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While many have claimed the aircraft carrier is dead, many powers seem to have missed the memo recognising the growing importance of fleet-based air power. India is the latest regional power to expand its aircraft carrier capabilities, enhancing their avenues for regional power projection.
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At the end of the Second World War, the aircraft carrier emerged as the apex of naval prestige and power projection. Unlike their predecessor (the battleship), aircraft carriers in themselves are relatively benign actors, relying heavily at their attached carrier air-wings and supporting escort fleets of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines to screen them from hostile action.
Driving this change is an unprecedented period of Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea and the growing capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which has seen the Chinese fielding or preparing to field a range of power projection capabilities, including aircraft carriers and supporting strike groups, fifth-generation combat aircraft, modernised land forces, area-access denial, and strategic nuclear forces, combined with growing political and financial influence throughout the region.
India, a well-established aircraft carrier power, with major economic, political, and strategic interests across the Indian Ocean and well-publicised animosities with the People’s Republic of China, has increasingly moved to modernise and expand its own carrier capabilities, embarking on a period of what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described as Indian self-reliance or “Aatmanirbhar Bharat”.
Today, strategic sea lines of communication support over 90 per cent of global trade, a result of the cost effective and reliable nature of sea transport. Indo-Pacific Asia is at the epicentre of the global maritime trade, with about US$5 trillion worth of trade flowing through the South China Sea (SCS) and the strategic waterways and choke points of Southeast Asia annually. For the Indian Ocean and its critical global sea lines of communication, are responsible for more than 80 per cent of the world’s seaborne trade in critical energy supplies, namely oil and natural gas, which serve as the lifeblood of any advanced economy — including Australia’s.
Toward a ‘two-carrier’ force
A key part of India’s extensive and rapidly growing naval modernisation efforts under Prime Minister Modi has been the emphasis on establishing the Indian Navy as a credible “two-carrier” force, at a minimum — that is a fleet, capable of operating two aircraft carriers and supporting battlegroups concurrently throughout the Indian Ocean, with specific focus on the operating areas close to the Middle East, namely the Persian Gulf and the critically important Straits of Malacca in Southeast Asia.
In order to achieve this new focus, the Indian Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the INS Vikrant (R11) has recently completed a major operational milestone, successfully completing the integration of the MiG-29K into the ship and, in a major first for India’s burgeoning defence industry, successfully landing and launching the nation’s indigenous Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, designed and built, Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) on the vessel for the first time.
Indian Navy Chief of Naval Staff Admiral R Hari Kumar welcomed this milestone, stating, “The successful landing and take-off of the indigenous LCA Navy on India’s first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier is a momentous step forward towards the realisation of our collective vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat. The maiden landing of the MiG-29K also heralds the integration of the fighter aircraft with INS Vikrant.”
This milestone achievement marks a major step change in the capability profile of the Indian Navy, arguably giving the rising superpower the most powerful surface fleet in the Indian Ocean — with a growing emphasis on expanding this advantage of potential adversaries, namely Pakistan or China, through the acquisition of additional nuclear powered and conventionally powered attack and missile submarines, a fleet of large, next-generation guided missile destroyers armed with the hypersonic, BrahMos missile systems, and working closely with the United States to acquire a fleet of large, advanced carrier-based fighter aircraft, namely, the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
India’s increasing concentration of powerful fleet units in the Indian ocean will serve as a powerful, multidomain force projection capability that will serve to complicate the tactical and strategic decision making of potential adversaries as competing interests arise.
A return for Australian carriers?
Increasingly, multi-domain air power plays an important role in the efficacy of naval forces and serves as a key component in both the force structure and capability development plans for Japan, South Korea, and Australia — these similarities support not only closer relationships between the two nations that share unique geopolitical and strategic similarities, but also provide the opportunity to develop robust force structures to respond to the rapidly evolving regional strategic environment.
Promoting greater interoperability and duplication of capabilities serves to support the broader regional order, while also serving to share the tactical and strategic burden between key US allies at a time when the current US administration is placing increasing emphasis on allies sharing the financial, personnel, and material burden of maintaining the post-Second World War economic, political, and strategic order.
The notion of Australia acquiring a third, F-35B dedicated Canberra Class LHD has been discussed at great length by both strategic policy analysts and politicians since the RAN acquired the vessels. Currently, the HMA Ships Canberra and Adelaide lack a number of structural and technical modifications that would enable the ships to safely and effectively operate the aircraft and any third vessel would need to incorporate the modifications from the keel up, in a similar manner to the Turkish Navy’s recently launched TCG Anadolu (based on the Canberra/Juan Carlos Class vessels).
Despite the apparent structural limitations of HMA Ships Canberra and Adelaide, the vessels’ base design, the Juan Carlos I, was designed from the keel up to accommodate a fixed-wing naval aviation capability. The Spanish vessel, when acting in the light carrier role, is capable of accommodating 10–12 AV-8B Harrier IIs or Lockheed Martin F-35Bs combined with an additional 10–12 helicopters by using the light vehicles bay as an additional storage space.
Meanwhile, despite continuing issues with Turkey’s access to the F-35, Turkey fully expects to operate a small fleet of the Lockheed Martin F-35B from the TCG Anadolu. Despite the relative success of the platform in the light carrier role, it is important to recognise the limitations of the LHDs in the carrier capacity and role and identify alternatives that would better suit the introduction of a dedicated aircraft carrier role.
The introduction of a dedicated aircraft carrier also benefits Australian industry, through increased procurement programs for support and escort vessels, larger F-35 supply chain contributions and larger sustainment and maintenance contracts, which are key to keeping the Navy “battle ready and deployed”.
Australia’s security and prosperity are directly influenced by the stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific, meaning Australia must be directly engaged as both a benefactor and leader in all matters related to strategic, economic and political security, serving as either a replacement or complementary force to the role played by the US — should the US commitment or capacity be limited.
There is no doubt that Australia’s position and responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the nation’s ability to sustain itself economically, strategically and politically in the face of rising regional and global competition. Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national security strategy integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust Australian role in the region.
While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the socio-political and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.
Enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities in supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia, this is particularly well explained by Peter Zeihan, who explains: “A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation.”
Accordingly, shifting the public discussion and debate away from the default Australian position of “it is all a little too difficult, so let’s not bother” will provide unprecedented economic, diplomatic, political and strategic opportunities for the nation.
As events continue to unfold throughout the region and China continues to throw its economic, political and strategic weight around, can Australia afford to remain a secondary power, or does it need to embrace a larger, more independent role in an era of increasing great power competition?
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
