Pete Comment
Babones' contention (bolded below) that Australia's 2 main naval bases (in Sydney and just below Perth) are too far south, could be refuted on several grounds. This includes:
- cost of moving bases
- psychological impact of moving bases from the major population centers
- loss of personnel, as they and families would reject living in isolated (hot, cyclonic) northern towns.
- need for large cities to support major naval bases
- loss of distance protection from Chinese airstrikes
- ships and submarines can transit from Perth area and Sydney anyway.
ARTICLE
Salvatore Babones, for The National Interest has written an excellent article of August 28, 2019, titled "If Australia Wants Collective Defense, Then It Should Get Its Own Navy in Ship Shape".
I have bolded the parts directly on submarines and base locations. Here it is below:
"China’s rise and rearmament has introduced a security schizophrenia into Australian politics. This is what lawmakers can do to address their fears of a Beijing invasion.
Babones' contention (bolded below) that Australia's 2 main naval bases (in Sydney and just below Perth) are too far south, could be refuted on several grounds. This includes:
- cost of moving bases
- psychological impact of moving bases from the major population centers
- loss of personnel, as they and families would reject living in isolated (hot, cyclonic) northern towns.
- need for large cities to support major naval bases
- loss of distance protection from Chinese airstrikes
- ships and submarines can transit from Perth area and Sydney anyway.
ARTICLE
Salvatore Babones, for The National Interest has written an excellent article of August 28, 2019, titled "If Australia Wants Collective Defense, Then It Should Get Its Own Navy in Ship Shape".
I have bolded the parts directly on submarines and base locations. Here it is below:
"China’s rise and rearmament has introduced a security schizophrenia into Australian politics. This is what lawmakers can do to address their fears of a Beijing invasion.
If
Australia Wants Collective Defense, Then It Should Get Its Own Navy in Ship
Shape
With
the South China Sea dispute back on the front burner and trade tensions between
the United States and China bubbling over, some of America’s regional allies
are starting to feel the heat. Yet when Mike Pompeo told a Sydney forum that
“You can sell your soul for a pile of soybeans or you can protect your people,”
Australia’s good and great were “gobsmacked,” according to an eyewitness
account from The Spectator Australia. Substitute a
lump of Australian coal for a pile of American soybeans, and Pompeo’s message
was clear.
China’s
rise and rearmament has introduced a security schizophrenia into Australian
politics. Canberra’s China doves argue that Australia should accommodate its giant
neighbor and number one export partner, sign up to Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road
Initiative, and do whatever it takes to avoid attracting China’s ire.
Meanwhile
a certain species of Australian hawk believes that the United States is no
longer a reliable ally, and that Australia should muscle up for a potential
future confrontation with China. The most prominent of these is Professor Hugh
White of the Australian National University, who thinks thatAustralia should be considering the
development of an independent nuclear deterrent.
He’s
not alone in worrying about American staying power in the Pacific. One of
Australia’s most prominent conservative commentators, Paul Kelly, says that “the strong and astute America [that
Australia] needs is not on display,” while the governor of Australia’s central
bank says that he does “not have a clear idea of what
strategy the U.S. has” for dealing with China.
Now
a major research paper from the University of Sydney’s
United States Studies Centre concludes that the United States “no longer enjoys
military primacy in the Indo-Pacific” region and “has an atrophying force that
is not sufficiently ready, equipped or postured for great power competition.”
The paper was partly funded by the Australian Department of Defence, American
defense giant Northrop Grumman, and the French multinational Thales Group.
The
paper’s authors, Ashley Townshend, Brendan Thomas-Noone, and Matilda Steward,
call for a NATO-style strategy of “collective defense” in the Indo-Pacific as a
“way of offsetting shortfalls in America’s regional military power.” They
repeatedly highlight the “decline,” “inadequacy,” and “questionable abilities”
of the United States Armed Forces.
Meanwhile
they laud Australia’s “significant submarine modernisation” program, which
consists of the construction of twelve new diesel-electric boats to enter
service in the 2030s and 2040s. Australia’s [former] Defence Minister Christopher Pyne
has described the submarines “regionally superior,”
which only makes sense if the region they’re talking about is Southeast Asia.
He can’t mean the Indo-Pacific region. India and China already have
nuclear-powered attack and ballistic missile submarines.
They
also praise Australia’s “surface vessel recapitalisation” program, with nine
new frigates to be built on a British design. Like the submarines, these likely
won’t enter service until the 2030s. They are mainly designed for
anti-submarine warfare, but as the Royal Australian Navy’s new workhorse
vessels, they will have to do general duty as well.
They
criticize the United States for planning to buy “only” 2457 fifth-generation
F-35 fighters and cancelling the F-22. For the record, Australia has committed
to buying just seventy-two F-35s in total. They expect to
have ten by the end of the year. The USAF, Navy, and Marines already fly more
than three hundred.
A
Look in the Mirror
If,
as the Australian report claims, the United States “no longer enjoys military
primacy in the Indo-Pacific” region, then who does? If the United States is
“not sufficiently ready, equipped or postured for great power competition,”
then who is? Webster’s defines primacy
as “the state of being first,” and no one seriously doubts that the United
States is first in the Indo-Pacific region. Great-power competition implies a
great-power competitor, and no one seriously believes that China is
better-prepared for competition than the United States.
If
Australians really are worried that the United States is no longer able to come
to their defense, then perhaps they should take White’s advice and take a long,
hard look in the mirror. No one expects a country of twenty-five million people
to match the military spending of a global superpower thirteen times its size.
But since the turn of the millennium, Australia has spent an average of only
1.8 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on defense, compared
to 3.7 percent for the United States.
What
the Australians do spend, they often spend inefficiently. For example,
Australia’s politicized navy is buying diesel-powered submarines out of an
ideological aversion to nuclear power. The United States, which has a real
fighting navy, hasn’t built a diesel submarine since 1959.
There
are also questions about readiness. Australia’s two main naval bases, Fleet
Base East and Fleet Base West, are located in the pleasant southern cities of
Sydney and Perth, ideally placed to defend the country against the march of the
penguins from Antarctica. Meanwhile the U.S. Marines are sweating it out in Australia’s remote northern outpost of
Darwin, where they serve as a rapid reaction force ready for deployment
throughout the Indo-Pacific region.
Naval
Gazing
The
Royal Australian Navy's Sydney headquarters is particularly self-indulgent.
Strategically stationed in the posh inner-Sydney suburb of Potts Point, the
RAN’s top brass can comfortably grab a croissant on their morning walk to work
from subsidized housing in one of Australia’s most expensive neighborhoods. In
2018, the city of Sydney wanted to acquire the base, which has golden sunset views of the
landmark Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, to use as a cruise ship
terminal. The Navy turned them down.
Yet
the base is incredibly insecure—and incredibly dangerous. Pedestrians walk on a
public inner-city street within ten yards of the bows of the nearest ships. The
whole base is hemmed in by a city park on one side and a luxury hotel on the
other. Any decent quarterback could hit six ships with bombs lobbed from the
park overlooking the base; a determined terrorist could sink half the fleet
with a portable rocket launcher. Even an onboard accident could take out the
civilian hotel just one hundred yards away.
A
serious fighting navy would move north to the country town of Townsville,
fifteen hundred sea miles closer to any potential threat emanating from China
or emergency arising in the Pacific. The RAN has refused to move out of
congested Sydney Harbour to nearby suburban Botany Bay. They say the reason is
“tradition.” Another word for it is “lifestyle.”
Australia’s
Fleet Base West should also be relocated fifteen hundred sea miles north to
Port Hedland (population fifteen thousand). Australia’s iron miners tough it out
on the country’s remote northwest coast, but then they have to: that’s where
the iron is. The RAN prefers the comfortable climate and urban amenities of
metropolitan Perth (population two million). And who can blame them? But if
Australians prefer the good life to the rigors of military readiness, they’re
in no position to demand additional American sacrifices on their behalf.
The
Political Reality of Collective Defense
As
the experience of NATO amply
demonstrates, “collective defense” is really just a polite way of
saying “American defense.” When it comes to collective defense, what is
everyone's responsibility becomes no one’s responsibility—except America’s. In
2018, America’s European NATO allies spent an
average of 1.5 percent of GDP on defense, in flagrant violation of their long-standing
commitments to raise spending to 2 percent. Only five NATO members meet their 2 percent spending
commitments: three frontline Eastern European countries, the United Kingdom,
and the United States.
Australia
is an important political ally that has provided welcome symbolic support for
American missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and (most recently) the Persian Gulf. Australia lost forty-one soldiers in fierce
fighting in Afghanistan after taking up the call of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Americans will always be grateful and proud to have Australians standing beside
them in time of need.
But
if Australians are serious about defending freedom in the Indo-Pacific region,
then they should take a more active role in their own defense. That means
buying the most effective weapons systems available and deploying them as
efficiently as possible. It also means accommodating and hosting American
forces, when its own aren’t sufficient to do the job. But most of all, it means
making a genuine commitment to security partnership.
Opinion
polls consistently show that the Australian people are
willing to take on these responsibilities. It’s long past time for Australia’s
political class to step up to the plate.
Salvatore Babones is the author of The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the
Tyranny of Experts.
3 comments:
ideally three new bases (one at Ashmore & Cartier Islands, One in Far North Queensland say Torres Island and One between these two locales in the Northern Territory say Gulf of Carpentaria) might be advisable especially if Shortfin DE subs are going to be the mainstay.
Chinese SSN activity has already been seen right from the Sulu sea all the way near Darwin and in the east all the way to the edge of the second island chain.
shore based P-8s based at these bases will also provide good patrolling support to ASW frigates and DE sub patrols.
GhalibKabir
Ashmore & Cartier Islands are tiny, uninhabited, lack fresh water? low lying? likely to be swamped in a cyclone.
Torres Strait and Gulf of Carpentaria are so shallow (much is less than 20 meters deep https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-submerged-lake-and-reefs-in-the-Gulf-of-Carpentaria-a-Depth-contours-illustrate_fig3_287456176 )
has so many reefs and rocks that subs may not even attempt to pass through.
Perhaps a better approach is looking at this study by ex-submariner, now Senator, Rex Patrick http://www.defence.gov.au/Publications/Reviews/ADFPosture/Submissions/Rex%20Patrick%20-%20Submarine%20Force%20Posture%20article.pdffor consideration of Forward Operating Bases (FOBs)
Page 6 is key: so HMAS Stirling, just south of Perth, is main Base West. Darwin supplies some docking-refueling. Existing commercial ports in northern Western Australia (WA) include Port Hedland, Dampier and Broome, but are considered difficult.
Exmouth (where US and UK sub refueling did occur in WW2) is better in northern WA - now with nearby air base and good road access.
Much more in http://www.defence.gov.au/Publications/Reviews/ADFPosture/Submissions/Rex%20Patrick%20-%20Submarine%20Force%20Posture%20article.pdf including study of very remote Cocos (Keeling) islands suitability.
Remaining AP-3s and new P-8s from Edinburgh/Adelaide can be FOBed/do pass through RAAF Katherine, Darwin, Singapore (I think) and Butterworth (Malaysia).
Cheers
Pete
Hi GhalibKabir
Here is an interesting article about some consideration of building an Australian east coast submarine base just south of Sydney at Port Kembla (in the small city of greater Wollongong) or at Newcastle, just north of Sydney.
The article at https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/6394341/defence-looking-at-port-kembla-for-a-new-navy-submarine-base/ of September 19, 2019 also records the interesting idea:
"Under the "two-ocean basing concept", the Collins class subs would stay on the west coast while the 12 new submarines - the Shortfin Barracudas being built by French armaments company "DCNS" [sic - they mean Naval Group] - would located on the east coast."
Comment - Not such a good "two-ocean basing concept" as by the time the last of the 12 Attack class "Shortfin Barracudas" has been built (in the late 2040s) all of the Collins would have been long decommissioned and broken up. Also CITY-bases on the east coast would not gladly host the possibility of NUCLEAR subs for Australia.
Pete
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