Exercise SEA RAIDER 2022

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10/14/2022

In September 2022 the Australian Defence Force conducted Exercise SEA RAIDER across the coast of North Queensland.

Exercise SEA RAIDER 2022 certified the Amphibious Ready Unit and saw the Australian Amphibious Force train closely with the Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Adelaide, as well as a beach landing force comprising of infantry, armoured vehicles, aviation and logistics elements optimised for amphibious raids and assaults.

The Sea Series of exercises enhances joint interoperability of the Australian Army and Royal Australian Navy’s amphibious capabilities.

Credit: Australian Department of Defence

September 30, 2022.

Preparing for Major Change in Australian Defence: The September 2022 Williams Foundation Seminar

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Preparing for Major Change in Australian Defence: The September 2022 Williams Foundation Seminar

On September 28, 2022, the Williams Foundation hosted its latest seminar.

The focus was on the challenges which need to be addressed in making the biggest change to Australian defence seen in recent memory.

Rather than focusing on the away games and support for its major ally in such efforts, the focus was returning to the direct defence of Australia and what needs to be done with an adversary which can cut Australia off from global supplies.

As the new Chief of Navy put it:

“I believe it’s important to raise our eyes above the tactical level for a moment to reflect on why we build and employ an integrated force. And I say this because what we build and what we do with it matters only in so much as it enhances our national well-being.

“Our national well-being like all nations is derived from sustained economic prosperity, and peaceful coexistence with nations. And as a trading island nation connected to the global trading system by seabed cables, and maritime commerce, our economic well-being is almost exclusively enabled by the sea and by the seabed.

“Enablement though is not enough. Sustained economic prosperity has only been possible because these systems — freedom of navigation for commerce, and seabed infrastructure which enables our financial and strategic connectivity with the global trading system — have flourished in an environment of acceptance and adherence to the complex array of treaties, laws and conventions that for almost 80 years have been iterated, improved and almost universally supported.

“We call this the rules-based order, and we credit it with providing it with good order at sea in the collective interest of peace for all nations. Those of us who understand Australia derives its well-being from this system are alarmed that such norms are being challenged.

“We are concerned that the right to peaceful coexistence with other nations can no longer be assumed. As former minister for defence the honorable Kim Beazley stated in Perth last month, and I paraphrase, what right do we have to exist as a sovereign nation of only 25 million people occupying an island continent with room and natural resources the envy of the world?

“The answer is the rights conferred by adherence to the rules-based order. The very rights we have assumed to be enduring and beyond contest for decades. But that is no longer the case. This system is now being challenged and our government has commissioned the defence strategic review in response to these challenges.

“It is reasonable to conclude that that which cannot be assumed, must be guaranteed. And that is why the lethality and survivability of our defence forces is being re-examined. In this context, there is a direct and distinct nexus between the lethality and survivability of the integrated force and the survivability of our nation.

“And this relationship is recognized by our prime minister in the last month. The Honorable Anthony Albanese has stated that he sees the three key principles of our current security policy are to defend our territorial integrity, to protect our political sovereignty from external pressure and to promote Australia’s economic prosperity through a strong economy and resilient supply chains….

“Australia is a paradox. The geography which makes it difficult to invade and conquer Australia also makes Australia dependent upon seaborne trade. In other words, Australia might not be vulnerable to invasion, but the hostile power does not need to invade Australia to defeat Australia.”

Unpacking an understanding of the evolving relationship between the nation and the ADF is at the heart of reworking the defence of the nation in the years to come. The defence capabilities which have enabled the ADF to deliver significant but targeted warfighting capability will now be adapted and refocused on Australia’s direct defence and role in its region.

But how will this intersect with how national efforts unfold?

How will the necessary ADF mobilization potential intersect with the mobilization of the nation?

How will the ADF build out its workforce and be supported by the enhanced capability of domestic defence industry to support the ADF in a crisis or sustained conflict?

The pandemic as a prologue to the kind of macro crisis which faces Australia highlighted the need for more secure and stable supply chains.

How can Australia build resilient supply chains and with whom?

How to build the knowledge base with regard to what needs to be protected by such an effort and what can be left to the forces of globalization?

The fuel challenge is notably significant as the geopolitics of fuel and setting climate change standards without regard to geopolitical reality will only leave Australia and the liberal democracies vulnerable to energy supply extortion. It is difficult to miss what is going on in Europe and its relationship with Russia as a basic lesson in the relationship between geopolitics and energy.

And the question of Australia’s geography is a foundational point for understanding how the ADF will re-deploy and re-calibrate as the nation prioritizes infrastructure in the regions in Australia central to the projection of power from the continent to the first island chain of Australia and beyond. The importance of shaping enhanced capabilities for operations from the North of Australia was a frequent point made in various presentations to the seminar.

For the complete report, read the following:

The Australian Defence Force Faces Its Future in the Direct Defense of Australia

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on The Australian Defence Force Faces Its Future in the Direct Defense of Australia
10/11/2022

With the looming defence strategic review launched by the new Labour government, the Williams Foundation seminar held on September 28, 2022 looked at the challenges facing the ADF and the nation in shaping a defence policy shaped not by a peacetime mindset but one attuned to a global order in conflict.

Ramping Up U.S. Navy Combat Capabilities: The Case of the CMV-22B

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Ramping Up U.S. Navy Combat Capabilities: The Case of the CMV-22B

With a war raging in Ukraine and the threat of conflict over Taiwan, a shift from a peacetime mindset for the U.S. military and the defense ecosystem of the United States is crucial.

I have just returned from Australia, where the government has launched a strategic review built around the core belief that the warning time for war is much reduced and Australia faces significant threats from 21st-century authoritarian powers. This means the ADF must refocus and ramp up capabilities in the near to mid-term. How to do so in not as clear, when it is obvious from the supply shortfalls from the war in Ukraine that the West does not have the arsenal of democracy it once had.

For the U.S. Navy, there is no shortcut to building more hulls; but they can focus on enablers that provide enhanced lethality and survivability for the fleet.

The Navy has focused upon distributed maritime operations as a core way ahead to do both, but a distributed fleet in contested operations faces a significant sustainability and logistics challenge – how to ensure the fleet does not go “Winchester” on weapons and supplies during conflict?

The decision to shift from a fixed-wing aircraft to a tiltrotor one and to buy it in numbers designed for peacetime operations of the traditional carrier task forces provides a foundation for ramping up fleet support.

The CMV-22B, unlike the C-2A, is a fleet support asset, not simply a large deck carrier support asset.

The fleet seen as mobile bases – for this is what seabases are – faces a significant future as part of a distributed joint force to shape congruent strike capability for enhanced lethality. This means not only does the fleet need to operate differently in terms of its own distributed operations, but also as part of modular task forces that include air and ground elements in providing for the offensive-defensive enterprise which can hold adversaries at risk and prevail in conflict.

The CMV-22B can operate across the distributed combat chessboard.

And because the Marines have deployed the MV-22B for decades, there is a very robust operational and sustainment expertise already in the fleet. What this means now is as the CMV-22B works to deliver core carrier logistics needs, it can operate as well across the fleet. It can be maintained in large part on non-carrier vessels as well as the large-deck carriers.

With the challenge of supplying the fleet from military sealift command ships at sea in contested operations, the aircraft’s role expands to support emerging logistical needs. The CMV-22B has unique capabilities in terms of speed and range which allow it to fill in a combat support gap in such situations.

It would seem the U.S. Navy then needs to up its buy of its initial order of 48 CMV-22Bs (44 of the program of record 48 have been ordered to date) which was based on a peacetime deployment projection.

But there is a significant catch to such a prospect – the production line is facing a shutdown in the next couple of years.

When the production line shuts down, the significant supplier base will trim down as well to a level to sustain extant aircraft. And if the Navy were to decide after the shutdown to ramp up production, delays would be inevitable and costs significant to re-establish an effective supply chain and production line for a new build CMV-22B.

In other words, the Navy faces a key strategic decision.

Will it leave a very predictable contested logistics gap for the fleet?

Or will it close that gap by ramping up its buy of CMV-22Bs with a hot production line in place?

I had a chance to discuss these tradeoffs with Kurt Fuller, Vice President, and V-22 Program Director at Bell Textron Inc. He has been with the Osprey program from the beginning (January 2002 to be precise) and except for a couple of years working on another program, he is a key part of what the Marines have called from the beginning the “Osprey Nation.”

Any discussion of production and supply chain issues on a specific defense platform must be placed firmly into the understanding of the realities of supply chain shortfalls. In addition to the supply chain, we must consider more broadly the macro-economy and the shortfalls in the skill levels necessary to man those supply chains to ensure production success.

In other words, any consideration of disrupting production with a hope of starting again in a few years must consider a macro-economy in significant downturn and transition. The margin for maneuver in the supply chain area is much reduced compared to the pre-pandemic years.

Fuller noted that the current supply chain consists of “over 500 suppliers across 44 states and north of 27,000 employees.” Keeping this supply chain alive through new production CMV-22Bs also provides a lower cost for the sustainment of the extant fleet of over 400 operational aircraft. So, a ramp up in the buy of the Navy variant will have significant knock-on consequences for the entire operational fleet of Ospreys as well.

If there is a production line shut down, then suppliers downsize for the much lower demand side of sustainability of the extant fleet.

And some of these suppliers will leave the Osprey community, as will the small businesses which work with the Osprey production ecosystem,  and go elsewhere to look for profitable work. And along with that, there will be an atrophy of the learning skills already built into the Osprey supply chain and production process driven by having a hot production line.

With the current production process, according to Fuller, it takes three years from order to delivery for an Osprey. This means if the Navy needs the short to mid-term ramp up in fleet support capabilities which the CMV-22B represents then the future is now.

It also must be realized this is a complex aircraft and mastering production has been a historically unprecedented achievement. I can remember back to 2007 when I saw my first Ospreys on the tarmac at 2nd Marine Air Wing at New River Air Station, that in those early days keeping the Ospreys operational was challenging.

And when I visited Bell in Fort Worth at the request of Lt. General Trautman, then Deputy Commandant of Aviation, I remembered quite clearly the “supply management” center. On the wall were photos and drawings of parts and under those graphics was the number ordered and who was building them.

To go from that to the enterprise one can see today when visiting the factories that build out the Osprey is a significant statement about American industrial prowess.

But not leveraging this prowess while it is in place – and again it must be realized no other industrial nation has built such an aircraft – would represent a missed opportunity.

I asked Fuller about the challenge to turn an MV-22B into a CMV-22B.

The main difference between the two is with regard to its fuel tank and range. According to Fuller, there were “a number of nuanced changes or differences that were worked through. But we were able to design the modifications pretty rapidly. I think it is reflected in that the Navy has deployed their first CMV-22Bs within one year of receiving their first fleet aircraft.”

He added: “we took advantage of as much of the supply chain, the tooling, the manufacturing infrastructure and manufacturing flow already in place as we could in order to keep the cost down for the Navy and get the CMV-22B to the fleet rapidly.”

So how many Navy platforms have been operational within a year of delivery to the fleet?

And how many platforms does the Navy have that leverage a joint force extant capability?

The synergies between the Navy and the USMC in this area are obvious, in terms of operating and maintenance knowledge.

But as I have argued in my co-authored book on the maritime kill web, reimagining how to use amphibious ships is a key part of reworking fleet operations.

And certainly, the Osprey is part of that re-imaging.

And this means in part if a CMV-22B needs some maintenance help it does not have to land on a carrier or an ashore Navy maintenance facility. It certainly can land on ships that have historically been called amphibious ships as well.

In short, the CMV-22B brings to the fleet new sustainment capabilities, up to and including providing for contested logistics at distance, such as in the Pacific.

As Fuller put it: “The CMV-22B adds significant agility to how the Navy can deliver its sustainment efforts for the fleet.

“They can take supplies point-to-point versus going to a central hub and then distributing supplies to the rest of the fleet.”

Featured photos of the production line and of the CMV-22Bs are credited to Bell and to Mike Mason and Dayna Bayne.

Also, see the following:

The European Political Community: The First Meeting, October 2022

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on The European Political Community: The First Meeting, October 2022
10/09/2022

By Pierre Tran

Paris – U.K. prime minister Liz Truss was among the 44 political leaders from Europe attending Oct. 6 the first meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), a summit seeking to boost solidarity following the invasion of Ukraine ordered by the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.

Truss was expected to meet French president Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of that gathering of heads of government and state, organized by the Czech Republic and held in the rooms of Prague Castle.

That bilateral meeting may open the door between London and Paris in the wake of tension after the Brexit departure from the European Union.

Only Belarus and Russia were off the invitation list for the EPC meeting, while Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky was attending by video link.

Not only was Truss attending the high-level meeting, but she had also penned an article for the U.K. daily, The Times, pointing out that “Security, energy and migration are three of the most urgent priorities for the British people, so they are top of my agenda too.

“That’s why I am travelling to Prague for today’s European leaders’ meeting.”

Security was the first item on Truss’s list, and the fact she turned up for the meeting signalled there was a perceived need to open up lines to Europe after a hard-line Brexit deal sought by London.

The backers of the EPC had sent the message out: the meeting was about Europe, not the EU.

Macron has worked for some time to set up some sort of institutional link with the U.K. in the realm of defense, and while the French leader has been careful to stay low profile, it was clear EPC is largely due to his promotion of the concept of European strategic autonomy.

The French leader has sought to set up a European defense and security council, seen as needed to maintain ties with the U.K. after Brexit, and that seems to have morphed to gathering leaders to the EPC.

There are leaders of the 27 EU member states, and 17 other European nations at the EPC.

Putin’s armed bid to seize Ukraine raised the risk level, and Macron called for creation of a European Political Community on May 9, the day that Russia marks victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 with a Moscow military parade. Macron made clear there was a welcome for the U.K. to the EPC.

Over in the U.K., there have been media reports of doubts on Truss attending the EPC, on fears it might be the European Union by another name. Anything that smacked of the EU was to be avoided, went the Eurosceptic thinking.

That the U.K. was paying the price of Brexit in terms of political and economic isolation was not to be spoken of.

The U.K. has offered to play host to the next EPC meeting in six month’s time, but that may be held  in Moldova.

It was “too early to tell” whether Macron was friend or foe, Truss said when she was on a campaign to win votes from Conservative party members to be named prime minister.

The U.K. was “a friendly nation,” despite their leaders sometimes making mistakes in speeches on the soapbox, Macron said in response to Truss, adding that Britain was a strong ally for France.

That could be seen as something of a warm and fuzzy statement in view of London’s key role in helping Australia curtail French work on building a diesel-electric attack submarine for the Australian navy, and to opt for a nuclear-powered boat from the AUKUS alliance between Australia, U.K. and the U.S.

Truss won that leadership contest and moved into Downing Street. But public criticism and lack of support from Conservative members of parliament have just forced her to back down on a key item in a mini budget, namely a tax cut for the most wealthy, at a time when those on modest incomes are being hit by inflation and soaring energy prices.

A lack of funding details in the mini-budget led to a punitive plunge of the pound against the dollar and euro, and forced the Bank of England to announce an emergency fund to support government-issued bonds. The central bank on Threadneedle Street had to set up that fund in response to a massive sale of gilts in response to the mini budget, which imperilled pension funds.

Meanwhile, Germany will also be attending the EPC, at a time when Berlin is looking to take up a larger role in response to the Russian invasion. There is a view that Joe Biden may be in office now, but who is to say who will be the next U.S. president, and whether there will be a policy switch.

That is seen as calling for Germany, which may be a dedicated Nato partner, but also must pay close attention to building Europe. 

The featured graphic: Photo 70137316 © Juan Moyano | Dreamstime.com

The Evolving Strategic Environment and Its Impact on the ADF

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on The Evolving Strategic Environment and Its Impact on the ADF
10/07/2022

By Robbin Laird

The launch point for the Williams Foundation Seminar held on September 28, 2022 was the presentation of Dr. Alan Dupont.

Dupont provided a comprehensive examination of how fluid and dynamic that environment was for Australia and the liberal democracies. He underscored that several crises were happening at the same time, and that the demand side on nations of having to deal with multiple crises at the same time presented an overload situation.

For Australia, this meant that its economy was challenged by several developments at the same time. The pandemic exposed the supply chain vulnerabilities of an island continent. The globalization disruption and re-direction meant that the core relationship between China and Australia which has been part of Australia’s prosperity was significantly undercut. The war in Ukraine posed both supply chain disruptions, economic downturns and brought back dramatically the threat of global conflict.

For the nation, Dupont underscored that defence and security were clearly not simply an ADF challenge or to be funded simply by defence budgetary requirements. How to build more secure supply chains? How would doing so disrupt the trade order and the global WTO rules? How to deal with the energy crisis? How to ensure energy supply? How will Australia deal with coal and nuclear energy issues?

The broader point was simply that defence was no longer the province of the professional ADF; the global crises posed challenges beyond the remit of a professional force like the ADF could deal with.

And what is required was shifting from a peacetime mindset to one which understood the cascading challenges to Australian sovereignty and to the nation.

The Chinese challenge to the region is broad based. It is military, it is commercial, it is political, and it is about comprehensive security challenges, such as cyber intrusion and actions like its security pact with the Solomon Islands. Just deal with this challenge alone provided the need for a comprehensive rethink concerning how Australia dealt with its security and defence challenges.

This requires a geographic shift for the ADF.

This is how Dupont put it on a piece published in The Australian shortly after the seminar:

“Our posture is far from ideal. There is an imbalance between where our forces are and where they need to be. Most of the ADF is comfortably located in our major southern cities, along with their equipment and supporting infrastructure and enablers. But the main threats are to our north. Northern Australia is poorly defended and doesn’t have sufficient capacity to support enhanced ADF and allied deployments into the western Pacific, the most likely conflict arena.

“None of the navy’s major fleet units are based in the north. People’s Liberation Army intelligence collection and war-fighting ships patrolling the Timor, Arafura and Coral seas know our frigates and destroyers will take days to reach them from their bases in Perth and Sydney. The only significant naval ships in Darwin are patrol boats, which are used primarily for constab­ulary tasks. There is no air-defence system in northern Austral­ia able to protect vital oil, gas and military installations from missile attack.”

In other words, the more specific military challenges require Australia to focus on how to use its geography to its and to allied advantage. This means finding ways to work in Western to Northern Australia to Australia’s first island chain. Dupont both in his presentation and in the interview he had with John Blackburn and me a few days after the seminar, highlighted the importance of leveraging the Northern Territory.

But to do so he argued that innovative new ways to raise capital for infrastructure development was required. Notably, he highlighted the importance of public and private partnerships to do so.

Dupon also underscored that shaping new defense and security infrastructure and training facilities was an important opportunity to involve core allies of Australia, notably the United States, Japan and South Korea, in involvement in building out the defense infrastructure in the Australian continent and find ways to shape more effective integrated training at the same time.

It should be noted that building 21st century basing involves force mobility, so the question of how one builds defense infrastructure in this area involves as well significant innovation regarding basing mobility and shaping both Australian and allied capabilities for what has come to be called agile combat employment. Former PACAF chief Hawk Carlisle referred to this dynamic as “places not bases.”

During the day, other presenters weighed in with regard to how the evolving environment changed the defence dynamic. For many of the speakers, the focus on defence from the continent to the first island chain required a major focus on how to reset the force for this primary mission set. This meant force mobility and working tradeoffs between enhanced hardening of bases and base mobility.

With regard to base protection, what would be the role of active and passive defense? How might the Air Force and Army work more closely to deliver more survivable distributed force basing? What kind of mobile basing was feasible? What role for seabasing in relationship to the force mobility dynamic? What role might civilian assets, such as merchant marine assets might play in such an effort?

Longer range strike has been identified a key element of the building out of Australian defence capabilities. In 2018, the Williams Foundation held a seminar which directly dealt with the need for shaping longer range strike for the force. Air Marshal (Retired) Brown had summarized a key aspect of that seminar as follows: “I think we need a serious look within our focus on shaping industry that both meets Australia’s needs as well as those of key allies in the missile or strike areas.

“We build ammunition and general-purpose bombs in Australia, but we have never taken that forward into a 21st century approach to missiles and related systems. We should rethink this aspect of our approach. There are plenty examples of success in arms exports; there is no reason we cannot do so in the weapons area, for example.”

Since that time, the Australian government has committed itself to do so, but given the threat envelope and the affordability challenges, how best to build out long range strike for the ADF? How to manage targeting tradeoffs? At what range does the ADF need to be able to strike an adversary? How does the ADF manage risks in the targeting areas in terms of getting a crisis management impact without leaving the Australian strike inventory at perilously low levels?

How does Australia build a capability with allies in which a range of strike weapons could be built, stockpiled and used in a crisis? How to get a more affordable inventory of weapons?

It was not mentioned in the seminar, but the coming of directed energy weapons to capital ships could have a significant impact on the deployed distributed force and deliver enhanced integrated lethality and survivability at the same time. For example, the new Hunter class frigates could deliver such a capability if so configured.

And longer range strike is not simply kinetic. What role can cyber offensive operations play in disrupting Chinese military operaitons, supply chains and Chinese domestic control and manufacturing capabilities?

In other words, the evolving strategic environment and the impact of multiple crises is setting in motion in Australia the biggest change in defence seen in recent years.

And in dealing with this challenge, the ADF re-set will not be defined by the acquisition of big new weapons programs, but by taking the current force, re-setting it, re-deploying it and building out from this effort to force design modernization defined by the gaps identified and the needs which can be met within the short-to-midterm rather than envisaging a force in 2030 or 2040 in abstract war-gaming terms.

And if it is only left to the ADF and what the defence budget can fund, the defence and security re-set will fall far short.

The featured graphic is a slide from the presentation to the seminar by Dr. Dupont.

See also the following:

The Scene Setting for the Next Phase of ADF Development: The Williams Foundation Seminar, September 2022