CIVITAVECCHIA, Italy (May 9, 2022)
Sailors assigned to the Lewis B. Puller expeditionary sea base USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4) went on a five month deployment.
Hershel “Woody” Williams is rotationally deployed to the U.S. Naval Forces Africa area of operations, employed by U.S. Sixth Fleet to defend U.S., Allied and Partner interests.
05.09.2022
Video by Petty Officer 1st Class Fred Gray IV U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. Sixth Fleet
By Graeme Dobell
Australia is removing the qualifications from its quasi-alliance with Japan.
The visit to Japan by Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles is another step in the fading of the qualifiers: ‘quasi alliance’, ‘small “a” ally’ and ‘alliance lite’.
The qualifiers apply because this is a pact without a treaty—no formal pledge to go to war together.
The quasi-alliance moniker describes the third leg of the trilateral, supporting the US–Japan alliance and the US–Australia alliance.
The small ‘a’ and lite descriptors fade because over the past two decades Japan has risen to become a defence partner for Australia that ranks beside New Zealand and Britain.
Japan sits on the second tier, with the traditional Anglo allies, below the peak where the US presides as the prime and paramount ally. The chatter grows about whether to admit Japan to the ultimate Anglo club, the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership, comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
In the first decade of this century, Canberra was the eager suitor, pushing Tokyo to do more, building the Australia–Japan–US trilateral. In the second decade, Japan stepped up under Shinzo Abe, showing uncharacteristic vigour and ambition. This decade is shaping as the moment Japan remakes itself as a military power.
In launching the trilateral in that first decade, John Howard’s government took the lead and Japan warmed slowly. When Foreign Minister Alexander Downer first broached the trilateral with his Japanese counterpart, he was told Australia was too insignificant as a security player for Tokyo to bother. Equally, Canberra was eager to go further than Tokyo in the ambit of the joint declaration on security cooperation that Howard and Abe signed in 2007. Australia wanted a treaty, while Japan would go only as far as a declaration.
In his second coming as prime minister in that second decade, Abe changed much in ways that matter greatly for Australia. The ‘Indo-Pacific’ may have been a US naval theory, but Abe’s adoption made it a diplomatic and military construct with heft; Australia joined Japan as the first adopter. Abe was equally important in growing the trilateral, the second coming of the Quad, and saving the Trans-Pacific Partnership after US President Donald Trump pulled out—a TPP without the US could only exist with Japan at its heart.
The quasi-alliance has its fullest expression within the trilateral. The three defence ministers had their 10th meeting last week during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Their ‘vision statement’ has the now essential language about opposing ‘coercion and destabilising behaviour’ and standing against ‘unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force’, underscoring ‘the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait’.
To Australian eyes, the trilateral statement now has the same tone and style of an AUSMIN communiqué, with the effort to list ‘concrete’ outcomes such as exercises for interoperability and readiness; coordinated responses to regional disasters and crises; deepened cooperation on maritime capacity building; and a framework for research, development, test and evaluation to advance trilateral cooperation on advanced technologies and strategic capabilities.
When Abe departed the leadership in 2020, Australia confronted the question of how much the quasi-alliance was based on his personality and how much on permanent shifts in Japan’s policy personality. Abe pushed for a stronger, more autonomous Japan rather than a comfortable Japan declining gently into middle-power ease.
The answer offered by Indo-Pacific expert Michael Green in his new book, Line of advantage: Japan’s grand strategy in the era of Abe Shinzo, is that the trajectory is set—the Abe era will last much longer than the Abe tenure.
Green argues that Japan has done more than any other country to devise a strategy to manage China’s rising economic and military power, to ‘compete but not to the death’. Green’s prediction:
From now on for 10, 20, 30 years, people will be referring to Abe’s doctrine and Abe’s approach. There will be variations. There will be changes. There could be big changes if we have war in Asia or if the US retreats from Asia, but I don’t anticipate those. In terms of intent and trajectory, I think Japan will be very reliable and will be a thought leader and will be respected in Asia.
The shape of the Abe era came into sharper focus on 8 June when Japan’s cabinet approved a plan for a massive increase in defence spending from 1% to 2% of GDP. The 2% pledge is buried in footnote comparisons to NATO spending, so the transformation of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida from dove to samurai is still work in progress.
In his speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, Kishida promised: ‘I am determined to fundamentally reinforce Japan’s defence capabilities within the next five years and secure a substantial increase of Japan’s defence budget needed to effect such reinforcement.’
In tandem with reinforcing its alliance with the US, Kishida said, Japan would strengthen ‘security cooperation with other like-minded countries’. A new era, he said, needed a new ‘realism’.
Kishida noted that Germany had pledged to lift its defence spending to 2% of GDP, adding, ‘I myself have a strong sense of urgency that Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow.’
A Japan pushing fast to double its military spending will change much. After Kishida’s speech, the director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, John Chipman, pointed out that if Japan and Germany reached the NATO standard of 2% of GDP for defence, that’d make Japan the third-biggest defence spender in the world, behind only the US and China, while Germany would lift to number four.
Australia’s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has already had his first meeting with Kishida, at the Quad summit on 24 May. They are set to meet again at the NATO summit in Madrid in a fortnight’s time.
Just as NATO is always about alliance politics, these days Australia and Japan have their own alliance dialogue within the trilateral with the US.
Graeme Dobell is ASPI’s journalist fellow.
This article was published by ASPI on June 16, 2022.
Credit Image: Richard Marles/Twitter.
U.S. Marines with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 268, Aviation Combat Element, Marine Rotational Force-Darwin (MRF-D) 22, and U.S. Navy Corpsmen with the Enroute Care Team, Logistics Combat Element, MRF-D 22, perform a long-range casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) as a part of exercise Southern Jackaroo 22, Shoalwater Bay Training Area, Queensland, Australia, May 24, 2022.
The CASEVAC was performed as a proof of concept by MRF-D 22 personnel for providing long-range medical treatment within the Indo-Pacific region.
SHOALWATER BAY, QLD, AUSTRALIA
05.24.2022
Video by Cpl. Frank Webb Marine Rotational Force – Darwin
By Robbin Laird
Training is one of the words that changes meaning as the liberal democracies face the military dimension posed by the 21st century authoritarian powers. Rather than being just about training to be prepared, which is obviously crucial, advanced training capabilities drive the adaption of the force which is crucial to prevailing in the high-end fight.
Learning to adapt the force in a dynamic combat environment is always crucial, but especially so when the United States and its allies need to operate closely in crises where the 21st century authoritarian powers concepts of operations and forces are designed to divide and conquer throughout the multi-domain spectrum of warfare.
And the art of warfare focuses on the need to understand the ends being pursued in a dynamic crisis or combat situation and to match those ends with the appropriate means understood as force packaging.
As my Williams Foundation colleague, John Conway, put it in a recent interview I did with him: “We have demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq that we are good at warfighting, but we are not so good at warfare. And I think we have a generation of generals and politicians who only know war fighting. They don’t understand that there is a significant difference between warfighting and warfare.”
If we indeed focus on the art of warfare, the key focus is upon how to get the crisis management effect we need; not simply engaging in ongoing warfighting and positioning for warfighting.
And this means in turn, that the focus for the ADF or its allies is not simply providing balanced funding for the joint force, but prioritizing investments and training to shape a force with the most lethal effect and with most useful impact on advancing the art of warfare for the liberal democracies.
As the ADF moves forward, Conway discussed the “triangle of tradeoffs” for development of the force, namely, lethality, survivability and affordability. It is not about investing in balanced force development for its own sake; rather investments need to be directed to those elements of the ADF which can deliver lethality and survivability at the most affordable cost.
In such a context, advanced training is critical and as such will provide a key focus for discussion in the September seminar. As he put it: “Within a limited budget, you’ve now got to think really, really hard about survivability. And you’ve got to think really hard about preparedness and that links to the training piece.
“And we’ve now got an adversary, who is making us spend more and more money on survivability. We’d rather spend money on lethality, but they’re making us spend money on survivability because they’re becoming increasingly sophisticated, because it’s coming harder and harder to survive.
“And this is driving up the cost of survivability. But one way of mitigating that risk is getting your training systems right. And being able to fight the best fight with what you’ve got and invest in warfare rather than just war fighting.”
Put in other words, how to use U.S. and allied military capabilities to have the right kind of crisis management and combat effects?
And how to train to focus on such an approach?
This is how Paul Averna from Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions put the challenge in an interview I did with him in December 2021: “For effective training, we need to discover how to work our various platform capabilities to deliver decisive effects.
“And it’s not just the high-end kinetic end game of a conventional fight between us and a peer competitor. It is down at the lower rungs of conflict to manage escalation points. We need to be able to use asymmetric advantages to shape escalation options, and we need to train to do so.”
Training in the evolving combat environment is a key way ahead to shape not simply the skill sets to operate the force, but to provide significant domain knowledge to drive the development of the force or in other words, training when considered in terms of how to leverage the virtual world along with the live training piece can drive how the force can be continuously redesigned.
A key driver of change is the proliferation of fifth generation systems as the F-35 has become a key element for both the U.S. joint forces and the allies.
Fifth generation systems are multi-mission systems which drives further change in training requirements, which will become more significant over time as multi-domain operating capabilities are highlighted in defense acquisition.
In a recent discussion with Paul Averna, he highlighted how he saw the impact of the F-35 and fifth generation systems on the operating force and training. According to Averna: “Historically, we have operated and trained to single mission threads, such as counter-air or counter-surface warfare and we have used either a purpose-built system or operated with a pre-planned and interconnected group of capabilities synchronized to deliver a single domain effect. With the F-35, we have a multi-domain machine which can support multiple mission threads, and to do so at the same time.”
How do you train to leverage this capability?
Or as Averna puts it, “How do you create an authentic training environment for multi-domain effects?”
To do so, requires an ability to blend simulation or the virtual world with live training, but this requires a focus in the near term on funding such capabilities and getting the operators to operate in a more integrated manner.
Averna argued that “we are ready to proceed down the path of getting such capabilities live on the ranges within the next three years. We can leverage what we are learning in the joint simulation environment in terms of TTPs and can take those effects and model them into the training environment on the live ranges.”
And driving change in training systems associated with the F-35 would see a shift from prioritizing embedded learning systems in the aircraft to being able to work LVC dynamic training. With the current embedded learning systems, the operators learn to work in a wolfpack environment with four ship formations.
With the transition to LVC dynamic learning, the focus would be upon working force packages in a fluid combat space and using a multi-domain system – the F-35 more fully – which in turn would lay the groundwork for introducing new multi-domain systems in the future with a very clear notion of how to use them to get the kind of combat and crisis management effects desired from the combat force.
For the United States and our allies, training to deliver greater integrated capabilities will be critical in dealing with the 21st century authoritarian powers, both to gain the combat mass desired as well as the coalition operational cohesion which can deliver crisis management dominance.
Again, the F-35 global enterprise can be a driver for innovation in enhanced interoperability.
As Averna put it: “The whole concept of the F-35 global enterprise is rooted in partner nations having a common capability so that one could replace a UK asset with a US asset or a Finnish asset or a Canadian asset, because they have a common operational capability. Training to leverage this commonality is crucial which then allows one to build around that idea that ‘whoever shows up with their F-35, the rest of the coalition knows what can be done with that asset from a coalition warfighting perspective.”
By forging an authentic training environment one can contribute to dealing with Conway’s triangle of challenges – survivability, lethality, and affordability.
Averna added two other dimensions to that triad. Averna noted that survivability, lethality, and affordability provide a design constraint for creating effects. “But the other two dimensions are time and interoperability. If you only design a unique stovepipe solution that works for your specific country that reduces interoperability and creates a vulnerability.
“And the kind of peer adversaries we face now require not only rapid decision making but timely evolution or adaptation of the force in terms of acquisition. The general focus now on designing a force for 2030 is simply too far away to deal with the threats we have now. We have to be able to shape force packages rapidly to tailor the effects we need now and not some abstract distant future.”
And while training for such effects, both the software can be reshaped for specific platforms to enable greater integratability and capability as well as learning how to adopt more rapidly to the opportunities for change.
For example, recently I spoke with a senior U.S. Navy Admiral about how he was using the findings of Task Force 59 – the autonomous systems task force in 6th fleet – to enhance the capability of his strike force. He noted that they were adopting capability and trying it out and adopting what worked for them and provided inputs to other elements of the fleet with regard to what particular systems could contribute now to the operating force.
In short, training is not simply preparing to operate the force you think you have; it is about generating the force packaging and operational capabilities you need in joint and coalition operations now and in the near term.
And in so doing, one is able to lay down requirements for acquisition going forward.
But this requires a significant shift in understanding the central role of training and providing the funding to accelerate the LVC elements within the training environment as well.
The graphic is credited to Paul Averna.
Training for the High End Fight: The Strategic Shift of the 2020s
Defense XXI: Shaping a Way Ahead for the United States and Its Allies
U.S. Marines with 2d Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion attached to Task Group 61/2.4, conduct a movement to a helicopter pickup zone to relocate radar sensor to another site on Saaremaa, Estonia, May 22, 2022.
Task Group 61/2.4 provides naval and joint force commanders with dedicated multi-domain reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance (RXR) capabilities.
Task Group 61/2.4, under Task Force 61/2, is executing the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Concept for Stand-in Forces (SIF) to generate small, highly versatile units that integrate Marine Corps and Navy forces.
Task Force 61/2 is deployed in the U.S. Naval Forces Europe area of operations, employed by U.S. Sixth Fleet to defend U.S., Allied and Partner interests.
SAAREMAA, ESTONIA
05.22.2022
Video by Sgt. Dylan Chagnon U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. Sixth Fleet
By Paul Dibb
Prime Minister Albanese is attending the NATO Summit in Madrid on 28 June, along with the leaders of Japan and South Korea and representatives from Sweden and Finland. President Zelensky has also invited him to visit Ukraine after the NATO leader’s summit. There will clearly be expectations in both meetings of additional Australian support.
Australia should, of course, strongly support Ukraine diplomatically and promise to do more in terms of supplying appropriate military equipment. However, there are other limitations about what we can do in Ukraine and how we can respond to NATO expectations.
No doubt, there will be discussion at this NATO Summit whether Russia will extend its military aggression to include the targeting of the supply of military equipment by the U.S .and its allies to Ukraine through Poland.
There is the further complication of whether NATO will discuss its planning for military contingencies involving Russian military attacks on one or more of the Baltic countries, all three of which are vibrant democracies. A Russian attack would raise serious moral questions for us, including our vital interests in seeing a democratic Taiwan not being attacked by China. As Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, has observed: there are clear implications for East Asia of the war that is now being waged in Europe.
There is the further question that has been raised by Ukraine’s Ambassador, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, who claims that “if the sovereignty of any Indo-Pacific country was violated, Australia would expect NATO and other allies to come and support it.”
Unfortunately, that is not what history teaches us in this part of the world. In the Second World War in the Pacific, once the Japanese had defeated Britain in Singapore, no other major European powers participated in the defeat of Japan.
And we all recall the way the UK dropped its strategic interests in our part of the world when in 1968 it announced the policy of withdrawing all its troops East of Suez.
In the Vietnam war the Europeans and the British were nowhere to be seen in this prolonged conflict with communist North Vietnam. While the UK was directly involved in the war against the communist insurgency in Malaya in the1950s, as well as against Indonesia’s Confrontasi in the 1960s, no European country chose to be involved. Most of Europe was not concerned that Indonesia had the world’s third-largest Communist Party and was being heavily armed with advanced Soviet military equipment. It was at this time that Australia purchased F-111 strike bombers and Oberon class submarines. We recognised that if push came to shove, we might have to manage Indonesia alone.
Accordingly, because of these developments and US expectations under the 1968 Nixon Doctrine, Australia for the first time started to focus on the defence of the Australian continent without reliance upon our US ally – short of nuclear war or an attack by a major power. During the 1970s and 1980s, Australia underwent a major revolution in its approach to defence planning, which gave priority to our own defence and the security of our own region of primary strategic concern rather than expeditionary forces at great distance overseas.
The idea of the defence of Australia encountered great resistance – especially from the Army. And Coalition governments from time to time continued to give preference to Australia being able to mount distant military operations alongside our U.S. ally. So, the 2016 Defence White Paper gave equal weight to the three strategic priorities of the defence of Australia, our region, and our broader global interests. That simply undermined any attempts to discipline the three single services to give priority to our own defence.
However, all this changed for the better when the Coalition’s 2020 Strategic Update announced a radically changed policy:
“The Government has decided that defence planning will focus on Australia’s immediate region: ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland Southeast Asia to Papa New Guinea and the South West Pacific…..That immediate region is Australia’s area of most direct strategic interest.
The 2020 Update also stated there was a need to build a more potent, capable, and agile defence force, including acquiring capabilities that enable Australia to hold adversary forces and infrastructure at risk further from Australia. Accordingly, it said that our immediate region “will provide a tight focus for defence planning.” The Update concluded that consideration of making wider military contributions outside of our own region “should not be an equally-important determinant for force structure compared to ensuring we have credible capability to respond to any challenge in our immediate region.”
These key defence policy guidelines must be firmly etched into the decision-making of our Prime Minister and Defence Minister when it comes to responding to expectations from NATO. With China deliberately building up military pressure against us, now is not the time to ditch decades of hard-won work in Defence that has put in place the priority to be given to our own region of primary strategic concern and the defence of our homeland.
The Government’s commitment to having an independent review of the ADF’s force posture —including its basing in Australia and deployments overseas —should be guided by this fundamental defence planning principle.
Paul Dibb wrote the 1986 “Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities” and was the primary author of the 1987 Defence White Paper “Defending Australia.”
An earlier version of this article was published in The Australian on June 27, 2022.
According to a story published by 3rd Marine Air Wing on August 20, 2021, VMFA-211 conducted the first cross-deck aviation mission in modern naval history.
Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 conducted a first-of-its-kind operation which saw F-35B aircraft launched from HMS Queen Elizabeth land on the amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6) to load ordnance, refuel, and strike follow-on objectives on August 20th,2021.
The operation highlighted the interoperability of the F-35B and the strategic importance of the joint integration between the United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group (UK CSG) and the U.S. Navy Amphibious Ready Group / Marine Expeditionary Unit.
This mission was the first time in modern history the United States has cross-decked aircraft for a mission utilizing a foreign aircraft carrier, demonstrating naval partnerships in action.
“The evolution underscored our continued effort to shift away from static, built-up airfields towards distributed maritime operations (DMO),” said Col. Simon Doran, U.S. Senior National Representative to the UK CSG. “Doing so as part of the United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group 21 strengthens our alliances and partnerships through the development of interoperable capabilities, combined operations, theater security cooperation, and capacity-building efforts.”
DMO calls for U.S. Naval forces to operate in a less concentrated and more distributed manner to complicate an adversary’s ability to find, track, and target them while still delivering decisive combat power where needed. The multi-national maritime aviation operation extends the reach of the F-35, enabling the 5th-generation aircraft to effect objectives farther away, for extended amounts of time, and with increased ordnance capacity.
In planning guidance released to the fleet, the Commandant of the Marine Corps highlighted that the Marine Corps is a naval expeditionary force capable of deterring malign behavior and, when necessary, fighting inside our adversaries’ sensors and weapons engagement zone to facilitate sea denial in support of fleet operations and joint-force horizontal escalation.
VMFA-211’s F-35B short take-off and vertical landing aircraft capabilities make them uniquely qualified to support distributed maritime operations, and capable of operating from HMS Queen Elizabeth.
For U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Brian Kimmins, the executive officer of VMFA-211, this mission wasn’t his first-time landing on USS America.
“Having previously deployed on amphibious assault ships while flying the AV-8B Harrier, I looked forward to the opportunity to work with the Marines and Sailors aboard USS America from the cockpit of an F-35B,” said Kimmins. “Being able to demonstrate the interoperable nature of the F-35B amongst partner nation vessels further highlights our flexibility and lethality as a war-fighting organization.”
This phase of the deployment represents a crucial milestone in the development of UK Carrier Strike and our integration with partners in the INDO PACIFIC region.” said Royal Navy CAPT James Blackmore, Carrier Air Wing Commander. “Exercising with a range of allies, including the US and Japan, provides an invaluable opportunity to gain further experience in operating the Lightning F-35B, Merlin and Wildcat helicopters from the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers alongside other nations, which will be key to delivering the Carrier Strike Full Operating Capability by the end of 2023.”
Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211 and USS The Sullivans, are humbled and proud to continue the special relationship with the United Kingdom through the deployment of Carrier Strike Group 21. Their interoperability with the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and additional international allies will preserve our collective military advantage and reinforce rules-based international order. The United States and United Kingdom’s forward-deployed forces remain ready to respond to crises globally as a combined maritime force – “we stand together.”
NATO and partner nations are taking part in exercise Ramstein Legacy 22, NATO large-scale live-fire air defence exercise.
Seventeen Allied and partner countries are exercising in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with aircraft, missile defence systems and electronic warfare systems from 6 to 10 June 2022.
Around 50 aircraft have flown from bases across Europe, and 17 surface-based air and missile defence systems are being integrated and tested in live-fire scenarios.
Footage includes live-fire demonstrations in Ustka, Poland with Czech, French, Polish, Slovak and UK troops demonstrating various weapons systems, including the Starstreak air defence system.
POLAND
08.06.2022
Natochannel