Interchangeable forces key to submarine success

By?Alan Dupont

The Weekend Australian

October 30, 2021

The Morrison government’s groundbreaking AUKUS agreement has the potential to accelerate the transformation of the Northern Territory from strategic backwater to vital alliance hub.

It won’t be realised without an integrated plan to leverage increased investment in the Territory’s defence infrastructure to strengthen allied capacity and reach.

There is little time to waste, or margin for error, as strategic competition in the region heats up and the balance of power shifts in favour of states that don’t share our interests or values.

Our alliance with the US, and other like-minded countries, is a potent military and diplomatic multiplier for Australia. But previous levels of defence co-operation and interoperability are no longer sufficient.

We need to pool our resources, jointly fund critical infrastructure, collaborate across all areas of defence technology, step-up training and exercises and become super-interoperable to the point where our defence forces are “interchangeable”.

Admiral Tony Radakin, the UK’s First Sea Lord and incoming chief of the defence staff defines interchangeability as the capacity to operate seamlessly with close allies. Radakin asks: “When we are looking at maintaining our freedom of manoeuvre … does it really matter whether it’s a US submarine or a UK submarine?”

This is more than wishful thinking. When the UK’s new aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth, sailed through the Western Pacific last month, US F-35B joint strike fighters flew from its decks along with the Queen Elizabeth’s own joint strike fighters.

Interchangeability is the key to solving our submarine problem. The navy’s nuclear-powered submarines are unlikely to be in the water much before 2040. Having our submariners train and operate as joint crews on American and British nuclear submarines rotating through Darwin and Perth would help fill the looming submarine capability gap.

But interchangeability won’t be possible without substantial new investment in the Territory’s defence infrastructure. Putting more muscle on the bones of the Territory’s infrastructure should not be mission impossible.

There is much to work with, notably a scalable industrial base, secure high-speed communications and a growing capacity to fuel, replenish and repair visiting ships and aircraft. It will soon be possible to launch satellites and high-altitude balloons for surveillance, communications and targeting on demand from the Gove Peninsula and Alice Springs.

The Territory is a defence-friendly jurisdiction, long accustomed to hosting multinational ship and aircraft visits. Elements of a Marine expeditionary force have rotated through the Top End for a decade.

When completed, the announced training range upgrades will offer unsurpassed opportunities for exercising sophisticated war-fighting skills. But there is a need and appetite to do more because of the heightened risk of conflict in the region and the long lead times required to develop fit-for-purpose facilities.

The Territory’s proximity to contested areas of the South China Sea and the strategically important Malacca Straits makes it an ideal location for the much closer alliance co-operation envisaged by Canberra, London and Washington.

As the US adjusts its regional defence posture, the Territory could become the linchpin in the chain of US bases running from the Aleutians in the North Pacific to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean which support US strategy and military operations.

Five times larger than Sydney Harbour and deeper than San Francisco Bay, Darwin Harbour is uniquely placed to facilitate and support an enlarged regional alliance. This is due to its strategic location, abundant space, relative security from missile attack, proximity to two major defence airfields and a rapidly developing maritime precinct.

Over the next five years, much of the harbour’s growth will be in the defence and national security domains as the Australian and allied navies ramp up their capacity to protect vital sea lines-of-communication and maritime choke points.

Darwin Harbour is well placed to become a valuable joint-user facility for the US Navy, Marine Corps and Quadripartite members Japan and India, as well as forward deployed British and European ships. The navy’s new focus on Darwin as an operational and sustainment base for naval operations to our north mandates additional defence investment.

Construction of a 5000-tonne ship lift and the establishment of a regional maintenance centre in Darwin under Project Galileo will complement, and improve, the Territory’s ability to support and maintain alliance fleets. An increase in the size of the ship lift would allow the speedy repair of battle-damaged destroyers and frigates.

Strategist Peter Layton says that if the allies become involved in a regional maritime conflict, getting damaged warships back into the fight quickly becomes the critical capability needed, not new ship construction.

Darwin is the only place that can provide this service given the time it would take battle-damaged ships to reach alternative destinations with the requisite specialised dry docks, ship lifts and adequate stockholdings of replacement items.

Only a failure of vision and strategy can prevent the Territory from becoming an indispensable hub for an enlarged alliance and a key enabler for the more capable military Australia patently needs.

Alan Dupont is the Northern Territory’s Defence and National Security Advocate.