By Dante Barrett
This piece first appeared as a featured article in volume 95, issue three of Pelican, where it won the Editors’ Choice Award. You can view our print archive here.
In late February, the long-awaited Independent Analysis into Navy’s Surface Combatant Fleet (the Surface Fleet Review) was released. Although the full report is classified, we can glean considerable material from the executive summary alone. Based on the 2023 Defence Strategic Review and conducted in that year’s third quarter, the Surface Fleet Review recognises Australia’s “strategic circumstances” require its Defence Force to provide a greater deterrent to potential foes.
The Defence Strategic Review positions Australia staunchly within the United States’ Indo-Pacific alliance and affirms its stake in the “global rules-based order”, in contest with the ambitions of a disruptive China. The reviews express concern Australia has been caught in an end-of-history slumber, operating the oldest fleet in its history. They admit that our “10-year warning time” before major conflict has disappeared and that “regional military modernisation” has overtaken Australia’s sophisticated but small defence force.
To restore Australia’s naval capability, the Surface Fleet Review calls for an “enhanced lethality surface combatant fleet” in conjunction with the Defence Strategic Review‘s recommendation we acquire at least eight nuclear submarines. This includes nine of what the report calls “Tier 1” warships, with also the intention of acquiring six Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels (LOSVs), 11 “Tier 2” vessels, and 25 minor war vessels. There is an emphasis on meeting the Defence Strategic Review’s continuous ship-building goal and crewing the new fleet minimally.
What are navies for?
Much cultural material today showcases armies at war. Popular recent releases from Napoleon to All Quiet on the Western Front pay little heed to the most influential military factor upon history: sea power. When we consider the highest-profile wars in living memory – the Falklands conflict, the Second Gulf War or even the Russo-Ukrainian War – their maritime components are often neglected or reduced to secondary interests.
Until these modern times, however, island nations understood that the army is but “a projectile launched by the navy”, as Admiral Lord Fisher pithily observed. In a similar vein, the maritime strategist Sir Julian Corbett noted that “great issues between nations at war have always been decided […] either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and national life or else by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do,” and so it is the responsibility of our navy to fulfill its most important function; to secure and make use of command of the sea, or at the very least, prevent the enemy from doing so.
A nation achieves command of the sea when its fleet has control of maritime communications, that is, lines of passage on the sea. Command may cover the tiniest portion of these communications, or their entire extent. Command may be temporary – an enemy fleet could contest it – or permanent, typically when the enemy fleet has been eliminated or never existed in the first place. The primary purposes of command are easing commercial passage, enabling military expeditions, blocking those of the enemy, and defending against invasion. These same principles of command apply no matter our position in history. We can evaluate modern developments in naval procurement by drawing inferences from past events – for example, by examining how fleets with certain capabilities or design choices have historically performed.
The Surface Fleet Review explicitly centres maintaining “our sea lines of communication and maritime trade” when crafting its fleet design, implicitly drawing on a system of fleet constitution consisting of three categories: battleships, cruisers, and flotilla vessels.
Battleships secure command – they are designed to be as powerful as possible in battle, relieved of cruising duties so they may focus solely on this purpose. In modern times, few kinds of ship belong solely to this category. Historically it was occupied by the largest, most expensive vessels – the first-rate ship-of-the-line and the dreadnought – but today, the aircraft carrier exclusively claims the category. This type of warship is inefficient for any purpose other than battle, since it cannot be deployed in numbers and its characteristics are specially designed. However, since the most decisive way to secure command of the sea is to have your nation’s battlefleet destroy the enemy battlefleet, nations that depend upon the security of command find battleships a worthwhile expense.
Tier 1 vessels do not easily fit into the category of battleship, though they may be employed in this function alongside allied battlefleets by contributing Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells to fire missiles. This is called a ‘distributed lethality’ approach. It must be remembered, however, that every ship removed from its true function to join the battlefleet, is one less cruiser exercising command. This exercise is the ultimate purpose of both Tier 1 and 2 vessels; making the distinction only one of degree rather than kind. Tier 1 vessels are more capable than Tier 2, but are fewer and harder to produce. Their role includes defending communications from attack and attacking the enemy’s communications, which can be done simultaneously. This class must be numerous and accessible across the extent of communications so a nation can prevent enemy interference no matter its location.
Cruisers have been important to battlefleets across history; providing activities like scouting, screening or air defence to enhance the squadron’s action. However, to increase the individual fighting power of this class would be to decrease the power of that fleet to exercise control. For where a warship houses weapons, it cannot house sensors, and as vessels increase in size and price, fewer can be acquired and less sea can be controlled. Finally, the flotilla is designed not only for battle and command but also to fulfil tertiary duties like constabulary operations, search and rescue, and to a limited extent, sea control.
Our projected dependence on cruisers and the Surface Fleet Review’s pronouncement of the “need [for] a surface fleet of warships with greater capability in integrated air and missile defence, multi-domain strike and undersea warfare” plainly reveal what capabilities are necessary for Australia to control its communications. The possibilities of our naval strategy inextricably depend upon our fleet composition.
Fleet constitution: inferences we can draw about strategy
The most striking feature of the Surface Fleet Review is its projection for a future fleet mostly bereft of battle function. Both the Hobart and Hunter classes have few VLS cells compared to their American counterparts, the Arleigh Burke class. Indeed, the Hobart class has 48 cells while the future Hunter class frigate, also destined for the first tier and even bigger than the Hobart, has only 32 cells. However, the Hunter class can potentially be modified by increasing the number of cells to 96, and Naval Strike Missiles to 16, meeting or exceeding even the Arleigh Burke’s capabilities. While the Hunter would gain a stronger battle function, the trade-off is losing its mission bay and towed array sonar, severely limiting its anti-submarine and cruising capabilities which the larger American ship retains.
If the navy opted for this trade-off, considering the Hunter class is intended to number six, this would indicate a shift in the vessel’s purpose towards deployment in richer air, surface and land target environments where it will be more suited to anti-aircraft warfare and battlefleet actions, although remaining a cruiser at heart. Sacrificing the class’s state-of-the-art anti-submarine capabilities, however, would severely curtail the degree to which the navy may exercise sea control.
Possessing significant undersea warfare capabilities, both the Hunter and Hobart classes in their current iterations have a strong capacity for anti-submarine activities to safeguard commerce and military logistics vessels in high-risk areas. That said, these classes remain useful to a battlefleet, although battle would remain their secondary function. The future LOSVs, although details are sparse, appear to lack the cruising capabilities of the previous two classes. They would be neither an effective battleship, nor cruiser, for the same reasons that a cruiser is not an effective battleship and a battleship is not an effective cruiser. Current specifications denote 32 VLS cells and the same combat management system as the other tier 1 classes (Aegis baseline 9). The future LOSV will probably depend on American developments and become the physical embodiment of the distributed lethality approach. While not unprecedented – a similar concept has existed from at least the 15th century – its success remains to be seen.
With this clear focus on exercising sea-control, the review appears to admit that the Navy’s first priority will not be to secure command but rather to make use of the command presumably secured by allied fleets.
Is there an alternative?
While we might be naturally averse to the significant price tag, no other, cheaper alternatives could match or supersede the current projected capability. Prof. Hugh White, in his criticism of the AUKUS provisions, has floated the idea of acquiring aircraft if the nuclear submarine deal falls through; an alternative that may also be picked up by critics of the Surface Fleet Review. This would entail longer-range aircraft “cover[ing] the waters that would otherwise be patrolled by subs” or shorter-range aircraft contributing to a “shallower but denser defensive shield”. White later evokes the Corbettian notion of the defender’s superiority at sea.
While he is technically correct that the defence is an inherently stronger position than the offence, his plans make little provision for defending the objective – maritime communications – and reflect little of global naval experience. His preoccupation appears to be security from invasion, rather than protecting our country’s economic arteries.
Aircraft cannot assume the same role and activities of submarines, and likewise cannot fill the same role of the surface fleet. Even if they had the range, aircraft cannot simultaneously protect communications from air, surface, and undersea threats for the entire time that defence may be needed, unless they are procured in exhaustive numbers. In other words, the power aircraft have in exercising multidomain control is more limited than purpose-built ships.
Finally, White’s appeal to defensive power as justification overlooks that the plan outlined in the Surface Fleet Review is already defensive. Australia would fight any potential conflict for negative ends (i.e. to prevent something being taken from us) with little potential for offense by merely covering ally-secured lines of communication with a fleet that can do no more. White’s argument cuts costs without delivering proportionate capability. It is an economist’s solution, not a strategic solution.
Conclusion
Whether the government can remain committed to expanding the Navy as the Surface Fleet Review prescribes, whether Australia’s defence industry can meet the requirements of domestically producing and supporting such vessels, and whether the Defence Force can continue to crew these vessels are all mutually supportive conditions in guaranteeing the programme’s survival. While the fleet is projected to be the largest since World War Two, it is a contingent fleet; built envisioning the support of a larger navy and therefore limiting the range of policy choices available to the country. The outcome of the Surface Fleet Review does not mark a general policy shift, but a global shift – the security of maritime communications is increasingly a burden returning to countries that depend on them.
Australians should consider the expense of this programme as an economic insurance policy. If we choose not to purchase the policy and war breaks out in the Indo-Pacific, the damage caused by war-time collateral damage to our LNG exports to Japan, or coal to India, would have devastating consequences for our economy, even if we were a neutral party. By insuring our country against such adverse developments in our region, we are drastically increasing the chances of our costs being covered, and our economy weathering the dire straits.