{"id":22304,"date":"2015-09-01T14:30:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T04:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=22304"},"modified":"2015-09-01T14:06:36","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T04:06:36","slug":"defending-the-surface-combatant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/defending-the-surface-combatant\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending the surface combatant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Hugh White\u2019s column for The Strategist<\/em><\/a> on naval surface ship-building in Australia continued his campaign against such a national effort, but was actually centred on his long standing objection to the maintenance of a capable surface fleet by Australia at all.<\/p>\n

It also reflected a continued misunderstanding of the fundamentals of maritime operations and naval warfare. The cause of this misunderstanding is possibly that he fails to distinguish between the control of territory\u2014which is generally a question of sustained physical possession\u2014and sea control, which is about the use of the sea to achieve a particular end\u2014usually the movement of a ship with a cargo or else the despatch of a force to project power\u2014but only through the sea areas concerned and for the time required.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve pointed out elsewhere<\/a> that there are problems with Hugh\u2019s ideals of sea denial to the exclusion of any necessity for Australia to exercise sea control. Those ideals founder on the requirement for the fuel and other resources to sustain the air striking power from northern bases that is central to his concept. Such sea control may be limited to protecting the passage of one tanker a week, but it will be needed. And, given the nature of our national fuel arrangements, the tanker may well have to come from and through the archipelago to our north.<\/p>\n

In fact, if one is considering a high intensity conflict, there will be other national requirements for supply by sea which aren\u2019t just a matter of maintaining the balance of payments. They will be needed to keep the country running. We are thus not just considering matters of \u2018trade\u2019, but of vital supplies, something sometimes lost in discussions over the protection of sea communications. Also sometimes lost is the reality that sustained, general protection of shipping has always, does and almost certainly will always require a coalition\u2014and is about much more than convoys and surface escorts.<\/p>\n

The other line of argument, reflected in the citation of other recent contributions to The Strategist, <\/em>is the vulnerability of surface ships. The problem is that these commentaries have failed to address the way in which maritime forces\u2014indeed, modern military forces generally\u2014function as complex systems, with mutual dependencies and complementary capabilities. Their assessment of the place of surface ships in future conflict has been simplistic, without any serious discussion of the actual working of the communications networks, computers, remote sensors\u2014such as satellites\u2014and data links that support modern warfare.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s high time that the strategic debate in Australia moved up a level from the fixation on platforms that\u2019s marked so much commentary. Frigates as well as other ships, aircraft and submarines operate as part of an integrated force with the benefit of the systems already described. It\u2019s how they all work together and what each unit brings to the combination as a whole that counts.<\/p>\n

However, there\u2019s another story to this \u2018system of systems\u2019. Here there\u2019s an element which mightn\u2019t have considered by the commentators and that\u2019s the way that warfare will change when networks are under attack. Cyber warfare in all its forms will make remote targeting and precision much more difficult than they have been in the largely benevolent electronic operating environment of the past few decades. This is a challenge that\u2019s occupying much of the thinking of contemporary operational experts. \u2018Line of sight\u2019 networks are likely to prove much more robust in such circumstances than ones which depend absolutely upon distant data sources. Local networks will thus become much more important and, among other things, this will place a premium on ships which can maintain awareness with their own sensors and those of the manned and unmanned units which they can deploy, control, and sustain without reliance on remote stations. In this context, navies are not ignoring the way in which conflict is changing as technology evolves; they are seeking to adapt to it.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons why there\u2019s been an increase in the size of many surface warships in recent years has been recognition of the importance of having additional carrying capacity for both manned and unmanned vehicles which can be deployed under, on and over the surface of the sea. Future surface combatants may well become \u2018masters of the swarm\u2019, accessing remote sensors and information systems when they can, but possessing a level of autonomy that allows them to survive and fight in a contested environment, even when those distant data sources are cut off or corrupted. That such carrying capacity will have obvious utility in lower intensity conflicts is a bonus.<\/p>\n

As a maritime nation, with vast distances even around its own coasts, Australia needs surface combatants that can operate for long periods and in adverse sea states. They need to be able to operate helicopters and the unmanned units of the future, and carry effective sensors and precision weapons. That\u2019s why the size of the surface combatant that Australia seeks is comparable with those of France, Germany, Italy, India and the United Kingdom\u2014among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hugh White\u2019s column for The Strategist on naval surface ship-building in Australia continued his campaign against such a national effort, but was actually centred on his long standing objection to the maintenance of a capable …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":22305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,833,1157,304,579],"class_list":["post-22304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-capability","tag-frigate","tag-future-surface-fleet","tag-royal-australian-navy","tag-shipbuilding"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDefending the surface combatant | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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