Question Australia's RAAF and Maritime Defence - Analysis of Capability?

[jdoe101]

Much of the focus has been on the submarine acquisition as Australia only has 6 x subs at present and it's going to take a long time to get the nuclear subs (if ever). So that might leave maybe 4 available at most? This part of our military procurement hasn't gone so well with flip-flopping compounding issue of long lead times.
However, the part of our defence procurement that has gone relatively well is the air force. It's more or less relatively new with F35s, SuperHornets, Growlers, AWACS and P8's. Australia has Harpoon Missiles which I believe are being replaced with LRASMs.
The primary concern of the government I believe is protecting Australia's shipping lanes from PLA Navy aggression (coercion). In this context, question is, what does our air power give us in terms of existing capability to defend against their navy? If we had problems with our shipping lanes I suspect we would could re-route ships away from choke points from the north to the south of Australia where they can't easily project air power. But, do our platforms have the ability to penetrate the air defences of say, their powerful Type 55 destroyers? It appears they have a lot of VLS cells but at the same time, most of Australia's fast jets have electronic attack now which might be problematic for their air defences.
Then there is submarines to worry about which which is what the P8s are for, though I wonder how difficult it is with to find their subs which I believe aren't so quiet.
To be clear, I am not naive - Australia has zero chance of winning a full scale war with the PLA. However, they can not project all their military assets into our neighborhood and with home ground advantage, perhaps having the ability to sink a ship or two could would make them less likely to try anything. I should hope a full blockade of the content would be difficult to achieve, but their power projection capability is a big part of this question.

 

[Todjaeger]

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues surrounding the SLOC chokepoints in/around SE Asian and the Indo-Pacific.

You might have to look at what chokepoints are likely of concern to the PRC and why or under what circumstances.

For example, one of the major ones is of course the Malacca Strait, which has something like 200 vessels transit it daily, and has nearly 40% of global trade pass through it. Much of the cargo going to or coming from Europe, Africa or the Mideast will pass through that chokepoint before continuing on to ports in eastern Asia, Australia, or the west coast of North & South America. Similarly, much of the shipping from Chinese, Japanese and S. Korean ports will pass through/by Singapore before heading to Australian ports.

The PRC and PLAN is naturally interested in being able to control these SLOC because they allow access to the SCS. In the event of a major conflict between the PRC and some other power, if the other power were able to control this access the PRC's SLOC to critical resources (like petroleum) would be severely restricted. An area of Australian concern in this regard is that if the PRC were able to establish control over this specific SLOC chokepoint, then the PRC would have control over a major SLOC for Australia.

Also having merchant shipping change transit routes would likely be problematic, since I suspect that Singapore is not only a port to refuel at, but also a transshipment point where cargoes bound for different destinations can be offloaded and reloaded depending on the planned port of calls for the vessels.