Choules <\/em>is an amphibious logistic ship. She carries more cargo than the LHD, her Mexeflote-powered pontoons carry four times the weight the LHD\u2019s landing craft can handle, and they\u2019re better suited for heavy or awkward individual loads. She also has a container park and two useful 30-ton cranes. As long as there are no tactical considerations to worry about, she\u2019s better than the LHD at delivering the heavy equipment and engineering plant needed for the type of disasters Andrew and Geoff discuss.<\/p>\nThe LHD is different. If you want to launch an over-the horizon night time helicopter assault and follow it up with a high-speed, but relatively light, surface assault, then it beats the LSD hands down. Just don\u2019t expect its helicopters or high-speed tactical landing craft to shift the type of heavy equipment the LSD\u2019s Mexeflotes will. Incidentally \u201cassault\u201d doesn\u2019t mean landing under fire. It just means that the enemy is likely to react before you complete the job, so you have to land tactically.<\/p>\n
The high-speed vessels described in the article are neither of these types. They are sea-lift ships that need ports and ports are often unavailable. Secondly, their design parameters are narrow. They\u2019re designed to carry specific loads at specific speeds over specific distances. Changing one of those variables dramatically impacts the other two, rendering them of little use for routes other than the one for which they were designed. That\u2019s great if you know exactly what you want them to do, like shuttling from Darwin to Dili, but military responses just aren\u2019t that predictable. No one who uses this type of vessel does so for amphibious operations.<\/p>\n
The 2016 Defence White Paper provides for another support ship, which may be either an Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment (to support the surface fleet), an amphibious logistic ship, or a hybrid. The answer depends on the strategic priority between agile amphibious operations, heavy logistics across a beach and endurance of surface forces at sea. Whatever the priority, the solution is unlikely to look like a high-speed vessel.<\/p>\n
Andrew Davies and Geoff Slocombe reply:<\/strong><\/p>\nA big thanks to Bob Moyse for his response to our post on Navy\u2019s amphibious and sealift capability. He\u2019s quite right to make the point about the difference between amphibious lift, amphibious logistic support, and sealift that requires a port. We should have been clearer on that. And we don\u2019t disagree about the limitations of high-speed vessels either\u2014he makes valid points about the trade-offs that operating such ships would require. But we aren\u2019t suggesting for a moment that Navy have those sorts of vessels instead<\/em> of its dedicated amphibious vessels. It so happens that Australia\u2019s local region has many places that lie within the reach of high-speed transports and in which future ADF peacekeeping and stabilisation operations are likely. In those circumstances, port facilities will be available, and the benefits of speed (and thus mission turnaround time) could be realised\u2014exactly as happened in 1999 in East Timor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a long-time amphibious capability advocate I welcome Andrew and Geoff\u2019s piece but I think that it\u2019s useful to distinguish between amphibious tactical operations, amphibious logistic support to land operations, and sea lift which requires …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":32280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,259,304,579],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Reader response: Australia\u2019s amphibious fleet | The Strategist<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n