{"id":62513,"date":"2021-02-16T15:08:50","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T04:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=62513"},"modified":"2021-02-16T19:25:48","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T08:25:48","slug":"does-the-royal-australian-navy-need-tomahawk-missiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/does-the-royal-australian-navy-need-tomahawk-missiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the Royal Australian Navy need Tomahawk missiles?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In my most recent article<\/a>, I noted that the Department of Defence appears to be in the early stages of identifying a ship-launched land-attack missile for acquisition. The government assessed in its 2020 defence strategic update<\/a> that it is \u2018essential that the ADF grow its self-reliant ability to deliver deterrent effects\u2019. A recent government announcement<\/a> hints at acquiring a weapon like the Tomahawk land-attack missile, or TLAM. Could it provide a deterrent? Or, if it failed as a deterrent, could it provide a robust strike option? I\u2019m sceptical. (For some context on the Australian Defence Force and strike, see my earlier<\/a> pieces<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The TLAM or a similar weapon might appear to be a boost for the ADF. It would be a new capability in an area where the ADF sorely needs more tools. The Royal Australian Navy currently doesn\u2019t have a land-strike capability, beyond the very limited effect provided by its guns and the Harpoon anti-ship missile. Even the Royal Australian Air Force has very few arrows in its strike quiver. The land-strike role was performed for a long time by its F-111s. When they were retired, the government acquired the JASSM strike missile and integrated it into the air force\u2019s F\/A-18 A\/B \u2018classic\u2019 Hornet fleet as a partial replacement. Since the JASSM hasn\u2019t been integrated into any other RAAF aircraft, the question mark over the ADF\u2019s long-range strike capability is getting larger as the classic Hornets are retired.<\/p>\n

But something like the TLAM probably isn\u2019t the answer. That\u2019s because the navy\u2019s planned fleet isn\u2019t going to have anywhere near the capacity to carry the number of missiles that would be necessary to make a difference in a conflict.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at how the TLAM has been used. There are two broad scenarios. The first is as part of a large air campaign in which weapons such as the Tomahawk have been used to \u2018kick down the door\u2019\u2014disabling command and control networks and air defence systems at the start of the campaign to allow sustained sorties by manned aircraft.<\/p>\n

For example, in 1999, in an effort to persuade Serbia to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and remove its forces from there, NATO bombed Serbia. During the campaign, NATO launched 218 Tomahawks<\/a>, less than 1% of the 28,108 munitions delivered. TLAM strikes were followed up by 38,004 aircraft sorties, of which 10,484 were strike sorties. Ultimately, it took something like old-fashioned carpet bombing by heavy bombers to induce the Serbs to leave Kosovo.<\/p>\n

Four years later, in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the US and its allies expended 29,199 munitions<\/a>, of which two-thirds were guided. That included 802 sea-launched Tomahawks. Put another way, a huge number of long-range missiles made up only 2.7% of the total number of weapons used.<\/p>\n

The problem for Australia in this kind of scenario is that, even if Tomahawks kicked in the door, we don\u2019t have the air force with the size and range needed to follow up. I\u2019ve discussed this challenge previously<\/a>, and my colleague David Millar has discussed<\/a> the lack of concrete in the Pacific necessary to support air combat operations.<\/p>\n

The second use has been as a way for the US to send a signal without getting involved in a prolonged campaign. An example of this was Operation Infinite Reach in 1998, in which the US launched 79 Tomahawks against several al-Qaeda targets. Another was the 2017 strike on Syria\u2019s Shayrat air base using 59 Tomahawks in response to the Assad regime\u2019s use of chemical weapons.<\/p>\n

The effectiveness of such strikes is debatable\u2014al-Qaeda was still able to conduct the 9\/11 attacks, and Shayrat was back conducting air operations within hours of the US strikes. The signal such strikes seem to send is \u2018We aren\u2019t willing to commit the resources that are needed to stop you.\u2019<\/p>\n

Just as importantly, the RAN will find it difficult to mount even those numbers of weapons. At the moment, its only surface ship capable of carrying the Tomahawk is its main air defence platform\u2014the Hobart-class destroyer. The three destroyers have 48 vertical launch cells each, a number dwarfed by the capacity of both allies (the US Navy\u2019s Arleigh Burke destroyers have 96) and potential adversaries (the Chinese Type 055 destroyer has 112). Once they\u2019ve been loaded up for their air defence role, there\u2019s likely to be little capacity left for land-strike weapons. The Hunter-class frigate will have only 32 cells, and the first ship won\u2019t arrive for another decade.<\/p>\n

This is one of the outcomes of the exponentially upwards spiralling cost of our ships. The head of the US Navy, Admiral Michael Gilday, said<\/a> \u2018we cannot afford to wrap two billion dollars\u2019 worth of ship around 96 missile tubes\u2019. Unfortunately, Australia is wrapping $2\u20133 billion worth of ship around one-third that number of tubes. And despite the government\u2019s planned $575 billion spend on defence in the next decade, the navy won\u2019t get an additional vertical launch cell to sea in that time.<\/p>\n

The submarine force is unlikely to add much. While the US Navy is adding modules with vertical launch cells to future tranches of its Virginia-class submarines, the first of our Attack-class boats won\u2019t have them, so any potential strike missiles would have to compete for very limited space with the torpedoes or anti-ship missiles being launched through their torpedo tubes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to see how a RAN taskforce could carry more than a dozen or so land-strike missiles without sacrificing its air defence capability and, through the government\u2019s shipbuilding plan, that\u2019s essentially baked into the navy\u2019s force structure over the next three decades.<\/p>\n

Even if we go up against an adversary with no anti-ship capability, allowing the navy to increase the number of land-strike missiles its ships carry, there are probably vanishingly few scenarios in which they\u2019ll make much of a difference. If al-Qaeda and Syria can ignore a strike, then any local adversary could too.<\/p>\n

But suppose an adversary established a forward operating base in our region that threatened our interests. It\u2019s conceivable, for example, that in time of conflict the ADF could use ship-launched TLAMs against it to degrade its force-projection facilities or destroy aircraft on the ground. But once the taskforce\u2019s small number of missiles had been delivered, it would take several weeks to rearm in southern Australia, giving the adversary time to regroup, reinforce and get ready for round two. That load-out also couldn\u2019t be changed at sea should the nature of the fight change from land strike to maritime strike or air defence or anti-submarine warfare.<\/p>\n

Another use could be to contribute to a US-led coalition, much as the UK has employed submarine-launched TLAMs. It\u2019s true that as the US Navy\u2019s vessels age out, its numbers of vertical launch cells are likely to fall. But again, it\u2019s unlikely that any number Australia could provide would make much of a difference. Moreover, the defence strategic update states clearly that the ADF needs to increase its self-reliant<\/em> ability to deliver deterrent effects. Therefore, niche contributions to the US should not be the primary lens through which to assess the potential capability.<\/p>\n

In short, the opportunity cost of ship-launched land-strike weapons in both dollars and competition for limited space on our ships seems to outweigh the benefits.<\/p>\n

There are, however, other potential ways to provide a credible land-strike deterrent. Land-based missiles, for example, are an approach that Defence is also exploring and which has a funding line in the force structure plan. They come with their own calculus of cost and risk. A large number of missiles could be based in Australia and they would be difficult to detect and destroy, but they might not have sufficient range to reach potential targets. And deploying them overseas would require a large, costly overhead in other capabilities needed to transport and protect them.<\/p>\n

There are, then, many possible strike options to evaluate. But there\u2019s one that so far doesn\u2019t seem to have received much attention. The number of strike missiles that a naval taskforce could carry is roughly equivalent to the number that a bomber could carry in a single sortie. Plus, a bomber can rearm and return the next day. It can also both kick in the door with long-range weapons and follow up with direct attacks using cheaper, more plentiful short-range weapons (potentially in the same mission). It can adjust its load-out every day for different missions. And a bomber has a human crew of only two who are in danger, in contrast to the 500 or more in a maritime taskforce.<\/p>\n

Most of the cost of maritime platforms is due to the integrated systems needed to defend them, not their offensive capabilities. Why not put some of that investment into more cost-effective ways of striking an adversary? The B-21 bomber<\/a> is certainly not cheap, but, in deterring an enemy and altering their cost and risk calculus, it may be a far more cost-effective strike platform than a ship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my most recent article, I noted that the Department of Defence appears to be in the early stages of identifying a ship-launched land-attack missile for acquisition. The government assessed in its 2020 defence strategic …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":767,"featured_media":62516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,268,114,362],"class_list":["post-62513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-missile","tag-ran","tag-strike"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDoes the Royal Australian Navy need Tomahawk missiles? | 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\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/does-the-royal-australian-navy-need-tomahawk-missiles\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does the Royal Australian Navy need Tomahawk missiles? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In my most recent article, I noted that the Department of Defence appears to be in the early stages of identifying a ship-launched land-attack missile for acquisition. 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