Page 112 - Australian Defence Magazine May 2022

112 SEAPOWER SURFACE COMBATANTS
MAY 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
Another ‘passive’ defensive technique is to simply not put too many high value assets into harm’s way. In land war- fare, the dispersion of forces has been a clear trend as le- thality of battlefield systems has increased. Translated into the maritime environment, that might make a good argu- ment for a ‘high-low’ fleet, with numerous smaller (and less expensive) vessels taking on the roles that don’t require the presence of a major surface combatant.
Certainly, most of the constabulary and low-end roles don’t need a large warship. But maybe some warfighting roles are better suited to smaller vessels as well, such as ASW, where area coverage and concurrency matter more than combat
BELOW: An RAAF F-35A Lightning overflies HMAS Hobart during Exercise Tasman Shield 21
“WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO CONTROL THE SEA FOR OUR USE AT TIMES”
mass. The corvette and destroyer escort have gone out of fashion, but might be worth another look as the cost of frigates and destroyers continue to escalate.
But smaller ships won’t be able to do everything and will come up short against the persistence mea- sure. Increasing the ability of larger
ships to produce useful effects at a distance—hence keeping them further from land-based threats while using the sheer size of the ocean to complicate an adversary’s targeting of them—would help improve their survivability. Long-range precision weapons work both ways, and seaborne strike as- sets could sit further off and still be effective. And not all the effects would require classic surface combatants to deliver— the possibility of strike fleets including unmanned ‘missile magazine’ vessels is being explored in the US.
Finally, more efficient shipborne defensive systems would help. Systems like high-energy lasers and rail-guns have sometimes been touted as the way ahead. They both offer the advantage of greater rates of fire and deeper mag- azines (the limiting factor basically being the ability of the vessel to provide power) than is possible when relying on large kinetic kill missiles like the SM-2. But both systems have been in R&D for decades and neither has been con- vincingly demonstrated as a robust and reliable defensive
system against contemporary and emerging threats. And, the high-power requirements themselves drive up the size of the vessel on which they would deploy. The USN has shelved plans for railguns, and is instead looking at a new generation of hypersonic missiles.
We have a problem. We need to be able to control the sea for our use at times. But the ways we’ve ensured that in the past are looking progressively more questionable, even as they consume steadily more resources. Continuing to rely on a small number of very expensive assets doesn’t look to be a sound strategy. There is no ‘silver bullet’ solution in sight, and surface combatants as we know them will doubtless be around for years to come. But there are complementary ap- proaches that would likely increase our chance of future suc- cess and it’s probably time to think seriously about them. ■
Andrew Davies is a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strate- gic Policy Institute and lectures on intelligence and defence force structuring at the Strategic and Defence Studies Cen- tre at the ANU.
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