Staffing concerns should not hold back the expansion of the RAN

The Independent Analysis into the (Royal Australian) Navy’s Surface Combatant Fleet, released at the beginning of the year, recommended a modest expansion to our surface fleet.

Both prior to the government’s release of the review and afterwards, the idea of any sort of expansion of the RAN has been greeted by what is becoming a predictable refrain from some Defence commentators and observers – that the RAN is incapable of properly crewing its current fleet, after all, just recently an Anzac Class frigate was put on the slip indefinitely as there are not enough sailors to crew her.

The poor state of the RAN’s recruitment and retention is deservedly a cause for serious concern and should be addressed as a matter of urgency, but at the same time, these issues should not be allowed to be decisive in planning the future structure of the RAN.

The idea that a country of 26 million people would not be able to find the personnel to crew eight nuclear submarines, nine major surface combatants and 11 general purpose frigates, is absurd.

As has been acknowledged in the recent 2020 Strategic Defence Update, the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific have changed significantly in recent years. The multi-decade notice we previously had on major conflicts developing in our region is now gone.

The RAN and the rest of the Australian Defence Force must be ready to fight in a major peer-to-peer conflict in our region with little notice.

With this in mind, the overriding priority of the RAN must be to replace our existing ageing combatant vessels (with the exception of the Hobart Class air warfare destroyers) with an expanded number of newer, more capable ships, as quickly as possible.

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Unlike the other services, which have the luxury of being able to expand relatively quickly, the RAN is likely to be forced to fight the next war with the fleet it goes into that conflict with.

Building ships and submarines is a more time-consuming process than building (or more likely in the case of the latter, purchasing from overseas) tanks or fighter craft. As we have seen over the past few decades, Australia’s shipbuilding capacity is extremely limited and slow.

The fastest Hobart Class air warfare destroyer to be constructed was three and a half years between being laid down and commissioned. The fastest Anzac Class frigate was built in around two and a half years and the fastest Collins was around from beginning to completion was six and a half years.

Even taking into account wartime resource prioritisation, it may be the case that the next major war starts and ends before the Australian shipbuilding industry is able to deliver a single frigate or destroyer into service.

Relying on the shipbuilding industries of our larger allies during a conflict or the period immediately beforehand is also likely to deliver poor outcomes, as most, if not all, shipbuilding capacity is likely to be occupied fulfilling their own navies’ requirements.

In fact, the shipbuilding industries of many of our allies are already struggling, with the example of the US struggling to building Virginia Class submarines to the point that some US congressmen have spoken out against the delivery of even three of these to the RAN starting in a decade’s time.

As was the experience in World War II, in a potential future conflict, the RAN may need to rely on small general-purpose vessels akin to a modern version of the Bathurst Class which could be built locally, several at a time, over a few months. The capabilities of such vessels in a modern peer-to-peer conflict are likely to be limited, however.

Unlike the expansion of the number of vessels that the RAN operates, which is likely to be a multi-decade effort, personnel capacity can be significantly expanded in a relatively short period of time, if the strategic situation warranted it. In 2022–23, the RAN Active Reserve (SerCats 3-5) numbered 4,800.

If called out, this would expand RAN by about a third in terms of personnel. In addition, there are also several thousand inactive Navy Reservists (SerCat 2), who have served within the last five years.

While it’s unlikely that the Naval Reserves, if called out, would exactly match the gaps in staffing that would be required to fully crew an expanded RAN fleet, other measures could be used to rapidly fill these gaps.

These measures include recruiting suitable former RAN personnel or personnel from other friendly navies for specialist or senior officer roles, while non-specialist sailor roles could be trained from new recruits in only a few months.

This is not an ideal solution, however, in the case of a major conflict breaking out in our region, it would be preferrable that the RAN went into it with a larger fleet even if some of the crews were drawn from the reserves, former personnel and new personnel, rather than having a fleet that is too small and is extremely difficult to expand at the last moment.

Todd Newett is an economist and public policy manager. He was previously a Reservist.