ADF General discussion thread

[MickB]

Imagine the near future where ocean resources are even more depleted and China dispatches its "coast guard" to protect a fishing fleet strip mining the EEZs of PNG, Solomons, Fiji etc
A battery of ASMs quickly flown in might provide the proper intimidation factor to prevent the situation escalating.
And give time to resolve the situation through other means.
Or if it blows up, the muscle to back our allies.

I know some will say the battery itself is an escalation.
But i fail to see why if China, Russia etc; threaten force to get their way, there are many who will just shrug and except it, but if a western aligned country threatens to reply to that force with force of its own the same people deem that to be a dangerous provocation.

 

[ADMk2]

I think that's a perfectly legitimate concern to have. And, quite frankly, I've never actually seen the (mainly Army) concept of forward deployed land based missiles actually genuinely considered, or argued against.

Where are those forces going? Many of the neighbours we casually throw around have a very different relationship with Beijing. They are not going to want to be dragged into a major regional conflict between the US and China. The uncontested idea that we can park on Indonesian, Malaysian etc territory and shoot at PRC targets is not an assumption I would grant a Staff Cadet at RMC, let along Russell Offices. Some nations may - PNG for instance - but what does that achieve for us? Defending our north-east quadrant is great for us, but what is it achieving from a PRC point of view? Are the PRC even going to send surface vessels to the Coral Sea when they are in the fight of their lives around Taiwan?

How are those forces getting there? The closer we go to the PRC, the easier it is to target our forces and the more options the PRC has to throw at us. The options they have to strike Guam v Darwin is literally orders of magnitude. So how do we get these missile launchers there? Note also, the PRC doesn't have to strike the strategic lift. It can just track them. Someone mentioned Gull and Sparrow force above - they all died. For nothing. you cant hide the deployment of these beasties.

What are you taking? Some Strikemaster? Bahahahahahahaha....... that's murder. Such short range weapons are a joke. So HiMARs or better. Cool. Note at the moment that's still well within the PRC WEZ, but the best (land) option we have at the moment. So, what, a Battery of HiMARs? That's 14 launchers. 14x PrSM missiles. Ok.....I mean, that's less than the Tier 2 combatants we were going to buy, but sure. Not sure it's going to do anything - the PLA-N is designed to fight an enemy with 122x VLS Ticos, 96x VLS Burkes and multiple CVNBG.... I'm not sure what 14 extra missiles are going to do (not nothing, but still....).

How are you going to protect them? I mean, you don't have to. You can leave them to die. But they will need protection. Their disembarkation point is known. The number of launch points worth of PRC attention is known. They are closer to the WEZ than anything else, so the PLA have even more options than striking Australia. This rapidly turns into a significant chunk of ADF power, dangling out .... 'there'

The advantage China has, is that Australia is negligible. We are not a threat. Anything worthy of striking here (which is Stirling and maybe a RAAF Base where a heavy USAF presence is) is geographically known (as opposed to a PLA-N SAG) and is already in range of multiple Chinese options. So the issues facing us, targeting, range, missile production rates, simply aren't an issue for Beijing. Their challenges in those areas relate to the mobile targets east of Taiwan, specifically the USN units. The only possible similarity facing Beijing is the ABO issues, but they already have long-range missiles and they travel out of the atmosphere - negating ABO. Furthermore, the possible diaspora to hide non-conventional forces in is in Beijing's favour, not ours.

I've been arguing against Army owning anti-ship missiles since writing the first needs statement in 17/18. Lessons from the Baltic and Black Seas don't apply here. It's a waste of resources - if you want an anti-ship capability you fund the RAAF and RAN. They do it better and faster. The reason I'm a HiMARs fan is because it's the beginning steps to a genuine very long range strike capability, preferably hypersonic. The PrSM plan gets us most of the way, and hopefully by then we have options to go beyond that. Then we can shoot from Australian territory at the things that matter.

All good points and I am not a fan of the Strikemaster myself, for the very same points you’d raise. If there genuinely is a need to buy land based long ranged missiles to cover our approaches, than why would we buy more of the shortest ranged anti-ship missile we already have? As you say, RAN and RAAF can already do better and will still be able to even if we did buy it, so why we aren’t investing in something mostly different is beyond me.

We will have 10 ships full of NSM by next year (if not already) that’s 80 rounds (assuming we have enough in our inventory and the missiles aren’t being rotated between ships, which would almost be a first for RAN…) does another 14 of the same weapon, help that much?

We have 3 ships available with Tomahawk with problematic ship load-outs if they are to be strike configured (if they are, they can’t really be AAW ships and vice versa).

Tomahawk gives us range we (almost) don’t currently have and again SM-6 gives us speed we almost don’t already have. (Same problem, only 3 ships with limited load-out).

In the short term Typhon MRC fixes both of those problems - later Increments of PRsM might as well (1000+ k ranges reportedly are being sought) but that’s a maybe - one day. Typhon MRC is available now.

Strikemaster fixes none of them and is nowhere near “ready” for service either, to boot...

For me it’s HIMARS with accelerated development and deployment of longer ranged PRsM with alternative mission profiles (aka maritime strike) or Typhon MRC…

 

[Todjaeger]

Imagine the near future where ocean resources are even more depleted and China dispatches its "coast guard" to protect a fishing fleet strip mining the EEZs of PNG, Solomons, Fiji etc
A battery of ASMs quickly flown in might provide the proper intimidation factor to prevent the situation escalating.
And give time to resolve the situation through other means.
Or if it blows up, the muscle to back our allies.

I know some will say the battery itself is an escalation.
But i fail to see why if China, Russia etc; threaten force to get their way, there are many who will just shrug and except it, but if a western aligned country threatens to reply to that force with force of its own the same people deem that to be a dangerous provocation.

I do not really view a battery of land-based AShM as being an escalation. Rather, I see it as an expensive (keeping in mind one needs to factor in everything to make such a setup actually functional and effective) but very niche capability with limited potential employment. Those same employment scenarios are one which also can be met by deploying other ADF assets already in service.

Given the scenario provided, a PRC "Coast Guard" escorted fishing fleet stripping an area of resources in the EEZ of a country like PNG, Australia is already able to deploy a RAN frigate which could get on station of both monitor the activities of the fishing fleet, as well as deter them. As an alternative, send RAAF P-8 Poseidons to monitor and deter said fleet. Or deploy both.

Realistically, Australia would likely need to deploy one or the other at least, in order for any land-based AShM batteries to be effective because they will need targeting data and IMO it is unlikely that PNG, the Solomons or Fiji would have the sort of systems to collect and then relay target quality data to a RAA unit.