360 Degree NATO?

 December 1^st, 2021

Yesterday, I had the honour of addressing the Riga Security Forum which was a side-event of the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Latvia.  My old friend, Ambassador Imants Lietgis, who chaired the session asked me the address the following question:

One of the theses of your book addresses the impact of emerging technologies on future warfare, and the profound implications on European defence. BUT you also had a chapter focussing on Southern Europe and indeed the question of 360 degree Europe? Could you say something more about Europeans needing to reconcile threats beyond Russia?

Thanks for the question, Imants. Central to the thesis in Future War and the Defence of Europe, which is brilliant and very reasonably-priced, is the need to understand the interaction of all the threats Europeans face – strategic, geopolitical, regional, domestic, and technological.  Whilst the Russian threat is central to the thesis of the book a core message is that ALL threats are linked and must be considered in the round.  

INDEED, NATO’s essential challenge in the forthcoming Strategic Concept, the what, where, why, how, with what, with whom and for what end of the Alliance, will be to credibly balance the ends, ways and means of deterrence and defence, with that of security engagement,  outreach and partnership whilst recognising the changing threat and technology landscape. It is a global landscape that is, and will, create such tensions in US foreign, security and defence policy, and stretch American forces to such an extent, that the central tenet of European defence since 1945 should no longer be assumed: that US forces of sufficient strength will always be present in Europe. In other words, Europeans are going to have to do far more for their own security and defence IF the Americans are to maintain their security guarantee to Europe across a full spectrum of missions…and mean it. At the very least, that will mean more European strategic responsibility for the sake of European security and defence and the transatlantic relationship. That is the strategic inflection point we are at.

So, leaving aside Russia let me quickly address three sets of risks, challenges and threats to Europe from elsewhere – MENA, China and Technology.

MENA

First, MENA.  I think it is important to separate regional crises from a wider more systemic challenge apparent in MENA. The challenges and threats to southern Europe are part of globalised systemic change, demographic change, climate change and a mass mega-trend shift of peoples from rural life to urban life and across countries and continents as people become aware of a more secure life elsewhere and many of them seek it, enabled sadly, by growing transnational organised crime networks.  As a privileged migrant myself I understand the motivation. 

However, it is the interaction between systemic change and regional crises which is placing NATO’s south, in particular, on a new front-line of instability and making European societies in general, ever more vulnerable to geopolitical manipulation via 5Ds of perma-warfare—disinformation, deception, destabilization, disruption, and coercion via implied or actual destruction.

Across MENA itself social and political instability has worsened with the emergence of state versus anti-state Salafist Jihadism further exacerbated by COVID-19 with potentially profound implications for southern Europe and the rest of Europe given the dislocation of peoples it is causing, ongoing conflict and suffering, and the dissatisfaction with the established political and economic order in states across Europe’s strategic neighbourhood vital to European interests.

The prospect of a major regional-strategic war is ever present, particularly so given Iran’s hard-line stance over its nuclear programme as evinced by what is happening in Vienna at the moment, and the emergence of regional-strategic blocs in the Middle East, exacerbated by external geopolitical interference.

For Europeans, there is also the constant threat of disrupted energy security, particularly in Libya, which threatens not only to cut off vital oil and gas supplies, but extend Europe’s reliance on, and thus vulnerability to, Russian influence and coercion.

China

The rise of China is the biggest single geopolitical change factor to impact Europe’s defence since 1945 and whilst the US has long been a ‘European’ actor; China is fast becoming one. China is also a Jekyll and Hyde power — both constructive and invasive. COVID-19 has revealed the extent to which China seeks to exploit globalization, or what I call Chinaization (ghastly phrase I know), to impose its will and that is, indeed, Beijing’s longer-term aim. The CCP are nothing if not control freaks.

China’s threat to Europe is indirect at present but its impact on Europe’s future defence could well be as profound as Russia’s post-COVID-19 if wolf-warrior diplomacy and debt diplomacy are combined to ill effect. This is particularly the case in Southern and parts of Eastern Europe where Chinese (and I might add Russian) money are having an effect, particularly in the Balkans and parts of the Eastern Mediterranean.  The Belt and Road Initiative and the indebtedness of many European states already enables China to exert its influence and could over time begin to threaten the very functioning of  the EU, NATO, and the transatlantic relationship if states are effectively bought.

Technology

And then there is technology, and the changing character and conduct of warfare that NATO and the European Allies in particular must grip.   If deterrence is to work Europe’s future defence will need to be credible in all potential worst cases, chronic US over-stretch, and the application of emerging and disruptive technologies in the battlespace.  ALL NATO Europeans, indeed all Europeans, will need by 2030 a defence posture that reaches from sea-bed to space, from open space to urban space warfare and across the multi-domains of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge.  

That, in turn, will demand a new concept of European deterrence, defence and security that is credible in the minds of allies and adversaries alike, both Great Power Competitors and Terrorist Groups, and across the mosaic of hybrid, cyber and hyper war that will be the essence of the simultaneous totality of future war. 

A host of new partnerships will also be needed if the new defence is to be both capable and affordable, underpinned by a radical strategic public-private sector partnership that leverages emerging and disruptive technologies and the introduction into the order of battle from Artificial Intelligence and hypersonic missile technologies to super/quantum-computing, Nano engineering et al.  

The test of seriousness?  Irrespective of US policy choices the beating military heart of Europe’s future war defence will need to be European; a new US interoperable, high-end, first responder NATO European future force capable of sufficient manoeuvre that it can reinforce deterrence and of sufficient capacity/mass to support front-line states in the south in the face of systemic instability.

In The Alphen Group’s just completed NATO Shadow Strategic Concept, which will be published in January by several think-tanks, we call it the AMHF or Allied Command Operations Heavy Mobile Force (AMHF). The AMHF would build on the NATO Readiness Initiative and would be EU-available, at the core of the new comprehensive European security and defence concept, and underpin the NATO 2030 Agenda. It would also help strengthen the transatlantic relationship through more equitable burden sharing of both cost and risk. Crucially, it would afford Europeans more strategic responsibility within the Alliance framework, and strengthen the all-important NATO-EU strategic partnership.

To conclude, seven lines of Allied strategy will be needed to deter hydra-headed future war:      management of Russia through defence and dialogue;  the purposeful balancing of post-COVID-19 human security and national defence costs; the re-establishment of European strategic realism and responsibility via a genuine NATO–EU strategic partnership that is built on the twin pillars of defensive power projection and resilience; the building of a radical cross-border strategic public–private partnership that can properly harness emerging and disruptive technologies; a willingness to see security and defence both in the round and in full across the Euro-Atlantic community; recognition by Europeans that only by helping America be strong where she needs to be strong can Americans help keep Europeans secure into the future, be they in the north, east or south of Europe; and, a Europe strong enough militarily and cohesive enough politically to be a strong actor in and around Europe in the face of all threats and from all strategic directions.

Frankly, we Europeans have a choice to make. One that we can no longer fudge or dissemble over. If the forthcoming Strategic Concept does not recognise much of the above it will simply be politics as all too usual dressed up as faux strategy all too usual.

Which begs perhaps the biggest question of all. Are we up to it?

Julian Lindley-French,  November 2021

Proritize NATO's Core Tasks: Collective Defense

My latest piece for Defense News is entitled  "Prioritize NATO's Core Tasks: Collective Defense" is co-written with an old friend, Dr Hans Binnendijk. Hans is the former Senior Director for Defense Policy at the National Security Council in Washington and now Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Read more...

https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/11/23/prioritize-natos-core-task-collective-defense/

Putin's Cold, Dark Russian Winter

 By

 Ben Hodges and Julian Lindley-French

 

“A transition from sequential and concentrated actions to continuous and distributed ones, conducted simultaneously in all spheres of confrontation, and also in distant theatres of military operations is occurring.”

 

General Valeriy Gerasimov

 

The War to the East

 

In their very legalistic way the decision by the German energy regulator to suspend the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline may just be the first real evidence that Berlin is finally thinking strategically. If so it is not a moment too soon.  Europeans urgently need to re-consider any policy that deepens Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, even if that means missing carbon emission targets. It would be strategic illiteracy of the worst kind to put the freedom of Europeans at risk simply to meet arbitrary climate change targets, important tough they are.

 

President Putin will always use the power he is given by Europe against Europe. The grand strategic aim of the Kremlin is to force much of Eastern Europe, including the Baltic States into a new Russian sphere of influence. That is why thousands of desperate migrants are being used as human pawns and forced towards the Belarus border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, Belarus threatens to disrupt gas supplies to much of Eastern Europe, Russian nuclear bombers fly down the North Sea into the English Channel, and a Russian anti-satellite (ASAT) test scatters debris in the path of the International Space Station (ISS) whilst some 90,000 troops of Russia’s most capable military units gather on Ukraine’s eastern and northern borders. It is the Gerasimov Doctrine in action by which Moscow simultaneously applies ‘strategic maskirovka’ (deception) and ‘desinformatsiya’ (disinformation) together with so-called ‘active measures’ to keep a deeply disjointed and feeble Europe politically and militarily off-balance. The immediate aim is to prevent Ukraine crossing a Russian ‘red line’ by moving formally to join NATO. That was the purpose of President Putin’s September 2021 essay in which he denied Ukraine had ever been an independent state and was thus an integral part of Russia. Therefore, even though President Biden recently told President Zelensky that NATO membership is a long way off Ukraine’s eventual integration into free Europe must now be a shared Allied strategic aim.

 

The use of Maskirovka and desinformatsiya is war that is short of war in the grey zone between war and peace. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Phil Breedlove, says that Moscow already sees itself at war with the West and that its chosen weapon is disinformation. It is a purposeful 5D warfare strategy that combines implied destruction with disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and deception and which is driven from the very top of the Russian state through multiple messaging and by ramping up the threat of force.

 

Appeasing Putin

 

With winter coming and Europe in some disarray Putin may think he will never have a better opportunity to exploit a sixth 'D', energy dependence. Indeed, a hitherto craven Brussels has appeared terrified that Russia, and its puppet Belarus, will cut gas supplies to much of Europe.  Moscow’s clumsy efforts of late to coerce the European Commission into approving Nordstream 2 by hiking gas prices on the spot market demonstrated exactly why Russia will never be a reliable or trusted energy partner.  Had Germany led Europe to even greater reliance on Russian gas (it might still do) it would have tied not just Berlin to Moscow in so many ways, but much of the rest of Europe. One could almost hear the sound of chickens coming home to roost.

 

The ‘response’ from Brussels thus far has made a mockery of the empty rhetoric of EU sovereignty. Indeed, the EU’s response thus far has been little short of appeasement even though Horst Seehofer, the German Minister of the Interior, last week said that the Kremlin was the architect of the current tensions. If the EU cannot summon the diplomatic and economic power to pressure the Kremlin to stop Belarus from turning desperate migrants into pawns, there is little hope Russia can be dissuaded by Europeans from pursuing its grander ambitions. 

 

Instead of focussing on the minnow Lukashenko and Russia’s Belarus colony, the EU should be directing its ire towards Moscow. Rather, the EU prefers to criticize the Poles for how they are dealing with a desperate situation, just as Brussels recently criticised Kiev for using drones to retaliate against Russia’s use of artillery that killed Ukrainian soldiers. The threat of EU sanctions, including on airlines flying migrants to Minsk is welcome, but in some respects it helps the Russian cause by creating yet more tension with Turkey. There is also the potential for a dangerous and rapid escalation of tensions, particularly if Belarussian border guards trigger an armed confrontation close to the strategically-vital Suwalki Corridor, which not only links the EU and NATO to the Baltic States, but Russia with its armed enclave Kaliningrad. It is all too easy to see Russia moving to resolve a “humanitarian crisis” in or near Kaliningrad by engineering such a confrontation. Russian and Belarussian Special Forces have been observed carrying out reconnaissance missions to time the responses of Latvian security forces to attempted incursions by migrants. Such actions have not gone unnoticed in Kiev. One only has to look at a map to see how relatively easy it would be for Russian forces to the north in Belarus and the east to attack the Ukrainian capital. It is almost as though Russia’s recent Zapad 21 military exercise never ended and Russia is undertaking a dress rehearsal for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine…or not.

 

Chess or Poker?

 

Will President Putin invade Ukraine? Naturally, Moscow denies it has any intention to attack Ukraine, but then the Gerasimov Doctrine might mean Russia does not have to. The threat of force might well be enough to coerce a Ukraine that is profoundly uncertain about the real strength of support from its European ‘partners’. However, Putin has been building up Russia's military capacity around Ukraine's eastern and northern borders for many months. Russia now has almost all the military pieces in place so that should Putin decide to act he could.  What better way for President Putin to subjugate Ukraine, humiliate the EU, divide NATO, and thus assure his legacy as a ‘great’ Russian who ‘saved’ Ukraine from 'Western incursions'?

 

It is also entirely in President Putin’s gift to end the tensions now if he so wished. There is still little chance he will. President Putin sees himself as a grand master of grand strategic chess when in fact his real game is stud poker.  The tragedy for the people of Eastern Europe is that Russia’s apparent strength is primarily due to Western European weakness and incompetence which has turned the reality of Russian weakness into an illusion of strength. The Nordstream 2 decision may just be the first sign that Europe is prepared to raise the stakes. 

  

Power and Strategy

 

Even if Moscow does takes its foot off Kiev’s throat for the moment it is unlikely to mark a new dawn in either Russia-Ukraine or Russia-West relations. The current crisis is a clash of wills. Putin is calling Europe's bluff and seeking to demonstrate an Atlantic Alliance divided. Have Europe’s political leaders the collective courage and will to counter Russia? Europe’s growing energy dependence on Russia is leading Moscow to believe it now has Europeans just where it wants them and the 'weapon' to potentially decouple the US from its European Allies. Not surprisingly, the US Administration is deeply concerned and both Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin have made plain those concerns.

 

Deterring Russia from its strategic direction of travel will require Europeans and their North American allies to collectively apply counter-pressure. That will only be possible if the Allies adopt their own active measures in the form of a counter 5D warfare strategy with the main effort centred on NATO. In short, the Kremlin needs to be made to understand it will pay a heavy price if it continues with such aggression. Right now, that means facing down Russia, politically, economically and militarily. Over the medium term such deterrence will require effective counter-messaging, information operations, offensive cyber operations, a new Allied balance between military power projection and people/information protection, resiliency, robustness and redundancy in defence, and an EU-NATO strategic partnership that can generate a range of incentives and constraints on Russian policy.

 

Russia will only be stopped when it is stopped and the Nordstream 2 decision might, just might, suggest European leaders now recognise that.  If not, then what is happening today will just be the beginning of repeated Moscow-generated confrontations that will demand of European leaders both the political will and the means to deter Russia, something that for too long they have been reluctant to do. To do that they will all need to grow up strategically and stop rendering Europe and Europeans so systemically vulnerable to Russian energy. The American economist J.K. Galbraith once famously said that power is as power does. President Putin needs to understand that power, like gas, can flow two ways. Nordstream 2?  Scrap it!

 

Ben Hodges and Julian Lindley-French

 

Lieut. General (Ret.) Ben Hodges is Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. Professor Julian Lindley-French is Chairman of The Alphen Group

 

Is NATO a Maginot Line?

 

“We could hardly dream of building a kind of Great Wall of France, which would in any case be far too costly. Instead we have foreseen powerful but flexible means of organising defence, based on the dual principle of taking full advantage of the terrain and establishing a continuous line of fire everywhere”.

Andre Maginot, 1929

NATO’s deterrence hole

November 2^nd, 2021. Sometimes history, theory, drama and reality combine.  As I write, Russia’s elite 1st Guards Tank Army and the 41^st Combined Arms Army are moving and massing, again causing concern in Kiev and at NATO HQ. Last week, I delivered the Band of Brothers speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V during the St Crispin’s Night dinner at the Cavalry and Guards Club in London.  On Thursday, I took part in Allied Command Transformation’s Concept Development and Experimentation Conference and considered Future War and the Defence of Europe (funny that!).  Is NATO a latter day Maginot Line?  No.  However, the Alliance urgently needs to close the gap between the theory of deterrence and the reality if it is not to become like the August 1939 Agreement of Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and Poland.  It might have been mutual but it was not of much assistance to Poland. Empty deterrence?

Deterrence is always a trade-off between history, politics, technology and money but sometimes such trade-offs create a deterrence hole because they convince democratic leaders they are more secure than they are.  Take Andre Maginot. He was the French Minister of War who gave his name to France’s ill-fated anti-German Maginot Line.  His vision of a “powerful but flexible means of organising defence, based on the dual principle of taking full advantage of the terrain and establishing a continuous line of fire everywhere” was delusional.  Indeed, the Maginot Line was a military-strategic folly, an illusion of power that gave a sense of false security to those who it was meant to protect.  It was also quickly overtaken by technology and the changing character of warfare.  It was also an extremely expensive illusion of safety that between 1930 and 1939 cost some three billion francs. The Maginot Line was also too short for fear of offending the Belgians who in 1936 declared neutrality and ended all co-operation with France to extend it.  In 1914, the Imperial German Army carried out a grand strategic flanking movement on the French and British armies by attacking through Belgium.  Lesson learned?  In May 1940, Hitler did exactly the same and, apart from a brief but decisive battle at Sedan, the Maginot Line did not so much fail as was by-passed.  In the end the entire system of fortifications surrendered to a Wehrmacht that approached it from a direction it was not designed to defend, behind.

At last month’s Riga Conference I spoke with several senior commanders and came away with a profound sense of Maginot unease about NATO’s fitness for its core deterrence business.  My historian’s sense is that NATO today is becoming a bit like France’s Maginot Line in 1940 or Hitler’s Atlantic Wall in 1944; a thin forward deployed crust which if broken through would reveal little more than a large, effectively undefended space.  Like the mayhem caused by Panzergruppe Kleist in May 1940 a powerful air-mobile-tank force could exploit that space long before Allied forces were able to move up in the required strength to counter them. In such circumstances, NATO’s defence mission would quickly turn into a rescue mission and possibly all-out-war. Of course, neither Daladier’s government in 1939 nor (thankfully) Hitler had nuclear weapons, but given that any Russian action would likely be ‘limited’ in both scope and ambition (although not for the people in its way) the use of NATO’s strategic nuclear deterrent simply lacks credibility much as British offers of mutual assistance to Poland in 1939. A deterrence hole.

Filling NATO’s deterrence hole

NATO’s deterrence hole is not simply due to a lack of forces in sufficient strength in the right place. HQ Multinational Corps Northeast is based at Szczecin, Poland and under the command of the excellent LTG Wojchiekowski. It is also NATO’s “unblinking eye” on its eastern flank and just took part in Exercise Steadfast Jupiter. However, ‘MNC NE’ is also some 1500 hundred kilometres from the British battlegroup in Estonia that forms part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP).  Why?  Like the Maginot Line MNC NE’s area of responsibility is also a consequence of a false understanding of both history and politics. Some Allies are extremely wary about placing forces in any strength on the territory of Allies that are also former Warsaw Pact countries for fear of breaking some tryst with Russia.  First, there is no and never was such a tryst.  Second, even if there had been President Putin abandoned any rights to have any say over NATO deployments in Europe when he invaded Crimea in 2014.  Russian forces are also growing in strength in Belarus and its Baltic enclave Kaliningrad, as well as opposite the three Baltic States and for the second time this year are threatening Ukraine and the wider Black Sea Region.  NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence is precisely that, a presence not a deterrent and what lies behind it, the NATO Response Force (NRF) is simply not big enough, heavy enough, responsive enough nor exercised enough to fill NATO’s deterrent hole given what it might face. 

The NRF is a 20,000 strong multinational force comprising air, sea, land, maritime and Special Operations (SOF) tasked with reacting at short notice to all and any emergencies across the Euro-Atlantic area, including an Article 5 contingency.  However, Europe is a very different place to 2004 when the NRF was formed and although it was ‘enhanced’ in 2014 with the creation of the 5000 strong Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) the personnel came from within its ranks.  Enhancing is not strengthening and the NRF increasingly looks like the EU’s CSDP, a force conceived in a different age for a different world with NATO’s ‘rapid’ response looking less and less so given the rapidly changing character of war. Whilst the VJTF is supposed to be able to react within anywhere between 48 hours and 5 days, the rest of the NRF could take anywhere up to 30 days, whilst the 40,000 strong Initial Follow-on Group could take between 60 to 90 days to move.  An analysis of recent Russian exercises suggests that Moscow has deliberately designed its forces to get inside NATO’s battle rhythm and cause self-sustained mayhem for 30 days or so, but face growing problems thereafter. In other words, there is a dangerous symbiosis developing between Russia’s limited military strength and NATO’s limited military posture.

The Allied Command Operations Mobile Heavy Force (AMHF)

The consequences is that the Enhanced Forward Presence is a trip wire to nothing, a thin crust of deterrence much like the Maginot Line and the Atlantic Wall, a potentially fatal weakness further exacerbated by the growing over-stretch of US forces world-wide which is eroding the Alliance’s military backbone. To plug this deterrence hole NATO needs to infill SACEUR’s area of responsibility and urgently.  NATO needs to consolidate its various rapid response forces into one single pool of forces supported by the requisite force structure and enablers, with a likely centre of gravity somewhere in Poland, an Allied Command Operations Allied Mobile Heavy Force or AMHF. This new essentially European NATO force would need to be supported by Polish forces, US V Corps at Poznan and the German-led Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC) at Ulm. The AMHF force would act as the deterrent showcase for an Alliance-wide sea-bed to space future force multi-domain force concept designed to operate across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge.  As such, the AMHF would act as deterrence reinsurance but would look north, east, south-east and south across a range of contingencies, including transnational threats.  It could also bolster European strategic responsibility by being able to operate under either a NATO or an EU flag.

This AMHF would also be living proof of more equitable transatlantic burden-sharing with its main purpose to act as a high-end, first responder force sufficiently robust and responsive, and held at a sufficient level of readiness, to meet all and any threats to the territory of the European theatre.  AMHF would build on the VJTF and NRF, as well as other very high readiness forces that emerge from the NATO Readiness Initiative.  By merging these forces into the AMHF it would also better enable NATO to better exploit emerging and disruptive technologies such as envisioned in the new NATO Artificial Intelligence Strategy.  To that end, the AMHF would be vital for the introduction into the NATO Order of Battle of the stuff of future war, such as artificial intelligence, super/quantum computing, big data, machine-learning, drone swarming, and hypersonic weapon systems.  This is because by 2030 NATO’s capacity to engage in hyper-fast warfare will be vital to NATO’s future deterrence. Above all, the AMHF would act as the vital technology transmission with high-end US forces and thus enable NATO’s European pillar to operate both autonomously and maintain a high degree of interoperability with the fast evolving US military. By 2030, at the very latest and at the very minimum, the AMHF would need to be Corps-sized.

Where to begin?  One option would be to return the British-led HQ Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (HQ ARRC) back to the Continent from its current base at Innsworth in the west of England.  It was a profound mistake to move HQ ARRC out of its base at Rheindahlen in Germany a decade ago, and I said so at the time.  Rather, HQ ARRC could become the command, control and development hub for the AMHF. Yes, it would cost the British money, but it would also reinforce Britain’s enduring commitment to the peace of Europe in the wake of Brexit.  Whilst it would take time for the AMHF to reach Full Operating Capability (FOC) an Initial Operating Capability (IOC) by, say, 2023 could be to stand up an all-arms Task Force built around an armoured brigade.  Even at ‘IOC’ the AMHF would still need attack and lift helicopters, engineers, rocket and field artillery, as well as signals, intelligence, logistics, cyber and missile force protection.  ‘Heavy Mobility’ would also mean very significant self-deployable amounts of equipment suited for the full spectrum of AMHF missions, as well as C-UAS (counter unmanned aerial systems) and ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance).  

The Alternative? 

In 1929, war in Europe must have seemed as remote to Andre Maginot as it does to so many Europeans today.  Hitler was still a political lunatic on the far right of the German body politic. Then came the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression which suddenly and fundamentally changed the very nature of power and politics in Europe.  Since 2008, Europe has seen the Great Financial Crash and the pandemic which has profoundly weakened Europe and again threatens the change the nature of its politics. The one truism that holds about President Putin is that if he generates power, or other Europeans give it to him, sooner or later he will use it. The main purpose of NATO is to stop that.  Indeed, that is why NATO is in the deterrence not the defence business. So, NATO must do whatever it takes to deter and that means filling its deterrence hole.  Unlike Henry V if defence today fails the result may not be the miracle of Shakespeare’s imaginings, “When, without stratagem, but in plain shock and even play of battle, was ever known so great and little loss”.

Julian Lindley-French

NATO's Riga Test 2021

 

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing”.

President Theodore Roosevelt

The Riga Test

October 20^th, 2021. The Riga Test concerns the good citizens of Latvia’s capital city and whether or not they can sleep in their beds safe in the knowledge that NATO is defending them.  The just finished Riga Conference 2021 was another milestone event, and I have had the honour of attending most of the Riga Conferences since 2006. I do so out of solidarity with my fellow Europeans and because Rigans live on the front-line of freedom. Riga is thus the perfect place to test the health and utility of the Alliance.  This year? I am worried. For the first time since 2006 a senior figure told me that some Latvians are becoming fearful for their future.  What I detected for the first time is that Latvians, ever conscious of history, can smell possible betrayal in the air, maybe not tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow?

The key to moderating any successful panel is the quality of the people on it. At this year’s event I had the honour of chairing His Excellency, Ambassador Tomasz Szatkowski, the Permanent Representative of Poland to the North Atlantic Council, Baiba Braže, Assistant NATO Secretary-General for Public Diplomacy, and Dr Erik Brattberg of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.  The title of our session was, what is the Future of NATO under the new Strategic Concept? Good question.

Riga Conference 2021

As is my predilection I kicked off the panel with a characteristically lame joke.  I pointed out to the assembled great and good that I was a fan of Sheffield United Football Club.  ‘The Mighty Blades’, as United are known by me and my fellow delusionals, are a wonderfully cohesive team, but we are also rubbish.  NATO?  Right now, I am drafting a Shadow NATO Strategic Concept for The Alphen Group which I have the honour to chair.  The real NATO Strategic Concept, the where, why, how, when and with whom and what for the next decade, will probably be the most important such Alliance document since the very first in January 1950 which was afforded the glaringly obvious title, “The Strategic Plan for the Defence of North Atlantic Region (DC 6/1)”.

Frankly, if I had my way the 2022 document would be entitled “The Strategic Plan for the Future Security and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area’.  That will not happen for a whole host of politically irrelevant reasons, even if privately NATO officials are deeply concerned.  First, the thirty Allied nations no longer really agree about what is more important collective defence, crisis management, or co-operative security. Second, too many Allies continue to recognise only as much threat as they can afford.  Consequently, NATO faces an acute ends, ways and means crisis and there are simply not enough forces and resources, particularly European forces and resources.  They find it hard to undertake even today’s spectrum of missions around the 360 degrees of Alliance commitments that NATO has signed up to, let alone what’s coming next.  Third, NATO strategic concepts are fast becoming like a rich aunt’s Christmas tree, ever bigger, ever gaudier, and with ever more baubles hanging from it.  The 2022 Strategic Concept will have a whole box of baubles hanging from it that will have little or nothing to do with the strategic defence of the Euro-Atlantic area, such as climate change and women and security.  Don’t get me wrong, these are vitally important issues with which I sympathise, but they are not NATO’s core business.  If that statement offends the defence woke, then so be it.

The consequent danger is that Strategic Concept 2022 will be yet more NATO muddling through to some lowest common denominator of political convenience.  A smorgasbord of political euphemisms drafted to keep everyone happy (even President Macron) which says everything and thus nothing.  It is already happening. The word is that the most important goal of the Strategic Concept will be to maintain political cohesion at any price, even if ‘political cohesion’ is simply a metaphor for a rubbish NATO that can at best bluff deterrence and pretend defence, particularly on the Alliance’s eastern and northern flanks. 

The twin causes of Latvians' concerns is China-warped US military over-stretch and a growing crisis of deterrence and commitment in Western Europe, primarily, Britain, France and Germany.  The latter is caused mainly by a lack of solidarity with Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, and a profound lack of trust in each other.  The consequences might not be apparent in Western Europe, but they are in Latvia, and the other two Baltic States. At the very least, NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence will need to be significantly further enhanced with more forces, as well as significant investment in areas such as critical infrastructure protection and military mobility. 

The further west and south one goes across Europe the more one also hears the argument that Russia would never dare attack the NATO Baltic Allies. Really? How do they know if the Russians themselves don’t? All NATO can (and must) do is assess Russia’s political and economic stability, military capability, strategic opportunity, its stated intent and recent actions, none of which would put me at my ease if I were a citizen of Riga.  The very nature of Russia and its governance makes it vulnerable to sudden and potentially dangerous changes of political direction that could lead to a whole host of possible outcomes. These could range from a Gorbachev-like ‘new deal’ with the West to an ultra-nationalist military adventure towards the west, or just good old Russian political and economic collapse.

Riga and Risk

Given that reality the essential question Strategic Concept 2022 must answer is what will it take to both deter Russia and at the same time help stabilise NATO’s southern flank and deal with the threat of terrorism? First, NATO will need the necessary collective strategic ambition to meet both threats. NATO is a worst-case, high-end, defensive military alliance or it is nothing. NATO’s critical dilemma is that it is organised around the US and both Washington’s national security and military strategies are being warped by the military rise of China.  Put simply, the US can no longer be strong all of the time everywhere. Consequently, NATO’s worst-case reality over the next decade would be a US forced to confront simultaneous engineered major crises from the Indo-Pacific to the Arctic, whilst an under-armed Europe meanders along in the ‘peaceful’ fantasy of the Euro-world with militarily Lilliputian Europeans arguing endlessly over this bit of EU competence or that.  The irrelevant in pursuit of the meaningless at the expense of the over-committed. 

Second, NATO will need the right amount of the right military force and civilian capability across a new spectrum of hybrid, cyber and high-end hyper war to maintain even a minimally credible deterrence posture. At a conference of senior NATO representatives and officials I suggested the next ten years of military adaptation could see the equivalent of the previous seventy years of military technological transformation given the changing nature and character of war. A step change is already apparent in the technology of war that could drastically shorten the time between decision to act and military objective, much of it driven by emerging and disruptive technologies (EDT) such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonic glide systems and drone swarms that will transform NATO’s defence space.  

I really don’t like saying “I told you so” (well, in fact, I do), but with each passing day the dark vision at the start of my latest brilliant and very reasonably-priced Oxford book, Future War and the Defence of Europe, is being proven correct. In August, the Chinese launched a global reach Long March hybrid ballistic missile and hypersonic nuclear-capable manoeuvrable ‘glide’ system.  The recent large Russian ZAPAD 21 military exercise on Latvia’s doorstep not only tested a host of robotic systems but also left an ominously large ‘military footprint’ in Moscow’s client state, Belarus. Add to the mix Nordstream 2 and Germany’s growing reliance on Putin for its energy Russia is steadily and cleverly deploying the means to coerce and, if needs be threaten, much of Europe into compliance.

Riga Test 2021

One test of Strategic Concept 2022 for me, and thus NATO’s responsibility to the well-being of the people of Riga will be a commitment by Canadian and European allies to create by 2030 (at the very latest) an Allied Command Operations Heavy Mobile European Force (AMHF). The AMHF would dramatically reinforce NATO's Forward Presence and anywhere around NATO’s flanks with a heavy, fast moving force.  The AMHF might be further strengthened by moving HQ ARRC from sleepy Gloucestershire to somewhere in the 1500km gap between Multinational Corps Northeast on the Polish-German border and Latvia’s border with Russia. The AMHF would also need to be the outcome of real European strategic ambition, a high-end, first responder allied Future Force able to act from sea-bed to space and across the multi-domains of air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge.  The AMHF would also be the heartbeat of the NATO Military Strategy sufficiently robust and responsive, and held at a sufficient level of readiness, to meet all and any threats to the territory of the Euro-Atlantic Area in the first instance.   

The AMHF would afford NATO a real trip-wire deterrent posture by moving far beyond the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) and the enhanced NATO Response Force (eNRF). It would also act as a ‘synergizer’ enabling the Alliance to not only exploit emerging and disruptive technologies, but critically maintain a high degree of interoperability with fast evolving US forces, a key component of credible deterrence. Finally, the AMHF would be central to Allied efforts to introduce artificial intelligence, super/quantum computing, big data, machine-learning, drone swarming, hypersonic weapon systems into the NATO Order of Battle and thus embed the Alliance’s deterrence and defence posture in hyper-fast warfare which will be critical to the credibility of the future NATO.  

Rigour, Riga and Russia

The real test of Strategic Concept 2022 will be whether or not it reinforces deterrence in the Baltic States to such an extent that Russia would not even think about invading under any circumstances.  NATO was founded to be a ‘don’t even think about it’ alliance.  The problem is that invading the Baltic States is precisely what President Putin and General Gerasimov are thinking about.  That does not mean any such invasion is going to happen tomorrow, nor does it mean Russian forces would go beyond Lithuania into Poland, but Moscow is certainly keeping such an attack open as both an option, as well as a lever ,to coerce increasingly uncertain Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  Tant pis? Well no. If the Baltic States were lost it is hard to believe the likes of Germany would be willing to mount a rescue mission and in that case NATO would be finished.  NATO’s core, core business is thus not really defence at all, but rather deterrence. In short, such a defeat would mean the end of NATO as a credible alliance and President Putin would like nothing more to be his legacy.  Therefore, Strategic Concept 2022 must not be yet another exercise in floppy political short-termism at the expense of rigorous longer-term strategic realism. 

Years ago at a big NATO bash I upset one secretary-general by publicly disagreeing with him about the purpose of strategic concepts.  He suggested that the main purpose was to reach out to publics, particularly young people.  No, I demurred, the clue is in the name. The purpose of a strategic concept is to re-establish and re-confirm the essential contract between political leaders, who set NATO’s strategic direction of travel, and those Alliance officials charged with carrying out their instructions.  Unfortunately, ever since NATO strategic concepts became part of the public domain they have lost their essential strategic rigour and are more like party political manifestos than over-arching political strategy for a military-strategic alliance. Comparing the 1950 Strategic Concept with its 2010 descendant is like comparing Tolstoy’s War and Peace to Disney’s Frozen II. 

Strategic Concept 2022 must champion the return of Alliance rigour because strategy drives policy and planning. Rigour will be vital if Riga is to be truly secure in the face of a restless Russia.  NATO is at a critical strategic inflection point and my message to NATO leaders responsible for the Strategic Concept and the future peace of Europe is necessarily blunt. Only NATO can generate the necessary power to guarantee Europe’s peace, but for NATO to do the job all the citizens of its democracies ask of it there can be no more political blah blah dressed up as sound strategy.  You, NATO leaders, will betray the people of Riga, my fellow free Europeans, if at the 2022 Madrid Summit you again put your short term politics before their long-term freedom. Now, more than ever, NATO needs a Strategic Plan for the Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area if it is to eventually pass Riga Test 2030, the real purpose of NATO Strategic Concept 2022. Don’t screw up! 

Julian Lindley-French

Macron, Power and Autonomy

 After Brexit, 80% of NATO’s defence expenditure will come from non-EU Allies”.

Secretary-General Stoltenberg, November 2019

Macron and autonomy

October 13^th, 2021. President Macron is right. ‘Europe’ needs to become a much more serious strategic power, but how Europe becomes more serious could well decide if Europe has any power.

In the past week three events have demonstrated the extent to which Europe is vulnerable to events elsewhere. First, President Putin has been fiddling with Europe’s gas supplies in an effort to coerce the European Commission and EU Member-States into sanctioning the German-Russian Nordstream 2 gas pipeline. If it goes active, as it will, Europe will become even more dependent on Russian energy, Moscow will have (further) extended its sphere of influence at the throwing of a switch, and much of Central and Eastern Europe will be forced into a choice between “war and warmth”, as one British minister put it.  German leadership or German selfishness? Second, President Xi Jingping has again been threatening to reunite Taiwan with the rest of China by force.  China is not ready quite yet to invade Taiwan, but Beijing’s growing military capability will not only render such a threat increasingly plausible, it will also focus much of America’s future strategic attention on the Indo-Pacific with profound implications for both Europe and NATO. Third, Nicholas Chaillan, the Pentagon’s chief software officer, resigned saying that the US had already lost the cyber-security war with China and will soon lose the race to develop military artificial intelligence, the very stuff of future war and my latest brilliant and very reasonably-priced Oxford book Future War and the Defence of Europe.

President Macron’s call for greater European strategic autonomy was both defence focussed and couched in the language of Macro-Gaullism. In a recent speech he claimed that, “This [European strategic autonomy] is not an alternative to the United States alliance. It is not a substitute, but it is to take responsibility for the European pillar within NATO and draw the conclusions that we are asked to take care of our protection”.  If that was the extent of Macron’s ambitions there would be no argument.  However, he then went on to say that, “…Europeans must stop being naïve. When we are under pressure from powers, which at times harden [their stance], we need to react and show that we have the power and capacity to defend ourselves”.  Naïve about whom?  With the AUKUS ruckus still in full flow Macron was in fact implying that the US is no longer a reliable ally and, that its perfidious ‘mini me’ Britain is little more than an American vassal state (his Europe Minister even said that).

(Small) Groundhog Day?

During France’s forthcoming presidency of the EU Paris will seek to define strategic autonomy specifically as European Union strategic autonomy with the EU the future European pillar of a transformed NATO.  France will champion the idea of a 5,000 strong European initial entry force, which for those of us who worked on the 60,000 strong European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF) twenty years ago feels more like Groundhog Day than D-Day, albeit a small groundhog. The idea that in 2021 the ‘IEF’ is all the EU could muster for high-end crisis intervention highlights Europe’s essential weakness, the gap between ambition and practice. The retreat from strategic ambition evident over the past twenty years begs two fundamental questions; where exactly is the necessary fighting power and all of its enablers going to come from, and who is going to pay for it in the post-COVID European economy?  France? 

As French bank BNP has stated, “In the draft 2021 budget, the French government forecasts budget deficits of 10.2% of GDP in 2020 followed by 6.7% in 2021. The public debt ratio is expected to rise by 20 points, to 117.5%, in 2020, before declining slightly, to 116.2%, in 2021…the emergency measures…have effectively cushioned the economic shock caused by lockdown; the debate is about the extent and speed of the positive effects to be expected from the recovery plan”. Europe’s simple reality is NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s reality, 80% of NATO’s defence expenditure is now made by non-EU allies, with an equally indebted UK alone representing close to 25% of all European defence expenditure. 

Macron’s vision would make sense if there was agreement across the EU to move towards a European Defence Union with a common budget, but there is not. Countries that could make a very significant contribution to EU strategic autonomy, such as Poland, do not want it. Germany only talks European Defence Union to escape Berlin’s interminable defence dilemma over how much German military power is good European power. Even France, which constantly calls for more European defence integration, only wants it on French terms, and so long as France retains the capacity to be strategically autonomous from a future strategically autonomous EU. In other words, it is hard to see how European strategic autonomy that is ‘European’, ‘strategic’ and ‘autonomous’ could ever be realised without the active support of the US and the active participation of the British, the very ‘untrustworthy’ nations Macron implies are the reason why ‘Europe’ needs autonomy.

Power is as power does

The American economist J.K. Galbraith once famously said that, “power is as power does”.  Strategic autonomy from the US would by definition require Europeans to have sufficient military power to be autonomous from the US. In other words, the measure for such ‘strategic’ autonomy would be European military power in relation to US military power.  Therefore, if Europeans really want the EU to be strategically autonomous from the US and the future European pillar of a transformed NATO, then the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy would need to be imbued with far, far more strategic ambition than has ever been the case.  Indeed, CSDP only exists because of NATO.

To underline that point Ambassador (Ret.) Alexander Vershbow, the former Deputy Secretary-General of NATO, and Dr Hans Binnendijk, a hugely-respected Washington defence analyst, have just published an excellent article in Defense News which effectively sets the bar for such ambition. In, Needed: A transatlantic agreement on European strategic autonomy Vershbow and Binnendijk suggest that, “One way to establish a military standard for strategic autonomy is to agree that Europe will provide one-half of NATO’s current agreed ‘level of ambition.’ That would translate into Europe being able to conduct three nearly simultaneous small operations and one major operation on its own. Given Europe’s current lack of enablers, its relatively low readiness rates, and its fragmented military industrial complex, meeting this standard will take time. So strategic autonomy will be a process, not a diplomatic declaration. But the process should start now”.  You bet!

 Autonomy, force and technology

Vershbow and Binnendijk also believe that European strategic autonomy could only ever be realised within the framework of NATO, enabled by the Americans and including the British. What would such autonomy look like in practice?  At its core there would be sufficient and contemporary European military fighting power and enablers to create a real European rapid reaction future force that could both act as a high-end first responder to deter Russia in an emergency and project stability to Europe’s south.  Such a force will be vital if Europeans are to fulfil their obligations under what is a new transatlantic security contract in which Europeans help keep America strong where she needs to be strong, in return for a continuing American security guarantee to Europe.

To that end, Macron is certainly right to highlight the need to radically re-structure the European Defence and Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) and Europeans must develop the technology of future war, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, and hypersonic systems and drone swarms etc and et al.  Part of Macron’s narrative is clearly designed to protect the French defence industry, much like from London’s perspective AUKUS is designed to help shore up the British defence industry.  Macron also understands that such so-called emerging and disruptive technologies (EDT) will not only be vital for Europe’s future defence, but that such ‘EDTs’ could also offset much of Europe’s military weakness by easing Europe’s chronic lack of military expeditionary capability through technology-driven enablers. 

The paradox is that no amount of reform of the EDTIB is likely to realise Macron’s vision without significant buy-in from the US and its defence technological industrial base and any such future force would need to be part of NATO rather than the EU.  Any attempts by the EU to bypass the US by looking to China and Russia to give Europeans such a technological step up, as Macron seems at times to imply, would simply be self-defeating. That said, it is vital that Europeans confront the reality of the mass disruptive and mass destructive information war, cyber war and hyper-fast future war that is headed their way and the artificially-intelligent, machine-led battlespace of the future that according to Chaillan an ethically-unburdened China is pioneering.

NATO, autonomy and responsibility

The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept should ideally drive the much needed transformation of the Alliance, but that will only happen if NATO is more politically cohesive and the burdens of Europe’s future defence shared more equitably across the Euro-Atlantic area.  A transformed Alliance would be a more global NATO that can help meet the challenge of China, pivotal for strengthened deterrence and defence against Russia, has a strong role in combatting international terrorism with a renewed focus on Europe’s South, and at the hub of a more global partnership network with a much more ambitious strategic partnership with the EU.  NATO must also take the lead in developing strong NATO capabilities to meet the threat posed by ethics-free hyperwar and the potential use of it by China and Russia.

And yet, in an interview in the New York Times this week the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire signalled something very different. He suggested that the key challenge was for the EU to become independent from the United States so that it is able to defend its [French?] own interests, whether economic or strategic. First, defend with what?  Second, in the same interview Le Maire implied equivalency in the French elite mind between the democratic US and autocratic China. Unfortunately, for all Macron’s protestations of love for NATO his vision of strategic autonomy is ultimately an EU defence that is not just autonomous from the US, but independent.  Macron’s justification is that AUKUS has revealed both the US and Britain to be unreliable allies. Unreliable for whom?  In any case, the need for greater European strategic autonomy has nothing to do with the reliability or otherwise of either the Americans or the British and there are enough graves across continental Europe of young Americans and Britons to find Macron’s inference of unreliability plainly insulting.  Rather, European strategic autonomy is needed but to help transform NATO, not to replace it.

Therefore, European strategic autonomy will only ever work if it is a metaphor for greater European strategic responsibility and the only chance of that happening is if it is also done with the Americans and inside NATO. Yes, the EU would be a beneficiary of such power, but not its driver.  Given its structure and culture all the EU is ever likely to do is potter around the country lanes and byways of real power trying to find its way through the fog of its own contradictions with a strategic compass that like some demented satnav offers Europeans a whole host of attractive destinations, but absolutely no idea how to get to any of them.  The EU certainly has a role to play helping to make its Member-States more resilient, but that part of Brussels will never be a driver of the twenty-first century super-highway of hyper military power which ‘strategic’ autonomy implies. 

Folie de grandeur?

Once the AUKUS ruckus has died down (as it will) and the French presidential elections are over one can only hope that France, the US and UK reset their strategic relationship.  Don’t hold your breath. It is not a given that Macro-Gaullism is simply a ruse to attract domestic support in the run-up to the French presidential elections.  President Macron really does seem to believe his own hype.  In such circumstances, it can only be further hoped that a new Berlin government also heralds a return to German statecraft that used to be so good at preventing European problems becoming transatlantic crises.  This is because the ultimate paradox of ‘l’autonomie strategique a la Macron’ is that far from heralding the age of a strategic Europe it could well destroy it, and do NATO an awful lot of damage in the process.  

Power is power precisely because power does. It is European weakness that has rendered Europeans dependent and it is vital that European democracies become more powerful if they are also to be responsible and take their proper place alongside the world’s other democracies in maintaining the twenty-first century peace. Some Americans suggest that how Europeans become more effective allies really does not matter.  They should be careful what they wish for. Thankfully, the chance of Macron’s strategically independent Europe being realised is about as likely as Boris Johnson being invited to join l’Academie Francaise (“Donnez-moi un break”?).  

There are also a host of European states that have no interest in French ambitions to decouple Europe from America and subordinate Britain.  Rather, the more likely outcome if Macron persists is that France will simply isolate itself from powerful allies.  So, yes, Macron is right to call for Europe to become a serious strategic actor, and with more power Europeans will also develop more autonomy.  However, if European strategic autonomy is at the expense of the future NATO Europe will be neither serious nor strategic. Folie de grandeur?   

Julian Lindley-French

Operation Hookless

 Operation Hookless

 September 30^th, 2021. Operation Hookless, or the Australia, United Kingdom, United States security and defence pact (AUKUS) as it has become known, began in a rather unexpected way.  In March 2020, the First Sea Lord (Chief of the Royal Navy) Admiral Sir Tony Radakin attended an important but nevertheless routine meeting at the Australian High Commission in London.  At the meeting he met with Vice-Admiral Michael Noonan, the Chief of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).  Noonan explained that Canberra was increasingly concerned about growing capability of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The Australians are particularly concerned about the new Type 095A nuclear attack submarine, and the ability of the French-designed Short-fin Barracuda/Attack-class to meet Australia’s strategic needs.

The Australians enquired if London, and possibly Washington, would be interested in helping the Australians build a fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines that would be faster, stealthier and with unlimited endurance than the planned conventional diesel-electric submarines the Australians were building in Adelaide under a 2016 contract with the French Naval Group. At the meeting the Australians said that endurance and the ability to undertake stealthy surveillance were particularly important capabilities for them to have.  The Australians already had a close and trusted relationship with the British through the Five Eyes intelligence community and discussions were taken forward.

Thereafter, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence in London, took over responsibility for dealing with the request (which was given the codename Operation Hookless).  Hookless also had the full backing of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wanted a much deeper strategic relationship to emerge from it (AUKUS).  Such was the sensitivity of the negotiations that in London only ten people were kept in the loop. The British then approached the Americans. This delayed the negotiations somewhat as the request had to pass through the laborious Pentagon machine during a Washington election year.  This delay caused concern in Canberra as the Australians were under growing time pressure as they were fast approaching a contract requirement which would see the costs of the French contract increase exponentially.  Eventually, the new Biden administration agreed in principle to the pact, the final shape of which was agreed behind closed doors by Biden, Johnson and the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the June 2021 Carbis Bay G7 meeting in Cornwall.

The stuff of AUKUS

The three main elements of AUKUS are the strategic alignment of the US, UK and Australia in the Indo-Pacific, the building of eight new SSN for the Royal Australian Navy, and collaboration over future defence applications of artificial intelligence, machine-learning, quantum computing and cyber warfare (Australia already has a strong research base in such areas). The building of the eight RAN SSN will also be part of a new “special nuclear relationship”.  Whilst the Australian Government will take the final decision on what specific system to purchase in 2023 the British seem to be best placed.  Last week, the UK Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, committed £160 million to the development of the Submersible Ship Nuclear Replacement Programme (SSNR), including the award of two contracts to BAE Systems Maritime and Rolls Royce.  The SSNR programme will begin to replace the current Astute class SSN starting in 2035, five years after the Australians were due to take delivery of the first Attack-class submarines.  They will likely be driven by a variant of the new Rolls Royce PWR3 nuclear propulsion system under development for the British Dreadnought-class SSBN currently under construction.  It is no coincidence that Australia is also planning to take possession of the first SSN in 2035.

By some measures (Naval Technology magazine in the US) the Astutes are the world’s most capable nuclear attack submarines, although they lack the vertical launch tubes on the Virginias.  The Astutes also have a smaller weapons payload than the Virginias (but more torpedo/cruise missile tubes than the nuclear-propelled variant of the French Barracuda class). However, the crew per boat is a quarter less (98 versus 135) which will matter to the personnel-constrained RAN.  The Astutes also have unlimited range and endurance (like the Virginias but unlike the Barracudas which need to be refuelled every ten years).  The electronic countermeasures on the Astutes are also extremely capable, and they are faster underwater than the Virginias (30 knots versus 25 knots).  The Astutes are also specifically designed for surveillance, infiltration and exfiltration operations which is high on the Australian wish-list. They will also give Australia access to advanced (and upgradable) American and British weapons systems. 

Australia’s nuclear options

The Americans could offer a late block Virginia variant, but that is unlikely because the US Navy will need all 66 of them and block four Los Angeles class boats will be too old by 2035.  The same applies to the British Trafalgar-class SSN the last two of which are beginning the decommissioning process.  Although HMS Audacious, the latest of the seven Astute-class SSN, was commissioned into the Royal Navy last week, the Royal Navy does not have, and will not have, enough Astutes to hand any over to the Australians. The Americans are also unlikely to give even the Australians or British access to some of the black box technologies being developed for the planned SSN (X).  

Ironically, it is the very troubled story of the early days of the Astute programme that may be indicative of the likely way ahead for the Australians, not least because Prime Minister Johnson directly linked AUKUS to highly skilled British jobs.  In March 1997, the British Government signed a contract with what became BAE Systems and Rolls Royce to build the Astute-class.  However, when work began in 1999 the design was incomplete and the 30,000 strong skilled workforce that had built the British Vanguard class SSBN over a decade before had been reduced to 3,000.  In short, BAE Systems had overreached itself and it was only with the appointment of General Dynamics Electric Boat (together with an American programme director) as part of a US Navy contract that the Astute programme began to recover.  Those problems have by and large been resolved, albeit at great cost to the British taxpayer.  In other words, by joining SSNR the Australians would be buying into a well-established and up and running programme that combines both American and British expertise.

Therefore, the most likely solution for the Australians is to join the British SSNR programme with the caveat that their variants will have more US technology built into them than their British counterparts to ensure they are suitable for operations in the Indo-Pacific, as opposed to the North Atlantic or Mediterranean. The eight submarines will likely be built at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide where the RAN variants of the new Type 26 Hunter-class frigates are also being built by a consortium led by BAE Systems and where the Attack-class submarines would have been completed.  Unlike back in 1999 at the Devonshire Hall Barrow shipyard back where the Astutes are built, the Osborne yard already has a skilled workforce in place. The Australians are also used to co-operating with the British because the Type 26 frigates are also being built for the Royal Navy (Town-class) with the first three ships, HMS Glasgow, HMS Cardiff and HMS Belfast close to completion, as well as the Royal Canadian Navy as the Canadian Surface Combatant.

One final thought. Australia’s first nuclear powered submarines could well be named the Odin-class and the first two boats given the honour of carrying the same name as the country’s first two named submarines, HMAS Oxley and HMAS Otway.  

 Julian Lindley-French