedoes and mines) that surface fleets were obsolete, being vulnerable to much cheaper attackers. This argument has been repeatedly vindicated by events, and just as repeatedly ignored by the makers of defence policy.
Update: My point is pretty much proved by this report that the Navy has dropped the ball on training and retaining submarine crews. By contrast, the general tone of many comments seems to be based on the notion “why not have it all?” with no consideration of budget constraints, let alone benefit-cost analysis.
In the first decade of the 20th century, the race to build Dreadnought-class battleships was a significant contributor to the tensions that led to the outbreak of the Great War. Yet when the War came, the Dreadnoughts on both sides turned out to be useless, meeting only in the inconclusive Battle of Jutland. The German Fleet stayed in port for the rest of war and the British Navy didn’t attack them because of the fear of submarines and mines. The real naval war was that of German submarines against British merchant ships and their escorts.
Despite this, governments around the world raced to build more and better battleships in the period from 1918 to 1939. The renewed outbreak of World War showed that battleships were only marginally useful, and highly vulnerable to air and submarine attack. Again the real naval war was one of submarines and carrier-based aircraft. The main role of surface ships was as anti-submarine escorts and as platforms for aircraft.
Since then, of course, the range, speed and capabilities of aircraft have all increased dramatically, while ships continue to travel at speeds of 20 to 30 knots. A ship can be sunk by missiles from huge distances, and the vastness of the oceans has ceased to be relevant in the era of satellites and pilotless spy planes. Submarines have greatly improved their capacity to avoid detection, but it is essentially impossible to hide a surface ship.
Since 1945, there has only been one serious naval conflict, the Falklands/Malvinas war which demonstrated all these points. The Argentine navy played real no role in the war, returning to port after the sinking of the Belgrano by a submarine. Pitted against a fourth-rate airforce (more used to murdering dissidents than to any kind of military activity) operating far from its home bases, the British Royal Navy only survived because the other side ran out of missiles and couldn’t get its bombs to explode.
Based on all this experience, it seems safe to observe first that we are highly unlikely to be involved in naval surface warfare ever again. If we are, a surface fleet will be defenceless in the absence of air and submarine superiority and redundant with it. In this context, there was an interesting piece in Prospect a few years ago which spelt out the vulnerability of surface fleets to submarine and air attack. I didn’t agree with all of it, notably the bit at the end suggesting the push for dreadnoughts leading up to the Great War was a good idea, but it confirms my general view that naval policy continues to be premised on fighting the wars of last century if not those of the century before that.
If we abandon the idea of a traditional surface warfare capacity that still leaves some jobs to be done by surface ships, of which the most significant in military terms is transporting troops and equipment, and supporting amphibious operations. But does it make sense to have a separate arm of the service for this. Wouldn’t it be better to let the army handle this job and decide what resources should be allocated to it?
Then there are various coastal patrol activities. Important as these are, they could be adequately handled by a Coast Guard, as proposed by Kim Beazley a while back.
Finally, there are the kind of long-distance operations characterized by our contribution to various operations in the Persian Gulf. We can never do this except as a small part of a US effort centred on a carrier battle group. It makes no sense to invested in ships dedicated to this kind of job. To the extent that we are obligated to support such operations, it would be better to make a cash contribution, as many US allies did in Gulf War I, or send specialist personnel.
How much could we save by doing without a surface navy? In capital terms, expenditure on large-scale naval projects appears comparable with that on the air force, while delivering a lot less defence. In terms of numbers, the navy has 13000 military staff, compared to 14000 for the air force and 21000 for the army. If we could halve the size of the navy by winding down the surface fleet, that would be about a 15 per cent saving in numbers. Overall, it looks like an option worth exploring further.
John Quiggin 
What about aircraft carrier task forces supporting amphibious invasions? How will we ever turn the South Pacific into an Australian lake without such forces?
Oh dear. I shall prepare a fuller reply tomorrow, but for now I will simply point out that this is based on a cumulatively reinforcing series of misunderstandings, e.g. that battleships were no use because they were not used. JQ was gone a long way out of his area this time…
“has gone” – sorry, finger trouble.
“Despite this, governments around the world raced to build more and better battleships in the period from 1939 to 1945. The renewed outbreak of World War showed that battleships were only marginally useful, …”
Shouldn’t that read “the period 1918 to 1939”?
Fixed now, I hope
I’m no expert, and I’m just free-thinking here, but what if we decide we need to intervene sometime in Fiji or some other South Pacific island.
If the force we’re intervening against captures and damages the airstrips, wouldn’t we be stuck? Our aircraft can’t land, and all we can do is deliver bombs, but the rebels have disappeared back into the jungle, the city, etc.
No ships to get troops there directly, no carriers to ferry helicopters over there, etc.
Maybe we should be looking at submarine troop carriers and submarine aircraft carriers.
This doesn’t work. Army ships are just as vulnerable to air attack/misile attack as navy ships.
If navy ships are useless, so are army ships.
Even though JQ and PM Lawrence have taken different positions here, I think I can see they both have a valid point.
We can’t afford more of those costly defence procurement disasters. We can see that taking old airframes and old hulks and then trying to upgrade them with electronics and weapons systems has been a costly failure. Would we not be better off buying modern proven “off the shelf” items in our cost range and meeting our defence needs? I presume this would mean buying more modest but very modern capability from countries like the the UK, France and the USA.
At the military grand strategy level (if you are a major power, which we are not) then I suspect the general rule would be that you cannot afford to abandon any medium (ground, air, sea surface, undersea or space) to the enemy. Further, you cannot afford to abandon any significant arena of capability. Hence a great power needs the full suite and to also be pushing at the leading edge in all sorts of research fields.
For a minor power, like Australia, the above reasoning will not hold true. We can’t afford the full suite and would simply spread ourselves too thin or beggar our economy in the attempt. I think JQ and PML would both agree that we could not realistically seek to run nuclear subs, aircraft carriers and build a small but strategic nuclear arsenal. Our economy could never carry that.
So the question is; What is suitable for a minor or secondary power like Australia? It’s a tricky question and needs to be based on what we can afford, what conflicts we think we might need to fight and what alliances we have. Tricky question. I don’t pretend to know the answer. I’ll await PMLs post and others.
If we significantly reduced the size of our Navy we could redeploy the funds (and possibly the personnel) to the army and air force.
The American/Australian alliance isn’t perpetual and unquestionable but from my perspective it comes as close to that state as pretty much any element of the world scene.
Australians make good soldiers – very, very good soldiers. Our maritime tradition is pretty minor in comparison.
If we focused on our strengths would be a more significant contributor to the alliance? (I don’t for a second delude myself that we will ever be anything but a very junior partner in that alliance in the foreseeable future.)
A similar case might be made for the air force, without the case studies provided by the Battle of Jutland. In recent conflicts, for example Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan one side only has commanded aerial terror. Other than a terrorist weapon it hard to see the value of planes?
Then again they are very expensive, and I suspect the protected industries that produce them, particularly in the US are very inefficient, hence the cost overruns in production. It is notable that the US Air Force believes the Airbus Tanker is greater value than that produced by Boeing.
Of course instead of depending on violence, somebody suggested we could rely on nonviolence. Simply on the grounds of economic rationality and global well being, nonviolence is worth considering. Violence resolves conflict by domination, hence conflict is not resolved but more often a vicious cycle of increased spending of violence and weaponry is created. For example, aside from the utility of surface warships,violent conflict is the curious rationale for the waste in creating nuclear weapons that cannot be used but must it seems still be built.
“Other than a terrorist weapon it hard to see the value of planes?” Wmbb
Talk to the Indonesian-backed East Timorese militias about that.
Australian air supremacy meant that within minutes (literally) of an attack on Australian forces, air units were supplying suppressing fire and dropping Australian reinforcements behind the enemy positions.
Losses on both sides in East Timor were minimal – precisely because air power made any attack on Australian ground forces virtually suicidal.
Greg Sheridan’s defence of the Super-Hornet
This may be slightly off topic, but did anyone notice Greg Sheridan’s defence of the Super-Hornet in the Australian on 25 February? I can’t find the original article, but two letters in agreement as well as one in disagreement, and some subsequent online discussion posts are to be found here. I recollect that Sheridan argued that the Super-Hornet had not been judged fairly because it had some additional capabilities the information about which had to be kept secret.
Pr Q says:
THe Air Warfare Destroyers are basicly mobile anti-aircraft platforms. Pretty useful if you want to protect vital assets far from home, eg US aircraft carriers. But our domestic assets could be protected just as well by terrestial systems.
They are an expensive way to say “thank you”. I am afraid that Mr Howard, in his comendable effort to show out US allies proper gratitude, has overstepped the mark on this one.
The idea of paring back the surface Navy to portable specialist adjunct forces eg frogmen, choppers, commandos, is appealing. They could be detached to US forces in a jiffy and ride around in style, without having to invest all this money into a gigantic white elephant.
Greg Sheridan is a shameless apologist for Mr Howard. I, by contrast, am a somewhat shame-faced one.
are the interests of the oz people in placating americans, or being at peace with the world? do we assume that someone will invade us if we do not submit to american policy, or do we assume we can defend ourselves?
answer these questions first, then talk about hardware.
Thanks jack strocchi. I had wondered if on defence questions, if nowhere else, there may have been some objectivity in Greg Sheridan’s writings and that I may have missed something in regard to the Super Hornet. I had been moved to write an <a href=”http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6665″article about what the ineptitude of the Howard Government in regard to defence in an Online Opinion article in an effort to help counter the nonsense to the contrary peddled principally by the Murdoch newsmedia.
As I acknowledged it was largely based on the book “National Insecurity” reviewed here a few months ago as well as the Four Corners program.
It was sobering to realise that the two party preferred vote last year was only 52.3% to 47.7%, so if as few as 1 in 43 voters had changed their minds we would still be living under Howard’s mis-rule. Since then the figure has shifted to around 61% to 39% so, apart from the bandwagon effect, quite a few people may possibly have woken up to the fact that they had been duped in regard to the Howard government’s alleged defence competence.
Sorry I messed up the link. The article was here.
Al, in my view, the greater our contribution to the alliance with the US thee greater our ability ot influence US policy.
American foreign policy over the past eight years has been actively malign for the most part, however if we take a longer historical view American has frequently been positive.
It seems to me JQ and al are asking similar sorts of questions, but perhaps the bigger question is whether we want a more isolationist defence policy, or keep up our engagement with might what loosely be described as the united liberal democratic nations. Now some see that largely as claque of US lackeys, but whatever your view, there is the undeniable fact that US military power is on the wane, largely due to the coming economic downgrade and the concomitant reluctance of American taxpayers to continue such heavy lifting. As that happens all we hangers on will have to answer the same question. Pull back or shoulder more of the economic military burden?
This sort of question is playing out in Afghanistan (and perhaps with Iran)right now, if it hasn’t already been answered in Iraq. To make up his mind on that JQ and others need to be aware that it was US naval cover that allowed our intervention in ET. Without our serious, ongoing engagement with the new ULDN that’s emerging we can forget about such missions in future, albeit we won’t be stuck with the ‘good wars’ like Afghanistan or the ‘bad wars’ like Iraq anymore.
The Prospect article you reference makes clear that if the Royal Navy purchases submarines instead of frigates or destroyers they must be nuclear submarines, not diesel/electrics. The article is of the opinion that diesel/electrics submarines are not effective enough to replace surface ships. I am not sure I agree with that but its worth thinking about in the Australian context. Arguably diesel/electrics are only as effective as nuclear submarines in confined coastal waters where they do not have to manouver much and can sit and wait for targets. In open ocean their need to surface makes them vulnerable to detection by air borne radar just like conventional surface ships and they lack speed making it difficult for them to intercept fast moving targets. The Collins class top speed is 20 knots while most fighting surface ships and nuclear subs are can do close to 30 knots. Considering how much of Australia’s naval environment is large open ocean a completely submarine fleet might not be an effective replacement for a surface fleet without a nuclear powered component. If that’s the case then there will not be any savings as nuclear submarines cost four times more than conventinal ones.
How can we beat back refugees from the north or the Pacific without a navy? How can we ship troops to the middle east to support the Americans? Without the navy what sailors would Australia have – or vessels for that matter? How could we protect the whales or save people like Tony Bullymore from themselves?
Also has anyone done the sums as to which emits the greatest amount of greenhouse gases – at least the navy could always operate on wind power!!
The popular notion of a navy (armed vessels of the state)has changed subtley and continuously over the course of time; national defence, defence of commerce, projection of power and of course it’s most simple variant one armed flotilla v another armed flotilla,the land battle simply staged in a maritime environment, used in as means to wage war. Two technological advances in the twentieth century made the traditional surface navy obsolete as a means of waging warfare, the aeroplane and the submarine. The last major naval engagement of the twentieth century illustrated these stark truths, a mottley collection of ageing Artentinian aeroplanes fitted with modern missiles wreaked havoc amongst armed surface vessels, while a submarine brought the Argentinian naval offence to and end when the sank the Belgrano. It was not until air supremacy was restored in the Falklands could the land offence be completed. Yes you may require some form of armed vessel and armed support for surface vessles but investment in airpower and submarine power combined is a far wiser defence investment than simply bigger, better and more sophisticated surface warships.
The Sea Sprite was always a flight of fancy and a dud in the making. You cannot fit digital control and weapons systems to a helicopter designed in the analogue age without effectively redesigning the machine, after $2B we gave up as the real cost was probably going to be triple. To use an analog it was like taking your 1969 Toyota Corolla and attempting to make it into a 2008 Corolla, cheaper to buy the 2008 Corolla. The Hornet is not a necessarily a dud (keeping in mind again it is essentially 198o’s technology) but you have to relate its future effectiveness against the threat environment it has to operate in. If the threat environment is less equal it is an effective buy, it is more equal than it is a poor choice. Here is where our narrow focus on our American relationship blinds us to the obvious, if you want value for money, capability and robustness then you would buy the Sukoi’ and MIG29 from Russia, superior aeroplanes all round by any measure. We will never see the day when Australia makes such a choice, why we spent too much precious defence capital in integrating into the American Defence System to ever allow such a rational choice to be made. That is the critical flaw in our defence strategy is is not self reliant, it projects an alliance response comminality and is dependent upon US technology as a result. For Australia – any naval service that is not submarine centred with light high speed missile equipped surface interceptors and high speed transports protected by air power is a waste of money and time.
Retrying, since the first attempt seems to have got lost.
Before starting, I should declare an interest: my uncle Jim was a Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors. From conversations with him and following up on this family interest, I do know what I am talking about.
“It’s been argued ever since the development of the submarine in the late 19th century and the airplane in the early 20th (along with torpedoes and mines) that surface fleets were obsolete, being vulnerable to much cheaper attackers. This argument has been repeatedly vindicated by events…”
That happens to be a misreading. For one thing, those cheaper attackers can only be used in limited circumstances – they don’t have the strategic reach. For another, the military value of particular arms, used in a combination of arms, is not only a cost benefit of the damage they inflict and receive but also how they free up and enable other parts of the combination, e.g. by tying up enemy resources. This should become clearer from examples as we go. It’s also worth mentioning that this vulnerability has been greatly overstated. It’s just that increased defences come at the proce of speed, range and manoeuvrability, and – as it happens – the ones that were so easily destroyed had made the wrong trade off from that point of view. One of the older sort of battleship actually survived an A-bomb test at ground zero.
“Yet when the War came, the Dreadnoughts on both sides turned out to be useless, meeting only in the inconclusive Battle of Jutland”. That happens to be plain wrong, both in the facts described and in the interpretation. Ignoring for the moment the strategically very important naval engagements of 1914 in the south Pacific and Atlantic, each sides heavy ships stalemated each other – analogous to trench warfare, without the casualties – and made a win for the allies in the end.
But unused doesn’t mean useless. The function for the allies – let us avoid the word “used” for clarity – was to perpetuate the blockade of Germany by preventing a break of it, and to prevent a German destruction of supplies to Britain. The convoy system was able to break the U-boat blockade, at great cost in blood and money; do you know why it wasn’t adopted earlier? Because it instantly put all eggs in a basket that capital ships could break. The anti-U-boat campaign only worked by keeping surface vessels out of play! From the German point of view, the function was to stop a series of Zeebrugges and a breakthrough into the Baltic (which was planned for 1919).
“The German Fleet stayed in port for the rest of war and the British Navy didn’t attack them because of the fear of submarines and mines”. Wrong – because of the downside risk while stalemate was working so well.
“Despite this, governments around the world raced to build more and better battleships in the period from 1918 to 1939.” Wrong, there was a limitations treaty that basically prevented this from the early ’20s to the mid ’30s. And, as it happened, there was a misjudgment about what constituted “better”, which increased the vulnerability.
“The renewed outbreak of World War showed that battleships were only marginally useful, and highly vulnerable to air and submarine attack”. Wrong, the Japanese Yamato played the same role of preventing major battleship use against Japan as the German fleet had in the earlier war, because it outclassed US ships. It was sent on a suicide mission once events overtook that role, right at the end of the war.
“Again the real naval war was one of submarines and carrier-based aircraft”. This confuses the war with activity.
“Since then, of course, the range, speed and capabilities of aircraft have all increased dramatically, while ships continue to travel at speeds of 20 to 30 knots”. Nevertheless, they can still do many things aircraft can’t – notably carrying larger loads with all the capabilities they permit, and station keeping.
“A ship can be sunk by missiles from huge distances” – so what? They can in their turn fire just such missiles, and the only emplacements that allow such missiles to fire at them are even more vulnerable in an artillery duel, now that bunker busters work better.
“…and the vastness of the oceans has ceased to be relevant in the era of satellites and pilotless spy planes.” This rather ignores just what it is that navies do.
“Submarines have greatly improved their capacity to avoid detection, but it is essentially impossible to hide a surface ship.” The latter happens to be incorrect. It is very easy to hide them while they are in bases keeping an enemy at bay – and it is easy (not cheap) to hide them long enough while they are operating, since it is easy to make decoys with the right signatures.
“Since 1945, there has only been one serious naval conflict, the Falklands… war which demonstrated all these points”. Now a similar declaration of interest: a little over a century ago, my paternal grandfather was for several years an itinerant schoolteacher in the Falkland Islands, so again I had an interest all along and followed things up (I even dropped into the Falkland Islands Association during hostilities – where a gorgeous blonde remarked in passing that “Chileans make better peons [than Argentinians]”). That campaign demonstrated no such thing. It demonstrated that a task force could operate at that range and deliver an invasion, that it could stay out of the adequate range of mainland based air attacks, so that attackers only had limited chances to attack while they could stay in range, and it showed that they could provide adequate air cover for the amphibious operation. Contrariwise, it showed that nothing less than a task force could do the job needed.
“Pitted against a fourth-rate airforce (more used to murdering dissidents than to any kind of military activity) operating far from its home bases, the British Royal Navy only survived because the other side ran out of missiles and couldn’t get its bombs to explode”. Er… the slurs aren’t helpful or relevant; the Argentinian Pucara was perfect for destroying an unsupported ground force on the move (and, dug in, such a force can be picked off in detail by other ground forces). Those other things are not coincidences, they were just precisely the strategic environment that the amphibious operation created. With no Royal Navy involved, say just troopships, Argentinian forces could have stopped that from bases on the Falklands as easily as we did the Belgrano (it’s amusing that the Argentinians chose to name that after a General whose main claim to fame was a humiliating defeat after an attempt to seize Paraguay).
“…a surface fleet will be defenceless in the absence of air and submarine superiority and redundant with it”; again, how on earth do you suppose you ever get air and submarine superiority without a suitable combination of arms, mutually reinforcing? Leave part out, and the rest can be unravelled a bit at a time.
“…it confirms my general view that naval policy continues to be premised on fighting the wars of last century if not those of the century before that”; ironically, it was not doing that that created the vulnerabilities; even in the Falklands War, using modern materials to lighten structure created a fire trap. It may well have been better than sticking with slower stronger designs, all things considered, but the fact is that naval policy did not base itself simply on previous wars.
“Wouldn’t it be better to let the army handle this job [transporting troops and equipment, and supporting amphibious operations] and decide what resources should be allocated to it?” No. It would be as silly as entrusting the direction of operations to a qualified economist who doesn’t know when he is out of his depth. In Churchill’s Life of Marlborough, he makes it quite clear that Marlborough did know his limits in that respect and made sure that Admiral Sir Cloudisley Shovell was kept in the loop when planning operations with a maritime aspect, on the grounds that land experience didn’t teach you everything you needed to deal with the sea.
“Finally, there are the kind of long-distance operations characterized by our contribution to various operations in the Persian Gulf. We can never do this except as a small part of a US effort centred on a carrier battle group.” Er, no, unless you were just planning the last war? There are grounds for believing that carriers have lost their primacy, and of course the US isn’t the only possible collaborator that might emerge in the future.
“It makes no sense to invested [sic] in ships dedicated to this kind of job. To the extent that we are obligated to support such operations, it would be better to make a cash contribution, as many US allies did in Gulf War I, or send specialist personnel.” Rent or buy? This completely ignores the significance of having your own distinct force, a significance that did not escape the USA when it insisted on having an AEF in 1917 rather than sending recruits and materiel straight into existing allied units (that delay was why the USA didn’t actually affect the outcome of that war). When you have your own, the others need to keep you happy and you get a place in negotiations in peacetime.
Perhaps I’ll address other commenters’ concerns later.
Testing, since my post doesn’t seem to have got through.
So. It detects a duplicate comment but doesn’t post it either time? What gives?
MH. The Mig-29s and Sukhoi aircraft are not superior by any measure. Modern fighters and attack aircraft are platforms for missiles and avionics. The radar on the Mig-29 in particular has been shown to be a disappointment.
The Sukhoi and the Mig-29 are good airframes, but the package as a whole for both of them is probably inferior to up to date Western equipment.
It’s worth noting that no F-15, the previous generation of Western aircraft’s top fighters, was ever shot down by hostile fire in combat.
As far as John’s question about whether we need a surface navy. Well, it would be hard to argue against patrol boats. Heavier craft certainly have real problems. The ability to repel enemy subs and aircraft is questionable. The new LHD ships will enable Australia to support intervention missions in the Pacific as required. They should also be good platforms for unmanned aircraft.
But John has an important point. To quote a US Navy submarine SONAR instructor: “Gentlemen, there are only two types of naval vessels………. Submarines, and Targets” and submarine and submarine launched UUVs will be the most important sea borne military equipment at some point in the 21st century.
PML, I don’t think it would be helpful to respond at length to your already lengthy post, but I didn’t find your response convincing on any point.
To pick one example, you didn’t respond at all to what I said about the Falklands, except to defend the honour of the murderers who ran the Argentine Air Force. I’ll repeat what I said. If the junta had been as competent at procuring and maintaining bombs and missiles as it was at murdering its opponents, the Argentines would have won the war with air power alone. This isn’t just my view; it’s that of numerous British participants, one quoted in the Prospect piece IIRC.
Sorry JQ, I don’t think you have anywhere near the appreciation of military issues that you have of economic issues. I was convinced by PML on several points. (PML and I had our own little argument about Sun Tzu’s precepts in a previous post.)
The issue is about combined arms operations. The issue is especially about combined arms operations in/on different operational media (land, air, sea surface, under sea.) – My terminology may not be orthodox. – It is about not ceding a medium to the opponent presuming a theatre where all media are present.
PML is quite correct that stalemated or balanced assets still perform a role even though their operational deployment might appear to be fairly static at times. Parity and stalemate in one aspect of the struggle may well allow superiority in another aspect to be fully exploited.
Secondary powers like Australia might well benefit from smaller, cheaper but significantly more numerous and agile surface ships. I don’t think PML is suggesting we should be acquiring battleships and carriers.
I wouldn’t disband the navy. It’s transport, fire and support platform can at times be considerable. Coastal, island and archipelego operations are all quite feasible in our military future.
“To pick one example, you didn’t respond at all to what I said about the Falklands, except to defend the honour of the murderers who ran the Argentine Air Force”? Where do you get “defend” from my pointing out that it is a distraction from the point at issue?
However, the distraction seems to have drawn your attention away from what I did put. Since it hasn’t been posted (why, out of curiosity?), I shall excerpt it for other readers: “Er… the slurs aren’t helpful or relevant; the Argentinian Pucara was perfect for destroying an unsupported ground force on the move (and, dug in, such a force can be picked off in detail by other ground forces). Those other things are not coincidences, they were just precisely the strategic environment that the amphibious operation created. With no Royal Navy involved, say just troopships, Argentinian forces could have stopped that from bases on the Falklands as easily as we did the Belgrano (it’s amusing that the Argentinians chose to name that after a General whose main claim to fame was a humiliating defeat after an attempt to seize Paraguay).”
To me that reads as addressing the strategic and tactical issues very precisely, by pointing out that the task force put the enemy in a position where it would be at as much of a disadvantage as possible. The more you practise the luckier you get.
If you suppose that Argentinian air power alone could have prevailed, with better luck, you are right. If you suppose that it should have prevailed, and that it failed through air force incompetence, that is a misreading. That arm was fairly professional. But if you are merely making a comment general preparedness of the junta, you are perfectly correct. Not only was there a failure of co-ordination between the various arms, the army pushed the rest into it before Thatcher’s cuts destroyed Britain’s out of area capability (she knew or ought to have known the consequences – she fired a navy minister for warning her).
Well, let’s stick exactly to the point. Thanks to its failure to buy and maintain adequate armaments, Argentina had a fifth rate air force. Whatever cuts Thatcher might have made, the RN was still the second-most powerful surface navy in the world. If it had come up against the fourth-rate air force you could reasonably expect a country like Argentina to field, it would have lost. As it was, it was a near thing.
Hmmm well, projecting power a long distance from home is always an issue. Especially for any nation less than a superpower. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict, how could Britain have done it better?
More air power is the obvious answer. Therefore they needed another carrier or two. Of course they didn’t have them. And carriers need surface ships and submarines as a shield. If air power needs to be projected beyond the range of land airfields then carrier groups are still the obvious answer. A modern navy will of course make much greater use of missiles as well.
“Thanks to its failure to buy and maintain adequate armaments…”
That wasn’t the area of failure. British troops routinely found the Argentinians were better equipped, even for plain vanilla things like boots. They also adopted a trick the Argentinians had, of taping magazines together upside down to speed up magazine changes. Training and staff activities were weak – the junta had fallen for spending on materiel, toys for boys.
Argentina had a good solid air force, suitable for the needs of a second rank power, and it performed creditably within the operational limits it faced/had deliberately thrust upon it, e.g. working at the limits of range and endurance. They even worked out clever tricks during hostilities, notably having two aircraft working together, one nearer the target but low enough to be invisible while another out of range of counterattack flew high enough to see over the horizon and spot for the first, which jumped up above the horizon just long enough to lock and fire missiles. They knew their stuff, and learned fast. Argentinian systemic failures and British successes were in the areas I mentioned, plus one I didn’t: an RO I knew was heavily involved in the putting together of the task force from scratch, in a hurry and with no opportunity to correct mistakes later. Sheer professionalism got that through, which was a bigger deal in the circumstances than setting up the BEF in 1914 (the plans for that were already in place).
The Thatcher cuts were already in place at the time, with contracts signed to hand over crucial vessels to places like India. It was just that delivery had not yet been made. Similar considerations apply to to the reserve capacity, so there still transport ships available with the features needed for war use; those had nearly gone, too.
It seems to me that PMLs combined arms thesis could be used against him – we need a combined navy including things we’ll never have, such as Carriers, for it all to work properly together.
The new AWDs, what are they defending, apart from themselves?
I think that in the relativities of the tradeoffs, JQ has made an excellent point. While a nice big navy would make defence planning a little bit easier, what else can you do for the money? Are we getting value for money? SO not to dismiss the value of surface ships entirely, but to ask just what they really do and can do? I’m finding it hard to think of a particular scenario where Australia would do better with frigates and destroyers than with more submarines and more planes.
Wilful is exactly right, and his point works even better against the arguments of Ikonoklast. In the post, I argued that we could never mount the kind of long distance force projection that requires a carrier battle group.
As Ikonoklast notes, one carrier battle group isn’t enough, you need “another carrier or two” to have any real capability. That is, if you want to be serious about this kind of thing, you need to be a power comparable to the US. None exists at present, and Australia certainly will never be one.
this conversation would be better in “boy’s own adventure weekly”, as it’s not up to “merc’s guide” quality.
as i suggested earlier, the first step is finding strategic objectives within national capability. no one had much to say about that. fair enough, government is a secret matter here, only our enemies know our capabilities, not ‘er majesty’s loyal sheep. besides, boys like to talk about toys that go ‘bang’, not about when and where and why to use them.
america’s imperial ambition has rotted their economy, shredded any residual respect that might facilitate trade, and made profitable the munitions industry that drives the imperial ambition. i would wonder that anyone wants to follow this model, except the world is full of closet talleyrands.
and please, before you casually talk about projecting power to our neighbors, give name and address, so the resulting in-coming lands on your head. better yet, walk down some alley in a foreign land, shooting men, women, and children, because they hate you, and will kill you if you don’t shoot first. it will give you a different insight on military policy. if you’re not willing to do this, or incapable, should you be hiring people to kill or die for you?
“isolationist?” moi? au contraire. money not spent on a big navy, a big air force, on abrahms tanks, will go a lot farther if spent on schools and hospitals, roads and sewerage in our neighbors lands. it’s the imperialists who isolate themselves, vertically.
“Yet when the War came, the Dreadnoughts on both sides turned out to be useless,”
I have to agree with other commenters in saying this statement is wrong. Neither side’s Dreadnoughts did much but this was a British strategic success. Only Germany’s Dreadnoughts were useless. They should have been out on the open ocean wreaking havoc on British convoys but were stopped by Britain’s fleet. Submarines and mines alone would never have been unable to keep German’s dreadnoughts in port.
This does suggest that the German’s were crazy to try and build a Dreadnought fleet which cost a fortune yet did nothing but that’s not really the case. If there had been longer before WWI broke out or Britain had not responded as strongly with its own Dreadnought construction program then Germany might have had enough Dreadnoughts to be able to engage the British fleet. If that had happened then WWI could have ended differently. It would have made sense for the Germans to seek decisive engagements with the British fleet because from the German point of view the battle would be a toin coss with much higher downside for the British. Heads I lose my fleet, tails and you lose the war as German Dreadnoughts would roam the seas and totally finish off the British merchant fleet.
swio, it’s hard to think of any weapons system, no matter how lunatic, that couldn’t be defended on the lines you suggest.
But attempting to impute a coherent logic to either side immediately before and during the Great War is the way to madness. It ought to have been obvious that war would bring ruin to all the contending parties, as it did.
For regional amphibious ops like timor or the solomons we need the landing docks and they need surface escorts, if only as screens, as well as air and submarine support. otherwise we surrender any role as a regional power and become bound to our own coasts; if we followed this strategy in WW2 PNG would have fallen to the Japanese.
the more interesting point is about procurement. why do we bother with australian industry participation, it has been invariably disastrous. all our our most cost effective systems were proven US, UK or Euro technology purchased off the shelf. we would receive much better value for money if we stuck to this method, and we could afford more and better equipment if we did.
along these lines, we should consider the ‘visby’ stealth missile corvettes made by kockums, a few of these would be the perfect for coast defence and as escorts for the docks, along with subs and aircraft. if surface vessels are vulnerable, but necessary, then we should have more, smaller, lightly crewed vessels, made abroad by proven suppliers, rather than the large, already obsolete, floating targets which never seem to be fully functional and whose sole role seems to be to provide employment at home.
I’m not arguing the underlying strategic objectives were sane. The German’s were crazy to feel they needed to be a strong maritime power. Building a navy was a stupid expensive way to win a war against Britain which is why it didn’t work. But to argue that Britain’s response to that was irrational, and that Britain’s fleet was therefore useless is wrong. If Britain did not have a strong Dreadnought fleet they would have lost WWI. British submarines and mines could not have stopped a German Dreadnought fleet.
Think of it like chess. The most powerful piece on the board is the queen, but usually it does very little as its too valuable to lose. But its mere presence creates threats and limits an opponents options. Dreadnoughts played exactly the same role in WWI.
OK, let’s work through it. The Germans foolishly constructed a surface fleet even though they could never expect to beat the British, instead of putting more resources into submarines, which might have won the war for them (we seem at least to be agreed on that)
The British built a fleet much larger than was needed to contain the German surface fleet, instead of putting the extra resources into destroyer escorts which would have won the naval war much earlier. Their policy was no more rational than that of the Germans.
And then, after 1918, they all turned around and did it again, building dozens of battleships which were mostly sunk by airplanes and subs when the war restarted in 1939 and few of which did anything.
The only effect of all these battleships was to make war more likely.
I agree with your first paragraph. I think the Kaiser’s personality or some sort of early German Military Industral Complex was the cause of that strategic mistake.
Regarding your second point.
“He was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.”
– Churchill describing the responsibility of Royal Navy Admiral Jellicoe
In order to be certain of victory over the German fleet Britain had to have a superior number of ships. If there had been parity then any extended naval battle would have been a 50/50 prospect which was unacceptable to Britain because a loss for the British meant losing the war, and losing it immediately. Even though it was horrendously expensive it made sense (as much anything in war makes sense) for Britain to have a much bigger fleet than Germany to cover that risk.
I won’t argue that battleships were of any value during World War II. By 1940 the battleship was obsolete and should have been replaced by aircraft carriers.
PrQ,
Yet another example of a government failing to act in accordance with good sense. I am glad I believe in minimising the role of government as far as possible.
I would agree with swio in this instance, though. Britain was, and still is, highly dependent on sea commerce. Prior to WWI, if the Germans built a powerful surface fleet, the Brits had to counter and by more to ensure superiority. In effect, by pushing the Germans on their surface fleet, the Brits effectively neutralised the submarine threat in the most effective way – ensuring they were not built in the first place.
Perhaps next we can argue about Charles VI and Henry V, and whether it makes more sense for modern armies to be equipped with either longbows or cuirasses.
(This isn’t directed at you in particular Andrew, it’s just that I’ve only just now come back to this post).
SJ,
Personally, I prefer the compound bow – smaller and lighter for a given range. Much better mounted – just ask Kublai.
Great. Now we can argue whether the term “compound” strictly applies to laminated recurved bows, or unrecurved laminated bows, or whether the term was wrongly applied to recurved unlaminated bows.
I think the navy should have laminated recurves. 😉
PM Lawrence – a discourse on naval history ignores the obvious, what was appropriate once, is no longer. The discussion is essentially about risk management for conflict and utility in terms of economic choice to manage such risk. If you take a narrow view of what we need to defend or prevent in Australia then choices made by global powers are irrelevant. Australia’s greatest defence asset is the ‘Tyranny of Distance’, which provides defence in depth in overlapping ways. First you have to get near here, then you have to sustain that effort and then you have to conquer the distance and general climatic hostility of the land your on. Air power solves the tyranny of distance to a point and it is clear Air Force planners via the Wedge Tail project and air to air refuelling are well poised to manage that issue as was the not inconsequential investment in hard surface, unmanned air bases in the northern part of Australia that can be brought into use cheaply and rapidly as required. Submarines are very hard to find and are only vulnerable to a concerted and significant effort by surface based force. You may be surprised by some of the behind the scenes frenetic activiy required to keep the supply chain to the Falklands operative, good luck sustained it not good naval forces.
Pedro, a dud radar does not make a dud aeroplane. By most measures, the Sukoi’s and MIGs fly better, are easier to fix, are more simple, mechanically robust and therefore battle hardy. They cope well with extreme climatic conditions and are formidable adversaries. I have spent many professional working hours in the company of pilots who have flown them, in conflict and in peace, and the more you understand the aeroplanes the more you respect them. Compared to the high tech offering from the US they are cheap and long lived.
Economically we have the submarine building facility in SA, the high speed catamaran builders in TAS (Incidentally used to good effect by the US Navy and Marines)and the engineering capacity to build effective high speed surface interceptor type ships. Building aircraft is a very specialised business and very expensive, so it makes economic sense to buy as many as you can of the best at the cheapest price. Cost effectiveness? a $500,000 missile launched by submarine, surface vessel of aircraft is a cheaper method of protection than a flotilla of $1B surface ships. Back to the original problem – What is the risk that we seek to mitigate?
We’ve discussed this over at LP in the past. While I have considerable sympathy for JQ’s argument, MarkL (whose political views I don’t have a great deal of time for but works in the area) has argued strongly that the real value of the AWD capability is its ability to provide command and control for operations like East Timor; apparently Australia essentially had to borrow the same model of destroyer from the Yanks to provide this capability during the East Timor op.
I put it to him that $1.5 billion (at the time, it’ll probably be more like 3 by the time we get them) was a hell of a lot of money for a floating office block and why couldn’t all of that be done from a nice cosy bunker near Canberra; he argued that it really can’t.
SJ,
I think the Ruddster needs to convene (yet another) enquiry (or is it review these days) on this point. Testing the various options in the Chamber may cut down on Parliamentary salaries for a while. Use of horses optional.
.
MH – non-expert opinion (from me, I might add) would be to compare not the cost of a single missile to the cost of a ship, but the cost vs. effectiveness of all the options.
On the risk point I would agree. We do need to keep in mind what the threats we face are.
Personally, I do not think we will need to mitigate the risk of invasion any time soon (hopefully, never) which to me makes the submarines a bit pointless. If we are not facing a surface navy then why do we need to be able to sink warships?
The Army (and Navy) are likely to be engaged in force projection missions in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and, except for possible actions against Japanese whalers, this is not likely to be undertaken except in concert with troops actually landing on foreign shores. This means that keeping some landing ships and helicopter carriers makes sense.
That said, a decent sized cruiser or two (with heavy calibre weapons) or perhaps an aircraft carrier turning up in a harbour somewhere tends to make a strong political point. On that basis I think a couple of capital ships (with perhaps a small aircraft carrier which may have been useful in Timor) would make some sense. Combine it with a reasonable number of destroyers and some patrol boats an a few submarines to keep our submariners trained and you have, oops, something close to our current navy.
As I said – non expert opinion.
I think Robert and MarkL have summed up the issue nicely.
If your only objective is the defense of Australia from enemy attack then that is best done with submarines and land based air power. Surface ships are simply less effective in that role.
But if the objective includes projecting our own ground forces to overseas locations the story is different. Any place we put our troops will be within reach of enemy land based air forces. That was true in East Timor and is arguably true of the South Pacific as well. In that situation there is need of anti-aircraft protection. Submaries can’t provide that and Australian based aircraft will almost always be too far away. You’re stuck with using surface ships like the Air Warfare Destroyers.
Indeed, I think the object of defence forces is to defend the country.
Spending billions of dollars a year maintaining capacity for “force projection” needs a pretty strong benefit-cost case, which hasn’t yet been made.
East Timor would have been impossible without that capability, and the Solomon Islands intervention as well. I think most people were in favour of those forms of force projection. The cost benefit case of that is debatable and a very interesting question which I couldn’t answer.
The reality is our military spends more time on peace keeping than on the actual defence of Australia. Whether that makes sense is again debatable but the military should plan for the wars its going to fight rather than the ones it feels it should be fighting. The American military made that mistake prior to Iraq II and is paying the price.