The Australian Navy is useless against China warn various experts in this Age investigation.
Billions have been spent on surface warships that cannot survive modern warfare while the submarine program has been repeatedly bungled.
This is another example of Australia trying – and failing – to project power elsewhere instead of just defending Australia.
Key quotes
“There are so many ways for the Chinese to sink ships, and our ships are just pathetically undergunned.” (Marcus Hellyer, ASPI)
“Finding a ship is now a cinch and sinking it is now trivial. For Australia, this means it’s very easy for us to stop other people projecting power towards us, but the converse of that is that it’s very easy for an adversary to stop us projecting power towards them.” (Hugh White)
“We should stop spending money on forces designed to achieve sea control so we can project against others, and start spending money on forces designed for sea denial to stop other people projecting power against us.” (Hugh White)
Our Plan
- Stop building surface combatants, de-navalise and transfer our existing surface ships to maritime policing and humanitarian roles – or scrap them.
- Buy B-21 aircraft instead of building $5 billion dollar frigates.
- Build advanced conventional submarines in Australia for a fraction of the price of nuclear submarines.
- Use our existing Poseidon P-8 aircraft to deter aggression against Australia prior to the B-21 and new conventional submarines becoming available.
References
- Navy ‘Pathetically undergunned’ (The Age, Feb 2021)
- Our ‘Self Reliant, Self Defence’ policy
- Naval Group Achieves Breakthrough With Its FC2G AIP System (Naval Group, July 2019)
Image: Explosion of HMS Antelope‘s magazines in the Falklands War (Wikipedia)