An Early Look at the 2023 French Defence Budget

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09/29/2022

By Pierre Tran

Paris – France will next year order 42 Rafale fighter jets, worth some €4 billion ($4 billion), and take delivery of 13 units, major line items in the draft 2023 defense budget which will total €43.9 billion, up €3 billion from this year’s arms spending.

The government presented Sept.26 the draft 2023 national budget, which requires parliamentary approval. The defense budget is the second-biggest item in the overall budget, after €60.2 billion earmarked for education.

The order for 42 Rafales was around €4 billion, an armed forces ministry official said, following a Sept. 27 telephone press conference.

The aircraft builder, Dassault Aviation, had said in July that a French 42-strong order might well be made next year, comprising a batch of 30 Rafales in tranche 5 and 12 to replace French air force units sold to Croatia.

Next year’s delivery of the 13 fighters to the French air force will mark the end of a four year drought for the service, as the government had set priority to delivering Rafales to export client nations including Egypt, India, and Qatar.

That shipment of Rafales to the French service reflected Dassault having increased annual production of the fighter, said Jean-Pierre Maulny, deputy director of Institut des Relations Internationales et Stratégique, a think tank.

The domestic orders and a large number of export deals for the Rafale marked a “conjunction of events” for Dassault, he said.

The 2023 budget included funding for projects for a future combat air system (FCAS) and the main ground combat system (MGCS), a second ministry official said.

On the FCAS, and MGCS project for a new tank and unmanned vehicles, there will be a Franco-German council of ministers meeting at the end of October, giving “a few weeks” to draw up a demanding timetable, the defense ministry said following a Sept. 22 meeting of the French and German defense ministers in Berlin.

Work on FCAS could start in two years’ time, the ministry said after the Berlin ministerial meeting, and the companies were “converging on a statement of work.”

The FCAS program is the very symbol of a “strategic convergence” between France and Germany, the ministry said.

“This is a priority project because we need this innovation,” French defense minister Sébastien Lecornu said in a statement.

Dassault and Airbus Defence and Space have yet to reach agreement on management of the FCAS project, with the latter seeking effectively a joint prime contractorship on the new generation fighter at the heart of the FCAS. Dassault insists on a sole program leadership.

The French air force will also receive next year 13 upgraded Mirage 2000D fighters, part of a long-delayed program which saw the modernization cut to 55 units from 71.

A previous air chief of staff, Jean-Paul Palomeros, previously said that upgrade cost some €10 million per unit, seen as a modest amount, and should have been adopted some time ago.

Macron Upholds Spending Pledge

President Emmanuel Macron said July 14, the Bastille day national holiday, the government would observe the 2019-25 military budget law, signalling the planned €3 billion increase would be observed.

The 2019-2025 military budget law set out a €3 billion rise in 2023, followed by similar annual increases to hit a target of €50 billion in 2025.

There had been doubt in 2018, when parliament adopted the multi-year budget law, on whether the spending pledge would be observed, as that required re-election of Macron in 2022, Maulny said.

Macron won the presidential election this year, which meant the budget law would be observed, he said. Macron’s losing a parliamentary majority was unlikely to thwart the pledge to boost military spending.

An industry executive said it was one thing to have announced the 2019-25 military budget law, but quite another to see it executed, as there was doubt hanging over  the 2022 election.

Macron’s victory effectively secured €3 billion, “a significant amount,” the executive said, all the more so with the heavy cost of the Covid crisis.

That €3 billion marked a 36 percent gain over military spending in 2017, and a large rise compared to an annual increase of €1.7-€1.8 billion in previous years, a  ministry official said.

Macron’s administration had set the €50 billion target for 2025 before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That incursion has sparked inflation, raising concern whether the spending increase will go as far as had been hoped.

Contracts have standard clauses addressing inflation, the industry executive said.

Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, billed as “special military operation” by Russian president Vladimir Putin, led Macron to say France was now in a “war economy,” and called on French companies to speed up arms production.

There are, however, concerns over the supply chain, energy prices, and access to essential raw material.

Macron has called for drawing up a 2024-30 military budget plan in the wake of the Russian invasion, bringing forward the spending review.

Rebuild Stocks

A major concern has been a low level of French stocks of ammunition.

The 2023 budget earmarked €2 billion to place orders and €1.1 billion to pay for all  types of munitions, including ammunition, missiles and bombs, with the aim of replenishing and increasing stocks.

The €2 billion of munitions orders next year was almost an 18 percent increase on an average €1.7 billion over the period 2019-2022, the ministry said.

On munitions, the briefing document of the 2023 budget refers to the first firing of a new generation Mica air-to-air missile and delivery of a new one-ton bomb next year, and there are pictures of shells and rounds, and truck-mounted Caesar artillery firing canon shells.  The document makes clear the new bomb will be built by French industry.

The restocking of French weapons can be seen with the Direction Générale de l’Armement procurement office ordering July 13 18 Caesar truck-mounted artillery pieces from Nexter, replacing those sent to Ukraine as part of weapons support.

A swift delivery to the French army meant those guns will be the Mk1 version, with  shipments due in summer 2024 at the latest, the company said in a July 29 statement. The Caesar Mk2 version is due to be delivered to the army in 2026.

Lecornu told French senators in July that buying the 18 Caesars for the army would cost some €85 million. The then prime minister, Jean Castex, signed in February a contract worth €600 million for Nexter to develop and build an armored and updated version of the Caesar, with an order for 33 units and delivery in 2026, AFP reported.

Orders and Deliveries Next Year

Next year’s orders include unspecified batches of MBDA MMP anti-tank missiles, Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles for frigates, Exocet naval missile, and Aster Block 1 new technology missile.

Some of those orders could be the DGA taking up options included in an order for an initial batch of weapons, an industry executive said.

There will also be orders for 420 Serval light armored vehicles, and work on the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

In deliveries next year, the army is due to receive nine tactical drones, namely the long awaited Safran Patroller unmanned aerial vehicle, 18 upgraded Leclerc tanks, upgrades for five Tiger attack helicopters, five NH90 transport helicopters, and 200 MMP missiles.

The navy will take delivery of a nuclear-powered attack submarine – the second in the Suffren class, an upgraded Lafayette frigate, a new fleet auxiliary ship, and three upgraded Atlantique 2 maritime patrol aircraft. There will also be delivery of Exocet anti-ship missiles and a vessel in an unmanned mine countermeasure system, dubbed SLAM-F.

The air force will receive three Airbus A330 MRTT multi-role tanker transport jets, two A400M airlifters, nine Pilatus PC-21 training aircraft, and upgraded Scalp EG cruise missiles, Mica missiles with new engines, and a Syracuse IV secure military telecommunications satellite.

Some €14.2 billion has been set aside for procurement of major weapons, while €5 billion will go to service support, a rise of 12 percent, reflecting an attempt to boost availability of weapons.

That hefty amount for maintenance reflected a relatively low availability of modern  helicopters and the A400M fleet, a defense specialist said.

Exports allowed Dassault to double its production rate of the Rafale to two units a month. The company previously built 11 per year, the minimum rate seen as needed to keep the assembly line open at the Merignac factory, near Bordeaux, southwest France. The factory closes for the month of August for summer holiday.

Featured Graphic: Photo 242250644 / 2023 © James Vallee | Dreamstime.com

COVID-19 Disrupts but Does Not Block CIVMEC From Supporting Australia’s OPV Project

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09/28/2022

When I was last in Australia in March 2020, I was working on a report on the new Australian OPV program which was the initial effort to shape a continuous shipbuilding approach.

That report can be found in Chapter Eight (“Building a New Offshore Patrol Vessel: A Case Study in Strategic Change”) in my book, Joint by Design: The Evolution of Australian Defence Strategy.

I was in Western Australia visiting the Henderson shipyard and discussing the launch of the program with Jim Fitzgerald and Mark Clay of CIVMEC, the engineering company whose role in the program is to build the 27 key modules (blocks) that make up the hull and superstructure of the OPV’s.

This is what I wrote in my case study about the role of CIVMEC in the program:

Civmec’s Henderson facility, is the physical site of the vessels from the third OPV build onward. It is clear from visiting the yard, and looking at the build-out since they started the effort in 2008, that the company made a significant investment in shipbuilding prior to being awarded the OPV contract. But the build of the first two Arafura Class OPVs at the BAE/ASC yard in Adelaide does not take away from the effort of Civmec for the overall program or its preparation to build the remaining ships in the program at Henderson.

The material cutting for the ship is being done at one facility, not two, the one that I visited in Henderson. The material is shipped from Henderson to Adelaide by road and rail, and given that the cost of transport from West to East is significantly less than the other way around, the cost factor of having the initial assembly in Adelaide rather than in Henderson is very manageable.

This also allows the Henderson yard to have a two-ship run-through prior to launching full production at Henderson. This is a digital production facility, which is clearly evident when you visit the cutting facilities at the yard, where precision is the name of the game and where the production workers and staff manage a digital production process.

This includes having a control room for monitoring the parts flow into the yard and working schedules that are designed such that production materials arrive just in time for the production process. When visiting the yard, and walking into the large main assembly and sustainment hall, it is clear that it can accommodate accommodates the Royal Australian Navy’s ship up to the size of the Air Warfare destroyer.

Having to flee Western Australia to get to Sydney to get to back to the United States just before the pandemic lockdown happened meant that I did not get a chance to watch the program evolve over the past nearly three years.

It felt like I have just come back on the 3rd fleet (not quite as long as it took the first and second fleets but felt a bit like that). I felt a bit like the folks who came from the old country by ship but did not have direct communications for several years. Not quite the First Fleet experience but from a communications point of view, it was a bit like it.

Here is what greeted me day of departure from Sydney in March 2020:

Upon my return to Australia in September 2022, I had a chance to talk with both Jim Fitzgerald, Executive Chairman of Civmec, and with Mark Clay, Project Manager, to get an update on the progress in their side of the program.

Although not a heritage shipbuilder, they had relevant experience which they leveraged for the program and made significant investments to launch the program prior to full on construction.

This is what I wrote at the time of my March 2020 visit: “It is clear that in my initial read of the Civmec choice, I had missed one major area in which they work which is central to shipbuilding; they are players in the oil and gas offshore platform business. These are certainly sea bases and of relevance more generally to managing a shipbuilding enterprise.”

My expectation prior to my discussion with Fitzgerald and Clay was to hear a narrative explaining how the lockdown in Western Australia which cut WA from the rest of an Australia which itself was cut off from the world had slowed the program significantly.

But that was not what I heard.

Obviously, the pandemic created chaos and key disruptions to the workforce and supply chain.

Because the company had stockpiled enough material prior to the pandemic in anticipation of starting the program, they could continue the program. But clearly, resource constraints have been a key challenge to overcome.

As Clay noted: “We had already set up our core supply chain in 2018, so we did have a good start prior to the pandemic. We had ordered enough material to get us through that difficult time.

“And a number of our suppliers had ramped up supplies in anticipation of the program start and had done that prior to the Covid pandemic.”

Fitzgerald reinforced this point.

They also leveraged what they could find in Western Australia to fit in workforce pieces to the effort.

And it must be remembered that this is a digital production process which meant that they could leverage non-Australian expertise in building the program through “remote working” as well.

Obviously, they worked methods for ensuring worker safety required for curb COVID risks as well.

For example, they had to organize lunch breaks for the work force, by groups and would sanitize the area as lunch groups would come in a staggered schedule.

According to Fitzgerald: “We actually found that doing so increased productivity.”

According to Clay, “there are four ships on the go in WA at the moment. In Adelaide Ship 1 is in the water and due to commence builder trials, Ship 2 is progressing to launch and in WA Ships 3, 4 , 5 and 6 are in various stages of construction.”

Vessel consolidation is done in Civmec’s state of the art Assembly Hall by the prime contractor Luerssen and their various subcontractors.. They work with their subcontractors to achieve a finishing process as part of the consolidation, outfit and commissioning process.

Given that conflict in crises with adversaries will certainly disrupt, perhaps the pandemic provided a real-world preparation for the future.

In any case, at least this part of the continuous shipbuilding approach seems “battle tested” so to speak.

And they had to find more innovative ways to find ways to deal with shortfalls as well. This in turn provides a benefit going forward with the program.

And as one can see in the featured photos, the not yet completed assembly hall was clearly finished during the pandemic. By picking an engineering company to shape a new capability for shipbuilding has proven already successful.

The view of the yard in 2019:

The view now:

As Fitzgerald proudly underscored: “If you look at the completed facility now, at what we have achieved, and when you explain that to people, most people struggle to believe what we achieved through the height of the Covid pandemic.”

Shaping a Way Ahead for the ADF’s Logistics Enterprise with the Return on the Priority for the Direct Defense of Australia.

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09/27/2022

By Robbin Laird

The ADF faces a double challenge.

First, there is the transition from the away game land wars to preparing forces for higher intensity operations against global authoritarian powers. I have written several books which address how challenging this shift is for a whole generation of warriors and policy makers who have only known the land wars as a core focus for their defense forces and efforts.

But Australia faces a second challenge affecting the future of the ADF as well: where is the ADF going to operate primarily in the direct defense of Australia?

What exactly is the defense perimeter for Australia?

How best to operate within that defense perimeter?

And how to sustain the force for the time needed to prevail in conflict or crisis management?

In a recent meeting held with Colonel David Beaumont, an Australian Army officer, and both a practitioner and analyst of logistics for the joint force, he underscored the importance of the ability to persist in conflict situations.

This is how he put it: “The belligerent who can respond quickest and can return to support the combat force will be the one that emerges and the greatest chance for success.”

Added to the strategic calculus for the ADF has been living through the pandemic. What the pandemic has underscored is how vulnerable global supply chains are and the need for Australia to build more reliable supply chains in the face of dealing with global disruptions (and in war these will be deliberate efforts) as well as more national production capability and stockpiling for greater resilience where appropriate.

This may also include working with coalition or alliance partners, in a broader conception of what is known in Australia as a ‘national support base.’

Or put another way, the next phase of ADF development will be built around the direct defense of Australia and its ability to operate within its core defense perimeter with an integrated but distributed force, and able to mobilize a sustainment system for operations, but that will only occur with the broader capability of the Australian nation to mobilize as well. Mobilization is not simply an ADF concept; but it is a whole of nation one.

This is how Beaumont put it in our conversation: “We need to go beyond simply discussing ADF mobilization in a crisis. We need to understand what the limits and constraints are on what the ADF can do for itself and what might it need from the nation. This will help us understand exactly what capabilities or support mechanisms need to be built within the ADF, or what policies and plans may be required to help govern national responses to a crisis.”

In a recent article by Beaumont and published by ASPI on September 8, 2022, Beaumont provided his understanding of how to understand the challenges associated with enhanced ADF mobilization with that of the broader society or nation.

“Access to supply chains and civilian resources also influences where forces are based and prepared. It’s timely to remember lessons from the 1999 peacekeeping mission to Timor-Leste, Operation Warden, when the unplanned deployment of 10,000 coalition forces put a tremendous strain on the Darwin infrastructure. If the defence strategic review orients force posture to Australia’s north, an in-depth conversation about what infrastructure is required for military forces must follow. When civilian infrastructure is unavailable, the ADF must be structured to support itself. Expeditionary logistics capability may be in order.

“Civilian and military logistics and infrastructure, working together, ensure that military power is in the best position to be used. It is, however, virtually certain that infrastructure capability won’t be met by a comprehensive list of defence projects that’s been ‘optimised’ to treat all logistics and infrastructure needs. The defence budget is far too small to create the national economic infrastructure necessary for the types of scenarios that Australia should be prepared for, especially as step-change military capabilities are being introduced to offset the efforts of other nations.

“A range of civil–military measures to coordinate the development of infrastructure, if not other logistics and supply-chain issues, will be required. The needs will always outweigh the resources available to treat them, and the art of logistics and infrastructure development will come in the way that those involved in decision-making qualify, quantify and manage risks. What is needed, at the very least, is a conversation about the strategic concepts that underpin the making of decisions as envisaged in the defence strategic review.

“The community of discourse on this issue already knows that the only viable solution is a collective one. There are three broad perspectives relevant to this outcome. First, the military perspective looks to the potential circumstances of operations and produces concepts that reflect strategic guidance and enable logistics requirements to be determined. The question for the military planner is not necessarily whether the requirements can be met now, but whether the infrastructure can be made ready when it is needed.

“The second perspective is civilian (government and industry) in nature, and reflects an adaptive culture that allows their organisations to react to new situations and to meet new demands. They need to know what it is the military wants so that they can get on with providing it. Governments and their agencies, and local communities, have their own challenges to overcome, as do industry and infrastructure leaders. Routine consultation as well as sharing of concepts and plans will be required to enable these groups to contribute to overcoming logistics and infrastructure hurdles.  Providing incentives for results might also be a consideration, if not a necessary step.

“The third group of views comes from the defence analysts and commentators who often observe the occasional non-communication between the other two groups, and are not necessarily beholden to balancing a perception of need against the availability of resources. It goes without saying that a range of views on Australia’s strategic infrastructure is important given Australia’s strategic circumstances. Such views may offer valuable alternatives to conventional planning. Naturally, self-discipline is required so that conversations don’t become ‘all care with little responsibility’.

“What all can agree on is that an investment in military capability must come with an investment in strategic infrastructure and logistics support. It doesn’t matter whether logistics come from a military or a civilian origin, but it does matter that all involved know what resources are coming from which source and what infrastructure is available to maximise their use.

“A national-level conversation on civil–military cooperation, strategic support arrangements for contingencies, and whole-of-nation preparedness is warranted after the defence strategic review. Without such analysis, it’s reasonable to expect that logistics and infrastructure will launch from the back of our minds to the front of them—at a time we can ill afford.”.

The featured graphic is from my September 2018 Williams Foundation Report which began a very serious relook at the way ahead for the ADF.

Australia’s Strategic Geography and the Defence of Australia: A Conversation with Dr. Andrew Carr

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09/26/2022

By Robbin Laird

One of Brendan Sargeant’s legacy to me was introducing him to a young professor, Dr. Andrew Carr who works on defence issues and is well along in writing a book on the history of Australian defence.

Given the enhanced focus on the direct defence of Australia being generated with the evolving strategic environment, I had a chance to talk with Andrew about his assessments of this shift and how it fit into the longer-term perspective of threats, challenges and Australian defence policy seen in the longer term.

According to Carr: Australians actually have quite a long history of thinking about how to defend our country, obviously in very different circumstances, but certainly weighing how to balance what we need to do here on the continent versus what we need to do with partners.

“We’ve always had a tension between the two. And I think it’s under appreciated how much Australians actually have been concerned about direct defence. For example, in 1903, when our first defence act was passed, it actually forbade the professional force from going overseas because the defence forces were for coastal and port defences. That’s why we had these giant volunteer forces engaged in the First World War.

“I think the public image of Australia is always racing overseas to fight with allies and other people’s wars is a mistaken view. I think there is a longer history of Australians thinking seriously about our direct defence. And often that thinking isn’t done in public due to alliance sensitivities, but we are now seeing more willingness to do so.”

What Carr was underscoring was the need to balance support for allies, notably a primary ally. Initially the UK and then the United States, with the needs for Australian direct defence. Clearly, allies are important for a credible direct defence of Australia, but what one might call a necessary but not sufficient condition for ensuring credible direct defence of the continent.

Carr characterized this question of balance as “transactional if not even Machiavellian in the way that they’ve tried to manage those alliance relationships and balancing between what we thought was essential for our own security and what we thought we needed to do or wanted to do with our partners.”

He then drew an example from the Second World War: Robert Menzies, at the start of the Second World War, stated that as a consequence of Britain being at war we’re at war. But then spent the first three months of the conflict telling the British we’re not sending forces, we’re not going overseas because we are worried about the Japanese, and we are worried about your commitment to our region, and we are clearly worried about our own Homeland security. And once he gets a better sense of what the Japanese might do, then he’s willing to commit to significant overseas cooperation.”

The Indonesian conflict from 1963 to 1966 was also a clear element of understanding the nature of the challenges involved the nature of direct defence of Australia. (At the end of the article can be found the description of this period from the Australian War Memorial).

Sarawak, British North Borneo, 1965: soldiers of 3 RAR board a Belvedere helicopter to search for Indonesian infiltrators.

Carr underscored that the nature of the threats in the region rapidly dominated the Australian defence focus and re-oriented the calculus for force structure development.

“Suddenly the Australian government changes completely what it’s spending its money on, what kind of forces it’ was buying, it’s willingness to spend money, with our defence becoming nearly 17% of the national budget.

“And we bought equipment such as the Oberon submarines and ultimately the F-111s and a made a number of procurement decisions that really are at the heart of what the ADF is today because of that concern for the continent.

Oberon submarine as seen at the Maritime Museum in Sydney. Credit: Second Line of Defense

“In other words, the Indonesian conflict had much more of an impact on Australian force structure and military thinking than Vietnam did, even though that was much more publicly controversial and historically seen as the key moments in the Cold War.”

We then discussed a key concept in Dr. Carr’s work, namely how to think about Australia’s strategic geography in relationship to its defence focus.

This is how he put it: “There is an underlying paradox of is Australia an island or a continent? Determining your focus has important implications for the kinds of defence forces you want to build and the way you think about your relationship with others and the role of the state.

“We go back to Athens and Sparta, a land power, and a sea power, fight in different ways, they create different kinds of empires. In the 1980s, when Australia was thinking seriously about home defence and how you would build a force structure for that, the implicit idea was that Australia was an island.

“We focused on the SE gap to our north, on long-range understanding of traffic that might come down through the first island chain, developing JORN, the Jindalee Operational Radar Network and other systems like that for understanding that environment.

“Our maritime focus drove a lot of our defence policies. There was actually very little conception about how do you use Australia’s own geography for your advantage in a way that the Chinese or the Russians as classic continental powers have done so. And that was appropriate for the time and circumstances.

F-111 as seen in the Fighter World museum at Williamtown Airbase. Credit: Second Line of Defense

“There are examples of Australians in a crisis thinking about how to leverage our continental advantages. “The classic examples is the Second World War, where in desperation we suddenly considered whether Australia needed develop an insurgent or gorilla strategy with the public volunteering to fight the Japanese if they landed in Australia.

“Could we trade space for time? But the Australian continent isn’t very useful for such an approach because all of our key population and industrial centers are along the coast often with a mountain range very close to the coast with the result that we are clustered near the sea in de facto “island chains.”

He then argued that there was a third approach to conceptualizing Australia’s strategic geography which suggests a way to conceptualize the way ahead for Australian direct defence.  “If you look at where people have lived since British invasion in 1788 on this continent, it’s closer to being an archipelagic nation. You have the island of Sydney, the island of Melbourne, the island of Tasmania, the island of Brisbane and Darwin, with vast gaps in between.

“Our early patterns of settlement were all about supporting these distinct islands. The Australians didn’t run railways across the continent and have an expanding frontier as the Americans had. Everything ran to the sea because economically it made more sense to send goods to the nearest port, and then send it by ship from city to city, island to island effectively, or off to America or to Europe for trade.

“In other words, we have an archipelagic country that has very distinct cultures that are also connected and for a defence perspective, that leads to a different way of operating or thinking about your ability to move across and between settlements. Rather than being tied to the direct defence of every specific inch of territory.

“How do we extract benefit from such an approach?

“How you can we move force between sea and lands seamlessly and recognizing that it’s not simply the defence of your territory but having the ability to move move out into the region in cooperation with partners and allies, where Indonesia is the largest traditional archipelago in the world?

“There’s many significant archipelagic nations in the South Pacific, and we are going to need an ADF that is able to operate seamlessly across those environments as well.”

This means working mobile basing, force mobility, agile combat employment, leveraging land, sea and air bases to concentrate force against key threats in the region. And with the autonomous revolution at hand finding ways to get enhanced mass of payloads in support of the missions from a diversity of uncrewed as well as crewed platforms.

Conceptualizing of Australia in archipelago terms raises the question of rethinking the ADF as an archipelago defence capable ADF and as such can help both in restructuring the ADF in the near to midterm but also providing a sense of priorities for defence modernization and what mobilization of the nation might need to look like going forward.

Indonesian Confrontation, 1963–66

Between 1962 and 1966 Indonesia and Malaysia fought a small, undeclared war which came to involve troops from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain. The conflict resulted from Indonesia’s President Sukarno’s belief that the creation of the Federation of Malaysia, which became official in September 1963, represented a British attempt to maintain colonial rule behind the cloak of independence granted to its former colonial possessions in south-east Asia.

 The term “Confrontation” was coined by Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Dr Subandrio, in January 1963, and has come to refer to Indonesia’s efforts at that time to destabilise the new federation, with a view to breaking it up. The actual war began when Indonesia launched a series of cross-border raids into Malaysian territory in early 1963.

The antagonism that gave rise to Confrontation was already apparent in December 1962, when a small party of armed insurgents, with Indonesian backing, attempted to seize power in the independent enclave of Brunei, only to be defeated by British troops from Singapore. By early 1963 military activity had increased along the Indonesian side of the border in Borneo, as small parties of armed men began infiltrating Malaysian territory on propaganda and sabotage missions.

These cross-border raids, carried out by Indonesian “volunteers”, continued throughout 1963. By 1964 Indonesian regular army units had also become involved.

Australian units that fought during Confrontation did so as part of a larger British and Commonwealth force under British command. Australia’s commitment to operations against Indonesia in Borneo and West Malaysia fell within the context of its membership in the Far East Strategic Reserve.

At first the Australian government kept its troops from becoming involved in Confrontation, not least because of fears that the conflict would spread to the long – and difficult to defend – border between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

Requests from the British and Malaysian governments in 1963-64 for the deployment of Australian troops in Borneo met with refusal, though the Australian government did agree that its troops could be used for the defence of the Malay peninsula against external attack. In the event, such attacks occurred twice, in September and October 1964, when Indonesia launched paratroop and amphibious raids against Labis and Pontian on the south-western side of the peninsula. Members of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR) were used in clean-up operations against the invading troops.

Although these attacks were easily repelled, they did pose a serious risk of escalating the fighting. The Australian government relented in January 1965 and agreed to the deployment of a battalion in Borneo.

The military situation in Borneo thus far had consisted of company bases located along the border between Indonesia and Malaysia to protect centres of population from enemy incursions.

By 1965 the British government had given permission for more aggressive action, and security forces now mounted cross-border operations with the purpose of obtaining intelligence and forcing the Indonesians to remain on the defensive on their own side of the border. Uncertain where the Commonwealth forces might strike next, the Indonesians increasingly devoted their resources to protecting their own positions and less on offensive operations, although these continued on a much-reduced scale.

The first Australian battalion, 3 RAR, arrived in Borneo in March 1965 and served in Sarawak until the end of July. During this time the battalion conducted extensive operations on both sides of the border, engaged in four major contacts with Indonesian units, and twice suffered casualties from land mines. Its replacement, the 28th Brigade, 4 RAR, also served in Sarawak – from April until August 1966.

Although it had a less active tour, the 28th Brigade also operated on the Indonesian side of the border and was involved in clashes with Indonesian regulars. Two infantry battalions, two squadrons of the Special Air Service, a troop of the Royal Australian Signals, several artillery batteries, and parties of the Royal Australian Engineers were involved in Borneo. Ships of the Royal Australian Navy served in the surrounding waters and several RAAF squadrons were also involved in Confrontation.

Continuing negotiations between Indonesia and Malaysia ended the conflict, and the two sides signed a peace treaty in Bangkok in August 1966. Twenty-three Australians were killed during Confrontation, seven of them on operations, and eight were wounded. Because of the sensitivity of the cross-border operations, which remained secret at the time, Confrontation received very little coverage in the Australian press.

Australian War Memorial publication.

 

Combat Logistics Regiment 27

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U.S. Marines with 2nd Landing Support Battalion (LSB), Combat Logistics Regiment (CLR) 27, and 2nd Transportation Battalion (TB), CLR-27, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, load equipment onto rail cars at Morehead City, North Carolina, Aug. 15-16, 2022.

2nd LSB and 2nd TB conducted railhead operations from August 15 to August 22 in order to deliver equipment and vehicles for the upcoming Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) Course 1-23 in Yuma, Arizona.

08.16.2022
Video by Lance Cpl. Sixto Castro
2nd Marine Logistics Group

French 2021 Arms Exports: Analyzing the French Government Report

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09/25/2022

By Pierre Tran

Paris – France delivered weapons to Russia worth a total €344.9 million ($339.2 million) between 2012 and 2020, with a peak of shipments worth €81.7 million in 2014, the 2022 government report to parliament on arms exports said.

That high point of French deliveries in 2014 occurred in the year Russian forces seized the Crimean region in southern Ukraine, and Moscow-backed separatists  seized control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east of Ukraine.

French companies did not deliver weapons to Russia in 2021, the report said.

Overall, France won €11.7 billion of export orders for weapons in 2021, more than double the €4.9 billion orders in 2020, with the Rafale fighter jet boosting the orders. The defense ministry had predicted 2021 orders would exceed €10 billion.

On export deals this year, Dassault Aviation declined comment on a Sept. 20 media report by La Tribune that Indonesia has paid the deposit for six Rafale jets, bringing into effect a contract signed in February.

That batch of Rafales, reported to be worth around €1.3 billion, is the first part of Indonesia’s order for a total 42 units, worth €8.1 billion, including missiles.

The figures on exports to Russia are tucked in the back of the official report, in tables giving brief details of delivery, orders, and licenses allowing French companies to pitch weapons in the period 2012-2021.

The French government is called to present the annual report to senators and members of parliament June 1, and then make it available to the public. The defense and foreign ministry has previously presented the report in a press conference.

But this time round the government publication has yet to be officially released, Disclose, an investigative non-governmental organization, reported Sept. 15.

Disclose made the official document available on its website, and reported the publication was sent to parliament a month late, and that the private office of the armed forces minister, Sébastien Lecornu, had told the NGO it was up to parliament to decide when to publish.

The ministries for economy, foreign affairs, and armed forces are due to present the report to the lower house Assemblée Nationale behind closed doors Sept. 27, followed by presentation to the upper house Senate, AFP reported.

Annex five in the report shows French companies won Russian orders worth a total €433.5 million in the 2012-21 period, with a peak of €185.4 million in 2012.

Annex six shows France granted 78 licenses to allow companies to propose their products to Russia, with a peak of 36 licenses awarded in 2015. The French authorities awarded two licenses in 2021.

Annex nine gives summary details of deliveries, with shipments to Russia falling to €58.9 million in 2015, after hitting a high of €81.7 million in 2014. Some €3 million of arms were delivered in 2020.

France had allowed certain contracts with Russia to be observed after 2014 in line with the so-called “grandfather clause,” Hervé Grandjean, the then spokesman for the defense ministry, said March 14 on social media in response to a Disclose report on French arms sales to Moscow.

French contracts signed before the Russian 2014 annexation of Crimea could be observed to completion, and equipment bought before 2014 could be delivered, the former spokesman said.

“This possibility is clearly taken into account in the sanctions regime adopted against Russia in 2014,” he said on social media.

The report to parliament on arms exports in 2021 shows that since 2014, the number of equipment deliveries to Russia has fallen each year, to reach close to zero in 2020, he said. This reflected gradual completion of contracts since 2014.

“No deliveries have been made to Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine,” he said.

Disclose reported that the loopholes in the European arms embargo exports had been closed after the NGO’s report in March, and the delivery of contracts signed before 2014 had since been banned.

The report on 2021 dedicates a section of 20 pages on the rigor of inter-ministerial oversight of foreign sales, pointing up adherence to international sanctions, and restrictions on the sale of light and small caliber weapons.

“With €11.7 billion of orders in 2021, France recorded its third-highest arms exports, Lecornu said in the introduction to the government report. “It is already assured that there will be significant results in 2022.”

Egypt, India, Qatar, Saudi, and the United Arab Emirates were the five largest client nations last year, the report shows, with aircraft accounting for most of the value.

The spread of the Covid virus, leading to budgets suspended, trade shows cancelled, and fewer sales trips, hit foreign arms orders in 2020, bringing in orders worth €4.9 billion, down from €8.3 billion in 2019.

But the outlook for 2021 and 2022 had been seen as particularly buoyant, with Thierry Carlier, a senior DGA official, forecasting a total of more than €30 billion of orders over the two years, due to expected sales of the Rafale.

Carlier in September won promotion to five star general, after having been named deputy director of the DGA in July. The procurement office pointed up his five year record of heading its international development department and his work with Croatia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, India, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

All these countries have ordered the Rafale.

Dassault received in April a down payment from the UAE for its order for 80 Rafales, bringing that deal into effect. The UAE contract, signed in November 2021, was worth €14 billion, with a further €2 billion on missiles.

That UAE deal alone and the €11.7 billion of 2021 orders comfortably meets the value of orders forecast by Carlier.

The government report points up exceptional measures to help Ukraine, with the raising of a ceiling for free transfer of weapons this year to €300 million from €50 million.

This includes heavy weapons such as the Caesar truck-mounted artillery and the report said the arms are drawn from the armed forces’ existing stock.

France was in close contact with Ukrainian authorities, which regularly expressed their needs and which Paris tried hard to meet, while working with its EU and Nato partners, the report said. There is a section dedicated to working with Ukraine.

Lecornu has called on industry to speed up arms production to allow the French forces and European allies to replenish their stocks.

“A real war economy is being put in place,” he said in the introduction. “We will speed up this transformation.”

Featured Photo: Dassault Rafale during a acrobatic flight 49th Paris Air Show on June 23, 2011. Credit: Dreamstime

Shaping a Way Ahead for Maritime Autonomous Systems in the ADF: A Discussion with Commodore Darron Kavanagh

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Shaping a Way Ahead for Maritime Autonomous Systems in the ADF: A Discussion with Commodore Darron Kavanagh
09/23/2022

By Robbin Laird

At first blush, some readers would expect a title that focused on maritime autonomous systems to focus primarily upon their role within the Royal Australian Navy, rather than looking at the role within the overall ADF.

But because these systems are entering the force as it works its next phase of shaping joint operations, maritime autonomous systems can be viewed as enablers for and beneficiaries of the transition.

In my recently published book with Ed Timperlake, we focus on the reshaping of concepts of operations for the joint force upon kill web operational concepts.

It is about a distributed force where payloads to missions is a key element of building the modular task forces at the tactical edge which form the combat nodes from which force integration can be built in a fluid combat situation.

Maritime autonomous systems are defined by the payloads and the software which enables those payloads to support the missions in the distributed battlespace, rather than by the platforms which hold them.

This is a very different way around from the legacy approach to platform prioritisation and platform development. While certainly, core air, sea and ground platforms built under evolving systems engineering models will remain a key element of force design and development, the path for maritime autonomous systems is significantly different.

As Commodore Darron Kavanagh put it in our meeting at his office in September 2022: ”As soon as I say I’ve got requirements for a combat system, I immediately go into a classical systems engineering approach. But that approach doesn’t actually allow for the agility necessary rapidly to change that combat system.

“If I look at classical primes, they are often hardware first companies, software second. And there’s a lot of legacy in the design.

“One of the things we’ve been looking at is how would you take a software first approach to accelerate our maritime autonomous systems capabilities. This is one of the reasons that the sovereign industry players that we’ve selected recently to work with in the autonomous systems areas are software driven in their development rather than platform focused.”

The ADF has been looking for some time to work rapid software development and insertion into combat forces. This is much harder to do with core platforms than with software driven, payload defined, maritime autonomous systems.

This is why a key contribution to the ADF as a joint force can be provided by the kind of acquisition and operational models being shaped around maritime autonomous systems.

A key way ahead for these systems is to also shift from a classical understanding of product development.

While the approach does develop prototypes: this is not the primary focus.

It is about focusing on operational effects: as both contributions to the force in being and continuous and ongoing experimentation for force development under actual operational conditions.

The Commodore has his own MEGA hat – Make Experimentation Great Again. Maritime autonomous systems are purpose built to deliver the desired combat effects from the payloads onboard.

And working ways to cross-integrate data from payloads below the sea, on the sea and in the air will provide a key capability for building out a kill web enabled force, that can shape combat clusters able to operate in contested combat operations as well as throughout the full spectrum of warfare.

As he underscored: “if you actually want to deliver something different, if you want to actually get what I’d call asymmetric war fighting effects, then you must be prepared to experiment.

“Because those concepts of operations are not going to come from replacing what you have. Or indeed, an incremental improvement of what you have.

“You actually have to leverage what the technology will give you. It is because less and less it’s about a platform. It’s more and more about your intent. So, that’s command-and-control, and the payloads that deliver that intent.”

Commodore Darron Kavanagh underscored that the ADF is evolving and building out an ADF capable of effective distributed operations. And maritime autonomous systems will be a key enabler for such operations.

To do so, the systems need to be operating in the force as part of the overall operational capability for the force. As the ADF gains experience with these systems, these systems will face ongoing development and experimentation, both in terms of the payloads they carry as well as the operating systems on the platforms, as well as seeing platform development to better enable payload performance and targeted relevance to the operating force.

As he put it: “The challenge is being able to field them at the speed of relevance.  That is the difficulty in a bureaucracy such as any military.

“And so, one of the reasons it’s important to spend that time to work out how do we constructively disrupt? We are not building a one off system. The focus is upon delivering asymmetric warfighting effects again and again.”

I have found that one challenge facing the way ahead for acceptance of maritime systems into the operating force is not just the question of ensuring that one is deploying a trusted autonomous system: it is equally about the challenge of understanding the con-ops of a kill web force.

As we argued in the book: “when thinking through a kill web force, payloads are key building blocks for the distributed integrated capability which gives the force the necessary combat power. Those payloads can be found on a variety of sources, from air combat platforms, ships as sea bases, islands, land bases, mobile or expeditionary bases. The kill web mosaic is about having the launch point for key payloads which are appropriate to combat and escalation dominance,”

And we argued in the book that with a variety of ways to deliver payloads to missions, this also opened up the need to rethink what operational task forces might look like. We highlighted what we called “modular task forces” which can be formed within an operational context; rather than be defined with regard to what was initially deployed for an operation in terms of platforms making up that task force.

And this allows for mission command to guide a distributed force able to achieve integrated effects. As we argued: “Mission command guides a diversity of modular task forces, which deploy into the areas of interest, and provide engagement density. Sensor networks and C2 at the tactical edge enable modular task forces to execute their assigned missions and to do assessments and with their inherent ISR capabilities are able to ensure that the mission effect is being achieved.”

What this means for maritime autonomous systems is twofold. Either the USV or UUV can contribute to a modular task force as either individual or wolfpack capabilities or USVs, UAVs, and USVs can themselves operate as a modular task force.

One mistake in much analysis of this area of work is to focus on how various maritime autonomous systems are hermetically sealed or stove piped options: USVs compete with each other; UUV compete with USVs, and UAVs, compete with both.

That is old style platform think; what we are looking for here is complimentary in payloads for a variety of launch platforms. Shaping wolfpack operations for diverse maritime autonomous systems in a modular task force is a key way ahead for both operations and force development.

Recently, I looked at the Eager Lion 2022 exercise and highlighted the importance of such an approach:

“Recently, Iran temporarily capture a Saildrone Explorer  in the Red Sea. It would make sense to operate it with the Devil Ray which can provide some protection against adversaries trying to seize the saildrone.

“But the U.S. Navy to recapture the Iranian seized saildrone had to deploy manned assets to recover the UAS. According to the U.S. Navy: “While transiting international waters around 11 p.m. (local time), Aug. 29, U.S. 5th Fleet observed IRGCN support ship Shahid Baziar towing a Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel (USV) in an attempt to detain it.

“U.S. Navy patrol coastal ship USS Thunderbolt (PC 12) was operating nearby and immediately responded. U.S. 5th Fleet also launched an MH-60S Sea Hawk from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 26, based in Bahrain,” 5th Fleet said in an Aug. 30 statement about the first incident.”

“It makes sense to find better ways to defend a UAS such as the saildrone by working with a wolfpack UAS  “task force” such as the Devil Ray or Mantas UAS.”

Commodore Kavanagh emphasized that the terminology is important in understanding what maritime autonomous systems are and how their role within the operational force will grow over time.

“I refer to these systems as uncrewed systems. And the reason I use that term is that it is less and less about the vehicle that actually delivers the effect.

“The payload is really important as it could be on all sorts of different vehicles, whether it’s in the air, below, in certain circumstances, or on the surface. This requires you thinking in a different way about how do you plug and fight different elements into the combat force.”

Featured Photo: Australian Defence Force personnel prepare to lower a MARTAC T38 Devil Ray unmanned vessel into Jervis Bay in Jervis Bay Territory, during Exercise Autonomous Warrior 2022.

Autonomous Warrior 22 (AW22) is a Navy-led Operational Experimentation (OPEX) activity conducted over the period 16-27 May 2022 in the vicinity of Jervis Bay and from several remote sites in Australia and overseas. Conducted against an overarching theme of Remote and Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence (RAS-AI), Autonomous Warrior is the largest unmanned systems OPEX conducted in Australia. In 2022 it provided Australian and international military and industry partners opportunities to demonstrate innovations in autonomous and uncrewed systems and related technologies for use in the maritime and littoral domains, including operations in complex, congested and contested environments.

May 23, 2022

Australian Department of Defence