Force Structure 103b: all the way with LBJ…

All the way with LBJ?

Earlier posts (here, here and here) have looked at force structure from an Australian perspective, but in reality the American alliance dominates all our defence discussions. So our thinking about future force structure alternatives and how they relate to the alliance should start with a basic question: what we want from the alliance?

In defence terms, and from an Australian perspective, the alliance’s function is to gain American support in those instances where America doesn’t consider it in its national interest to be involved. To give some examples, American assistance to Australia during World War II both pre-dated the alliance and was in America’s own interest. But American support for Australia (and the Netherlands) when differences arose with Indonesia over the future of Dutch West Papua wasn’t seen the same way. Similarly, Australia’s 1999 intervention in East Timor didn’t engage America’s national interests and so US support was less comprehensive than some hoped.

So how can the ADF’s force structure be shaped to help gain American support in such circumstances? The most often proffered way is to be a part of America’s wars in the hope of reciprocation; a ‘you owe me one’ strategy. This approach suggests a force structure that can readily be added to a much larger US joint force. Such an additive force structure is easily developed—simply buy a range of off-the-shelf US hardware although, with the operational theatre of future American wars uncertain, the ADF would need to trained for a variety of possibilities. There are several downsides with this approach, including limiting Australia’s ability to undertake independent operations, acquiring capabilities that might be less relevant to our nearer region and doubts whether Australia’s contribution to a much larger American force can be sufficiently significant to ‘buy’ us the required kudos. Read more

JSF: Four Corners fails the balance test

The Department of Defense's first U.S. Air Force F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter (JSF) aircraft soars over Destin, Fla., before landing at its new home at Eglin Air Force Base, July 14, 2011

As a long time follower (and often critic) of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, I sat down to watch last night’s Four Corners episode with great interest. Now I want my 7.1 cents back. (As I suspect do James Brown and Sam Roggeveen over at The Interpreter.)

It’s not that the F-35 doesn’t warrant some criticism—the list of problems is long and has been documented in both my own writings for ASPI and numerous US government reports, among others. Even the most ardent of F-35 supporters can’t argue with the uncomfortable fact that the RAAF is still six years away from getting an aircraft they were supposed to already be flying. I argued two years ago that we need to be thinking hard about Plan B and I haven’t changed my mind about that. Timelines and engineering margins are uncomfortably tight and the cost growth is uncontestable.

The recent leaking of the latest Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) report into the open press only added to the public knowledge of the problems. These include the relaxing of some performance criteria and the revelation that the aircraft in its current configuration can’t fly in lightning. These observations aren’t good news. At this stage of development (and production), there’s apparent ‘zero sum’ engineering going on. The lightning hazard seems to be the result of weight reduction measures required to make some other changes—means that the program could be in real trouble if any significant issues turn up in the extensive testing still to come. Read more

Insuring the Pacific neighbourhood

Last month Cyclone Evan pummelled Fiji and Samoa, leaving a trail of destruction. This month in the remote Santa Cruz Islands province of the Solomon Islands ten people died in a tsunami triggered by a magnitude eight earthquake.

These types of natural disasters have resulted in an average direct annual loss in the South Pacific region of around $300 million. That’s a large sum for a region of small island countries that are economically fragile. The stability of the South Pacific region is naturally of interest to Australia, as evidenced by the emphasis we’ve placed on it in recent years. So we should welcome a recent positive development, which has seen the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu last month become part of a pilot catastrophe risk insurance program, launched to provide their governments with immediate funding if a major natural disaster occurs.

As part of this program, Japan, the World Bank and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community have teamed up with the five island states to launch the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Pilot. It’ll test whether a risk transfer arrangement modelled on an insurance plan can help Pacific island states deal with the immediate financial effects of disasters. The pilot is the first Pacific scheme that links immediate post-disaster insurance pay outs to specific events. This joint effort will allow Pacific island nations to access earthquake and tropical cyclone catastrophe coverage from reinsurance companies at an attractive price.

Island governments have struggled to arrange national insurance coverage of the magnitude that natural disasters can require. So the World Bank is acting as an intermediary between the pilot countries and a group of insurance companies selected through a competitive bidding process. And while AusAID isn’t funding the pilot itself, it provides support to the organisation responsible for managing the pilot, the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery. Read more

What’s happening to the US defence budget?

Since at least 1950 Australia’s defence policy has been predicated on US military strength. It behoves us, therefore, to keep a close eye on US defence policy.

In one sense, recent developments are encouraging. The US ‘pivot to Asia’ or ‘rebalancing’ has helped reassure Australia and other countries in the region concerned about China’s rise. At the same time, however, circumstances are conspiring to constrain US defence spending—and therefore military capacity—in the near and longer term.

The most immediate threat to US defence spending comes from the political machinations surrounding the US federal budget and debt ceiling (the best way to understand the debt ceiling is the borrowing limit on your credit card). Todd Harrison at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis has done a fine job of summarising the labyrinthine complexities of the situation. The essential features are as follows: Read more

ASPI suggests

Malaysia's first Scorpene-class diesel-electric submarine docked at its Naval base in Port Klang on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur on September 3, 2009.

There’s been a lot of discussion about escalating tension between China and Japan. Over at East Asia Forum, Sourabh Gupta looks at what an agreement over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands might look like. On the same blog, John Blaxland and Rikki Kersten share their thoughts on China’s use of active weapons radars aimed at Japanese military platforms near the island chain.

Meanwhile, Malaysia’s buying Scorpene submarines and Vietnam’s buying Kilos, but Geoffrey Till looks at why the Asia Pacific military modernisation isn’t Europe 1913.

Indonesia-watchers might be interested in the Australia-Indonesia Youth Association’s newly launched blog featuring updates, events, news and their pick of Indonesia-related stories.

CSIS’s James Lewis has a new report on cybersecurity—it looks at corporate responsibility for managing cyber risks as well as new strategies. Lewis discussed also cyber attacks and Obama’s new cyber protection policy on Radio Times. Read more

Kiwi and kangaroo

Kiwi and kangaroo

The Australian relationship with New Zealand is kindred, yet Kiwi.

The kindred yet Kiwi line expresses the reality that the kiss and the kick are the two twinned elements of a deeply intertwined history. These are two countries so close that even in moments of embrace, a bit of elbowing and toe-stepping is inevitable. This is a good thing. Happy is the international relationship that can take a bit of bruising, where the first response is often to make a joke about the other side.

To give you a view of how this works, consider the annual summit between the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand that took place in the Kiwi city of Queenstown. High policy, indeed.

Yet this summit prompted one of the smartest Kiwis I know, the eminent strategist Robert Ayson to pen a tongue-in-cheek column for The Strategist saying that the two leaders achieved so little that perhaps they should agree not to do another bilateral summit until they actually had something important to talk about. As Robert knows, any Kiwi leader who said he or she didn’t really need to leave Middle Earth to talk to the denizens of the West Island would court deep political trouble (Translation: this is a NZ-makes-Lord-of-the-Rings-movies jest). Read more

Reader response: more force structure options – take two

Marcus Fielding’s response to my force structure post raises several interesting points, in particular, that ‘…it’s entirely appropriate for Australia to restructure to be able to lead and provide force-level support to regional coalitions.’

In terms of force structure I think that option is an integral part of the joint force alternative. If we can field an independent joint force with its own command and control structure, others can join in later if operational circumstances require. Conversely, if we develop a force that’s optimised as part of someone else’s joint force, then our ability to form the core of some regional coalition becomes more problematic.

Marcus also makes an interesting point on the Timor-Leste deployment in saying, ‘many of the force-level capabilities, including a Deployable Joint Task Force Headquarters, have [since] withered away…’. This reflects the shift that my post discussed of more emphasis being placed on the ADF being able to form a part of a larger American combined force. Accordingly, the need for a DJTFHQ declined. Some in Army considered the Defence of Australia (DOA) construct unhelpful to their service in favouring air and naval forces, and thought this focus responsible for land forces being ill-prepared for East Timor. Marcus’s observation would suggest that this interpretation needs re-thinking as the DJTFHQ provided the land force element in with the capability to command a multi-national force. As noted in an earlier post, Timor-Leste did find the force structure lacking in sustainability, but perhaps the DOA construct was more land force friendly than critics allow. Read more

Reader response: control and diplomacy

Brendan Taylor provides an eloquent critique of Ben Scheer’s recent post, but I don’t think I can agree with him.

In his desire to ‘soften’ his former colleague’s line on China’s recent actions in the territorial dispute with Japan, he misses the most worrying element of his alternative anti-monolithic view of China in line with Linda Jakobson’s recent Lowy paper. This very element might well rule out the creative diplomatic options Brendan teases us with but does not elaborate on.

Following that logic, China’s most senior political leaders might not know what armed agents of the Chinese state are doing and are unable or unwilling to reign them in once they find out. This is a more worrying scenario for us all than the ‘monolithic complex strategy following China’ that Brendan claims Ben presents. Even more worrying is Linda’s final point that this lack of control is inherent to the present Chinese political system.

The upsurge in China–Japan tensions over the last decade is consistent with the uncontrolled thesis, as it is Chinese armed state agents that have come the closest to triggering an incident at sea (a ‘Tuchman miscalculation’), with Chinese helicopters and fighter jets ‘buzzing’ Japanese forces, PLAN radars locking onto Japanese platforms in disputed waters and PLAN flotillas sailing through the Miyako strait with no prior warning. Seemingly none of the perpetrators of these unprecedented and dangerous acts have faced sanctions from their political seniors. This wouldn’t and couldn’t happen in Japan, Australia or the United States and it shows how far the situation may be from creative diplomatic solutions. Read more

Table of the week: Australian defence industry – we are the world

I was invited this week to be part of a panel discussion at the Australian Defence Magazine 2013 Congress. Part of the brief was to address a series of questions relating to the role of Australian Defence industry. Under the heading ‘maintaining a strong sustainment workforce in current and future market conditions’, the talking points were:

  • How to avoid a skills gap
  • Realigning the offshore and onshore [industry] capabilities
  • Will there be a continued role for non-sovereign third party suppliers?

I chose to invert the order of these points, because I think that the third one informs the second and both have implications for the first—and I think the third one is based on a false premise. To see why, have a look at the top 12 Defence contractors and their turnover for the previous financial year in the table below (click to enlarge).

Top 12 Defence contractors and their turnover for the previous financial year

* I = International, A = Australian
Source: Australian Defence Magazine Dec 2012/Jan 2013 Read more

Managing incidents at sea

Exclusive Economic Zone

Recent incidents between Chinese and Japanese warships and aircraft in the East China Sea have renewed interest in confidence-building measures (CBMs) to prevent potential conflict. The situation is getting serious up there: Japan alleges that a Chinese frigate locked its fire-control radar onto one of its destroyers on 30 January, following a 19 January incident when a Chinese warship aimed its fire control radar at a Japanese military helicopter. The Chinese have denied both incidents, but they are plausible enough, and might well have occurred—and could certainly occur in the future.

This kind of situation is a possible path to an escalation that isn’t in anyone’s interest. Illuminating another ship or aircraft with fire control radar is risky because it displays hostile intent. It’s a precursor to locking on a gun or missile system, and could signify the intent to open fire. However, other explanations are possible. It might be an individual ship acting carelessly, perhaps even a radar operator acting without authority. Or it could be an intentional action to trigger an electronic response from the other vessel that might provide valuable signals intelligence (SIGINT).

The 1972 US–USSR Agreement on Prevention of Incidents at Sea (INCSEA) is the best known CBM to prevent and manage an untoward incident between opposing maritime forces. Similar agreements were also negotiated between the Soviet Union and several Western European navies, while Russia later signed INCSEAs with Japan and South Korea. However, there’s nothing similar at present between China and Japan, or China and the US.

The US–USSR agreement forbade ships from conducting acts similar to those that have been reported lately in the East China Sea. More specifically, article 6 of the agreement states: ‘Ships of the Parties shall not simulate attacks by aiming guns, missile launchers, torpedo tubes and other weapons in the direction of a passing ship of the other Party’. Read more