Looking Back at RIMPAC 2018: The Perspective of Air Commodore Craig Heap

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08/29/2018

By Robbin Laird

During my five years of visits to Australia, I have had the opportunity to meet with and to talk with Air Commodore Heap several times.

As the Commander of the Air Force’s Surveillance Response Group, Air Commodore Heap has had the challenge of leading one of the most diverse, but critical groups in Air Force as the ADF works toward maximizing the integration of its capabilities while  transforming into a 5thGeneration Air force.

During the last visit earlier this year, we had the chance to discuss a number of the innovations being worked by Air Force within the ADF and its Coalition partners. Notably, Air Force is bringing on the P-8A/Triton dyad. During the current visit I have had the chance to revisit RAAF Base Edinburgh and get an update on the P-8A program as well.

Obviously, bringing on the P-8/Triton dyad highlights the importance of the US Navy and its working relationships with Air Force, and the recent engagement in RIMPAC 2018 certainly added to that experience as well.

In RIMPAC 2018, Air Commodore Heap was the Combined Forces Air Component Commander, of an Australian-led CAOC within the exercise.

The Royal Australian Navy described RIMPAC 2018 as follows:

Exercise Rim of the Pacific 2018 (RIMPAC 2018) is a major United States Pacific Fleet biennial combined exercise to strengthen international maritime partnerships, enhance interoperability and improve the readiness of participating forces for a wide range of potential operations.

The multinational activity, held from 27 June to 2 August 2018 in Hawaii and off the coast of California, is the world’s largest maritime exercise and includes 47 surface ships, five submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel from 25 countries; Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam.

The Australian Defence Force has sent four surface ships, HMA Ships Adelaide, Success, Toowoomba, Melbourne, a submarine, HMAS Rankin, one P-8A Poseidon aircraft and more than 1,600 personnel including an amphibious landing force from 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.

ADF personnel will exercise across a broad spectrum of scenarios from humanitarian assistance and disaster response to maritime security operations, sea control and complex war fighting. Participating personnel and assets will conduct gunnery, missile, anti-submarine, and air-defence exercises, as well as maritime interdiction and vessel boardings, explosive ordnance disposal, diving and salvage operations, mine clearance operations and an amphibious landing.

 For Air Commodore Heap, this was the fifth RIMPAC exercise in which he has participated.

“This is the 26thRIMPAC exercise which has been held to date, which continues to be the largest Maritime exercise conducted anywhere”.

“There were 25,000 people, 46 warships, 200 aircraft, from 25 nations, engaged over a period of six weeks, in a series of phases.

“The initial phase involved getting to  meet each other at all levels, building relationships and discussing capabilities during the initial in port harbor phase.

“The Exercise then moved onto the Force Integration Training and Advanced Force Integration training, where a schedule of tactical events of increasing complexity, under the water, on the water, on land and in the air provided the basis for a four-day freeplay phase; all outstanding opportunities to improve tactical skills, individually as units and collectively as Task Groups,  while building interoperability with all the multi-national participants.”

“And the Exercise operated across full the spectrum of operations – from Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR), to Counter Piracy, Maritime Interdiction, Counter Insurgency and Multi Domain Advanced Warfighting.

“There was a HADR component lead by a Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force 2-Star, RADM Hideyuki Oban. This ran for two weeks and involved integrating a range of capabilities from the local civilian Hawaiian emergency services to some high end military capabilities.

“There was a counter-insurgency component to the exercise scenario, which was overlaid with the high-end maritime warfight at sea.

“The heart of the Exercise was is about building multi-national relationships, which improved understanding, leading to better cooperation and trust in a crisis, which will enable all participants to work together more effectively in the future on any operation.

Question: What was your specific role in RIMPAC 2018?

Air Commodore Heap: I was the Combined Forces Air Component Commander or CFACC.

“This meant that I led a multi-national team with the Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC), to safely and efficiently command land based assets under my control, while coordinate safely and effectively, all air assets, including the significant ship-based Carrier Strike Group and land-based Maritime Patrol and Response capabilities.

” Overall we safely executed 3245 sorties over 23 days from 8th through to  31tJuly. Obviously that entailed a lot of liaison and coordination from both the safety and training effectiveness points of view.

“During the exercise, we had Marine Corps F-35s, USAF F-22s and F-15s involved as well as a significant multi-national P-8 and P-3 maritime patrol force.  Airborne tankers of various sorts supported the air refuelable assets, in addition to rotary wing, MV-22 Ospreys and other unmanned aerial vehicles such as the Multi-Domain Task Forces Grey Eagles.”

“I would mention the US Army’s First Corps participation as the lead for the Multi-Domain Task Force, added another contemporary dimension to the capability options available to achieve effects at sea, in port or over land. Essentially, they were experimenting with concepts to potentially reshape their force to support the tactical maritime battle.

“Another highly beneficial component of RIMPAC  was the live fire program which was conducted on the Pacific Missile Range Facility, (PMRF) north-west of Kaui. This included two days when specially prepared hulks were made available by the US as targets for a range of live firings by various particpants.

“This included the successful first firing by an RAAF P-8A of a Harpoon anti-ship missile against a hulk, the Ex USS Racine.

RAAF Poseidon’s First Strike  from SldInfo.com on Vimeo.

Question: Your P-8s were clearly at the Exercise, even though they were not under your command in your cAir Component Commander role.

How did they operate with the other P-8s, namely the USN and Indian Navy P-8s?

Air Commodore Heap: Seamlessly.

“We demonstrated  the  clear capability for the US and Australian Mobile Tactical Operations Centres to work closely together, optimizing synergies.

“The Indian Navy P-8’s were operated from the same tarmac at Hickham, with their operations element collocated next to the USN and RAAF Mobile tactical Operations centre.

“All P-8 teams ended up working very well with each other in the tactical operations space.

“The Indian Navy aircrew and maintenance personnel were highly professional and clearly comfortable with advanced airborne ASW concepts as well.

“RIMPAC also provided a rare opportunity to exercise significant multi-national airborne MPRA assets, P-8s and P-3 from the US, Australia, India, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, in the conduct of Theatre ASW, (TASW).

“The P-8s in particular  are a force multiplier in this piece, the overall objective of which is to deny or deter an adversary submarine force from affecting our friendly forces.

“The TASW element focused upon being able to get ahead of our sea-based task groups, in accordance with the plan or tactical scheme of manœuvre, in order to search an area, and providing greater assurance that any submarine threat would be deterred or degraded from offensive operations against our friendly surface forces.

“This allowed the surface task force commanders to focus on the closer and immediate self defence of their own task forces.

“What Theater ASW provides is a centralised command construct, with assets to focus beyond the immediate and close defense of surface task forces; shaping the environment to provide decisive freedom of manœuvre, to prosecute underwater threats at greater distance and range.

“And that is clearly where the P-8s and Tritons come in as major players in the Theater ASW concept.

“As the Australian National Commander as well for the Exercise, I was also extremely proud and impressed by HMAS Adelaide and the 2ndRoyal Australian Regiments performance as part of the RAN led CTF176 Expeditionary Strike Group.

“Commodore Ivan Ingham, as CTF176,  and the entire ADF team also demonstrated that the ADF’s amphibious capability continues to perform, and indeed grow, providing the Australian government with a broader range of options across the spectrum of operations, from HADR to classical warfighting.”

In closing, Air Commodore Heap reiterated the aims of RIMPAC: relationship building, leading to understanding, translating to cooperation and trust.

He stated, that, “… the USN Commander of 3rdFleet and Commander Combined Task Force VADM Alexander insightfully stated in the early stages of RIMPAC planning that, ‘you cannot surge trust’.

“One of the truly great outcomes of RIMPAC 18 was that there was clearly a bunch of trust developed between RIMPAC partners which was allowed to begin surging due to their shared RIMPAC experience at every level; a key output from a great exercise.”

Appendix: Air Commodore Heap mentioned the US Army’s involvement in RIMPAC 2018 with their Multi-Doman task force. 

The article below published by the US Army provides more detail of this engagement:

KEKAHA, Hawaii — “Attention in the TAC! Target is Colorado.”

The U.S. Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force Tactical Command Post, or MDTF TAC, operating at the Pacific Missile Range Facility here is filled with energy and tension.

Sweat drips down the faces of the MDTF Soldiers as they process the fire mission, “Colorado,” to the 17th Field Artillery Brigade’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, crews. Positioned quietly, the Soldiers eagerly await the loud, booming sound of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force firing of a surface-to-ship missile alongside the HIMARS.

The long-range artillery systems fire … then comes silence. Soldiers crowd around the television screen in the TAC as they watch the feed provided by the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade’s unmanned aerial system, an MQ-1C Gray Eagle, to see if the round will impact the target. The target is a decommissioned naval vessel also known as ex-USS Racine … it’s a good hit!

The 17th Field Artillery Brigade, alongside the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, conducted its first live-fire exercise here, July 12, during the biennial Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, exercise.

The Naval Strike Missile was the first to launch as a land-based asset. Following the missile, Apache AH-64E helicopters, assigned to the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade and 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, fired upon the ex-USS Racine. Lastly, two surface-to-ship missiles from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force launched missiles in conjunction with the 17th Field Artillery Brigade HIMARS system.

“People are wondering why are we participating in RIMPAC,” said U.S. Army Col. Chris Wendland, commander of the 17th Field Artillery Brigade and MDTF. “We are here to support the Navy and our other services, to show them what the U.S. Army’s MDTF can provide to the fight.”

RIMPAC is the world’s largest international maritime exercise. It features 25 nations and is typically focused on naval operations. This year, however, U.S. Army ground forces had a role in the exercise for the first time as the MDTF.

“We are an asset the Navy and our joint services can utilize,” said Wendland. “What our maritime adversaries conducting this exercise are looking for are other ships or submarines as threats. What they are not looking for is the Multi-Domain Task Force, our ground forces, who can acquire the target and fire upon it using land-based surface-to-ship missiles, then be able to move freely.”

U.S. Army Pacific designated the 17th Field Artillery Brigade, a subordinate unit under America’s I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, as the pilot program for the MDTF concept.

“We looked across the U.S. Army and selected the best assets and leaders to build an organization that can fight in all domains,” said U.S. Army Gen. Robert Brown, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, during a brief to senior leaders before the live-fire event.

The concept of MDTF brings together various capabilities to address peer- or near-peer threats that could deny access to U.S. and coalition forces in maritime, land, air, and space domains. The MDTF integrates its assets to overcome adversary anti-access and air-denial through integration and synchronization of a variety of capabilities. These capabilities include unmanned surveillance assets, aviation, long-range artillery, air defense, electronic warfare, cyber, and space assets.

“We want to leverage and learn what our joint services utilize, as well as integrate our capabilities as a Multi-Domain Task Force into their planning efforts,” explained Wendland. “Our goal is to create joint interoperability to be able to deter our adversaries across all domains.”

RIMPAC has provided the MDTF and the U.S. Army with many “first” opportunities. This is the first time the 17th Field Artillery Brigade has worked under a naval commander instead of providing long-range artillery for I Corps during a military exercise; the first flight for 25th Combat Aviation Brigade’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle in Hawaii as a capability of the MDTF; and the first time using a distributed line-of-sight battle management network, knows as Link 16, with joint forces outside of the brigade.

The exercise is a tough, realistic training for joint and combined forces to deter and defeat aggression by major powers across all domains and levels of conflict in order to build multi domain concepts.

The 17th Field Artillery Brigade will continue to improve multi-domain concepts within the next year as it executes military exercises in Guam and Japan as the pilot program of the U.S. Army’s MDTF.

Twenty-five nations, 46 ships, five submarines, and about 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel are participating in RIMPAC from June 27 to Aug. 2 in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California. The world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC provides a unique training opportunity while fostering and sustaining cooperative relationships among participants critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security of the world’s oceans. RIMPAC 2018 is the 26th exercise in the series that began in 1971.

The above article was written by Capt. Rachael Jeffcoat and published July 23, 2018.

 

Shaping Enhanced Sovereign Options: Leveraging the Integrated Force Building Process

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Shaping Enhanced Sovereign Options: Leveraging the Integrated Force Building Process
08/28/2018

By Robbin Laird

The Williams Foundation has held a series of seminars over the past few years, which have progressively looked at the transformation of the Royal Australian Air Force and to the shaping of cross-modernizing Australian Defence Force.  Referred to overall as building a fifth generation force, the focus has been upon how force integration can be enhanced in the process of Air Force, Army and Navy modernization.

The core point is that an integrated force can provide a more effective impact for what their force can achieve as well as to enhance its deterrent impacts.

But with the growing nature of the challenges in the region, notably from the North of longer range strike and systems able to operate against Australia, what needs to be woven into the force integration process to give the Australian government a wider range of sovereign options?

While the main thrust of Australian investments is upon force integration, the sovereignty focus is very clear but how best to bring a more decisive edge to the force and give it greater reach is not.

Sovereignty is clearly evident in the shipbuilding program where Australia is tapping the United States, Britain and France to shape a way ahead in building the new Australian Navy. With the United States, a key emphasis is commonality with regard to combat systems and a continuing recognition of the key role working with the United States military in the region really is for the operational approaches of the Australian forces themselves.

Both Britain and France present interesting cases of sovereign emphasis by the most significant military powers within Europe.  For the Brits, the shipbuilding relationship is a key part of preparing for the post-Brexit process, which is rooted in the expression of sovereignty.  For the French, de Gaulle invented the French approach to sovereignty in defense within NATO by building the French nuclear deterrent.

It is clear that the working relationship with the United States, Britain and France is a work in progress while Australia crafts its way forward in shaping its 21stcentury defense force and its approach to crisis management.

And in the background of this strategic reconfiguration is the future of Japanese security and defense policy in the region and how Japan will build its forces and invest in defense industry for the next two decades.

It is clear that United States remains the core partner for these states; but reconfiguration of those relationships is clearly under way.

The latest Williams Seminar focused on discussing the idea of building an independent strike capability Australia, one that builds upon or leverages the integrated force building process?

What should Australia do faced with nuclear threats in the region?

What should Australia do with the Chinese building out strike capabilities clearly capable of striking Australian operational forces and evolving capabilities for greater reach into the continent itself?

The seminar was held on August 23, 2018, and a report will follow.  The main thrust of the seminar was to discuss the changing strategic environment and considerations for what Australia might do next.

It was less focused on the types of systems or capabilities Australia might acquire and more focused on cutting through the Australian strategic culture to put independent options onto the table.

Geoff Brown Williams Seminar August 2018

After the seminar, I sat down with Air Marshal (Retired) Geoff Brown, Chairman of the Williams Foundation, to discuss the seminar and the way ahead for the ADF.

Question: How do you view the way ahead with regard to the evolution of the ADF to provide a wider range of sovereign options?

Air Marshal (Retired) Brown: The Defence White Paper of 2016 guides the current modernization effort. It provided a coherent framework for force modernization.

But a lot has changed since then and we need to rethink the strategic guidance and the shape some additional force modernization elements.

The future is much more unpredictable. With Trump, we have seen a honest statement of the priority of American interests.  We need to take account of the priority, which America will place, on its interests when we go forward. And to be clear, this is not simply Trump, but the reality of what powers will do in an Alliance as well.

We need a much more sovereign approach to defense.

That’s not saying we should walk away, or not contribute to or benefit from the American alliance. But, we’ve got to be much more prepared to be able to act on our own in certain circumstances.

And by being able to do so, we will be a better Alliance partner as well,

Question: There clearly is the nature of the changing threat to Australia as well, notably in terms of North Korean nuclear weapons and the Chinese pushing their capabilities out into the Pacific and expanding their regional presence as well.

 How do you view this part of the equation of the need for greater sovereignty?

Air Marshal (Retired) Brown: We need to have a greater capability to hold competitors at risk at greater range and distance.

The North Korean case shows that nuclear weapons are not going away any time soon. The Chinese have clearly focused on significant investments in longer range strike.

This means as we do the next defense review, we need to focus on options which can allow us to deal directly wit these challenges and to shape how we do so within the reworking of the relationship with our allies going forward.

We need a major reset building upon the force integration process which we have set in motion.

Do Japan or South Korea go nuclear?

We need to have a realistic discussion of the nuclear impact on our defense policy as well.

What makes sense to do?

And how to do it?

Question: The question of the reach of Australian forces in a conventional sense also raises the question of the relationship between Australian territory, notably NW and Western Australia and the evolution of your defense forces?

 How does the territorial dimension come back into play?

Air Marshal (Retired) Brown: Clearly, we need to look at ways to enhance our force mobility and to build out both active defense and long range conventional strike in our territories closest to the areas of operational interest, both ours and the competitors.

The Australian Army is focusing in part in the evolution of fires both defensive and offensive, but we need a bigger commitment on this side of the force and with longer range, which could operate from our own territory as well as being projected forward outside of Australia.

Question: How does the strategic shift in Australian industry fit into this calculus of enhanced sovereignty?

 Air Marshal (Retired) Brown: It is crucial.

As you noted, the shipbuilding side of industry is clearly about sovereignty and we need to look to expand sovereignty in the strike domain as well.

A key area going forward clearly should be in the missile development, build and sustainment area, where we can clearly build out our own capabilities in relationship with core allies also interested in this process.

And by flying the F-35 with a number of partner nations, there clearly is an opportunity to build out this capability as well.

Question: I assume if you are interested in longer range strike you would be looking to something in the range of a 2,000 mile missile but given the focus on industry and working with allies, wouldn’t a modular build process make the most sense, where you can build various ranges into your missile production based on modularity?

Air Marshal (Retired) Brown: That would make sense.

But 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 21stcentury 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 can not do so in the weapons area, for example.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Defense of Australia: Looking Back and Leaning Forward

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on The Defense of Australia: Looking Back and Leaning Forward
08/26/2018

By Robbin Laird

Sydney, Australia

During my August 2018 visit to Australia, I had a chance to meet with and discuss the question of the evolving approach to the defense of Australia with a member of the Australian National University, Andrew Carr.

Dr. Carr is working towards the conclusion of his forthcoming book on the defense of Australia and has looked back to identify key themes and key points in the evolution of policy over the post World War II period.

And he has done so with an eye with regard to the next phase of the evolution of Australian defense policy, one which is very likely to feature greater emphasis on Australian sovereignty and continuing the modernization of the ADF with this in mind.

Question: How would you describe the focus of your book?

Dr. Carr: It’s an effort to think through the question: “How do you actually defend a continent and land mass as large as the Australian continent?”

We have a very large landmass with a relatively small population.

“Throughout most of our history we have been part of a larger defense effort, first with regard to the British Empire, and then working with the Americans during and after World War 2.

Australians often see themselves as having to go overseas to achieve their security.

“This book addresses the importance for us to address seriously defense in our immediate region and to shape concrete ways that the continent can work strategically for us.

“In the book, I address how thinking about the continent and its role in defense has changed over time.

“With the Japanese in World War II, their primary interest in Australia was denying its use by the Americans.  During the War Prime Minister Curtin started focusing on a strategy of holding the islands to our north in the post-War period.  The British were on the way out, the Cold War was not evident, and the United States, although deeply engaged during World War II, was expected to go back to its post-World War I turtle strategy.

“Curtin’s focus was on preparing for Australia to play a key role with regional allies in taking responsibility for our part of the world around Australia and New Zealand and the South Pacific.

“There was a clear desire to carve out more capabilities for Australian sovereignty and independence as the post World War II period approached.

“But they like many later government’s did not want to pay for a force that could achieve the large task they had set.

“But it was not until the Menzies Government invested in the F-111, that we saw a commitment to resources to enhance sovereignty in the region.

“In the early 1960s, the Menzies Government invested in range of new strike capabilities. The F-111 is ordered at that point. They ordered the Oberon submarines. They make significant upgrades to the frigates. There is a significant increase in defense spending.”

Question: I assume that it was the emergence of the Indonesian threat in the 1970s, which was the next impetus to thinking about Australian defense capabilities in support of Australian interests?

Dr.. Carr: The Indonesian dynamic was a key trigger point, or to be specific Jakarta’s policy of Konfrontasi, including threats to Papua New Guinea.

“This meant that Australia had to defend against a direct threat to the then territory of Australia.

“Most of the history of the Australian military has been three independent services up to 1976. Each was very good at operating with their sister services overseas. That’s how they fought WWI and WWII, and that’s how they saw themselves.

“After 1976, you get this idea of an actual Australian defense force as a single, integrated force. Still keeps its three services, unlike Canada, but sees itself as having one larger mission, which is defending Australian interests.

“The new ADF still often wants to go back overseas, and do coalition operations, but much more as a larger unified national service, rather than being plug and play single service efforts within coalition operations.

“These efforts will lead eventually to the Defense of Australia doctrine. This process starts in the early 1970s but it is not until the mid-1980s, that greater clarity is achieved with regard to how to shape a more integrated force in service of the broader defense of Australia effort.

“But with the end of the Cold War, and the focus on global peacekeeping operations, and expeditionary engagement with coalition operations, the ADF as an integrated force for the sovereign defense of Australia does not really materialize.

“We clearly are focused upon shaping an integrated force which de facto clearly can serve sovereign purposes, but where do we take the force?

“With the kind of direct threats which a China or Indonesia can pose directly against the Australian continent, what should and could Australia do to defend the continent directly?

“This is the big question facing Australian defense in the period ahead.”

Question: You have worked what you see as key elements of the past Australian approach, which are part of the fabric of Australian defense going forward as the focus on the defense of continental Australia proceeds in the new strategic situation.

What are these basic key elements, which you have identified?

Dr. Carr: The first is that the threat emerges from the North; but our population lives in the East and South. This leads to a key challenge of geography, namely how to work the Australian geography to deal with a threat from the North?

“We are a country that doesn’t quite understand its geography in part because of where the people are clustered, and yet, Northern and Western Australia provide some of the most important geography in a defense sense.

“The second is that Australia is both a continent and an island. This reality goes to the fundamental division between the Army and Navy. A lot of Australian defense thinking actually came from the British, not just because of the kind of the cultural history, but as an island that is offshore from a heavily populated continent.

“The Australian Army thinks of itself in expeditionary terms and by that not operating on Australian soil but in expeditionary operations with allies.  How might this change with a return to considerations of leveraging Australian geography to defend the continent from threats to the North?

“The third is that the defense of Australia can not begin with a narrow continental or fortress Australia focus. It doesn’t make sense to simply line up people and give them a rifle and tell them to stand on the beach and protect the continent at that point.

“Geography matters, but you have to have at least some understanding of what’s going on beyond your borders. The great fear has always been a hostile major power having control of an island base, or some significant piece of territory just off the Australian continent that can directly threaten the continent.

“The fourth is that Australia’s greatest security threat depends on how valuable it is to its allies. In WWII, the Japanese weren’t concerned by the Australian behavior. They saw us as too small, too irrelevant, not a significant security threat.

“But, because our continent was very valuable to the Americans, in trying to respond to their sphere of influence efforts, it then became attractive to the Japanese.

“I think this is something the Australians don’t always understand, when they think about alliance relationships.

“It’s not just about Australia and America as separate countries with distinct capabilities, but it’s also about the nature of the Australian continent and its significance within the region.

“I think this will probably play out again in the future.

“The Chinese won’t see Australians as a substantial direct threat, but they will see the Australian continent as substantial base for projecting power by Australia in an allied context.”

Dr. Laird is a Research Fellow of the Williams Foundation, Canberra, Australia 

It must be remembered that the Japanese followed up their attack on Pearl Harbor a few months later with virtually the same force in a major attack on Darwin in the Northern Territories.

The featured photo highlights that attack and is credited to the RAAF.

An article by Damien Murphy published on February 18, 2017 in the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted the anniversary of the attacks brought and brought back the memory of what a threat from the North looks like to the continent:

Australia marks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin on Sunday but for generations the country was kept in the dark about the true dimensions of the Japanese attack.

At 9.58am on February 19, 1942, just four days after the supposedly impregnable British garrison in Singapore collapsed, Japanese bombers escorted by Zero fighters appeared in the skies above Darwin.

The first wave attacked the CBD and harbour infrastructure, and sank 11 ships either at anchor or berthed. A second wave came for the RAAF base.

By noon, 243 people – including 53 civilians – were dead, 400 wounded. The wharf was cut in two, 30 aircraft were destroyed and the post office levelled; postmaster Hurtle Bald, his wife Alice, daughter Iris and six post office workers died when a bomb hit their slit trench.

The dead were buried in temporary graves at Vestys Beach near the meatworks. Later, their bodies were transferred to the Adelaide River Cemetery where they lie today.

Tokyo had no intention of invading – Japanese army leaders knew they lacked the capacity – but nobody fully informed the Australian people.

There was a brief report in The Age on February 20, but Prime Minister John Curtin subsequently banned media reports on the Darwin bombing.

“Unauthorised reports of this nature cause needless anxiety, especially to wives and children who have been evacuated,” Mr Curtin said in a memo to the Advisory War Council…..

The Darwin area took the brunt of the attacks, with the first in February and the last on November 12, 1943.

In between, there were scores of strikes on airstrips strung along the Stuart Highway, Batchelor, Adelaide River, Katherine and on Milingimbi in Arnhem Land.

Small towns and missions along the West Australian coast – Broome (where many died when flying boats with women and children evacuated from Java were sitting ducks as the Zeroes arrived), Derby, Port Hedland, Onslow and Wyndham, sustained a handful of raids.

In the east, Townsville – a key Australian and US army staging base – was hit four times, and the airstrip on Horn Island in the Torres Strait was bombed once. Inexplicably, so, too, was a sugar farm near Mossman in far north Queensland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doing the European Dance: Putin and the Next Stage of European Development

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Doing the European Dance: Putin and the Next Stage of European Development
08/24/2018

By Robbin Laird

Russia under Putin has been working hard his strategic agenda with regard to the West. At the heart of this strategy has been to reduce the direct threat to Russia posed by NATO and to stop NATO expansion in its tracks.

He has been more successful with the second than the first.

But with the European integration effort in question, with Brexit challenging the foundations of the way ahead for Europe both in terms of its domestic and foreign policy development, Putin has not been sitting idly by and waiting for a outcome favorable to his interests.

He clearly has been playing off President Trump’s approach to public diplomacy in Europe, which has been to challenge the European integration agenda and with his Article V NATO attacks suggesting the President has his own list of allies worthy of being defended which will we only really learn what his internal list is in a crisis.

This kind of ambiguity is exactly what Putin savors as it allows him maneuvering room to suggest that there are alternatives to collective defense, namely the kind of bilateralism President Trump himself favors.

And bilateralism is clearly a key tool for Putin in trying to expand influence and to shape a more favorable environment for the Russian authoritarian state.

We have seen examples of this quite literally in the European dance which he conducted with Austria earlier this month.

In an article published recently in the EU Observer by Stephanie Liechtenstein, the literal dance was described:

Last weekend’s pictures were hard to put into context, even for long-time observers of Austrian politics.

Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl got married at a vineyard in the picturesque Styrian hills of southern Austria on Saturday (18 August), but what was originally supposed to be a private affair turned into a highly political event with implications for Austria and Europe at the same time.

Kneissl not only invited Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (OVP) and vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO).

There was also a foreign guest who attracted all the attention: Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Putin sat next to the couple as they exchanged vows. Afterwards the Russian president delivered a speech in perfect German, wishing the bridal couple “much, much luck and health for their future together”. 

There was also a Russian Cossack choir dressed in bright red traditional clothes, Putin’s personal wedding gift to the bride and groom.

The Russian leader even briefly danced with the bride, at the end of which the Austrian foreign minister went down on her knees in front of the Russian president in an apparent attempt to thank him for his presence. 

Putin certainly understands his European history and certainly remembers that modern Austria was born in part with the actions of the Soviet Union working with the West.

Russian troops left Austria in 1955 on the condition that it would become a neutral country and not join any military alliance.

And with regard to Germany, the reunification process also involved assurances from the United States and the new German state about how Germany would fit into the EU and NATO going forward.

From  the Soviet side there were clear ideas about how East Germany joining with West Germany would not move the threat directly to Russia further East, as the Soviets understood the nature of the threat posed by NATO.

Of course, the Clinton Administration did precisely that from the Russian point of view.

I followed this process in great detail in both the United States and Europe and wrote number of key pieces on this process as well as running insider working groups in Washington DC at the time.

(Robbin Laird, The Soviets, Germany and the New Europe, Westview Press, 1991.)

This is history which most inside the Beltway politicians simply would not have forgotten; they would not simply know.

But for a Russian like Putin this is not just history.

After the dance in Australia, President Putin went to Germany and worked the German relationship.

In the wake of President Trump’s recent visit to Germany where he highlighted that any German deal with Russia was not a good idea, Putin was given the green light to proceed with what then could elevate and economic deal into a strategic event.

During his visit to Europe in July 2018, President Trump elevated the significance of any gas pipeline deal between Germany and Russia.

U.S. President Donald Trump launched a sharp public attack on Germany on Wednesday for supporting a Baltic Sea gas pipeline deal with Russia, saying Berlin had become “a captive to Russia” and he criticized it for failing to raise defense spending more.

Trump, meeting reporters with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, before a NATO summit in Brussels, said it was “very inappropriate” that the United States was paying for European defense against Russia while Germany, the biggest European economy, was supporting gas deals with Moscow.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-summit-pipeline/trump-lashes-germany-over-gas-pipeline-deal-calls-it-russias-captive-idUSKBN1K10VI

There is a long history to the gas pipeline deal, with many Europeans and Americans concerned about the potential implications, but President Trump now directly correlated the deal with a much higher level strategic issue, namely NATO defense.

It did not take long for German speaking and long time European observer and Soviet policy maker on Germany to jump in and take advantage of this Trump declaration.

In an article published by the EUObserver, entitled “Putin Strikes Blow Against Russia’s Isolation in Europe,” the author focused on the German-Russian meeting to discuss the pipeline deal.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has joined forces with Germany against the US over a new gas pipeline. 

His weekend trip, which included a visit to Austria, also struck a symbolic blow against EU diplomatic sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine. 

German chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin defended the Nord Stream 2 gas project at their meeting in Meseberg Castle, outside Berlin, on Saturday (18 August) in Putin’s first bilateral visit to Germany since the invasion in 2014.

“In connection with Ukraine, we will also talk about gas transit. In my view, even if Nord Stream 2 exists, Ukraine has a role to play in gas transit to Europe,” Merkel said ahead of their three-and-a-half hour discussions. 

The project will “perfect the European gas transport system and minimise transit risks. It will ensure supply for growing consumption in Europe”, Putin said.

“Nord Stream 2 is an exclusively economic project. It does not close any possibilities for transit of Russian gas through Ukraine,” he added. 

“Germany is one of the largest buyers of Russian energy resources … consumption of Russian gas is growing from year to year. Last year, it increased by 13 percent,” he also said.

The pipeline, which is already being built, will concentrate 80 percent of Russian gas sales to Europe on the German route from 2020. 

Putin has no intention being on the sidelines while Europe sorts through its new stage of development.

And let me be clear; the trajectory of the past two decades of European development is over; the question is what will the next phase become.

And Putin intends to become a key stakeholder in what comes next, which is amazing because not so long ago, the Soviet empire disintegrated.

He will clearly play off of Western developments both at the intra-European and trans-atlantic levels.

 

 

Shaping a Way Ahead for the Royal Australian Navy in a Deterrent Strategy

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Shaping a Way Ahead for the Royal Australian Navy in a Deterrent Strategy

By Robbin Laird

Sydney, Australia

During my visit to Fleet Base East in Sydney, I had a chance to talk with Captain Leif Maxfield, Deputy Commodore Warfare in the Royal Australian Navy.

At Garden Island, two of the latest additions for the RAN can be seen, namely the new amphibious ships, and HMAS Adelaide was in port the day I was there along with HMAS Hobart, which I reported on during my last article.

Captain Maxfield has a strong background in working in the amphibious warfare area and on the strategic shift worked by Vice Admiral Barrett while working on his staff. Currently, he works as the Deputy Commodore Warfare for the RAN, and among other things, the office is in charge of the Maritime Warfare Center.

The Royal Australian Navy is adding new ships, such as the amphibious ships, the air warfare destroyer, new frigates and new submarines.  But at the heart of the rebuild of the RAN is a very clear focus on two key elements involving concepts of operations and working a manufacturing/sustainment “continuous shipbuilding dynamic.”

With regard to the first, the focus is upon air-sea integration and working multi-domain warfare within an integrated battlespace.  As Captain Maxfield put it: “We area focused on integrated warfare approaches. Our maritime warfare center and the air warfare center have established a joint steering group to guide both centers down this path.”

At the heart of the focus is upon joint task forces and how to work the maritime and air components into effective task force operational capabilities. “We are bringing innovations on the air side and the maritime side into an evolving joint task force approach.”

The focus of the maritime warfare branch is upon force generation.  “We are focused on shaping force training packages to be able to deliver the kind of joint warfighting capabilities we need.”

Another key element of the maritime warfare branch is engagement in multi-lateral training exercises, such as RIMPAC 2018, where they provide standing staffs to provide for the maritime warfare component for the Australian force engaged in the particular exercise.

With a close working relationship with the air warfare center, shaping a maritime joint warfare training approach and participation in key multi-lateral exercises, the focus is upon shaping a solid foundation or building blocks for the journey forward into a more effective joint warfare capability for the RANand the ADF.

According to Captain Maxfield, “we are thereby laying the key stepping stones to how we take us to where want to be in 10, 20 years’ time in shaping a truly joint, integrated force capable of seamlessly interacting and integrating with allies in the combined operational environment.”

The integrated warfare approach being pursued by the RAN is intended to be highly interactive with the shipbuilding approach being crafted to build out the new fleet for the RAN.

The Aussies refer to this as a “continuous shipbuilding approach” which Vice Admiral Barrett then the  Chief of Navy described in an interview I did with him last year.

We spoke last time about the Ship Zero concept.

This is how we are focusing upon shaping a 21st century support structure for the combat fleet.

I want the Systems Program Office, the Group that manages the ship, as well as the contracted services to work together on site.

I want the trainers there, as well, so that when we’re maintaining one part of the system at sea, it’s the same people in the same building maintaining those things that will allow us to make future decisions about obsolescence or training requirements, or to just manage today’s fleet.

I want these people sitting next to each other and learning together.

It’s a mindset.

It puts as much more effort into infrastructure design as it does into combat readiness, which is about numbers today.

You want to shape infrastructure that is all about availability of assets you need for mission success, and not just readiness in a numerical sense.

Getting the right infrastructure to generate fleet innovation on a sustained basis is what is crucial for mission success.

And when I speak of a continuous build process this is what I mean.

We will build new frigates in a new yard but it is not a fire and forget missile.

We need a sustained enterprise that will innovate through the life of those frigates operating in an integrated ADF force.

That is what I am looking for us to shape going forward.

The importance of getting the manufacturing/sustainment approach was highlighted by Captain Maxfield as a key element of the strategic shift to an effective joint warfighting strategy.  If you do not design your ships with flexibility and agility in mind for a long-term effective modernization approach which encompasses joint integration, the RAN will simply not be able to get where it wants to go.

As Captain Maxfield emphasized, “We need to make sure that the integrated design concept and approach is on the ground floor as we build our new ships. We have shaped a navy-government-industry working relationship that we envisage will deliver life-cycle innovation for the joint force, not simply a one off build of a new combat ship. We are building a consolidated industry and service approach to ensure that will give us the best possible chance of delivering integrated output.”

When I visited Portsmouth this Spring, a key focus for the planners working the roll out of the Queen Elizabeth was how to ensure the best ways to ensure that ship availability and aircraft availability would dovetail to deliver best deployed capability.  For the RAN, fast jets and MPA capabilities are provide by the RAAF, which means that one challenge will be to work closely with the RAAF to ensure that aircraft availability dovetails effectively with ship deployments.

This clearly is a work in progress but does highlight how cross-cutting availability of separate service assets need to be coordinated if there is to be a maximum joint capability which can be deployed in a crisis.

Clearly, the coming of the new LHDs in the RAN has been providing a window into that challenge, as an amphibious task force is a very flexible force, which requires coordinated consideration of air and maritime assets appropriate to a specific configuration for an amphibious task force.  And this learning process is a good lead into the evolving task force approach being built by the ADF.

As Captain Maxfield put it: “We are on a journey of discovery with regard to the focus on an integrated task force approach. With the new LHDs and the air warfare destroyer, we have two platforms that are key elements of shaping the approach and forging or way forward.  But it is a journey of discovery for sure.”

Captain Maxfield underscored the importance of what Rear Admiral Mayer, previously Commander of the Australian Fleet, emphasized during his tenure: “It is about the network.”

“To deliver deterrence in the evolving strategic context, we need to deliver an effective integrated force and that relies on secure and capable networks. In the last few years, we have shifted from being a single-ship Navy to becoming a task group-focused organization that is appreciating the imperatives of joint integrated war fighting and what the sustainability and availability of assets delivers to the force.”

Vice Admiral Barrett emphasized in the various interviews I have done with him as well as his book on the Navy and the nation, how critical a comprehensive effort from the workforce as well as the uniformed military was going to be to get the kind of Royal Australian Navy the nation needs to lay a solid foundation for a 21stcentury integrated forces.

As Captain Maxfield concluded: “The ability to deliver new platforms, to maintain those platforms, to sustain those platforms, to repair those platforms and keep ahead with cutting edge technology will rest on our ability to support the effort with our educational system, our industrial system and effective cross cutting learning fromthe fleet back to the yards as we move forward.”

Featured Photo shows ship’s company of HMAS Melbourne standing at attention as she passes HMAS Adelaide during her departure from Fleet Base East in Sydney, for Indo-Pacific Endeavour 2018.

May 28, 2018.

Australian Department of Defece

 

Brexit in Limbo: Summer Time with Boris and Jeremy

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Brexit in Limbo: Summer Time with Boris and Jeremy

By Kenneth Maxwell

It is summer time in the UK.

The politicians are away from Westminster but political intrigue remains at fever pitch.

The fixation continues to be Brexit.

The deadline for the UK exiting the European Community is fast approaching.

But the Conservatives and the Labour Party are deeply split over Brexit and are embroiled in their own internal and never ending leadership battles.

The former British Foreign Secretary and former London mayor, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, better known as “Boris”  has used his revived column in “The Daily Telegraph” to ignite a venemous bruhaha over the use of the burka by Muslim women.

He ostensibly attacked the Danish decision to ban the burka.

But in doing so he attacked Muslim women who “chose to go around looking like letter boxes” and “bank robbers.”

Boris Johnson has made a career of self-promoting offensive comments.

He is notorious for his overweening ambition to become the leader of the Conservative Party. He resigned from the government three days after prime minister, Theresa May, had corralled her cabinet at her official country retreat of Chequers, into an agreed common proposal for the Brexit negotiations in Brussels.

But Boris, who had been the most high profile leader of the Brexit campaign, jumped ship.

As editor of the conservative opinion weekly “The Spectator,” owed at the time by the Canadian born British media mogel, Conrad Black, also known as Baron Black of Crossharbour (who was later convicted on four counts of fraud in the US District Count in Chicago), Boris published the racist and anti-semitic comments of “Taki” Theodoracopulos.

Black had also employed Boris at the “Daily Telegraph” which he owned at the time, after Boris was fired by the “The Times” for falsifying a quotation.

Black later called Boris “ineffably duplicitous.”

Boris said that the Queen enjoyed her tours of the Commonwealth because of the “cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnes.” Tony Blair in the Congo would be met by “watermelon smiles.”

He called Hillary Clinton a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.”

It is not surprising that this New York City born British politican, should now be taking pages out of Donald Trump’s “crooked Hillary” political playbook.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader, meanwhile, is embroiled in an ugly controvesy over anti-Semitism.

The British right-wing tabloid press, led by the “Daily Mail,” is attacking him for his attendance at a ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 (before he became Labour Party leader) where he laid a wreath at the memorial for Palestinian victims of an Israeli air strike in 1985.

The problem is that he was standing next to Maher al-Taher, the leader in exile of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at the ceremony in Tunis, which is considered by both the EU and the US to be a terrorist group.

Benjamin Netanyahu weighed in and said that Corbyn deserved “uneqivocal condemnation” for laying a wreath on the grave of a Palestinian terrorist of “Black September” who had killed 11 hostages from the Israeli Olympic team and a West German policeman at the 1972 Munich Games.

The British Jewish community was already deeply alienated from Corbyn.

Jewish Labour members of parliament, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, as well as all the leading British Jewish newspapers which claimed that Corbyn is  “an existential threat to Jewish life.”

They were infuriated by the Labour Party’s refusal to align its definition of anti-Semitism with that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

Len McCluskey, the powerful trade union boss, and a long time Corbyn supporter, said that the Jewish leaders have shown “intransigent hostility” to Mr Corbyn, and that some Labour MP’s were using the row to “provide rocket fuel a split in the party.”

He said the party was descending “into a vortex of McCarthyism” in its row over anti-~Semitism.

The Labour Party has complained to the press regulator over press coverage of the Tunis ceremony.

Perhaps Len McCluskey should have reminded his Labour Party colleagues, that Roy Cohn, who was the chief legal counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during his notorious “red-scare” anti-communist hearings, went on to be Donald Trump counsel and mentor (while also representing major Mafia bosses like Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante and John Gotti).

With Boris Johnson anti-muslim rhetoric, and Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-semitic reticience, the undertones of bitterness in British politics is getting very ugly indeed.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the credit agency, Fitch, has lowered its expectations of a smooth Brexit transition deal, warning that “an acrimonious and distruptive no-deal Brexit is a material and growing possibility.”

The featured photo shows Boris Johnson visiting a mosque in west London.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnsons-facebook-page-mobbed-by-racists-after-burqa-furore-f5jp2k77h

 

Australia Builds Out Its Alliance Relationships With Shipbuilding Deals

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Australia Builds Out Its Alliance Relationships With Shipbuilding Deals

By Robbin Laird

Research Fellow, The Williams Foundation

Canberra, Australia

As the Chinese challenge grows, Australia is clearly concerned about expanded Chinese influence within Australia and with regard to Chinese efforts to reshape the external environment to expand the influence and power of the Chinese authoritarian state.

Clearly the United States remains Australia’s core ally in dealing with the Chinese challenge, but as Australia modernizes its forces, it is broadening as well its working relationships with other key allies

The case of dealing with the region’s growing submarine threat provides a good case study of how the Aussies are working their alliance relationships. With the P-8 and F-35, the Aussies are working closely with the US to add new multi-domain warfighting capabilities to the force. The Aussies just stood up their own training facilities for the P-8, have eight P-8s already at RAAF Edinburgh and are moving ahead with this new capability. They are concurrently working to stand up their F-35 squadrons in rapid succession as well.

The Royal Australian Navy has worked hard to rebuild their once-flawed Collins class submarines and to generate higher availability rates as part of their response to the growing submarine threat in the Pacific. With the P-8 working with Collins, and with the F-35s working with P-8s as well, the RAAF and RAN will shape a new template with the United States to work anti-submarine warfare over the next few years, one in which their reach and capabilities are extended.

The next round of naval capability is being worked with the Brits and the French in terms of platforms, though the US is slated to play a continuing role in terms of force integration.

The UK and Australian Shipbuilding

As Britain faces a post-Brexit world, working with the Aussies is seen as a key political objective, in addition to any technological relationship. Australia decided to buy the new UK Global Combat Ship frigate at the end of June 2018, a key touchstone of how London sees its new role. It also is a good indicator of the Aussie point of view on what it needs for a new approach to shipbuilding.

The Australian anti-submarine frigates will be known as the Hunter Class and will be built by ASC Shipbuilding at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, South Australia. The Hunter class should enter service in the late 2020s. They replace eight Anzac frigates, which have been in service since 1996.

The ships will carry the Australian-developed CEA Phased-Array Radar and the US Navy’s Aegis combat management system.

The UK and Australia are shaping a wide ranging set of agreements on working together as well as determining what Aussie assets might go onto the UK version as well.  There is a clear design and build strategy already agreed to and a key focus is upon the manufacturing process and facility to be set up at the Osborne shipyards.

The priority is upon creating a digital build process. According to a top BAE Systemsofficial involved in the process, the benefits will be significant.

“Having a single point of truth in the design phase will mean that each of the nine ships will be replicated, which hasn’t been done in Australia previously, and which will benefit every stage of the program, including the upgrading and maintenance of the ships during service,’’ Glynn Phillips, CEO of BAE Systems Australia, said. “It will also be the first time in Australia where a ship’s systems will have the intelligence to report on its own performance and maintenance needs and have the ability to order both the maintenance and parts required prior to docking.”

With the coming of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers and the new UK frigates, and with extensive collaboration to build the Aussie frigates, a key foundation is being laid for working the UK-Australian strategic relationship in the years ahead.

Australia Reaches Out To The French

The Australians signed an agreement in 2016 to work with the French in building what the Australian government called “a regionally superior submarine.” That agreement has seen the first key enabling contract to establish the ship design process, but not yet the build agreement with a target price for the initial submarine.

What has been signed in addition to the agreement on intent and the security agreements in 2016, is Mobilization Contract for $5B (Aussie) which set up the working facilities to work the design process. in Adelaide and in Cherbourg

With the election of President Macron, the French have been forthcoming in focusing on the Chinese challenge and have highlighted the importance of the strategic relationship with India and Australia as well.  Building a new submarine capability in Australia will allow France not only to enhance their partnership with Australia but could allow French forces as well as industry to play a greater role in the region as well.

But the challenge for France is providing by the need to ensure that the two cultures can find ways to work together effectively in delivering what the Australians seek, which is a work in progress, and no easy task. And now the agreement with the UK with regard to the frigate is shaping a baseline expectation with regard to the build process for the submarine as well.

The Australians are coming to the new build submarine with several key expectations. The submarine is to be a large conventionally powered submarine with an American combat system on board allowing for integration with the US and Japanese fleets.

The Commonwealth has already signed the combat systems side of the agreement with Lockheed Martin and the LM/US Navy working relationship in the Virginia class submarine is the clear benchmark from which the Aussies expect their combat system to evolve as well.

The new submarine is not an off-the-shelf design; it leverages the French Navy’s Barracuda class submarine, but the new design will differ in a number of fundamental ways.  The design contract is in place and the process is underway, with Australian engineers now resident in Cherbourg working with French engineers on the design.

But design is one thing; setting up the new manufacturing facility, transferring technology, shaping a work culture where Aussie and French approaches can shape an effective two-way partnership is a work in progress.  And agreeing a price for the new submarine, and the size of the workforce supporting the effort in France and Australia are clearly challenges yet to be met.

And with the build of new frigates and submarines focused on the Osborne shipyards, workforce will clearly be a challenge.  Shaping a more effective technical and educational infrastructure in the region to support the comprehensive shipbuilding effort is clearly one of the reasons that the yard was picked as a means for further development of South Australia.

The Aussies are coming at the new submarine program with what they consider to be the lessons from the Collins class. This includes limited technology transfer, significant performance problems and a difficult and expensive remake of the program to get it to the point where the submarine has a much more acceptable availability rate.

Clearly, the Aussies are looking to be able to have a fleet management approach to availability and one, which can be correlated with deployability, which is what they are working currently with the Collins class submarine.

This is clearly one of the baseline expectations by the Australians – they simply do not want to build a submarine per se; they want to set up an enterprise which can deliver high availability rates, enhanced maintainability built in, modularity for upgradeability and an ability to better embed the performance metrics into a clear understanding of deployability – where does the Australian Navy need to go and how will it reshape its con-ops going forward and how do upgrades of the submarine fit into all of the above?

In my discussions in Australia, I’ve found a clear focus on building a state-of-the-art facility along these lines with regard to the submarine program as well. This means that the Aussies are not simply looking to see the French transfer current manufacturing technologies to build the new submarine, to co-innovate in shaping new and innovative approaches. By looking at Asian innovations in shipbuilding, the Aussies would like to see some of those innovations built into their manufacturing processes in their new manufacturing facility.

Put simply, the Aussies do not want to repeat the Collins experience. They want modern manufacturing processes, which they anticipate with the new frigate and have seen with regard to P-8, Triton and F-35, all programs in which they are already a key stakeholder.

The question is can the cultural dynamics of France working with Australia, with very clear Australian expectations, deliver the kind of long term, cross-learning partnership which Australia seeks in this program?

There are clearly key challenges of cross-culture learning and trust to be sorted out to be able to make this partnership work. From my discussions in Australia, it is clear that on the Aussie side there is a fundamental desire to shape a long term partnership with France in what the Aussies are calling a “continuous build” process.

Here the question is not of a one off design, and then build with the Aussie work force operating similarly to the Indian workforce in the process of a build as was done by DCNS with India.

The Aussies are not in a rush and as one Aussie put it to me: “We want the right kind of agreement; we are not interested in the wrong type of agreement.”  And when we discussed what the right type of agreement looked like, it was clearly something akin to the UK agreement.

The challenge though is that the Commonwealth has a longstanding working relationship with BAE Systems and the UK. And the UK is part of Five Eyes, which provides a relatively straightforward way to deal with security arrangements.

The Commonwealth has had a more limited working relationship with France and the defense industry within which France is a key player. It has had experience working with programs in which France is a key player like KC-30A, NH-90 and Tiger.  The very good experience has clearly been working with Airbus Defence and Space on the KC-30A, but the NH-90 and Tiger experiences with Airbus Helicopters has not been as positive.

When the Collins Class experience is married to the air systems experience, then the Aussie tolerance for agreeing to anything that is not comprehensive and well thought out is very low.  The challenge for France and Naval Group will be to build a long term partnership which can clearly set in motion a new working relationship which is not framed by these past experiences, but can leverage the very positive KC-30A working relationship.

The KC-30A is obviously different from the submarine because the plane was built abroad and the working relationship very good with Airbus Space and Defence where the Aussies are a cutting edge user pushing the way ahead with the company to shape future capabilities.

That is also the challenge: is Naval Group really a company like Lockheed or Airbus Defence and Space?  Or is the French government involvement so deep that the working processes with Naval Group not be transparent enough and credible enough to shape the kind of partnership the Aussies are looking for?

The migration of Airbus, notably under the leadership of Tom Enders, has clearly underscored the independence of this key European company and Naval Group has more of a challenge demonstrating its independence to deliver not a product nor a build of an existing product on foreign soil, but an open-ended partnership able to shape and evolve a new build product where the digital processes of build and sustain are so significant.

Conclusion

All of this adds up to the Australians building out their force capabilities with the Americans over the next five years, and then start to see UK and French led efforts in shipbuilding then fielding new capabilities, which can be integrated into the evolving Australian force structure.  with these engagements comes in tow the reshaping of their alliance relationships as well.

In effect, the Australians are in the throes of remaking their history.  Their history has been to be part of a broader power defending their interests; first as part of the British Empire, and then during and after World War II as part of the American presence in the Pacific.

What we are seeing now is a more sovereign and independent approach building on that American relationship and broadening their alliance in practical terms as well, And as Japan extends its perimeter defense and industrial investment to do this, almost certainly the relationship with Australia will become a key part of this evolving alliance mosaic for Australia as well.

This article was first published by Breaking Defense on August 22, 2018.

 

 

Visiting RAAF Edinburgh: An Update on the Aussie P-8 Enterprise

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Visiting RAAF Edinburgh: An Update on the Aussie P-8 Enterprise

By Robbin Laird

Canberra, Australia

During my visit to RAAF Edinburgh on August 10, 2018, I had a chance to talk with Group Captain Darren Goldie, Officer Commanding 92 Wing.

92 Wing is described by the RAAF as follows:

Headquartered at RAAF Base Edinburgh, No 92 Wing (92WG) has long been established as the first Maritime Wing of the Air Force.

The Wing is responsible for conducting long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in support of Australia’s national interests worldwide. 92WG is also responsible for search and survivor supply missions throughout Australia’s region of responsibility.

92WG commands: 

  • Two operational flying squadrons: Nos 10 and 11 Squadrons;
  • A training squadron: No 292 Squadron;
  • An operational detachment: 92WG Detachment A at Butterworth, Malaysia; and
  • A number of operational support and development elements.

Operating AP-3C Orion and P-8A Poseidon aircraft, 92WG’s combat roles include anti-submarine and anti-surface surveillance and warfare for which the aircraft are equipped with torpedoes and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. 

The AP-3C is being replaced by the P-8A Poseidon and MQ-4C Triton which will perform the vital functions of long-range maritime patrol.

I first visited 92 Wing in March 2017.

Since that time, new buildings have been put up to support the P-8 operations as well as the main operating hangar and control center close to completion.

During that visit I had a chance to meet with Wing Commander Mick Durant, Officer Temporary Commanding 92 Wing, Wing Commander David Titheridge, Commanding Officer 11 Squadron and Wing Commander Gary Lewis, Deputy Director P-8 and Triton Transition.

In that meeting, the process of change was highlighted.

We are P-3 operators but the operating concept of P-8  is very different and we are working the transition from the P-3 to the P-8 which is a networked asset both benefiting from other networks and contributing to them as well as a core operational capability and approach.

The changes that are coming are very exciting.

So we’re moving from an aircraft, which we’ve pretty much maximized, to a new one which is called P-8, for a reason.

This is an A model aircraft. So with an A model aircraft comes to the ability to grow.

And we’re going to a new world with a starting point, which allows us to grow.

The capacity to integrate, innovate, and talk to our allies and our own services is a quantum leap in what we’ve had in the past and it will allow us to be able to do our roles differently.

Shaping that change is one of the key missions that we’ve got.

We are going to innovate and think out of the box compared to P-3 tactics and concepts of operations.

The current visit provided an opportunity to discuss progress and thoughts about the way ahead with the current 92 Wing Officer Commanding.

Group Captain Goldie comes from the C-130 community and he argued that when a new series of aircraft are introduced into a community, in this case a P-8 in what has been a P-3 community, the addition education required (through conversion onto the new aircraft type) is significant whether you have been doing MPA missions or flying very different aircraft. He argued that with a change in the aircraft type, “it’s a great opportunity to move some people around the organization, to get a bit of cross-pollination in the force.”

There are currently seven P-8s at RAAF Edinburgh.

And with the current training cycle, the RAAF will train their P-8 operators in Australia.

“The last pilots to be trained in the U.S. have just arrived. We’re basically using the instructional workforce that has been embedded inside VP-30 for the last few years.

“They’re all posted to 292 Squadron, which is located in the adjacent building to us at the moment using the various training simulators and devices we have purchased and set up for crew training.”

After the interview, we walked around the maintenance training facility, which is very impressive.  The training area includes computer-based virtual training, which is capable of providing very detailed instruction and computer replication on the various aspects of the aircraft.

The virtual maintenance training is complemented by the use of key aircraft components – training devices — to get hands on experience.  This includes a 737 which has been modified to replicate a P-8A and painted in RAAF colors, on which crew can train for loading weapons, reconfiguring the aircraft or loading the search and rescue kit.

The Wing is in the process of crossing over from P-3s to P-8s.

“We’re right in that cross at the moment. We have roughly the same amount of crews flying each of the types, with four crews each on the Orion and Poseidon.

“But numbers five, six, seven, and eight are about to get going on the P-8, which means that we’re at the crossing point. So now it’s a case for every mission between now and the end of the year, we will work with the Air Operations Centre at Joint Operations Command to decide which aircraft type is better suited to the particular mission.”

Looking back at the process, Group Captain Goldie underscored that the planning has worked quite well.

“If you were to open the spreadsheet that someone drew up in 2012 or 2013 in terms of capability realization, we are on those timelines. So it’s a testament to buying an aircraft that another international partner, in this case the United States Navy, deployed a couple years ahead of us.

“But it would be remiss of me not to mention that of course there is challenges; it’s a new aircraft, it’s a spiral upgrade aircraft. That brings with it great opportunity in the future, but it brings challenges, as well.”

The Aussies are standing up their mobile operations center to use with the aircraft. They will receive three mobile tactical operations centers with one located at RAAF Edinburgh, with the other two ready to deploy forward to meet operational requirements.

“The Mobile Tactical Operations Centers will be operated from deployable shelters in the future, although at the moment, we are using tents.”

With both P-8 and now with Triton, Australia is in a co-operative program with the US Navy, which allows them to participate in co-development.

This essentially means Air Force is an equity partner in the aircraft, allowing influence and the sharing of resources for future upgrades.

“Through a co-development program we can participate in R and D for our aircraft through a partnership which leverages the size and technological capabilities of the US.

“For example, with regard to our search and rescue stores drops for the P-8, it was tested by the US Navy’s VX-1 squadron initially, before the conduct of OT&E within Australia.

“Our OT&E results were then fed back to the USN, with the procedures published in our shared document suite.

“Ultimately, the ballistics and checklists will be included in our training system as well.

“We have done the tests for Air to Air refuelling the P-8A with the (RAAF) KC-30A which is crucial for us but gives the US Navy a capability to leverage the global A330MRTT fleet as well.

“You can imagine the United States Navy would not place air-to-air refueling with the Australian KC-30 at the top of their list of priorities, but it’s close to the top of our list.

“Essentially, the US Navy gets a new capability by working with us.”

The P-8A uses jet propulsion jet and we discussed how using a jet versus a P-3 turboprop has changed maritime patrol.

“Firstly, an aircraft that can fly around at Mach 0.8, can get to an area of interest much more quickly.

“Given that it is designed to operate as a family of systems, the Triton will provide persistence, and the P-8 will become the response asset.

“If the Triton sees or senses something that is of value that needs closer investigation then of course the P-8 can respond, but I also see the P-8 as a strategic response asset.

“We are not easily going to be able to move the Triton around in the first few years; it will have a complicated basing structure, heavily reliant on its infrastructure for launch and recovery.

“In contrast, we can operate the P-8 on a variety of bases in the region. The P-8 can base in various locations through our partnership agreements within the region.

“An example of that might be operating with Seventh Fleet in Japan. So an endgame to me would involve taxiing our P-8 in on the ramp in Japan, downloading the aircraft media into the USN disk drives, which is thenprocessed, exploited, disseminated into the intelligence enterprise.”

“The traditional model of a P-3 or similar maritime patrol aircraft, includes transiting to an area, and using its sensors to find something. It then needs to localize the threat of interest. The process relies on that aircraft being a self-contained gatherer and disseminator of all of that. It needs to find it, it needs to collect it, it needs to decide what to do with it.

“It comes back with the information onboard, and it lands at home base. Someone pulls a disk out and sends the information for processing.

“Whereas with the P-8 plugged into a global satellite-enabled network meaning the information is readily available.”

The core point is that the template being shaped by the Triton/P8 dyad is laying a foundation for further innovation, innovation clearly visible in the weapons, sensor and remote platform areas.