Strategist Article Archives - Page 1141 of 1187

Not a lot atoll

9 May 2013

You can do a lot with a coral atoll. The US uses the leased UK territory of Diego Garcia ‘To provide forward support to operational forces forward deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf…’. That includes logistical support for naval and air forces, and makes Washington’s job of projecting power into the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf regions far simpler than it otherwise would be.

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The new Defence White Paper confirms the implementation of the ADF Posture Review recommendations to make military use of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, which lie about 1100 km from Indonesia, and 2100 km from Australia’s North West Cape.

The government will be…

…expanding the capacity of infrastructure to meet Navy’s future basing requirements; and upgrading airbases to better support aircraft operations, including for P-8A maritime surveillance operations from Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Of course the Cocos are smaller than Diego Garcia. There isn’t the space to provide the same level of logistic support, so we probably won’t see major and permanent bases there. Nevertheless, the position of the atoll will make it a useful operational asset as the Indian Ocean and South East Asian sea lanes take on greater significance.

Andrew Davies is a senior analyst for defence capability at ASPI and executive editor of The Strategist. Harry White is an analyst at ASPI.

Beyond the once-over analysis and partisan waffle

9 May 2013

Defence White Paper 2013 is well written and largely internally coherent, except for the absence of an investment plan to execute its policy and strategy objectives. It often tries making virtues out of necessities politically, particularly with convenient international schedule delays such as the troubled JSF program.

Much commentary has inevitably concentrated on its recent fiscal and current party-political contexts or, superficially, on major equipment proposals. There is really little substantial change to the major ADF capabilities originally planned in the 2003 Defence Capability Review that updated and corrected the 2000 White Paper.

More tactful and ostensibly optimistic about China than its predecessor, this paper has unfortunately dropped mention of China’s lack of strategic transparency as a cause of instability globally and regionally. It also logically continues the post-Indonesia focus of its 2009 predecessor. Read more

Antarctica: agreeing on principles, depending on price

9 May 2013

Guest editor Anthony Bergin

The issue of Antarctic geologically based resources hasn’t been discussed seriously for decades and for two good reasons. There’s been no serious interest by industry for sensible economic reasons. We’ve also seen the introduction of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol), with a moratorium on mining that commenced in 1991.

The United States Bureau of Mines introduced a system some years ago of classification for mineral deposits employing both geological and economic criteria. The classification has three main categories – economic, marginally economic, and sub-economic. Antarctic mineral occurrences are taken properly as sub-economic and classed simply as ‘mineral occurrences’. Polar Prospects: A Minerals Treaty for Antarctica : UNT Digital Library

But there’s been some changes in the last couple of decades that may well alter the equations in the near future. The changes are mainly in technology, rendering identification and extraction potentially easier. Economics remains, as it’s always been, the greatest deterrent, unless there’s a specific non-economic reason to extract. Read more

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9 May 2013

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Graph of the week: up, up, but finally away?

8 May 2013

I’ve been plotting the gross measures of the progress of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program pretty much since the day I joined ASPI back in 2006. It hasn’t always been a pretty story. It became obvious fairly early that the F-35 wasn’t going to buck the trends of history in terms of delivering more capability for less dollars. The projected cost has increased steadily, and the delivery schedule has moved steadily to the right, meaning that Australia and other customers have had to think about a ‘Plan B‘—exactly what we saw implemented last week in the White Paper announcement of an additional buy of Super Hornets.

The annual budget papers from the Pentagon have demonstrated both of these trends. The delays in delivery of capability and higher than expected costs has seen the American services steadily defer acquisition, preferring to spend their money elsewhere rather than buying into a manifestly immature program. The graphs below show these trends.

The first chart shows the expected flyaway cost (the cost of the aircraft itself, including engines but not any of the ancillaries required to operate it) over the forecast period for each USAF budget request from Financial Year (FY) 2008 to FY 2014. Back in 2007, when the FY 2008 budget was tabled, the USAF expected to be paying $83 million (all figures in 2013 US dollars) per aircraft by now. This year’s budget has the figure of US$153 million, a full 84% higher. Even five years from now the price won’t have come down in real terms to the expected 2013 number—the USAF expects to be paying $88 million for each of its aircraft in 2018. That’s obviously not a great result, and it’s consistent with my previous observation that this program has been more troubled than most. Read more

Ah the serenity: DWP13 and the view from Canberra and DC

8 May 2013

The vista from the White House is very different from the “serenity” that is seen from the front lawn of the Lodge. This is evident in Andrew Smith’s post DWP 2013—what will the Americans think?. Andrew provides an important take on the new White Paper and how it matches ‘US vital interests’. What it also highlights is that there is a big difference in strategic interests between regional middle powers and global superpowers.

Andrew’s take on the nexus between US and Australian interest hinges on the White Paper’s heavy regional focus. As he quite rightly states, despite the ‘pivot’ / ‘rebalance’ Washington cannot overlook that fact that it has ‘global interests and responsibilities from which it can’t resile’. Andrew’s major concern is the Middle East. The continuing US engagement with this region is smartly captured by the Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove, who has made reference to “Obama’s ‘Michael Corleone moment’” from The Godfather III: “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Read more

Transnational crime: a mammoth problem

8 May 2013

A couple of weeks ago my colleague Toby Feakin, wrote on The Strategist about the recently released United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s assessment on Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific, pointing out how international crime is a dynamic and complex phenomenon that ‘remains a threat to security and prosperity across the region’.

Toby highlighted how the groups that perpetrate these criminal acts

… have benefited from the globalisation process, and the technologies it provides, to operate across borders, creating new linkages between groups to maximise financial profit, while minimising the risks of being caught. They’re often formed like agile businesses, have no desire to become involved in the use of physical force just for the sake of it, and are highly adept at reshaping themselves to fit the illicit economies that they’re servicing. The groups are highly mobile, flexible and operate in multiple jurisdictions and criminal sectors, exploiting legislative loopholes where they exist, and are aided by the illicit use of the internet.

The UNODC report sends a clear message that transnational crime isn’t a homogeneous phenomenon, but rather a very diverse set of activities. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach won’t work: each aspect will need carefully crafted policy and operational responses. Read more

HADR: in search of low-cost innovative solutions

8 May 2013

In financially-constrained times we need to think of innovative ways to promote useful but low-cost security cooperation in our region. Developing Australia’s capacity to provide emergency food relief would enhance our international reputation and support closer security ties.

Australia’s desire for closer engagement with Asia has been a prominent and largely bipartisan priority during the last decade, albeit with occasional divergence in approach and emphasis. While the Howard Government was guided by the principles of ‘shared interests and mutual respect,’ Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd surprised the region in 2008 with grand plans for an Asia-Pacific union by 2020. Mr Rudd’s announcement failed to resonate with regional neighbours, who saw it as a threat to ASEAN’s patiently-constructed regional architecture. Read more

All at sea

7 May 2013

There was a time back in the 1990s when the Defence Annual Report listed not just the availability of the Navy’s various platforms for deployment, but also the actual number of days at sea for each of its vessel types over the year. We were told both what each fleet could do and what they did do.

By the turn of the century, the Navy had ceased to report sea days and we were left with only the (more flattering) number of days vessels of each type were available for tasking. Nonetheless, reporting during this period was sufficient to expose problems with the various platforms due to upgrades, maintenance issues and delayed replacements.

Then, in 2009–10, Navy ceased reporting at the vessel type level and aggregated together the availability of its key vessels into three categories:

Major Combatants: Anzac frigates, FFG frigates and submarines.

Minor Combatants: Patrol boats, auxiliary minehunters and coastal minehunters.

Amphibious and Afloat Support: oil tanker, replenishment ship, landing ship dock, heavy landing ship and heavy landing craft. Read more

Myanmar’s Rohingya exodus

7 May 2013

Early last month, 80 Muslim Rohingya from Rakhine state were detained by local police on an island off Sumatra as they made their way to Malaysia. On the previous day in East Java, Rohingya were caught in hiding as they awaited their escape vessel, en route to Australia.

This wasn’t an isolated event—it follows a brawl between 117 Rohingya asylum-seekers and 11 Buddhist fishermen from Myanmar that left 8 dead and 15 wounded, officials said. A police report obtained by the Democratic Voice of Burma implicates five of the fishermen in two separate gang rapes and a third sexual assault case while in detention in a Belawan town hall. The Thai Navy often deny Rohingya asylum-seekers the ability to come ashore, and Thai authorities have even been accused of firing on them or selling them on to traffickers.

The latest bloodshed highlights more than continued tensions between Rohingya and Buddhists. It crests a growing wave of people moving from Myanmar and reaching the shores of our neighbours, and the poor state of immigration protocol in Indonesia. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have arrived in Indonesia by boat since violence spiked last July. Almost every displaced Rohingya interviewed in Indonesia intends to come to Australia; more than 130 Rohingya have been stopped en route to Australia this April alone. Read more