AUSTRALIA´S ROLE IN AMERICA´S WAR WITH CHINA, PART 2 / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Australia’s Role in America’s War With China, Part 2

The country would have plenty to do aside from housing U.S. forces. 

By: Jacek Bartosiak

Perhaps America’s greatest operational advantage over China – should a war ever start between them – is the superiority of its submarines. Submarines are great for breaking China’s anti-access/area denial strategy. 

Especially in the early stages of the conflict, nuclear submarines and cruise missile carriers would be Washington’s first option; they would be deep in Chinese-controlled waters, and they could hit inland targets such as ports, communications facilities and air defense systems. 

Even so, submarines have an inherent operational limitation: ammunition, which obviously can’t be replaced underwater.

Geographic Advantage

Enter Australia, whose importance can’t be confined to just one analysis. 

Northern Australia would be the ideal location for US. bases in theory, but inclement weather, great tides, moving floors and reefs make it too treacherous. 

The best option, then, would be Western Australia’s Stirling naval base. 

It’s beyond the range of China’s current conventional missile force, and unlike in Guam, Australia has conventional submarines stationed there. 

Its access to the Indian Ocean also allows U.S. vessels to eliminate peripheral Chinese raids and to cut through Chinese communications or block military ports in the Indian Ocean. (Not for nothing, Stirling would need some upgrades: a new harbor for nuclear ships, a deepened port at the Cockburn Sound canal, and so on. All of which would require things like ammunition stores and massive construction equipment that would make this a huge undertaking.)

Notably, Australia already has massive ship, warship and aircraft traffic reconnaissance capabilities far north of the Australian coast. 

For example, the off-horizon observation system, based on the use of radio wave reflection in the JORN (Jindalee Operational Radar Network) ionosphere, monitors sea routes and straits at a distance of 1,000-3,000 kilometers (620-1,900 miles) from the northern coast. 

The system detects planes, rockets and ships. After a planned upgrade, it will detect ballistic missiles as well as stealth planes and cruise missiles. 

Its data is interchangeable with Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft, HALE-class drones and P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol planes. 

Australia may soon ask other countries in the region to host the system, which would only strengthen it further.

Indeed, Australia has a huge role to play in terms of space reconnaissance. The geographic location of the country on the edge of the Southern Hemisphere enables precise tracking of the launch and, later, the movement of bodies in orbit. 

Western Australia’s sparse population reduces radio interference of satellite signals, and the lack of cloud cover over the country’s western deserts is ideal for tracking Chinese satellites.

Responsibilities

In the event of a war with China, Australian forces would have several automatic advantages over Chinese forces in the Indonesian strait area. 

A blockade of the Malacca Strait would divert Chinese vessel traffic to the Indonesian straits closer to Australia. 

This would distance Chinese forces from their own coast, complicating logistics and effectively depriving them of air protection or at least seriously reducing it. 

The current naval and air systems of the Chinese army do not have sufficient range to conduct operations around the straits. 

Only Chinese cruise missiles can threaten surface ships trying to block the Indonesian straits. Chinese long-range reconnaissance will therefore have a very difficult task. 

The natural geography of the area favors Australia by channeling the movement of ships, which helps its armed forces to concentrate strike forces over and between narrow passages. 

Australia’s smaller naval forces have local control of key narrow sea passages closer to their own bases and ports that will be almost entirely beyond Chinese influence.

Australians would presumably be assigned the role of permanent control of the movement of ships and warships, and for this they would need sensors, drones and special forces located near the Lombok and Sunda straits. 

It would not be necessary to maintain a constant air force presence over all Indonesian straits, because Chinese planes have too short a range. 

Only Chinese H-6 bombers with stand-off missiles can operate in this area. 

And the Chinese can fight Australian aircraft only with their Luyang I, II and III-class missile destroyers. 

These ships would naturally be subjected to the first attacks by American (and Australian) forces at the beginning of the war, something best accomplished with a fleet of submarines intercepting Chinese ships on their way south from Hainan Island, or with long-range planes armed with hard-to-detect anti-ship missiles with a range greater than the sensors and radar of Luyang destroyers.

Another role would be to combat Chinese submarines traveling from Hainan Island toward the Indonesian straits to dislodge the blockade. 

In this case, the conventional submarines of the Australian navy – typically difficult to detect in shallow and acoustically noisy waters around the straits – would be even more important than U.S. nuclear ships. 

At the operational level, there would be a division of tasks between American and Australian ships, where American nuclear ships would fight the Chinese navy in the deeper waters of the South China Sea, while quiet, conventional Australian ships lying in the shallow waters of the Indonesian archipelago would be waiting for Chinese vessels trying to get out of the American trap.

An important aspect in all this is Indonesia’s response to the conflict. 

If Indonesia fought with Western powers, it would significantly change the balance of power. In the Sunda and Lombok straits, coastal missiles can be easily used against objects at sea with the help of special units or separate ground troops. 

The Sunda Strait, in particular, is exceptionally narrow – in some places only 15 nautical miles wide. 

Special operations forces equipped with rockets and hidden in the jungle at Cape Tua in Sumatra or Puja in Java, moreover, would help to effectively block traffic in the straits.

One last task Australia may have to carry out, and one that may prove to be its primary task with regard to establishing a blockade, would be to escort its own ships and warships. 

Doing so would require extensive use of warships and combat platforms as the main force. 

Given the daily number of ships passing through the straits, it will not be easy, and even using all Australian forces may not be sufficient in allied operations, given that the Americans also do not have the number of ships to do the job. 

To this end, the Australian armed forces should provide for the possibility of calling and replenishing war stocks in ports geographically close to the straits in Malaysia and Singapore, and in the Philippines.