The Abbott government is copping plenty of flak (metaphor used advisedly) over its obvious politicking with respect to the construction of a new class of guided-missile frigate for the Royal Australian Navy. The project with total costs touted at $90 billion is promised to create lots of jobs in South Australia, perhaps replacing those when the same government, in its free-market incarnation, welcome the death of the car industry.
Rather than pile on, I’ll ask a question which, from past experience, I know is bound to annoy many. What are these things supposed to do?
As far as I can tell, guided-missile frigates are supposed to shoot down aircraft and missiles, but this seems, on the face of things, to be an absurd proposition. Pitting an effectively stationary boat, costing the better part of a billion dollars, against missiles (fired from land or from aircraft), travelling at the speed of sound or more, and costing a million dollars apiece, seems like a hopelessly lopsided contest.
Of course, it’s just about impossible to test this proposition. AFAIK, the only conflict in which surface ships have actually engaged in combat with aircraft using missiles was the Falklands, more than thirty years ago. That didn’t appear decisive: the Royal Navy managed a win against the air force of a Third World country, but took some heavy losses in the process. But technology has advanced a long way since then, and there’s no way of testing which side of such conflicts it now favours. So, naval advocates can make up whatever claims they like about the capabilities of the ships we keep on buying.
Of course, the fact that there has been so little naval warfare in the last 70 years or so seems to me to be a very strong argument for spending less on money on warships.
Readers will be aware that I think war is almost always disastrous for both sides, that most military spending is wasteful and harmful, but that I know this to be a minority view. Even given that, the case against spending money on navies (and particularly surface fleets) seems so overwhelming to me that I’m amazed to find hardly anyone in agreement.
John Quiggin 
@Ikonoclast
I didn’t suggest you had. I was responding to your “what kind of navy?” question by noting that many people will tend to believe we can’t possibly do without the kind of ships we have now, when in fact we can.
Historically destroyers were support vessels that were intended to operate with capital ships of the day (at their inception, battleships and cruisers, and later carriers), to provide some measure of defensive capabilities against smaller and faster vessels (the “torpedo boats” of the original name) and submarines, as well as a ranged capability – they could be detached from their close support position to do stuff that would otherwise put the capital ships at additional risk.
In the modern world destroyers are still assumed to be support-capable (a lot of the AEGIS system is built around the idea of destroyers acting as an anti-missile screen supporting a carrier), but they’re also assumed to be stand-alone or capable of operating in a non-support role. Modern destroyers are /much/ bigger than the ships that shared the designation in earlier eras – the Type 45 destroyers the British are building right now are about the same displacement as the WWII era HMAS Sydney, which was a light cruiser. In all but the largest navies they’re the most capable surface vessels, in terms of their combat capabilities, their support capabilities, search and rescue, operations in hostile conditions (i.e. a quick jaunt off to Antarctica to rescue a stranded yachtsman or similar). If a navy wants to be able to operate in the open ocean, and conduct any kind of real-world surface naval combat they’ll need to have modern destroyers, and if they want to have the ability to do /anything/ outside a certain distance from their home ports they’ll need something similar (though probably not something as expensive and complicated as the RAN is planning for – that’s only necessary to take part in joint operations with the US and similar).
Frigates are a step down in size from destroyers, and due to that they’re even more relegated to support roles – radar picket ships in a carrier fleet, or a secondary role with a destroyer. Because of their smaller size they have less ability to provider disaster relief, search and rescue, and so forth. That said, modern frigates are generally significantly bigger than earlier counterparts, and are a lot closer to the largest destroyers of the WWII era in the role they’re intended for: a mix of independent operations and support operations with larger vessels.
If Australia wants to have the ability to do a whole host of maritime operations ranging from search and rescue through to disaster relief, then we need at least frigate-style vessels and possibly destroyer sized vessels. There’s really no other way to support those kinds of things in the kinds of conditions that we’d have an interest in dealing with (long ranges, all-weather operations, and sophisticated support systems including multiple large helicopters and the like). The US can afford to build frigate-style vessels for its coast guard service, but there’s no way that any Australian government would consider that option, so the only realistic way for Australia to support that kind of thing is by piggy-backing it on top of our military “needs”.
If we weren’t tied firmly to the coat-tails of the US we could build surface ships that actually met /our/ needs, rather than being built on the assumption that any real combat operations would be done as part of a US fleet. Exactly what they would look like I can’t say, but they’d certainly cost a hell of a lot less and would have a lot fewer extremely expensive and likely totally wasted missile defence systems – if /any/ vessel operating on its own was targeted seriously it most likely couldn’t do much about it, and the RAN just doesn’t have enough ships to do anything /but/ operate them independently.
Unlike submarines a surface fleet has lots of potential use outside of combat operations. Whether you consider those uses worth spending large sums of money on is a matter of judgement, but they really are useful to have sometimes. Of course, if you /do/ want to conduct combat operations the only thing worth considering is a good submarine, particularly if you’re in the geographic situation that Australia is, and maybe that’s a better use of $40 billion or $80 billion or whatever it ends up totalling. Or maybe we should have bought slightly more useful aircraft for the RAAF, for around the same money . . .
@Ikonoclast
No, there is no logical requirement for me to make a case in favour of anything. For one thing, until now I have not expressed a position on the question of Australia’s disarmament; for another thing, as it happens, I am not in favour of Australia’s total disarmament. There’s no logical requirement for me to make a case in favour of something when I have never expressed support for it and, even more so, there’s no logical requirement for me to make a case in favour of something that I’m not in favour of.
John Quiggin’s remarks do suggest a line of argument to me, and whether I’m correct in thinking it to be his argument or not, once it had been suggested to me it seemed worth considering. It goes like this:
There is no significant likelihood of bad consequences for Australia as a result of not having a navy; therefore, there is no good reason for Australia to have a navy.
Whether that is a good argument depends on the answer to a straightforward question:
Is there any significant likelihood of bad consequences for Australia as a result of not having a navy?
If the answer to that question is Yes, then the argument collapses; but if the answer is No, then the argument is close to indefeasible.
Now, I know nothing about who you are and I never will. As far as my knowledge goes, you might be the greatest living expert on combined arms and combined operations, or you might be no more than a fine armchair general/admiral (or even less well-informed than that). I can’t evaluate your comments on the basis of a background and experience unknown to me; I can only evaluate them on the basis of content. And what I notice about the content of your comments is the complete absence of any reference to the likelihood of bad consequences for Australia as a result of not having a navy.
So that’s my question for you: what are some examples (or just one to begin with) of bad consequences for Australia that have a significant likelihood of resulting from the absence of an Australian navy?
There’s no requirement, logical or otherwise, for you (or anybody else) to answer my question, but I can tell you the consequences.
If you (or somebody else) gives some convincing examples (or at least one) of bad consequences for Australia that have a significant likelihood of resulting from the absence of an Australian navy, then I will revise downwards my estimate of the strength of the argument under discussion (the one that I thought was John Quiggin’s but possibly isn’t, not that it makes any difference).
On the other hand, if neither you nor anybody else gives any convincing examples, I will revise upwards my estimate of the strength of that argument.
Ikonoclast, with the knowledge of force composition and combined operations that you have, do you think that Australia currently does not have the ability to mount combined operations because it doesn’t currently have the new three billion dollar frigates?
Or do you think Australia currently does has the ability to mount combined operations, but this ability would be greatly improved by the addition of new three billion dollar each frigates? Or at least that the ability to mount combined operations would be increased by more than if the money was spent on other alternatives?
Say what?
Exactly how does a sophisticated anti-missile system, armour and a large battery of armaments contribute to search and rescue or disaster relief? For the cost of one frigate we could build 100 patrol boats, or a large number of transports. The crewing requirements are about 10 to 1.
The frequency with which naval fans come up with this kind of argument only confirms my belief that these ships are a waste of money.
The defence white paper does refer to ‘future’ frigate suggesting military doesn’t really know what they want and for what purpose. It would seem that there is a substantial non-combat need but in reality the combat aspects of the vessel are required to pull our weight in terms of contribution to the relevant military alliances. As noted were not big enough to fend off a large force and I suspect our reliance on an ally with a large force comes with conditions.
Yes, this has been a mystery to me. Abbott has now promised billions of dollars on submarines, billions on joint strike fighters, and billions on frigates. We will be awash with hardware and, I suspect, desperately short of the people to crew them and maintain them – and funds to operate them. However, I’m reasonably sanguine about these promises because our less than trustworthy PM has an unfortunate record for delivering on promises.
Having said that, I would have thought South Australia would have been much better served in terms of pork barrelling if it had sought major resources to develop the weapons of not just the future, but of today. These would be the IT skills to engage in cyber warfare and unmanned weapons, the high tech skills and resources to build and operate these drones and remotely deployed weapons, the communications infrastructure that OUR country can depend on for surveillance and defence, and so on. Think what we could do with a couple of billion dollars in this field.
A contribution like this to SA would be much more advantageous to the state’s (and Australia’s) future.
@Ikonoclast
Knowing whether Australia is going to continue to have a navy would not tell us whether Australia should continue to have a navy, and knowing whether Australia should continue to have a navy would not tell us whether is going to continue to have a navy. These are two distinct questions with independent answers.
I think you, I, John Quiggin, and Megan all know that the answer to the question ‘Is Australia going to continue to have a navy?’ is ‘Yes’. That question hardly seems worth discussing, and it’s not the question John Quiggin was originally discussing; the original question was ‘Should Australia continue to have a navy?’ I’m not sure, but it looks to me as if both John Quiggin and Megan would probably answer ‘No’ to that one; I’m less clear about you.
(There are still more questions, distinct from both of the above, that could be discussed: for example, ‘Why is Australia going to continue to have a navy?’ and the closely related but not, I think, synonymous ‘What makes people think Australia should continue to have a navy?’)
It would be interesting to know if the powers-that-be have run a series of scenarios to establish what kind of navy assets make sense and which we should be working towards having, and to see those scenarios. Not that they’d tell us.
If we were to end up in a squabble with a major power, and if it required a navy platform for Australia to be able to defend itself, I’m not sure where frigates or destroyers sit in that picture. As others have pointed out, anti-ship missiles are pretty impressive pieces of relatively cheap technology capable of shredding a ship. Unless the ship has good defence against such devices, the cost of the ship seems difficult to justify.
If we were fighting against a major power, there is little to prevent nukes being used when ships do have good defences: the bigger the nuke, the further away it can be effective upon detonation. A nuke can detonate one or two kilometres away and still be lethal to ships and people. That means the defensive measures need to work at distances of more than a couple of kilometres away from the ship itself, assuming nukes are a possible hazard.
Ultimately, if we get some frigates/destroyers/clippers/row boats for the navy, I dare say they would be useful only as part of a larger coalition of forces, such as with the USA. Otherwise, the assets seem to be liabilities more than assets. Must be fun to not have debt and deficit to worry about…
@John Quiggin
My apologies for not being more clear.
Patrol boats and other smaller vessels can’t operate far out in open ocean, particularly in hostile conditions like those experienced in the southern ocean – they won’t have the range to get there or the seakeeping capabilities to do anything very useful. To be able to do that kind of thing ships need to be a reasonable size – the ANZAC frigates are quite capable of doing that, for example. You don’t need a warship, you need something with some minimum capabilities and size. In fact, the Ocean Protector that Customs leased for a while is a perfect example, and is similar in size to the ANZAC class (and is, as you say, a fraction of the cost).
If we’re going to have warships we might as well use them for peaceful purposes, too, but if we want to be able to do things like search and rescue in the southern ocean then we need to have something bigger and more capable than a patrol boat, regardless of whether we use them at other times for flag-waving military purposes.
You wanted some ideas about why we have the ships we have, and why we might have a need or use for ships along those lines (specifically size, range, general capabilities, not the combat capabilities) – I was trying to explain why for the most part the existing options other than the frigates and destroyers weren’t sufficient. I certainly won’t argue that we need the current RAN surface fleet, unless we want to get involved in a US Navy shooting match with . . . well, there isn’t really anyone at the moment they /could/ do that with.
I’ll happily go out on a limb here and agree with you in calling the current RAN surface fleet a waste of money.
With regard to John Quiggin’s original question of, “What are these things supposed to do?” Well, as far as I can tell, a missile frigate is able to travel a long way and when it gets to where it is going, it can murder people there with missiles. So if we wanted to, we could send a missile frigate to New Zealand and use it to murder people in Christchurch. But I don’t see why we would want to murder anyone anywhere. Even if they were New Zealanders.
Technically we could try to use a missile frigate to stop people who were coming to murder us by using it to murder them first, but it is really really bad at this job because the people on board have no reliable way to stop being murdured themselves by modern anti-ship missiles. And by modern I mean the highly technologically advanced ones that didn’t become available until about 40 years ago in the 1970s.
Now to avoid misunderstanding, I’ll point out that before the 1970s frigates still had no reliable defence against anti-ship missiles. It’s just their odds were better because the missiles were worse.
I believe that New Zealand has Harpoon missiles and these are an advanced sort that were developed in the 1970s and can come down on a ballistic path against which frigates have no defence. And if these were air dropped rather than launched from an ANZAC frigate, the Australian frigate wouldn’t even have a chance to anti-ship missile the anti-ship missile carrying ship. So using a missile frigate to murder people in Christchurch, which isn’t even a good idea to begin with, could well result in the people on the frigate being pro-emptively murdered in return.
Now as James Wimberley has pointed out, other countries use missile frigates to protect aircraft carriers, of which Australia has none. Now I suppose, if we asked nicely, India or some other country might let us use them to protect their aircraft carrier or carriers, but I don’t see how that helps us. Especially since missile frigates don’t just protect carriers by shooting down planes and missiles that are targeting the carrier, they also act as decoys. The powerful radars missile frigates carry to target planes and missiles also allow frigates to be targeted and homed in on.
So to sum up, a missile frigate is good for murdering people a long way away (ANZAC frigates can travel 11,000 kilometers), but only if the people being murdered don’t have anti-ship missiles. So we could use a missile frigate to murder people in Suva, but not Christchurch. A missile frigate could also be used to protect another country’s aircraft carrier by unavoidably making itself a target and increasing the chance of the Australians on board being murdured. Since we don’t want to murder people, and since we don’t want Australians to be murdered, and since they can be sunk or damaged at little risk or cost to an attackerwhich makes them very bad at stopping people murdering us; missile frigates probably aren’t very useful. In fact, they would seem to be something that is worse than useless, because at least spending three billion dollars carving Tony Abbott’s face into Uluru isn’t likely to kill anyone. (Well obviously, some people will die from shock, but the total may be less than the crew complement of a missile frigate.)
@Simon Fowler
If you want size, how about the Maersk Triple-E Maersk container ship, displacing 165 000 tonnes. Compared to a frigate, it’s a steal at $190 million.
Of course, that’s way too big to be practical for most purposes. The point is, we could use purposed-designed civilian vessels to do these jobs at a tiny fraction of the cost of a warship.
Of course, our warships have never (in living memory) performed any of the tasks they are designed for, so we may as well use them for something. But that doesn’t make them cost-justified.
“Ikonoclast, with the knowledge of force composition and combined operations that you have, do you think that Australia currently does not have the ability to mount combined operations because it doesn’t currently have the new three billion dollar frigates?” – Ronald Brak.
My frank answer is “No.” We certainly do not need the new frigates at the current planned ridiculous cost. Whether we need them (militarily) at a better cost I don’t know. I was clear that I had little knowledge of force composition, combined arms and combined operations. But I did note that the concepts existed and that they referred to real matters. Several commentators have shown no sign of being aware of this.
This discussion isn’t about frigates or destroyers. This discussion is really about whether people are anti-military, pro-military or realists. I place myself in the third group meaning both the theories of realpolitik and offensive realism. Not that I support these theories as prescriptions (indeed I would deplore them as prescriptions) but rather I hold them to be realistic descriptions of the benighted world we live in.
JQ the ships concerned are in all aspects a waste of money.
Blue water naval warships became a waste of money about the time when the first aeroplane dropped a bomb down the funnel of a warship or launched a torpedo at a warship and sank it and submarines did the same. The Americans came up with a novel solution floating airfields that could travel the world, i.e. aircraft carriers, any carrier group has untold number of surface ships all there to protect the carrier from other ship borne attacks including numerous submarines as well. You need to have an American sized defence budget to make this happen, Australia does not and never will. The Navy would be better of buying the large wave piercing catamarans build by Austral and others for their hack work in support of armies but the days of naval flotillas and naval encounters changing the outcome in armed conflicts was history at the end of world war one just as strategic bombing or bombers were useless in ending wars or achieving strategic outcomes as the British and Americans they threw a third of their defence budget at Germany in WWII via Bombers and it made the Germans give up not one iota. End of story.
Naval ships and bombing ISIS all the same problem, military establishments wedded to past century systems and structures and unable to deploy new technology in replacement. Take the RAAF for example as well, since when after WWII has any RAAF Fighter aircraft actually been used in that role or at all? Tells you a lot about fighters v missiles, they learnt that lesson in Vietnman but failed to consider it, no you buy more sophisticated defence systems to add to the equipment to save it from destruction. Total waste of money. NZ has no problems living without all this stuff.
Then I should have said the Australian Navy has an enviable record of spending eye watering amounts of money for no result or militarily useful kit whatsoever at the end, think helicopters, think submarines, think aircraft carriers and any number of untold useless bits of shipping they have used over the years but have never been able to seriously support the deployment, supplying or transport of Australian land forces tells you everything about the Australian Navy, clueless and trapped in the past.
The use of modern technology was demonstrated by General Guederin from the German Army in WWWII, while the British and others were still using horses etc, the Germans put everyone in a truck and dragged the guns and supplies behind in trailers and put their artillery in tanks. They called it Blitzkrieg a novel use of modern technolgy to overcome those still wedded to past ideas.
@John Quiggin
Part of my argument was that it’s easier to get the capability actually built and maintained if it’s justified as part of the Much More Important(tm) military capability that we seem to feel we need than if we made a sensible argument based on rational requirements – i.e. it might end up being a choice between buying overpriced and mostly wasted warships or not having /any/ of the peaceful capabilities we need. I’m not sure that’s a sound argument – after all, we /did/ have the Ocean Protector on hand to run the initial MH370 search, even if it was only leased for six years. Chalk that one up to our xenophobia, though, since we’d never have had it if we weren’t busy trying to keep the brown people off our northern doorstep.
I’m not sure you can reasonably argue that maintaining a defence capability is unjustified because of an extended period of peace – not unless you’re willing to argue that it’s not justified even in the event of armed conflict. It’s not as if we can build ourselves a navy when the shooting starts, after all – if it’s not worth keeping around even in peacetime it’s not worth having at all. Having the right one on hand is the challenge, and I’m pretty sure it’s a challenge we’re failing miserably at the moment.
Cost-justified is also a hard thing to define when it comes to defence, since it’s one of those things that when you need it you /really/ need it. Even if what you have at the time isn’t ideal it may get you through that challenge successfully – does that retroactively justify the spending? By the same token, if it never ends up being required does that mean the expense wasn’t justified?
All told, “Defence Requirements” are so ill defined and so hard to judge by any useful metric that there’s no way to justify it sensibly. We either need the capability, self-evidently, or it’s nothing but wasted money, time, and lives.
Ikonoclast, the discussion I am having, perhaps just with myself, is about frigates. They’re not very good.
Since realism was brought up, I’ll mention that one major thing Australia could do to improve its defence situation is reduce or eliminate our reliance on imported oil. Australia is now down to producing around 300,000 barrels a day while we consume over one million a day. And Australia is almost the only developed country without any fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. For the Abbott government to suggest we build missile frigates that are basically useless and which will cost billions of dollars before introducing fuel efficiency standards that would save Australians money and save Australian lives from pollution, is nuttier than a lumpy chocolate bar.
There’s been a quite a bit of late in the media about the dire straits of the Canadian Navy, the renting of a supply ship from Chile, the limited capability to project off their southern coast, and almost zero ability to project off their northern coast, where they face increasing competition over disputed economic zone extent.
While frigates/destroyers may be technologically redundant, there is probably a good case for some naval capability (with adequate protection) to enable projection of forces to protect national interest. For example, how would Australia evacuate nationals from the South China Sea (if the case so arose) without calling on the help of friendly neighbors?
How many Australians are in the South China Sea at any given time? I imagine there must be a fair number in countries bordering the Sea, but
(a) we have dealt with this kind of problem many times without losing any citizens (AFAIK)
(b) it’s not as if sending a fleet is going to help
As in my previous post, let’s do the metric in terms of lives we could have saved with domestic spending (on health, for example). At $3 billion, and with a life-saving cost of $6 million (these are my best estimates), every frigate we build costs 500 Australian lives. Assuming the navy costs 0.8 per cent of GDP (about $12 billion a year), keeping it at its current level costs around 2000 lives a year. I think that costs needs more than a handwaving reference to obscurely defined needs.
@John Quiggin
“Of course, our warships have never (in living memory) performed any of the tasks they are designed for…” – John Quiggin.
Now whether you politically or morally agree or disagree with the following actions, they did occur and our warships did perform tasks they were designed for and all actions are within living memory.
(1) WW2
(2) Korean War.
(3) Malayan Emergency
(4) Indonesia-Malaya Confrontation
(5) Vietnam War
(6) The Gulf Wars 1 & 2.
(7) East Timor
(8) Solomon Islands
(9) Fiji
I am not saying they were all live actions. I am not saying the navy covered itself in credit in all these diverse operations. Yet even being on station can contribute to deterrence, sea control, maritime security etc.
Your idea of tasks seem to be limited to hot wars… oh no, wait a minute several of these were hot wars and very big ones at that. So I am not sure what your idea of naval tasks is.
The idea that we don’t currently need destroyers or frigates is arguable though still context dependent. The idea that we don’t need a navy is nonsense. I guess that’s why you have resiled from the no navy position. (“Who needs a navy?” (rewritten) by John Quiggin on October 4, 2012 – Crooked Timber.)
@Ikonoclast
Why is it nonsense?
I’m thinking particularly of the “we” and “need” parts. If the Empire is “demanding” that we have one, that would be different from needing one. I’m all for telling them to go get stuffed.
For all its military might, history of using WMDs and relish for murdering my fellow humans in the tens of millions for its imperial wars of aggression – the US keeps losing every fight it starts. The reason for that has never been because their navy let them down.
Ikonoclast:
(1) The Australian navy was meant to operate as an arm, or perhaps finger, of the British Navy prior to World War II. That didn’t work out for us as the UK turned out to be a bit preoccupied, and the sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales in the first days of what we consider to be the Pacific War demonstrated that Australia’s ships could not accomplish the tasks they were designed for without air cover which was mostly provided by the United States of America.
(2) The Australian Navy was never designed to participate in a land war in Asia. And I consider this to be a feature and not a bug.
(3) Again, the Malayan Emergency was not the tasks the Australian navy was designed for.
(4) Yeah, same thing.
(5) Land war in Asia.
(6) In Desert Storm, Australia was quite intelligent to notice the Desert part of the name of that operation and immediately volunteered the use of its navy. A smart move, but still not the task it was designed for.
(7) Yeah, it wasn’t designed for that either.
(8) No, not designed for that. I think there’s a pattern emerging here.
(9) And not designed for that either.
Now unless you want to get very pendantic and claim that individual vessels performed tasks they were designed for, such as float, I don’t see how you can claim that Australia’s warships as a whole performed the tasks they were designed for in any of those situations.
@Megan
I am saying if we have a Defence Force at all then a navy is a logical and useful operational part of that Defence force. The actual composition of that navy is a whole other argument.
If you are want to argue for unilateral disarmament then argue it. You would have a lot of moral sympathy from me. However, you would rightly regard this moral sympathy as hypocritical or inoperative on my part as I would then argue “realpolitik” yadda, yadda, “offensive realism” yadda yadda and so on.
In one episode of Yes Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, newly appointed Prime Minister, meets for the first time with the Chief Scientific Adviser, who suggests to him that the UK might as well keep the nuclear missiles it already has, but that there’s no point in going through with the planned purchase of new ones. During the course of the episode at least three possible reasons for buying the new missiles are discussed. At one point Humphrey Appleby tries to convince Hacker in this dialogue:
Appleby has more success trying to influence Hacker in a different way. He mentions that the possibility has arisen of a change of arrangements for Hacker’s planned first visit to the US as PM: instead of being met by the President, he will be met by the Vice-President. Hacker is appalled. Everybody gets met by the President, he says; even the President of Botswana got met by the President. Appleby points out that Botswana had not just cancelled a major purchase of defence equipment from the US.
A third argument is one that Appleby doesn’t try on Hacker but does offer privately to Bernard Woolley:
So there are three reasons why expensive defence equipment gets bought, and they seem just as likely to apply to the latest naval technology as to the latest nuclear technology:
1. conspicuous consumption: buying and owning anything fancy feeds people’s egos;
2. feeding egos in a slightly different way: fancy defence equipment sets up opportunities for ministers to posture and preen themselves on a global stage;
3. some people like seeing the government buy fancy defence equipment because it makes them feel more protected (independently of whether they are actually any safer).
JQ raised a valid question about Commonwealth financial spending decisions vis a vis Australian Navy purchases of small ships with lots of electronics and missiles and not much else. All the above miss this point, the Navy has not been involved in a naval battle with anybody since the against the Japanese in WWII. It continues to purchase and operate highly armed small vessels (destroyers-frigates). It has reconstituted itself several times from hand maidens to the British Admiralty and now to the US Navy. The only vessels useful for any defence work by the navy are the submarines, the rest are unable to support anything else but a fight with another navy. The issue becomes one of costing risk? Is the risk insurable? what is the opportunity cost of this type of spending. Well if you buying something obviously useless then the answer is self evident. Why they cannot consider different vessels with different purposes and armed as required I have no idea, given they cannot support anything above a battalion on an immediate or short term basis and can provide no real or useful spacial coverage of the huge continental ocean boundaries that Australia has.
@Ikonoclast
Going on the Wikipedia description of “realpolitik” as:
it may be that the idea of “power” is totally misunderstood (wilfully perhaps) by the people who run the US empire.
And they seem to have lost all sight of the meaning of the terms “practical” and “material”.
And what if we get into a conflict that includes naval engagements, a situation where the sophisticated and expensive weapons systems you talked about might well make the difference between winning and losing, with all the strategic implications?
It sounds like you’re arguing that we don’t need a navy at all, given the significant costs and the limited returns. But once we go down that path we lose the capacity to rebuild a navy, maybe not literally but in practise. No western democracy would accept the idea of suddenly saying we need to spend many tens of billions of dollars to build something that will take ten years even to /start/ doing what it’s intended to do, let alone the twenty years at least it’d take to rebuild the institutional knowledge that would make it a truly effective navy. If we ended up needing that capability quickly we’d be screwed, and the costs would be impossible to estimate.
That implies that the cost of giving up on the navy altogether and then finding that we actually need it is unknowable but almost certainly much larger than the cost of keeping it around, even if we’re wasting money on it the whole time.
That’s why I said this is by nature ill-defined – you can run the numbers and figure that it costs 2000 lives a year to maintain the navy as it stands, but can you weigh that against the results of a future conflict? Or even a conflict avoided because of an existing capability?
Comparative metrics are hard when one side is both large and very uncertain. It’s not helped when both sides are pretty rubbery (how confident are you about your numbers?).
@Ronald Brak
Let’s look for ways we can agree. I think Sth Australia should build solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and electric mass transit passenger trains and cars instead of navy frigates and subs. The federal money should go into factories for these purposes.
Ikonoclast, I certainly agree that would be a better use of resources than building frigates.
@Brett
That problem (anticipation aim at a moving target) was solved in the 1950s with the “proportional pursuit” algorithm in the Sidewinder missile. Should be a snap to put such control in a ballistic missile by now. No wonder the US is worried by what China could do if they wanted to.
Interesting personal anecdote: I got to play around with the French competitor to the Sidewinder, the Matra, in the 1960s when my father was in the maintenance section for the Matra (meddling boy). The RAAF dumped their surface-to-air missiles at that time and I guess that might have had something to do with them acquiring the air-to-air Matra missile.
@Brett
That problem (anticipation aim at a moving target) was solved in the 1950s with the “proportional pursuit” algorithm in the Sidewinder missile. Should be a snap to put such control in a ballistic missile by now. No wonder the US is worried by what China could do if they wanted to.
Interesting personal anecdote: I got to play around with the French competitor to the Sidewinder, the Matra, in the 1960s when my father was in the maintenance section for the Matra (meddling boy). The RAAF dumped their surface-to-air missiles at that time and I guess that might have had something to do with them acquiring the air-to-air Matra missile.
(The moderation filter is annoying, BTW.)
@Simon Fowler
How would a country that has no navy get involved in a naval engagement? It’s not an event of low probability; it’s not an event of incalculable probability; it’s an event of zero probability.
@Ikonoclast
I’d agree too. I also don’t imagine it would be hard to draw up a completely different list of program expenditures 50-long and still stand better than spending $90bn on major capital procurement in defence.
I’m all for Australia having a coast guard that can rescue folk at sea and police illegal fishing, dumping and other undesirable activity in our bailiwick. Beyond that, we should make clear that we are never going to be part of any threat to our neighbours.
We use the resources we have instead to make our region are happier place for all who live here.
@Fran Barlow
Being late to the thread you probably didn’t notice my earlier “reactionary” or “conservative” support for having a navy. My honesty compels me to note you probably wouldn’t be happy with my position on that. I base my position on the general facts (as I hold them to be) of realpolitik and the theory of offensive realism (Mearsheimer).
But I don’t agree with the government trying to use a naval shipbuilding exercise as a job creation exercise. This is neither a cost effective way to get ships nor a cost effective way to get jobs created.
As for “other undesirable activity in our bailiwick” I suppose we could have used our frigates to stop whaling in the Southern Ocean, if we had had any gumption.
Philosophically and doctrinally (if I can put it like that) I am in favour of a purely defensive posture for Australia. We could save a lot of money and lives by not getting involved in the USA’s overseas “adventures”. Realistically we would have to remain an ally of US and NATO. We could do this whilst becoming less servile and not involved in the USA’s wars which are largely not our wars.
Much of this discussion is about the capability of the frigates themselves as opposed to their broader role in navy and defence strategy. The point is made very clearly in numerous defence whitepapers
As I stated earlier the cost of reliance on the force and capabiity of a large military alliance is to contribute to that alliance.
Naval engagements don’t necessarily /start/ with warships on both sides. Consider, for example, if Indonesia decided that blockading the trade routes that we use through their waters was in their interests – on our side there wouldn’t be any naval commitment initially, but it would still be very definitely a naval matter, and depending on the overall situation one possible option would be for Australian naval ships to escort merchant ships through the contested area.
That’s a pretty contrived situation, but it does give an existence proof and demonstrates that lack of a navy doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no possibility for naval conflicts to arise.
I’m not arguing that we can’t possibly do without a navy, but anyone arguing that it’s a no-loss situation is wilfully ignoring a whole range of possible risks that are mitigated by having a navy. What’s more, a lot of those risks are the kind that are extremely hard to deal with quantitatively, particularly when compared with things like Prof. Quiggin’s cost per life metric.
That’s a different matter to comparing one set of naval spending options with another, but so far I don’t think anyone’s taken the discussion in that direction. All the arguments have been no navy versus navy, or the same hidden behind arguments about how much money is wasted by having a navy.
@MH
As Freiser says, “the image of the fully motorized blitzkreig army is a figment of propaganda imagination”. The German army was much more reliant on horses than were the French or British. They just used the motorised armour they had much, much better.
@Ikonoclast
The idea that the concern of the state is with maintaining its security and power is an ideological principle and part of an ethical system. The idea of Realpolitik as something non-ideological and free of ethical assumptions (in supposed contrast to its opponents) is a fraud.
Aardvark, a “sea-based strike capacity and the ability to deploy, protect, and sustain a substantial land force.” is only useful for invading another country. And Australia is not part of any alliance that requires us to help another country invade another country. So why would we need the ability to invade to rely on the, “force and capability of a large military alliance?” It makes me wonder, do you think we should we end our defence ties with New Zealand because they lack the abiltity to invade?
@Aardvark
Is being part of that alliance worth what it costs us? in other words, what do we get out of it, or what would we lose if we weren’t part of it?
@J-D
Yes, I can see your point. Speaking strictly in absolutes it could be correct. It would depend I guess on one’s precise definition of realpolitik. Does one define realpolitik as something that entirely supplants ideological principle and ethical systems or as something that modifies these? I would support the latter definition. Realpolitik considerations modify one’s adherence to pure ideological or ethical principles. Understood at that level, it is really just the acceptance that empirical reality must be permitted to modify our ideal theories.
My pure ethical principles would see me argue for unilateral disarmament for Australia. My awareness of certain empirical realities, including the lessons of history and politics, lead me to modify this stance and compromise my ethical principles. I try to salvage my “ethical image” in my own eyes and maybe even socially and politically by advocating an economical and morally “least objectionable” stance of minimalist defence. At the same time I try be realistic rather than advocate foolish and unrealistic idealism.
My stance is a set of linked arguments to maintain;
(1) a purely defensive posture;
(2) a sufficient standing force to have some deterrent value against initial attack;
(3) a sufficient standing force to have some real effect against initial attack;
(4) a sufficient, balanced and combined arms force to form the basis for maintaining force-wide training and operational knowledge and to form the basis for a full mobilisation if such need should ever occur.
As opposed to this integrated understanding of history, politics, ideology and ethics in both civil and military matters, some other commentators here are offering up very piecemeal reasoning that just doesn’t wash in a real, complex, messy world. It’s naive stuff. Sorry, but that’s how I see it.
@Ikonoclast
Somebody who says ‘Before we decide about disarmament, we should consider the risk of being attacked if we disarm’ is taking a realistic position.
Somebody who says ‘Nobody should ever disarm because they might be attacked’ is taking a doctrinaire ideological position.
An absolute prerequisite of any realistic implementation of the second and third elements of your stance (‘a sufficient standing force to have some deterrent value against initial attack’ and ‘a sufficient standing force to have some real effect against initial attack’) is a realistic estimate of what sort of risk we face of what sort of initial attack. If we have no idea what sort of initial attack we might face, we cannot have any realistic idea of what standing force would be sufficient to have some deterrent value or some real effect against it. Likewise, an absolute prerequisite of any realistic implementation of the fourth element of your stance is a realistic estimate of what sort of need for what sort of full mobilisation might occur. If we have no idea what kind of full mobilisation we might need or what we might need it for, we cannot have any realistic idea of what force would be sufficient for that purpose.
@J-D
For sure, these are very big dilemmas. I don’t disagree with any point or issue you have raised here except maybe the one in the second sentence.
The whole issue is a general case of very imperfect knowledge about future possibilities and the relative sizes, costs and/or benefits of various risks and “insurance policies”.
How would you go about approaching these dilemmas if you don’t agree with my approach?
If a conflict arises with North Korea, Australia may be called on to help defend US and South Korean transports. Assuming China stands back and doesn’t get involved, and Japan can’t for geopolitical reasons (invading Korea is not really a good look!) then Australian support will be needed, and not just naval.
If conflict arises with North Korea it will likely be started by an imploding North Korean government raining hell on Seoul, and for at least a short period of time it will be likely that NK will make significant military gains. At that point naval warfare will be necessary. If China gets even marginally involved then everyone in the Pacific is going to be taking sides.
If conflict arises with North Korea, the chance that Australia won’t get sucked in is very low.
Once the NK situation is resolved and tensions over gas resources disappear due to AGW, then I think the Pacific will be the most peaceful place on the planet and no one will need an army or a navy. Until then, we need a navy and the most likely use for it will be as support for a US carrier group or amphibious landing force.
I’m surprised that we aren’t already seeing aircraft carriers that deploy only drones. I wonder how long till that becomes a reality?
I think a big part of these purchases is simply about having a Navy force full stop: the people and the training, and the overall strategic thinking that goes into operating a naval force under hostile conditions isn’t easy to acquire, and so I suppose the powers-that-be would wish to retain that strength (as they see it) of an operational naval force.
As far as I can see, in the modern defence force the lines of demarcation of navy, army, and air-force are increasingly blurred, and technological changes like drones mean that there are entirely new kinds of defence force capability (including the logistics, the defence personnel, etc) being created, and they arc across all of the older arms of a defence force.
@Ikonoclast
I’ve already told you that. I would put the following question to the people who say ‘We should spend money on a navy’:
‘What for? what do you think may happen if we don’t?’
If they can give no answer, I would conclude that there’s no good reason to spend money on a navy.
I feel as if I’ve explained that more than once already, which is making me wonder what might be wrong with the way I’m explaining.
@faustusnotes
If a conflict arises between North Korea and South Korea, and if transport ships are being attacked as part of that conflict, then it’s possible that Australia will be asked to help defend those transport ships, but only if Australia has naval forces capable of contributing to that defence. In the scenario (a strictly hypothetical one — I know this is not going to happen) where Australia has entirely decommissioned/disbanded its navy, Australia will (obviously) not be asked to help defend transport ships, since it will be unable to do so.
If you go on to argue that Australia needs to be able to defend transport ships from attack by North Korea, what I want to know is what negative consequences you think might follow if Australia were unable to defend transport ships from (a hypothetical) attack by North Korea.
Similarly, if you argue that Australia needs to have a navy in order to be able to provide support for a US carrier group or amphibious landing force, what I want to know is what negative consequences you think might follow if Australia were unable to provide support for a US carrier group or amphibious landing force.
J-D I don’t think there would necessarily be negative consequences for Australia of not joining in, but the longer such a conflict lasted the worse it would be for Koreans. It’s likely that any future war with North Korea is going to look a lot like a humanitarian mission (rescuing North Koreans from a war they had no say in, and protecting South Koreans from a huge and desperate army), and if Australia’s contribution to the war were to make any practical difference to its length, then the consequences of our not joining could be counted in dead Koreans.
Similarly if there is a breakdown of order or a civil conflict on a Pacific island, or instability in south east Asia as climate-related conflicts intensify.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the world is heading into a period of climate craziness that is going to create instability and conflict, and part of that conflict will be caused by the mass movement of vulnerable peoples, some at least of whom will be in our backyard. The chaos and confusion that will cause may lead to local conflicts and lawlessness our navy may play a role in confronting. It doesn’t seem like a great time to be giving up our navy.
@faustusnotes
Conversely, if the US empire had not been able to corral together such military giants as Palau and the Marshall Islands into the “coalition of the willing” – along with other enablers including us – then the destruction of Iraq (including dead Iraqis in the millions) by their illegal war of aggression would not have been politically possible and probably would not have happened.
So less military involvement can work to save lives. In fact it would seem axiomatic that the less military action there is the more lives are saved.
The answer to the other scenarios (e.g. climate chaos) should be peacefully rendered generous assistance, not military prevention of the mass movement of displaced and desperate people.