{"id":6995,"date":"2013-06-14T10:01:39","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T00:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=6995"},"modified":"2014-04-10T13:14:52","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T03:14:52","slug":"amphibious-anzacs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/amphibious-anzacs\/","title":{"rendered":"Amphibious ANZACs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TRINITY<\/a>For a while now defence officials and analysts on both sides of the Tasman have been looking for ways to re-energise the Australia-New Zealand relationship<\/a>. It\u2019s almost as if the two neighbours were becoming too comfortable with where things between them were at. Finding concrete measures hasn\u2019t proven easy so far but some cause for optimism might be on the horizon; cooperation on amphibious operations could breathe new life into ANZAC links. But to do so, some obstacles will need to be cleared out of the way.<\/p>\n

The development of an amphibious capability is one of key themes of Australia\u2019s new Defence White Paper<\/a> (DWP). With the arrival of the LHDs, the ambition is to maintain \u2018an enduring joint amphibious presence in the South Pacific\u2019. For its part, New Zealand is prioritising the development of a Joint Amphibious Task Force by 2015. Wellington\u2019s 2011 Defence Capability Plan<\/a> tells us that the Task Force will be designed primarily for \u2018responding to security tasks and defence tasks in New Zealand and its environs, security challenges to New Zealand\u2019s interests in the South Pacific, and challenges to New Zealand and Australia\u2019s common security concerns\u2019.<\/p>\n

Amphibious cooperation also features in the way that both country\u2019s relationships with the United States are heading, and this takes us well beyond the South Pacific part of the neighbourhood. Australia has of course agreed to host a rotational deployment of a US Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) in Darwin. In these days of the pivot, their focus is on maritime Southeast Asia. And, in the latest development, army, navy and air force personnel from New Zealand (alongside forces from Japan and Canada) are participating for the first time in the US Marines\u2019 major annual amphibious exercise, Dawn Blitz<\/a>, which started this week off the Southern Californian coast. While the NZ Defence Force\u2019s website is silent on the exercise, the US Marines report that the Kiwi contingent is involved in anti-mine operations<\/a>. For the US, anti-mining is becoming more important<\/a> in the face of China\u2019s anti-access\/ area-denial challenge.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s highly likely that amphibious operations will play a greater role for both Australia and New Zealand as they respond to the US rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific. New Zealand\u2019s involvement in Dawn Blitz, for example, can be seen as an outcome of the 2012 Washington Declaration<\/a> with the US, which promises closer cooperation in \u2018deployable capabilities, in support of peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region\u2019. That\u2019s also a line that\u2019s not out of place as one of the aims for US-Australian maritime cooperation.<\/p>\n

This creates both opportunities and risks. New Zealand and Australia can benefit from regularly exercising with what\u2019s arguably the best amphibious force in the world, thereby building up their own still rather rudimentary amphibious capabilities. There\u2019s also much to be said for trilateral amphibious exercises, utilising the MAGTF presence in Australia.\u00a0 At the same time, we need to be clear about the opportunity costs involved: apart from their value as an instrument of regional defence diplomacy in Southeast and East Asia, amphibious forces will become more relevant for US strategy to counter potential Chinese assertiveness in maritime disputes in the South China Sea and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

One sign of the careful navigation challenge which lies ahead comes from a report from Tokyo<\/a> which claims that Dawn Blitz is \u2018the latest, biggest\u2014and potentially most troubling\u2014step in expanding the roles and missions of the Japanese Self Defense Force since China began aggressively pressing claims on Japanese administered islands in 2010\u2019. This activity hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed, and China reportedly requested\u2014with no success\u2014that the US and Japan cancel parts of Dawn Blitz<\/i>. That leaves both New Zealand and Australia with the question of the degree to which they tie their amphibious components to US Asia-Pacific strategy. Canberra might find this a more natural thing to do than Wellington, but both will need to navigate the challenges very carefully. Transparency is clearly in order each step of the way.<\/p>\n

Beyond the US dimension, fostering cooperation on amphibious operations makes perfect sense for both countries to address common challenges in the South Pacific.<\/a> (This is no small issue, because we believe the health of the transTasman defence relationship depends mainly on what we can do together in the Pacific). NZ\u2019s joint amphibious approach is definitely geared towards contingencies in the region. But is the same is true for the ADF? The ambition for a \u2018joint amphibious presence\u2019 in the South Pacific could fall victim to another goal announced in the 2013 DWP: to deploy maritime \u2018joint task forces\u2019 into Southeast Asia and the broader \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019.<\/p>\n

An Australian \u2018mini carrier-group\u2019 based around the LHD\u2019s, the new Air Warfare Destroyers, and the future submarines also is likely to be an \u2018amphibious overkill\u2019 in the South Pacific. This points to the critical question of whether New Zealand and Australia will have compatible amphibious structures to allow for joint operations. While the ADF opted for two big LHDs, the New Zealand Defence Force has invested in a smaller multi-role vessel, for example.<\/p>\n

Thus, both sides need to develop a common understanding on what would be required to allow for joint amphibious operations. Will both sides develop similar doctrines for amphibious operations? \u00a0To what degree are their respective systems interoperable, both in a national and bilateral context? All of this suggests that there are many trans-Tasman conversations ahead if the amphibious ANZAC idea is to prove a net benefit to both sides.<\/p>\n

Robert Ayson<\/a>\u00a0is director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Benjamin Schreer is a senior analyst at ASPI.<\/em>\u00a0Image courtesy of the Australian War Memorial<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a while now defence officials and analysts on both sides of the Tasman have been looking for ways to re-energise the Australia-New Zealand relationship. It\u2019s almost as if the two neighbours were becoming too …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":6996,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,40,259,143,41,33,73,99],"class_list":["post-6995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-alliance-2","tag-amphibious-operations","tag-asia-pacific","tag-asian-century","tag-capability","tag-new-zealand","tag-south-pacific"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmphibious ANZACs? | 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\/amphibious-anzacs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Amphibious ANZACs? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For a while now defence officials and analysts on both sides of the Tasman have been looking for ways to re-energise the Australia-New Zealand relationship. 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