The Unsinkable Australian Aircraft Carrier - The UK, US and the Indo-Pacific Region

The USA and Australia have confirmed that they are about to significantly expand and enhance their security cooperation. Building on an already strong basis, the decision has been jointly taken to increase the capability and resilience of Australian defence infrastructure to make it easier for the US to operate from. Analysts have suggested that this will make it easier for the US to operate heavy bombers and other major defence assets in the event of war with China, due to the locations sitting well outside the range of most Chinese missiles. In many ways Australia is assuming the mantle held by the UK during the Cold War of becoming America’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’.

During the Cold War the UK was home to dozens of US military bases ranging from airfields, to prepositioned armoured divisions which would have been shipped out to the continent in the event of war, and also hospitals which would have treated the wounded. The entire country was safe from invasion and being overrun by Soviet troops, while due to air defences, the relative risk to sites in wartime short of nuclear conflict was low relative to the rest of mainland Europe. This gave rise to the saying that the UK was the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’.

In taking this action Australia seems to be confirming its position as the USA’s ally of choice in the Pacific. Indeed the case could increasingly be made that Australia is becoming the prime military ally for the US given the threats it faces and how to respond to them. Much like in the Cold War the UK was the key ally as much due to its geographic position, real estate and military capability, Australia is now taking on a similar role. Indeed, as the US perspective of threat changes, could it be the case that the Canberra/Washington link is seen as more important than the London/Washington link?

Australia has much going for it as a credible partner of the US – a strong economy and a significant range of diplomatic links and alliance memberships as well as governments that are instinctively supportive of supporting US foreign and security policy goals. When added to a permissive environment when it comes to hosting and supporting military activity by the US, a willingness to use force and support wider coalition military operations and above all a willingness to fund Defence on a serious basis, Canberra is without doubt seen as a very credible ally by Washington.

What does this mean for London? The shift in US focus towards the Indo-Pacific region and the growing concern about the rise of China poses a challenge for UK policy makers. There is no doubt that the Anglo-American relationship remains strong and grounded in nuclear cooperation and intelligence sharing. The resurgence of Russia as a credible military threat means that as a leading NATO power, the UK is seen as central to supporting US interests in Europe. But the gradual withdrawal of UK forces globally (for example drawing down of troop levels in the Middle East), the reduction of UK diplomatic and economic influence and access as a result of Brexit, and the increasingly clear reality that the UK is not funding Defence to the level that it needs to be funded at to deliver all that the MOD aspires to do, means that there must be question marks around the levels to which the US can completely rely on London in future.

The policy challenge for London is the extent to which to resource and support AUKUS and other engagements in the region over trying to play a leading role in NATO. There is neither resources, nor capability to support both aspirations. The Defence Command Paper is clear that the UK wants to have a global ‘fight tonight’ approach, able to deploy forces where there are crises and problems, but aspiring to operate globally and being credible in operating globally are two very different concepts. The fundamental issue is that the Indo-Pacific is a very long way from the UK, to get ships out there is a process which takes months. It is possible to rapidly reinforce via air, but that would only give a finite presence and be heavily reliant on prepositioned logistics support.

For British planners they need to strike a balance between committing resources to the region that meet UK policy goals, but which are also supportable for the long haul. They also need to be wary of committing to things that cannot be delivered at times of conflict, for fear that others will expect them to be present. For example, the UK (like all NATO members) declares how many military assets it plans to make available in the event of a crisis. This allows NATO planners to know what to expect in an emergency and to bring their plans together meaningfully. It is unlikely that similar plans exist in the Indo-Pacific, where defence planning is less integrated between nation states. This means that should the UK deploy F35 (for example) on an exercise, it needs to be careful how to message this in a way that doesn’t imply presence of F35 on an exercise means that in a war, the F35 will also be there.

This may sound obvious, but the balancing act is that if the UK chose to not send advanced forces into exercises, then its military value diminishes, and there is less credible reason to give it access to the really major exercises. Why allow someone who is not openly committing and preparing for operations to be present when you plan and exercise those operations? This means that the door for influence will close as the UK finds it may not be welcome at all the ‘cool kids club’ exercises going on, and in turn is perceived to have less to offer. The current force laydown in the region, built around 2 x RIVER class OPVs, a Gurkha battalion and some occasional RAF deployments is enough to show the flag and support low level defence interests. But to be taken seriously as a credible partner, the UK will need to raise its game.

Such a signal is likely to come over the next few years as the UK increases its military presence in the region, both through the increased deployment of Littoral Strike Groups, and the likely deployment of Type 31 providing a credible maritime task group in the area. In the longer-term plans to deploy an SSN as part of AUKUS will also significantly enhance UK operational credibility as a regional player. It may also be the case that the UK looks to use other, non-military hardware levers to gain influence – for example increasing its intelligence commitment or using AUKUS to invest in scientific R&D that advances cyber security or quantum computing. The UK arguably sees AUKUS as much as being about the wider virtual and cyber threat as it is about the physical hardware – committing scientific resource in place of military power may be seen as a good policy trade off.

But every commitment to the Indo-Pacific comes at a price – deploying lots of ships out to the region means they are no longer available for tasking in the NATO area of interest. With the lag in deployment time being measured in months, the UK has to be ready to ‘fight tonight’ with what it has in theatre – and this in turn means either accepting it has no part to play in any conflict, or supporting it to the level capable of surviving and enhancing US, Australian and other allies plans. Baring a very unlikely turn of events, there is not going to be a Carrier Strike Group able to participate in a major war in the region, as it will probably be over before it can get there.  In turn this raises the question as to whether the UK wants to look away from a maritime presence in this most maritime of regions? Given the relative paucity of assets and time delay in deploying them, would it make more sense to expand air and land cooperation, deploying assets that could be of general use in wartime and arrive quickly in theatre, rather than relying on a naval presence? The RAF, for example, has recently deployed A400M to Guam and it could be that the ability to surge land and air into the area is of more value than other capabilities.

Trying to understand the policy challenges this presents will be a major issue for the 2025 Defence Review, regardless of which political party conducts it. The UK needs to be able to define in a way that reassures allies what its intentions are for the region – is it to deter and be ready to ‘fight tonight’ as part of a wider international coalition? Is it to fly the flag in a low key way to reassure voters that the UK is a ‘global power’ but not deploy meaningful capability to bear. Or is it something else – as noted, is the answer to focus on delivering influence and effect by softer tools of power such as intelligence and research rather than relying on hard power? There are no right answers to these questions, which cut to the heart of how the UK sees and defines itself as a power in the Indo-Pacific – is it to be able to fight or is it for show?  Also, how does the UK define its relationship goals with the USA – as attention shifts East, does the UK need to fundamentally rethink its defence posture, radically reshaping itself to continue to be of value to the US by offering a credible Indo-Pacific based force that can assist Washington on ‘night 1, day 1’ or is it of more value to the US to focus on taking a leading role in NATO. Until the UK can define what it wants in the longer term from the Anglo-American alliance, and decide what this means for Defence planning and policy, it may find itself struggling to deliver against confused aspiration and ambition without the clarity of where resources should be directed to resolve this.