The Australian Chief of Navy spoke with the Naval Institute’s Fred Rainbow and Fred Schultz during a recent visit to the Proceedings editorial offices. He addressed his navy’s support of operations in the Gulf and the way ahead for its ships and its people.
Proceedings: How did the Australian Navy work in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or Operation Falconer as Australia called it?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: It worked very well. We deployed three ships—an Anzac-class frigate, HMAS Anzac; an FFG-7 [Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigate], HMAS Darwin (FFG-04); and an amphibious ship, HMAS Kanimbla (L-51), which is one of your ex-LSTs [tank landing ship] that we converted.
We also had a few smaller organizations, including a clearance diving team that worked in Umm Qasr and Az-Zubayr along the waterways. We had a small command element embarked in the Kanimbla, and that was headed by Captain Peter Jones, who I'm sure is a member of this Institute. [See his comment in this issue, page 13, on "Mine Countermeasures a Success," by Rear Admiral P. J. Ryan, U.S. Navy, in May 2003 Proceedings.] The job had been done previously by Captain James Goldrick, and we have been doing that task for more than 16 months. [See Captain Goldrick's "In Command in the Gulf," December 2002 Proceedings, page 38.]
Peter Jones was in charge of the clearance of the KAA [Khawr 'Abd Allah waterway] and antiboat operations that took place just before and during Iraqi Freedom. Several good things came out of it for us, and some of them were timely.
The Anzac and three British Type 23 [Duke-class general-purpose] frigates conducted naval gunfire support on the Al-Faw Peninsula in support of the 3rd Royal Marine Commando Brigade. And that got a lot of publicity in Australia.
It was good for people to see some of the higher end of naval capability. I'm sure the public has been aware that Australian naval forces have been in the Persian Gulf since the end of 1990. And they're used to seeing pictures of people boarding ships and inspecting cargoes. But they are not accustomed to seeing the sort of weaponry that was used in this ship so effectively and accurately. So that was a timely thing for us.
HMAS Darwin played a supporting role with HMAS Anzac in keeping the KAA clear. The Darwin actually looked after the major exit into the Gulf, once people realized that war was about to start and they tried to escape en masse.
HMAS Kanimbla was the mother ship for a coalition of small boat parties, people who were in charge of looking after this mass of people who were expected to come out. The Kanimbla also discovered a tug and barge full of mines on their way up into the northern part of the Arabian Gulf. These vessels had been previously searched in a perfunctory fashion, and there was nothing overtly wrong with them. But after continued questioning and looking into it, the crew of the Kanimbla found that these things had indeed been concealing mines.
In a maritime sense, that was one of the most fortunate things that happened, because had that tug proceeded into the Gulf and been able to lay those mines, things would have been a little bit different. The diving teams worked under very difficult conditions. Quite a lot of ordnance was found in the area, and quite a few mines, but I'm not sure whether there's much evidence of a mine-laying campaign. There was plenty of evidence that they were preparing to conduct one. Of course, the issue of an Australian being in tactical command of Coalition forces also played well and certainly put the Navy in a good light.
Proceedings: What sort of lessons did the Australian Navy learn?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: The divers were very well supported in a communications sense. They were more independent than the other diving units there, in terms of bandwidth and connectivity. The diving itself was less frequent than it was in Desert Storm.
The Anzac and the Kanimbla operated into the very northern parts of the Gulf, well inside the 12-mile limit. They probably taught us lessons about the littoral combat ships that people are trying to put into effect in this country. Most of the things you're talking about, other than the speed, are there. You've got a relatively shallow-draft ship. You've got an accurate gunfire system. And you've got very good target-indication radar. For us, the greatest achievement was to prove the Anzac ship in that sort of environment.
We've known for some time, from operations in the Gulf, that the two LSTs we've procured from this country and converted into the Kanimbla and the Manoora and the changes we made—in spite of a lot of criticism at the time we made them—have been extremely successful. They have a lot of bandwidth, and they have the ability to house the sort of command and control needed for this type of operation. They also have the ability to take a lot of boats and extra people.
Proceedings: How were your forces used in Operation Enduring Freedom, and what lessons did you learn in that combat?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: When the 11 September terrorist attacks occurred, we happened to have the Anzac in the Gulf as part of the Multinational Interception Force [MIF]. And she stayed on after 11 September until two frigates relieved her. We then sent the first LPA, the Kanimbla, to be a platform in support of foreign forces committed to Enduring Freedom. We had a notion that it would support special forces, if necessary, and that it would provide, if we needed it, a fighting platform for our national command headquarters. That didn't really eventuate, because we were offered the technical command of the MIF. We accepted it, and we provided the Kanimbla, the best ship for that function.
What we did during Iraqi Freedom is not all that different from what we had been doing all the time. It was different in the sense that larger ships had been searched and had attempted passive resistance. This was about emptying the KAA of all shipping traffic so the Coalition could then sweep for mines and ensure the place was clear for the eventual delivery of humanitarian assistance and to allow shipping back into southern Iraq.
Proceedings: Many in the United States envision Australia as an even greater player in global operations. How would you accomplish that with the size of your force and the requirements you have to defend a large coastline?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: Australia's contribution will continue, as long as the government remains convinced of the worth of whatever the commitment is. But you cannot expect the Navy to be committed much more than it has been already, without something being forced to give.
The Navy has been engaged in the Persian Gulf, and it has been engaged in what's called Operation Relex, which is the surveillance of the northern and northwestern coast, particularly in an antipersonnel, smuggling guise. And that started ten days before 11 September. So all of those things have come off in that short period of time. And for the surface force, for the amphibious force that supports it, and for the small patrol boat force that exists in the north, that is about all they can handle. If you want to do something else, you take from one of those things. Sustaining another operation at this time would be difficult.
Proceedings: The vision of your predecessor, Vice Admiral David Shackleton, was called Plan Blue. What will you do to tweak that?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: The most important job I have is to make sure that we can implement it. The most important shortcoming that we have in our Navy—which remains unaddressed in the sense that it doesn't have funds committed to it—is the high-end capability of the surface combatant force. We are losing that high-end missile defense, air defense capability. We haven't really changed that very much from the first Gulf War. We have projects in place to upgrade our FFG-7s, but only to give them an AIM-7D defense. We have a project awaiting approval to take the Anzac ship and upgrade its antiship missile capability. What we really need is a project that gives us an area air defense capability.
As long as we retain [Standard Missile] SM-1-fitted ships, which is what the FFG-7 is, we're not going to have that capability anymore against the sort of threats that are going to come. So we need to move from there to something that looks like the SM-2. That's the most important thing, and that's in Plan Blue, and we need to do it.
We need to ensure that the amphibious ships are replaced as well. We need to ensure that the replenishment ships are replaced. All that is in Plan Blue. But more than that, and I suppose this is in terms of tweaking, we have to start to get some commonality among the ships and the systems we have. You have that already, because you build all your ships here in the United States. You don't necessarily find that in Australia, because we've shopped around widely.
Keeping the submarine program on track is important, but most of that is now fairly well tied down and performing well. It's the Surface Navy that has to take the leap into the future.
Proceedings: Is the key to that the Air Warfare Destroyer?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: Yes, I think it is. We're held to a timeline that says we're not going to get it in service before 2013. And there's no way we can get ahead of that timeline now. We would like to, but we can't. It is important to the independence of our ability to convey our land forces ashore that we are capable of sustaining them in the face of an air threat.
Proceedings: You spoke earlier about the Standard Missile 1. Essentially, the U.S. Navy is walking away from Standard Missile 1 and going to Standard Missile 2. What kind of dilemma does that pose for you?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: Well, it is a dilemma. The SM-1 starts to disappear in the next couple of years. A lot of other navies around the world have this problem. Without saying too much about capability, Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles, which we will have, are not all that different in their capability from the SM-1. To get to the point where you can control the fellow who tries to fire at you, rather than to allowing him to act with impunity, you must have at least something that looks like an SM-2.
Proceedings: A recent issue of Asia Pacific Defence Reporter states that the Australian Navy is facing a shortfall of 1,200 people. What are you doing to make naval service more appealing to potential recruits and to those currently serving?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: Recruitment for sailors is as good as it's been in 20 years. We've come out of the slump we had four years ago. We've come a long way from there. Why is that? I put it down to the fact that for 18 months or so we've been operationally engaged. People see that.
Recruiting is not as good for officers. Retention is improving, but we still, of the three services in Australia, have the worst retention rate. I guess this could be a sort of catch-22 at play here. On one hand, operational service is attracting people. On the other hand, too much operational service is driving people away. So it may be that the same phenomenon is affecting both.
We are very careful to look at the operational tempo. I've been in the Navy 38 years, and the tempo is far greater today than it's ever been in that time. We are hoping there will be some respite. I accept the fact that we need to go into a reconstitution mode. We need to be able to slow the pace. We need to be able to give people back some of the leave that's owed to them. We're growing again, in terms of people numbers, but I would not hide the fact from you that retention, not recruiting, is one of the most significant issues we face.
In the future, we will be looking in quite different ways at how we man naval ships. One thing that contributes to bad retention is the fact that people, because of operational tempo, cannot get the sort of training they need. You wouldn't know that we have a two-ocean navy. We really have only the infrastructure of a one-ocean navy, especially in terms of training. It's difficult if you happen to be on the wrong side of the continent.
We can try to address geographic stability by moving our infrastructure from one side to the other. But even that, in a navy our size, will never be enough to solve the problem. We have a navy that's based on, as yours is, a model that I think most 20th-century navies adopted, and that is for every two years you do at sea, you should be able to do a similar period ashore. Therefore, a third of your people serve at sea, and two-thirds serve ashore. You've got a paradigm now that says we outsource all the jobs that sailors traditionally did ashore. So there haven't been many jobs ashore. The whole thing is just not going to work, unless you change the model. There are also other ways of doing it. Multiple crewing is one way. We already do that in hydrographic ships.
We hope to get a contract for a new patrol boat in the next couple of months for service around the end of next year. We now know that we will probably end up with fewer hulls than we have now. We are planning to have more crews than hulls. So that will be the second force to change the normal method of crewing.
Proceedings: You have a concept called a Navy Innovation Strategy. What is it, how does it work, and what tangible results has it produced?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: Good question. The Navy Innovation Strategy is really a concept-led strategy. It's about trying to describe concepts for future warfare. If we determine that a certain direction is conceptually the way things are to be done, we then decide what sorts of technologies might fit in and how they would be used. Then we transfer that thinking into something we call the force development process.
It is in its very early days. It's something that the Army has done in Australia for some years. A group of people—from Naval Headquarters and the Defence Scientific and Technical Organization—have worked on it full-time. The Staff College students were used for about two weeks to game some of the concepts. That was quite good, and it confirmed some things that were already thought. The next step in that process is to bring the Air Force on board, which will happen this year. We want to do it in a joint way.
One of the things that I would caution people on is that we have a lot less freedom perhaps than you have here in terms of hardware. If you asked me what my navy would look like in 15 years' time, I could tell you almost down to the name of the ship. We know roughly what sorts of platforms we're going to have, and we can't change that. The sorts of things we can change are doctrine, personnel, organization, and training.
Proceedings: How valuable is an open forum for discussion of military matters?
Vice Admiral Ritchie: I certainly see value in the U.S. Naval Institute, and I think your publications and your books are well written and more important, thought-provoking. We haven't had great success in encouraging this sort of debate. It's limited in Australia to a small group of people, but we will keep trying to widen that debate.
The Australian Naval Institute has had a bumpy career, but it's now reasonably secure. I think it is useful for people such as myself to explain to a broader audience what I think is important in the way our organization is going. I would like to assure people that we are in the business of remaining a professional navy. We also are in the business of remaining a capable navy, and it's in that area—as evidenced in the earlier questions about the surface combatant force in Australia—that we've got some work to do.
If we are to remain capable, interoperable, and useful in a global sense, then we need to do some things differently. I think our government understands that, and I think the Defence Capability Plan points us in that direction. We must be able to give military options to our government, and you can't do that sitting still. You've got to keep on moving ahead.