Tag Archive for: maritime

A tale of two fleets: gunboat diplomacy in an era of rising military power

When the US Navy’s Great White Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour in 1908, it was an unmistakeable signal of imperial might, a flexing of America’s newfound naval muscle. More than a century later, the Chinese navy has been executing its own form of gunboat diplomacy by circumnavigating Australia – but without a welcome. The similarities and differences between these episodes tell us a lot about the new age of empires in which Australia now finds itself.

Both were shows of force. The former expressed President Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy of speaking softly while carrying a big stick – the original version of peace through strength – while the latter aimed at disturbing the peace.

The Great White Fleet’s visit was a spectacle. Australians cheered as 16 gleaming battleships, painted white and with shiny trim, paraded into Sydney Harbour. A flight of steps, the Fleet Steps, was specially built in the Royal Botanic gardens to receive the American visitors.

The visit was a calculated diplomatic manoeuvre by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin in making the invitation and by US President Teddy Roosevelt in accepting it. Both Australia, a young federation deeply tied to the British Empire, and the United States, a rising but not yet super power, saw value in signalling US Pacific presence to Japan.

For Roosevelt, the fleet also presented his big-stick foreign policy to European nations: the US had arrived as a global power. Just as important, he saw the fleet’s world tour as helpful in explaining to the American people why they needed to spend money on defence, including ships, as their country opened up to global opportunities but also threats. Deterrence, preparation, social licence all strengthened national resilience.

Deakin saw the chance and didn’t just invite the fleet to Australia but engineered the visit. He wanted the visit to kindle the notion in Australia that it should have its own fleet. Irregular Royal Navy deployments to the Far East could not guarantee Australian security.

Also like Roosevelt, Deakin knew that a passive approach to defence policy would not keep the nation safe in an era of rising military powers, with a strategic shift to proactive engagement needed urgently, not only once a crisis had begun. He was especially concerned about Japan’s growing sea power but, again like Roosevelt, he also had an eye on Russian and (later) German sea power.

While Deakin wanted a national navy and was an empire man, he thought it prudent to start building a partnership with the US. Not yet replacing Britain as global leader, it had burst on to the strategic scene only a decade earlier. It had annexed the Philippines in 1898 in the Spanish-American War and, in the same year, the Hawaiian Islands. These made the US a Pacific power.

Both men in the early 1900s understood the connection between European and Pacific security and both set out to protect their national interests by working together against European and Asian powers seeking to create instability and spheres of influence.

As Russell Parkins well describes in Great White Fleet to Coral Sea, Deakin noted in one of his written invitations to the US that “No other Federation in the world possesses so many features of likeness to that of the United States as does the Commonwealth of Australia”. Roosevelt later acknowledged he had not originally planned for the fleet to visit Australia but that Deakin’s invitation had confirmed his “hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency”.

This was naval might wielded with soft edges: immense firepower floating on the harbour, and friendly chats over tea ashore.

Today the strategic environment again involves European and Asian powers – Russia and China – seeking spheres of influence, only the dynamics of the naval visit couldn’t be more different. No time for afternoon tea, just the reality that Australia faces a security threat from Beijing that demands national preparedness and international friendships and alliances.

When Australia and China encounter each other at sea, the interactions are adversarial, accompanied by dangerous Chinese manoeuvres, high-powered lasers shining into cockpits, chaff dropped into Australian aircraft engines and sonar injuring Australian navy divers. These are not friendly port calls but dangerous military activities and displays of coercive statecraft.

The Great White Fleet sought goodwill and alliances. China’s naval behaviour is an assertion of dominance. If the Australian public were in any doubt about how Beijing intended to interact with the region, China’s behaviour in this most recent episode should be instructive. The lack of warning given to Australia was a warning itself of what is to come. Beijing wants us to heed it and submit.

We must not submit. We must learn from the incident and change Beijing’s behaviour.

When a Chinese naval flotilla last made a port call to Sydney, in 2019, it was met with some public unease, if not alarm. Australia had, after all, approved the visit. But through a combination of Canberra’s ignorance of history and Beijing’s aim of rewriting it, the visit was approved without recognising that it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Not long after the negotiated port visit, China suspended ministerial-level engagement as part of coercion to bring Australia into line. Despite some warming in relations in recent years, Beijing chose not to give Australia advance notice of live-fire exercises. The same Beijing that only a few years ago gave notice of a visit now has the confidence to fire at will.

Australia must stop being surprised by every new Chinese military or hybrid warfare development. Beijing’s confidence is growing in all domains, including cyberspace. With intrusions known as Volt Typhoon, China’s intelligence agencies were outed in 2023 as having pre-positioned malware for disrupting and destroying our critical infrastructure. This should also be seen as a rehearsal for later cyber moves.

And now, for the first time in the modern era, we have seen a potential adversary rehearse its wartime kinetic strategy against Australia. Yes, the Japanese did surveillance and intelligence gathering before World War II, but this circumnavigation with live-fire exercises takes us well beyond intelligence collection. Beijing has been undertaking “intelligence preparation of the battlespace” for some time with ships it frequently sends to Australian waters to observe our exercises or to conduct oceanographic studies (which improve submarine operations).

Just as the Great White Fleet helped to inspire the development of an Australian navy, the Chinese flotilla should warn us that our own fleet needs to be larger and ready to assure our security. The rhyme of history is that distant fleets operating in Australian waters matter and should spur our own thinking (and act as catalysts for action) regarding Australian sovereign capabilities.

After all, these episodes underscore an enduring truth about Australia’s geopolitical reality: we are a regional power situated between global hegemons and their very large navies. One could even say that we are girt by sea power. But this is not new territory; it is the blessing and burden of geography and history.

Whether it was navigating the transitions from British to American primacy in the Pacific or more recently adjusting to China’s challenge to the US-led order, Australia has always had to manage its strategic relationships with agility and nuance.

The key difference, of course, is that Australia welcomed the Great White Fleet in 1908 with open arms. Today, Australia finds itself on the receiving end of an unwelcome presence by ships that appear uninterested in friendly port visits. This demands a response that is not reckless but is firm enough to avoid being feckless.

Although the position is difficult, the Australian government should not think it must walk a tightrope in dealing with China. The strength of response to Beijing’s aggression should depend on the minimum needed to deter more aggression, not by a perceived maximum that will leave trade and diplomatic relations unharmed. European countries have made such mistakes in handling Russia – declining to hold it to account in the hope that Putin would keep selling gas to them and delay military action.

There’s no use in pretending or hoping there is nothing to see here except one-off instances of unpleasant behaviour. China’s aggression follows its concept of dealing with the rest of the world, and it won’t stop. Quiet diplomacy won’t deter Beijing from more dangerous behaviour but will embolden it to repeat its actions. Each instance will show Australia is incapable of doing anything about it until Beijing – mistakenly or intentionally – goes so far as to make conflict inevitable. Australia’s time to stand up cannot wait until a live fire drill becomes just live fire.

As Teddy Roosevelt put it, big-stick foreign policy involves “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis”. Navigating the best response to aggression therefore requires clarity about what is at stake.

What Australia does in the South China Sea – where it operates in accordance with international law alongside allies – is not equivalent to China’s recent foray into the Tasman Sea. Beijing’s actions represent yet another demonstration of reckless behaviour, following its dangerous harassment of Australian forces. By making various attacks – with lasers, chaff or sonar – China shows an undeniable pattern of attempted intimidation. When Australia sails into international waters, we do so to maintain the rules-based order and promote regional stability, yet when China does the same it is often to undermine the rules and destabilise the region.

The intimidation is in fact regional; it’s not just about Australia. Just as the Great White Fleet demonstrated America’s arrival as a Pacific power, China’s naval activities signal Beijing’s intent to reshape the region’s strategic balance. Australia, as it has done before, must adapt. It must spend more on its own defence capabilities, deepen relationships with like-minded democracies and maintain the diplomatic dexterity that has long supported its survival in a world of rising and falling empires.

Most importantly, the government must bring the Australian public along for the voyage. The threat from China should surprise Australians no more than the threat from Putin should surprise Europeans.

Knowledge is power and the Australian public can be empowered, and therefore prepared, not to be shell-shocked by China’s aggression. It should instead be reassured that the Australian government has the situation in hand and that defence investment is a downpayment on our future security. It should be reassured that the spending makes conflict less likely.

Australia is not a major power, but we have the world’s 13th largest economy and are not without influence. We should stop seeing ourselves as a middling middle power. We definitely shouldn’t act as a small power. We should be confident as a regional power. Our voice, actions and choices matter at home and abroad. It’s why Washington wants us as an active partner and Beijing wants us to be a silent one. Australia’s global advocacy for a rules-based system, and its public calling out of Beijing’s wrongdoing have been highly valued in Europe, Asia and North America.

Smaller regional countries rely on us to stand up to Beijing where they feel unable, while Europe increasingly knows the fight against Russia is also a fight against Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partner, China. And an Australia that stands up for itself and our friends will again demonstrate the value of partnerships to our ally the US.

Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet epitomised show of force as a means to deter conflict as well as preparation should deterrence fail. (Its cruise was also an exercise in long-range deployment.) The time for deterrence and preparation is with us once again. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said this month that China was ready for war, ‘be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.’

We need to show, along with our ally the US and other partners, that war is not what we want but is something we are prepared for. If we cannot show that we have a capable stick, and the intention to use it if required, we will be defeated with or without a fight.

As Teddy Roosevelt said: “Peace is a great good; and doubly harmful, therefore, is the attitude of those who advocate it in terms that would make it synonymous with selfish and cowardly shrinking from warring against the existence of evil.”

The past tells us that navigating strategic competition requires a blend of strategic foresight and political agility. The echoes of 1908 should serve as both warning and guidepost for the uncertain waters ahead.

Tag Archive for: maritime

China’s warships reveal more than a need to strengthen the ADF

Last month’s circumnavigation by a potent Chinese naval flotilla sent a powerful signal to Canberra about Beijing’s intent. It also demonstrated China’s increasing ability to threaten Australia’s maritime communications, as well as the entirety of its eastern and southern seaboards, where the major population centres and critical infrastructure are concentrated. In a major war, our civilian infrastructure is likely to be targeted, not just military bases.

The deployment further highlighted national resilience vulnerabilities that go well beyond the need to strengthen the Australian Defence Force’s capabilities, overdue and critical though this task undoubtedly is.

While the presence of a Chinese navy task group this far south was unprecedented, and a noteworthy demonstration of China’s reach and sustainment capability, it is important to stress that peacetime signalling through military presence and wartime operations are poles apart. As we are in peacetime, China’s naval flotilla was free to manoeuvre in close formation within Australia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and conduct live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea.

In a crisis or conflict, it is highly unlikely that China’s warships would venture so close to Australia’s continental coastline. Even with Australia’s current, inadequate military capability, the ADF would be able to hold a similar Chinese flotilla at clear risk of annihilation. Surface vessels approaching Australia are easily detected long before they appear in our vicinity, by surveillance systems such as the Jindalee Operational Radar Network. If the navy had not already intercepted a hostile surface action group in Australia’s maritime approaches, the air force would be tasked with responding.

However, such an effort would absorb much of the ADF’s combat capacity. It also assumes a free hand to operate from air bases, when those same, currently unhardened bases could be subjected to preparatory missile strikes launched by China’s long-range aircraft and submarines. China’s most capable warships have stand-off and air-defence weapons of their own, and could still pose a significant threat to ships and coastal targets.

China’s growing fleet of nuclear-propelled attack submarines would be much harder to detect than surface vessels. They would likely operate independently, further stretching the ADF’s resources. Even when threats are detected, gaps will remain in the ADF’s ability to respond to intrusions in our vicinity. After all, while Australia’s extensive continental and island territories create the world’s third-largest EEZ, our navy is and will remain significantly smaller than Japan’s or South Korea’s.

Monitoring and responding to incidents within such vast tracts of sea and air space is challenging even in peacetime. But gaps in capability can be narrowed if Australia invests with greater urgency and purpose to realise the focused, integrated force outlined in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review.

To defend the Australian homeland against China’s power projection, which is only going to grow in scale and frequency, the ADF needs to grow bigger, faster and more lethal. At the same time, Australia’s political and military leaders must avoid being lured into a defensive mindset. Beijing’s ‘I can play in your backyard, if you play in mine’ message is intended to do just that.

An Australia preoccupied with localised defence, less intent on shaping its surrounding region or developing the capabilities and forward posture needed for deterrence, serves Beijing’s interests more than Canberra’s. We need military flexibility, political will and strategic vision to help secure the region and defend ourselves.  We must remember that while China’s navy was sailing around Australia, it had other ships exercising in the South China Sea and near Taiwan. These remain China’s primary areas of military focus and should therefore be an ongoing focus for Australia’s deterrence efforts.

Even as Australia grapples with this unfamiliar challenge—a potential adversary that can project power from all directions and has every motivation to tie down the ADF during a conflict in East Asia—Canberra must continue to align its military efforts with those of our key allies and partners.

Also, the nuclear submarines we’re acquiring under AUKUS are flexible platforms that can be used for sea control. But their primary purpose is not, as sometimes portrayed, to protect and defend Australia’s vital trade routes and sea lines of communication. The massive investment to acquire them will be squandered if they are tied up in the defence of homeland waters or escorting high-value assets. Fundamentally, they are for projecting denial by taking the fight as close to the adversary as physically feasible.

But within the next decade Australia will only have one SSN in service, at best, while the fate of the life extension program for our six old diesel submarines of the Collins class hangs in the balance. China’s uninvited naval presence underscores that even if Australia had an operational AUKUS submarine fleet tomorrow, there would still be a need for a concomitant uplift in the ADF’s conventional capabilities across the board.  Unfortunately, the government has not approached this uplift with the requisite urgency. The opportunity costs of prioritising defence spending increases to fulfil our AUKUS Pillar 1 commitments have come home to roost.

Granted, improvements to the Royal Australian Air Force’s maritime strike capabilities are underway, as evidenced by the recent test-firing of an LRASM anti-ship missile by an F/A-18F Super Hornet, and an associated missile order from the US. The navy is also boosting its inventory of Mark 48 heavyweight torpedos. But the dollar value of such orders tends to obscure their relatively modest scale. For example, A$200 million buys 30 torpedos of the Mark 48 latest variant, based on a unit cost of A$6.7 million.

War stocks are chronically low across the ADF, despite the need to ‘sustain protracted operations during a conflict’ being designated as one of six priority capability effects in the 2024 National Defence Strategy. In addition to boosting its combat power, the navy needs to enhance its undersea surveillance capabilities in Australia’s approaches, to aid submarine detection efforts.

Mike Pezzullo has suggested that Australia acquire B-1B bombers as they are progressively retired from the US air force, and put them into service with Australia’s air force in an anti-ship role. This is a radical idea that deserves serious consideration. While expensive, it could be done on a timeline more relevant to our deteriorating security situation than AUKUS—though AUKUS should still go ahead.

Even then, Australia’s investments in maritime strike from the air will be worth nothing in a war if missile strikes render the air force’s bases inoperable. Base hardening needs to be done in parallel, just as China is doing on a massive scale. Equally, the government’s ambitions to invest in integrated air and missile defence, highlighted as a priority in the Defence Strategic Review, remain just that: ambitions.

In this context, the Australian Army can contribute to securing our surrounding waters and approaches by fielding anti-ship missiles on mobile launchers. This will make our coastal defence thicker, less predictable to enemies and more survivable. But it remains unclear how far down the track the project to implement this, Land 8113 Phase 2, has progressed.

China’s demonstration that it can project and sustain naval power into Australia’s surrounding waters has highlighted our lack of maritime resilience. As the late James Goldrick put it, defending a fortress is pointless without attending to its water supply.

As an island nation, Australia would face profound national sustainment challenges in a wartime environment where prevailing regional trade patterns would be massively disrupted. Shipping would be a key pillar of our national economic security, if not survival. In any prolonged maritime conflict, Australia would have to requisition merchant vessels to sustain the nation’s wartime needs beyond the short term. Australia’s nationally flagged fleet, comprising around 12 vessels and not a single tanker, is risibly inadequate.

The idea that Australia could depend solely on market forces for imports needed for national survival is dangerously complacent, especially given China’s growing dominance in international shipping and port ownership. The fact that the global maritime trading system has absorbed the impact of limited conflict in the Black and Red seas without breaking down owes much to good luck and some wrenching supply-side adjustments.

This is not simply a question of ensuring that Australia maintains maritime imports of essential commodities from across the oceans. Coastal shipping, although out of sight to most of the population, is vital to Australia’s economic functioning. Road haulage is no substitute for bulk transportation by sea. Much of Australia’s critical infrastructure, including our two remaining oil refineries, is vulnerably situated near the coast. We lack the redundancy and stockpiles to absorb damage or cope with sustained supply disruptions. Australia is energy rich. We are a major exporter. But what counts more when it comes to the crunch is our continuing dependence on imported fuels, including 100 percent of our aviation fuel.

The government-commissioned report on a Maritime Strategic Fleet, submitted almost two years ago, needs to be revisited urgently. There is little evidence that its modest suite of recommendations has been adopted. The report assessed that 12 privately owned and commercially operated vessels under the Australian flag and crewed by Australians would be enough to meet emergency needs. This is highly questionable if there were a protracted maritime conflict in the Western Pacific. The strategic fleet needs to include dedicated tankers, as well as more cargo vessels capable of transporting refined fuel products (the navy has two replenishment ships of its own).

By comparison, the US has a fleet of 10 US-registered tankers in its Tanker Security Program. These vessels operate commercially in peacetime, but are essentially reserved for military use to support forward operations in wartime. They are not intended to keep the US’s lights on, or those of its allies. Australia’s need to secure oil and oil products will be far more acute, given our paltry fuel reserves and absence of domestic alternatives.  Deep pockets may not be enough to secure supplies on the spot market at the outset of a conflict, given the attendant competition and dislocation.

There is a case for Australia to consider acquiring its own cable-laying ship, to repair or replace fibre-optic seabed cables cut by an adversary at the onset of a conflict. Such ships are in short supply and their availability would be highly uncertain during wartime. An Australian-flagged specialised seabed cable support vessel would be a strategic asset that Canberra could make available to its closest allies and partners in the Pacific.

If the South China Sea and the major straits connecting it to the Indian Ocean are deemed too hazardous for international shipping, the long diversionary route around Australia will become crucial for Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan (unless it’s blockaded) and the US from a military standpoint. From a supply and sustainment perspective, Australia should benefit from such a major realignment of shipping flows. Calling into Australian ports would no longer require a long and tell-tale diversion from major shipping lanes. And, to some extent, there is still safety in numbers, provided shipping is directly or indirectly protected.

The importance of the coastal sea lanes immediately south of Australia provides a strong case for us entering into cooperative arrangements with countries such as Japan and South Korea. India would become Australia’s most obvious substitute source for refined products, assuming that Japan, South Korea and Singapore would be unable or unwilling to meet our needs. And trans-Pacific routes would be vital to maintain communications and reinforcement from the US.

But there are downsides. China’s naval strategists and planners have likely also realised that the southern diversionary route would become a strategic artery for the US and its regional allies and partners, not simply of local importance to Australia. This paints China’s uninvited naval circumnavigation in a more strategic hue.

Australia’s southern and eastern seaboards could become a target for the interdiction of allied supplies, as they were for Germany and Japan in World War II, on and under the surface (Germany mined the Bass Strait during both world wars). Western Australia would be of heightened interest as a military target, given the likely concentration of US, British and Australian submarines at HMAS Stirling. Australia would necessarily have to assume primary responsibility for the protection of shipping passing close to its shores, partly as a quid pro quo to ensure its own supply. This would mean fewer warships and other assets would be available to perform other tasks, such as repelling an invasion of Taiwan or relieving a blockade of the island.

Fortunately, the closer the shipping lanes pass to the coast, the easier they are to defend. A layered defence incorporating assets based on land, air and sea could extend area protection in sufficient depth so that direct escort would be necessary only for the highest-value strategic cargoes or military assets. All three services would need to play an active role in defending Australian coastal waters and approaches for the duration of the conflict. The creative use of uncrewed platforms could alleviate the burden on the navy and air force.

Sustainment during wartime is a whole-of-nation endeavour. China’s recent naval visit, while in no sense a cause for panic, should sound an alarm that echoes beyond Australia’s naval community and the ADF. The defence of the nation during a major conflict will require more than just capable armed forces to succeed, while civilian infrastructure could be exposed as our Achilles’ heel. Australia’s national resilience and readiness will be the main theme of ASPI’s annual defence conference, on 4 June.

The dangerous collapse of US strategic sealift capacity

The US Transportation Command’s Military Sealift Command (MSC), the subordinate organisation responsible for strategic sealift, is unprepared for the high intensity fighting of a war over Taiwan.

In the event of such a war, combat commanders would look to MSC’s approximately 125 ships to transport about 90 percent of US Army and Marine Corps equipment into the Western Pacific for combat operations: fuel, ammunition, vehicles, missile launchers, spare parts and more.

MSC readiness levels have dropped to 59 percent, due mostly to vessel material condition and age. Most of its sealift ships are reaching an age at which maintenance and repair costs are ballooning, and service-life extensions won’t improve readiness.

Most alarmingly, current estimates indicate that the sealift fleet will lose 90,000 to 180,000 square metres (1 million to 2 million square feet) of capacity each year as ships reach the end of their useful life. That compares with the current capacity of about 840,000 square metres (9 million square feet).

Recent fleet exercises also indicate that most of MSC’s vessels cannot complete long voyages or are completely non-mission-capable. Without immediate investment, sealift will remain largely incapable of supporting major sustained combat operations.

US planning takes for granted that sea lines of communication will be contested from homeport in the United States to theatre in the western Pacific. Contested logistics add an additional layer of complexity for war planning, specifically because MSC’s strategic sealift fleet, already stretched thin and atrophied, would be subject to attack. Ships and their cargoes would be lost.

The US Transport Command will likely have to activate its Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement (VISA), which allows access to civilian commercial shipping to supplement military sealift capacity. While VISA enables increased lift capacity on paper, that comes with an implied trade-off: every commercial vessel seconded to military service is lost to US commercial capacity and revenue. There is also a risk that commercial shippers will suffer grievous losses in maritime combat. The government could compensate them, but their businesses would be badly damaged.

In 2017, the US Maritime Administration estimated that US civilian merchant shipping was 1800 qualified mariners short of requirements. Since then, that number has almost certainly increased. Obviously, in the event of a major mobilisation, the US will need sailors for its merchant ships.

The MSC’s strategic sealift fleet is woefully inadequate. While VISA may ease some of the inadequacy, it is unclear how effective civilian vessels would be in wartime. Moreover, even if the transport command activated VISA, the civilian merchant fleet would likely be crippled by a potentially fatal lack of interoperability among crews for want of shared experience. The US also faces a critical shortage of trained personnel.

The US Transport Command must take immediate steps to mitigate US sealift’s capability and capacity gaps. Failing this, the US and its regional allies and partners that also rely on US sealift face defeat. This is not because the US military cannot fight and win, but because the US military cannot support and sustain itself at scale on the other side of the Pacific.

Recapitalising the sealift fleet must be the MSC’s primary focus. The US needs to breathe new life into its domestic industrial base and revitalise its ability to rapidly construct ships. Fleet modernisation will obviously require building ships, but the US should also consider buying foreign vessels to bolster its merchant fleet until production capacity improves.

The US Merchant Marine must improve mariner recruitment and retention. No amount of new shipping or industrial capacity will make up for a lack of qualified sailors. The maritime administration should consider new incentive programs to bring talent to crews and vessels.

While it is vital to reinvigorate the US shipbuilding industry, and to attract and retain qualified sailors, these actions alone are not enough. The MSC must also conduct regular theatre-level exercises to train the sealift force and develop interoperability in the event VISA is activated. Fleet exercises lay bare problems in peacetime, providing the advantage of time to think through those problems.

In a war, any level of sustained attrition would quickly turn catastrophic without sufficient sealift. Underpinning all of this is the need to develop a comprehensive national maritime strategy. Such a strategy must align US policy objectives with resources and reality in the Pacific. This process is likely to be uncomfortable and require trade-offs, but it is fundamentally necessary. The alternative is almost certainly humiliating defeat for want of weapons, ammunition, fuel and equipment.

General John J Pershing, himself keenly aware of logistics, said ‘infantry wins battles, logistics wins war’. His axiom has likely never been truer. It is time to recognise that the US maritime logistics problem must be solved.