Page 32 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

PACIFIC
CONTEXT
“The ADF presence in northern Australia also directly contributes to
the economic and social development of the region.”
Military-to-military engagement devel- ops shared understanding, trust and ca- pacity to respond to a full spectrum of real- world incidents in the region. Once again, relationship building so that when trouble happens you know who to call.
Up north
The ADF regards northern Australia as strategically important, both for national defence and as a forward base for regional engagement (see P134 for more on this). The ADF presence in northern Australia also directly contributes to the economic and social development of the region.
A substantial amount of new ADF as- sets will either be based or operate in the vicinity of northern Australia, requiring new or upgraded facilities. These include new strike and patrol aircraft as well as the Canberra class Landing Helicopter Docks alongside Border Force assets that also operate in the region. The increasing presence of US Marine rotations within northern Australia will also require addi- tional infrastructure and base capacity.
However, future growth in the ADF’s northern Australia presence is constrained.
RAN sailors Petty Officer Communication and Information Systems Kathleen Price (left) and Petty Officer Boatswain Daniel Easton observe the Replenishment at Sea Approach (RASAP) exercise with Sri Lanka Navy Ship Sindurala from the bridge wing of HMAS Success during Indo-Pacific Endeavour 2019.
Climate factors affect the ADF’s ability to op- erate in the region and maintain its infrastruc- ture, while northern Australia’s distance from major population centres increases resource costs and can impede retention of personnel.
Accordingly, the most cost-effective im- provements will likely come through more efficient defence sustainment provided by local northern Australian defence indus- tries. The work being done by Thales on the Armidale sustainment contract is a good example of this, having recently won an Es- sington Lewis certificate for their work to turn the program around.
The mission
Navy has a lot on its plate at the moment. The force is all over the world, with a new deployment back into the Straits of Hor- muz to the EEZ and SAR areas that are be-
tween 7-11 per cent of the earth’s ocean in terms of sheer coverage, there is a lot to do. Managing a heavily tasked workforce and platform program alongside some of the biggest shipbuilding plans in the world at the moment, there are challenges and op-
portunities on the horizon.
There are known gaps on all these fronts
that are being addressed but the unplanned is always around the corner. Call it a black swan or un- known unknown, more and more operations are happen- ing in the grey zone where the lines between warfighting and posturing are blurring. Recent grey-zone activity in maritime Asia suggests an increase in hybrid warfare. The lines between military, economic, diplomatic, intel- ligence and criminal means of aggression
are becoming increasingly unclear.
The grey-zone is a metaphorical state of being between war and peace, where an ag- gressor aims to reap either political or ter- ritorial gains associated with overt military aggression without crossing the threshold of open warfare with a powerful adversary, according to the Australian Institute of In-
ternational Affairs.
The zone essentially represents an oper-
ating environment in which aggressors use ambiguity and leverage non-attribution to achieve strategic objectives while limiting counteractions by other nation states.
The leading purveyor of grey-zone tactics in maritime Asia is China’s irregular mari- time militia, dubbed the ‘little blue men’. It seeks to assert and expand Chinese control over an increasingly large area of disputed
and reclaimed islands and reefs in the stra- tegically important South China Sea. The militia, comprising hundreds of fisher- folks in their motorboats as well as China’s paramilitary forces, operates mainly out of Chinese-held islands in the South China Sea and has been involved in buzzing US navy ships and those of neighbouring countries with rival territorial claims.
The idea behind Chinese militia opera- tions is to exert authority over a maritime space using civilian craft and personnel, but to do it in a way that precludes open military confrontation. Grey zone opera- tions are coercive and intended to achieve change, but they seek at the same time to limit an adversary’s ability to respond.
Fit for purpose
This is not a future scenario; this is right now, and it is happening across our region. Is the force design that we are putting in place able to answer this threat along- side the possibility of a total war concept against a near peer adversary? Are we training our military decision makers to fight at both ends of this spectrum with the right equipment behind them (see P48 for more on hypersonics)? Do we have the right industry and strategic policy settings in place to support the force we need to fulfil the tasks set by government? Have we mapped the human terrain of our re- gion to the point where we have confi- dence in what is happening and why?
The RAN has had a lot of experience in fighting pirates/transnational crime and has had a Middle East rotation since 1990 (currently at rotation 67) at sea alongside deployments into the Middle East on land as well. Navy is relatively late to the
32 | October 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
DEFENCE