Defense News
01/09/2012
Going Large: Asian Navies Shift to Bigger Vessels, Downplay
Littoral Ops
By WENDELL MINNICK
TAIPEI - As Western
navies build fewer aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines, Asian navies
are moving in the opposite direction, ignoring the littorals with construction
and procurement of larger warships and submarines.
The U.S. and Europe
have stepped back from larger platforms designed for the Cold War and invested
in smaller platforms such as the U.S. Navy's Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship
(LCS). But this is not the case in East Asia and the Pacific, where there have
been increases in spending on destroyers and submarines in Australia, China,
India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, said Bob Nugent, vice president of naval
advisory services at AMI International, based in Seattle.
One of the most
notable cases involves Taiwan's procurement of four Kidd-class guided missile
destroyers and plans to procure eight submarines. Japan and South Korea have
also invested heavily in guided missile destroyers equipped with advanced
phased array radars.
Even in
budget-challenged Southeast Asian countries, the trend has been a shift from
smaller to larger platforms, such as frigates and large corvettes. Examples
include Singapore's Formidable-class frigates, Indonesia's SIGMA-class
corvettes, Malaysia's recent decision on the SGPV/LCS frigates, and Vietnam's
plan to buy SIGMAs and the pending delivery of Russian-built Kilo-class
submarines.
The main reason
regional navies are ignoring littoral capabilities has to do with geography. In
the region, "the home team enjoys an enormous advantage of range and
proximity and the attacker would have to be prepared to conduct pre-emptive
strikes against the coast state's bases before conducting operations in the
littoral," said Sam Bateman a regional naval specialist at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University,
in Singapore.
The U.S. Navy should
"think twice" about deploying classic sea control/power projection
capabilities, such as carrier battle groups, within range of subs and
land-based strike aircraft, Bateman said. The U.S. Navy's new LCS will be
"hugely vulnerable without close-air support and that cannot be
guaranteed."
The U.S. and
Singapore have recently agreed to allow the U.S. Navy to station the LCS in
Singapore.
Air support is the
"elephant in the room" with littoral warfare, Bateman said. Littoral
warfare is dependent on fire support directed against targets on land, either
from aircraft close-air support or naval gunfire. Despite all the advances with
missiles, "the big caliber naval gun remains an attractive and effective
way of putting down fire in coastal areas."
Another problem in
the Asia-Pacific has been increased tension over exclusive economic zone (EEZ)
claims, particularly in the South China Sea. Many countries, including China,
claim restrictions over naval operations in their EEZs.
Some within the
region have invested in stealthy vessels to avoid detection in the littoral environment.
Singapore's Formidable-class frigates are based on the stealthy French-built La
Fayette-class frigates and Singapore's ST Engineering is conducting research to
develop the 27-meter Stealth Interceptor and 57-meter Stealth Patrol Vessel.
Taiwan wants to build
a stealthy 900-ton catamaran corvette and is manufacturing a stealthy 180-ton
fast-attack missile patrol boat, armed with Hsiung Feng-2 anti-ship missiles.
The stealthy SIGMA-class corvettes procured by Indonesia and now being
considered by Vietnam are other examples.
For Asian countries
dealing with the littoral issue, the challenge is finding the right investment
balance among intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and defensive
and offensive technologies, Nugent said.
"Unmanned
systems are critical to ISR and defense in the littoral now and will become
more so for offensive littoral warfare as unmanned maritime systems are more
widely armed for all domains in the future," he said. Investments in
better sensors and C4ISR are the other areas where the "gaps that create
vulnerabilities in ship's self-defense against missiles and torpedoes in the
littoral are getting a lot of attention."
Another area of
growing interest is the use of unmanned surface vehicles (USV) and unmanned
underwater vehicles (UUV). ST Engineering is developing the 9-meter Venus USV
ostensibly for harbor patrol, but the vessel has potential for littoral
warfare.
USVs and UUVs will be
"particularly useful for littoral warfare as they can be launched outside
the EEZ or convenient surveillance range of the coastal state, which is
unlikely to have the capabilities of detecting them," Bateman said.
"They can be used for surveillance/intelligence collection and as an
offensive weapon - to lay mines or fire torpedoes," he said.
There is also
potential for anti-submarine warfare, but that capability is as yet
"unrealized."
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