Tag Archive for: aircraft carrier

Indonesia wants an aircraft carrier. No one knows why

When it comes to fleet modernisation program, the Indonesian navy seems to be biting off more than it can chew. It is not even clear why the navy is taking the bite. The news that it wants to buy the Italian navy’s decommissioned aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi came as a surprise.

Operating such a ship with helicopters is a big enough challenge in itself, but now we hear from media reports that the navy also wants to operate Harrier fighters from it.

Despite the challenges, the Indonesian navy isn’t saying why it needs such capability. Neither current planning documents nor the recently ended Minimum Essential Force modernisation program outlined plans for Indonesia to acquire an aircraft carrier.

Still, this isn’t the first time we hear of an Indonesian aircraft carrier plan. In 2013, Indonesia expressed interest in purchasing the then recently retired Spanish navy aircraft carrier, Principe de Asturias. For unspecified reasons, Indonesia ultimately decided against buying the ship. Furthermore, PT PAL, a state-owned  shipbuilding company, has unveiled an indigenous design for a helicopter carrier, which it claims to be ready for production by 2028, should the navy decide to make an order.

For a country that straddles two vast oceans and aspires to project force beyond its exclusive economic zone, the acquisition of at least one aircraft carrier may seem like a sound policy. However, consideration of practicalities reveals that this is more like a case of blind ambition.

The wartime missions of fighters on an aircraft carrier’s can include air defence of a fleet, strike against enemy ships, ground units and fixed installations, and reconnaissance. A carrier can also operate helicopters, usually for hunting submarines. Because these aircraft are on a ship, these operations can be undertaken much farther from home than is possible with aircraft tied to air bases.

Aircraft from Garibaldi, for example, undertook combat operations over Afghanistan—far beyond the practical reach of Italian air force aircraft flying from their home air bases.

Peacetime aircraft missions include humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). This appears to be the main appeal of an aircraft carrier acquisition for Indonesia’s Chief of Navy Admiral Muhammad Ali.

Yet this hardly gels with the reported plan to include several Italian navy AV-8B Harrier aircraft in the deal. They would have little or nothing to contribute to HADR operations.

The Indonesian navy’s Naval Aviation Centre last operated offensive aerial assets in preparation of Operation Trikora in West Papua in 1961–1962, using land-based Il-28 bombers. These assets were retired in 1969. Reintroducing offensive aerial capabilities, particularly with second-hand Harriers, would be highly costly, and doing it at sea would be highly difficult. The inexperienced Thai navy, for example, struggled to operate Harriers on its aircraft carrier, HTMS Chakri Naruebet, from 1997 to 2006 and finally gave up.

In addition to that, what message would Indonesia be sending to its immediate neighbours if it were to equip itself with such capabilities? Indonesia has already voiced concerns over neighbours acquiring advanced F-35 Lightning fighters, and was also perturbed by the AUKUS announcement. Indonesia’s pursuit of an aircraft carrier could also be perceived as an unnecessarily aggressive acquisition.

An aircraft carrier equipped with offensive aerial assets is vastly different from one operating solely with rotary-wing aircraft for military operations other than war. Indonesia has ample experience in operating unwarlike vessels. The navy’s Makassar-class LPDs, though retaining an amphibious assault capability, have been extensively used for HADR.

If the Indonesian navy is determined to acquire an offensive aircraft carrier, it must first define the role it seeks to play in the global maritime domain. Given current geopolitical complexities in the Indo-Pacific, Indonesia should act with caution.

The acquisition of a highly sophisticated asset such as an aircraft carrier must be driven by a strategy of cooperation first, and military posturing second. Without a clear need for the ship, Jakarta would risk ending up with an aircraft carrier serving as a static tourist attraction.

The ‘aircraft carrier’ that isn’t: Japan’s new helicopter destroyer

Japan's 22DDH in productionRecent commentary, including by Phil Radford here on The Strategist, has argued that Japan’s new Izumo (DDH22) ‘flat top destroyer’ is in fact the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s (MSDF) first, ‘mid-sized aircraft carrier’ since the Second World War. That’s because the 27,000 ton (full displacement) ship features a 248 metre flight deck which could be reconfigured to carry up to 12 F-35B, short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) Joint Strike Fighters. In this view, the operational role of this ‘light aircraft carrier’ would be to provide air defence over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands or even strikes against the Chinese mainland. In other words, the ship is about ‘upping the ante’ against Chinese maritime belligerence. But, while the Izumo certainly reflects a qualitative improvement for the MSDF, I’d argue that the ship doesn’t signal the return of the ‘Imperial Fleet’.

There’s an important distinction between ‘proper’ aircraft carriers, such as the Nimitz-class of the US Navy, the French Charles de Gaulle or the Chinese Liaoning, and large escort ships which can support STOVL jets but whose main purpose is either amphibious assault, such as the US Wasp-class, or antisubmarine warfare (ASW), and Japan’s Hyuga-class (16DDH) helicopter destroyer. Aircraft carriers allow for a larger range of air operations than a few jump jets. But even more important is their ability to perform a range of doctrinal roles that large escort ships can’t. Historically, such roles included: serving as the ‘eyes of the fleet’; as a ‘cavalry at sea’ to conduct hit-and run raids; as a ‘capital ship’ capable of defeating any other ship type; as a nuclear-strike platform; as an ‘airfield at sea’; and as a geopolitical chess piece. Most of these roles have become obsolete, and aircraft carriers are primarily used today as ‘airfields at sea’ to support land operations, as a symbol of national prestige and, more recently, to support humanitarian and disaster relief (HADR) operations. Read more

Reader response: getting carried away with Britain’s new carriers

HMS Ark Royal Visits HMNB Clyde for the Final Time

Harry White’s contribution on the UK carrier program highlights a number of the flaws in the UK’s current approach to its defence capabilities. But he seeks to ask the wrong first question in suggesting that it should be ‘are carriers the best way to achieve our strategic objectives for the money’?

Rather, the UK needs to go much deeper than this and seek to work out much more precisely just what its strategic objectives are. If, as proposed in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, they are to include a capacity to intervene overseas, only then does the question of whether carriers are the appropriate basing solution for air power arise.

If (and only if) there is determined to be a requirement for an intervention capability, it’s worth looking at the very mixed experience with maintaining basing access and passage through other nations’ airspace that the UK and its partners had during operational contingencies in the 1990s, and the part that this played in the original decision to build the carriers. The need to achieve and maintain access certainly drove much of the thinking behind the 1998 SDR and was the reason for the unanimity of Defence advice (including the RAF) at the time. If the UK is to continue in the intervention game, then that issue of access very much remains on the table. And, even if access can be assured, there remains the question of the cost benefit difference between proximate, sea delivered air power (plus seaborne lift—and an island state like the UK will always need to use the sea when conducting expeditionary operations) and long distance air-to-air refuelled capability. This is a very complicated question. Read more

Getting carried away: Britain’s new aircraft carriers

A pilot climbing into the cockpit of a Sea Harrier FA2, on the upper deck of HMS Illustrious, an Aircraft Carrier, as she sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar.

In last Wednesday’s Autumn Statement, the UK’s Chancellor George Osborne has clung, all white knuckles, to austerity with a commitment that would make Calvin proud. But as Osborne tries to sell painful belt-tightening to the British people, across Whitehall the Ministry of Defence is making at least one large spend which seems hard to justify—the new Queen Elizabeth class carriers.

Britain’s Carrier Strike capability (the carriers, and the planes to operate from them) will be expensive. The estimate released before April’s decision to revert to the Short Take-Off Vertical Landing version of the Joint Strike Fighter was at least £6.2 billion (AUD$9.5 billion). At more than 65,000 tonnes—almost three times the displacement of the Illustrious class they’ll replace and the largest ships the Royal Navy has ever operated—these are formidable pieces of hardware. As such, they will be symbols of national pride for a country that has naval traditions deeply embedded in its psyche. The problem is that they are unlikely to deliver a strategic benefit that justifies the price tag, no matter how impressive they look. (A fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Britain’s comedians.)

Like any element of force structure, the strategic value of the carriers rests on the situations in which they could be usefully deployed. And that’s the problem—it’s hard to find many of those. Carrier deployment would only be the right option for the UK in situations which get a tick next to each of the following criteria: Read more