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| NUSHIP Canberra arrives in Sydney (File Photo) |
By Peter Dean
Australia’s new Landing-Helicopter Dock (LHD) amphibious ships will be a game changer for its ability to project force.
In mid-1987, troops from the Australian Army’s Operational Deployment Force stood off shore from Fiji spread amongst the warships HMAS Parramatta and HMAS Sydney; the supply ship, HMAS Success; and the Royal Australian Navy’s one and only amphibious ship, HMAS Tobruk. These troops were there as part of the Australian government’s response to the May 1987 Fiji coup by elements of the Royal Fiji Military Forces, led by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka.
While the Australian Defense Force (ADF) was to maintain this force for seventeen days, it quickly demonstrated the poor state of joint capability at the time, including: inadequate doctrine, poor communications between services, shortage of amphibious ships and craft, and the absence of operating concepts. The operation was, in the end, a “sobering demonstration of the limits of Australian military power in the late 1980s.”
At the time, the ADF had been structured around the Defense of Australia (DoA). DoA focused on concentrating air and sea power to defend the air-sea gap to Australia’s north. This sea denial strategy placed little emphasis on the ability to project force in Australia’s near region and left Australian policymakers with precious few options in the region when events such as the military coup in Fiji occurred.
Operation Morris Dance was, however, the starting point of the development of the modern day ADF amphibious capability. A development that took its greatest leap into the future with the arrival of the first of two new 27,000 ton Landing-Helicopter Dock (LHD) amphibious ships in its new home port of Sydney on March 13 of this year.
Read the full 2 page story at The Diplomat