President Expected to Announce New Marine Base in Australia

Building upon statements by former Secretary Gates back in June, President Obama is expected to make more naval headlines this week by announcing a Marine basing agreement in Darwin, Australia. While there are few specific details announced publicly yet, the articles in the The Sydney Morning Herald and Wall Street Journal both suggest the basing arrangement in Australia will be specific to the Marine Corps. So far there is no indication that there will be any forward deployment of naval vessels, either warships or amphibious ships, but it is also unclear exactly how much of the details for the new basing arrangement have been worked out.

For smart analysis from Australia regarding these unfolding events, I encourage readers to keep an eye on the Lowy Institute for International Policy Interpreter Blog. The first reactions there by Sam Roggeveen, Ross Babbage, and Raoul Heinrichs are all worth checking out, and I suspect we will see more reactions as the official announcement is made. Sam Roggeveen makes a particularly interesting point discussing the comments in The Sydney Morning Herald article (linked above) by Alan Dupont and Hugh White:

It seems to me we could take Dupont's argument to arrive at the opposite conclusion to that reached by White. If the US is indeed moving its forces further away from China in order to buy them some safety from Beijing's increasing military reach, why would China be alarmed by this? If this move is actually accompanied by a reduced US military presence in Northeast Asia (which Dupont implies, though I'm not certain it is true) doesn't it in fact weaken America's ability to contain China?

Hugh White argues (convincingly, in my view) that Washington needs to cede some strategic space in the Asia Pacific to a rising China. If the Darwin basing arrangement is in fact a redistribution of US forces in the Asia Pacific and not a reinforcement, then that's just what the US is doing.

Thanks to transparency in the United States government, we can assume with a high degree of certainty this will be redistribution, because there is no evidence that the Obama administration has substantially increased funding for new naval combatants beyond existing plans that already do not number enough to replace retiring vessels in the coming decade. The US Navy's CG(X) program was cancelled, and while the administration is saying the DDG-51s will last 40 years, that's a bunch of nonsense with surface maintenance always underfunded - not to mention operational tempo's still above normal. While I know the US Navy would absolutely love to base a DESRON in Australia for all the obvious, legitimate reasons, it is hard to imagine any Senator or Congressman is going to allow warships to be reassigned out of their district unless a major west coast naval base in the Continental US is closed. If not from Japan or new construction, where exactly will the new warships come from? Anyone who has watched Mayport, FL politics has seen to the extent ship basing is a hot political issue.

This marks the third new basing arrangement announced this year by the Obama administration, with previous announcements claiming the US Navy will base Littoral Combat Ships in Singapore, and AEGIS BMD destroyers in Rota, Spain. How these round pegs square with the current Obama shipbuilding budget which has to date included no increases for more BMD warships nor any significant increase in ships to offset forward basing is very much unclear. That doesn't even include the CBO’s estimate that the Navy shipbuilding budget is about 7% higher than the Navy’s estimate for the first 10 years of the current Navy shipbuilding plan, about 10% higher than the Navy’s estimate for the second 10 years of that plan, and about 31% higher than the Navy’s estimate for the final 10 years of the current plan.

Unless the Obama administration has big plans for Navy shipbuilding following the current $450 billion defense cuts already proposed - never mind what comes from the super-committee budget discussion - it is hard to see a blueprint that is guiding Obama administration policy choices. Obviously the US has good reasons to develop new places like Spain, Singapore, and Australia where the US Navy can stage force in a forward deployed posture, but is there a budget for that? Are there ships for such a plan? Where are all these BMD ships going to come from for the Rota, Spain base, for example?

At a time the fleet numbers appear to be in long term decline and surface maintenance remains a big problem, the future Navy is being loaned out globally by the same Obama administration that really hasn't addressed any of the long term challenges facing the Navy. Industrial capacity is in decline and the fleet is numerically smaller than any point since WWI, nearly a century ago. I'm all for seeing the Obama administration making bold global security policy plans, but the Obama administration never increased shipbuilding resources for the Navy after placing the burden of the phased, adapted ballistic missile defense plan in 2009 on the Navy. Will these new forward naval bases receive adequate resourcing to meet the administrations foreign policy?

I have doubts the agreement with Australia is going to include any significant increase in forward deployed US forces in Australia. Unfortunately for our allies in the Pacific, at the policy level the Obama administration makes big promises in public that gives a public impression of substantial action, but if this announcement is made absent specific details - I wouldn't expect the final result to be as substantial as the public statement implies.

Piracy: Spain Sentences, Denmark Releases, The Netherlands Prosecutes

A Spanish judge has ruled in the case against 2 Somali pirates that were caught in 2009 after they held a tuna fishing boat and its 36 crew members for 47 days.

A Spanish court has sentenced two Somali pirates to 439 years in jail each for their role in the hijacking of a tuna fishing boat.

Maximum time to serve in Spain is 30 years.
The pirates have also been ordered to pay €100k to every crew member. Like that is going to happen.

This Sunday Denmark put 15 Somali men back on shore, after the Public Prosecuter found no grounds for prosecution.

The Dutch, on the other hand, have decided to prosecute 9 of the 16 men captured when they freed an Iranian fishing dhow. The 9 will be charged with piracy and the use of firearms.

1000 Ship Navy Reality Means Its Time For 30 Agency Navy Theory

Courtesy of Radio Australia, it appears someone finally asked China to put the rapidly growing PLA Navy to good use.

There's been a call for China and other Asian nations that fish off the coast of Somalia to take part in a proposed United Nations-backed force to combat maritime piracy.

Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, says the area off the African coast has become especially dangerous.

The headline of the article is Asian nations urged to join anti-piracy taskforce, which we are pleased to see because this is exactly what we called for on this blog last week. Coalition approaches to problem solving as reflected in the Navy's maritime strategy is without question the smart way to approach international security problems.

This is what Admiral Morgan was talking about when he floated the idea of the 1000 Ship Navy. If the international community can surge a global maritime partnership to address the pirate problems off Somalia, it would be a positive step forward towards using international institutions for promoting maritime peace in the 21st century.

And it is at this point the Navy arrives at step two. Our theme this week is peacemaking strategy, and we want to offer something up for discussion. If we assume for a moment that the Asian powers join with the US and European powers to provide security to the maritime domain off northeast Africa, we must recognize the 1000 Ship Navy will only be a solution to address the symptoms, not the problems.

For problem solving on the ground in places like Somalia in the 21st Century, we believe the complimentary capability that needs discussion is the 30 Agency Navy. We believe this is a direction the Marines are heading as part of their total capability.

While the current wars prevent the US from building this capability today, we note the wars are also part of the learning curve for it. We see the 30 Agency Navy an an international coalition much like the 1000 Ship Navy is, but as the engagement from the sea to the ground piece directed to troubled regions. If the Navy believes the 1000 Ship Navy could actually materialize, they need to get busy on that 30 Agency Navy concept, because its need will be very evident quickly if the 1000 Ship Navy is successful bringing security to a lawless region.

Photos of the Day: Juan Carlos I (BPE)

Things are busy, and posting is obviously light. I did want to take a few minutes to highlight some pretty nice photo's of the launching of Spain's Juan Carlos I a few weeks ago. According to Joe Katzman (also blogs here), Australia is paying about $1.5 billion US a piece for 2 built by Spain. Pretty good deal, but I would remind those wishing for some for the US that they would cost at least $2.3 billion to be built here. Why? Because someone in Congress will want them be nuclear powered. Even without nuclear power they will be more than $1.5 billion in the US though, they would not meet US Navy NVR.




Those ski jumps are not going to contribute much for Australia. People still talk like Australia is buying F-35Bs, but there is still no official plan at all to do so, and they have only expressed government interest to date on the F-35A models. The assumption is that will change. Maybe, but I think they will wait for a V-UCAS in the 2025 time frame.

Tons and tons more photos from the launch of the Juan Carlos I here.