I come at this response to your article from a pragmatic, very Australian perspective. I don't like the AUKUS contract because it falls into the very trap you describe: an overreliance on high-dollar vessels at the expense of an effective area denial strategy more applicable to a nation like Australia. AUKUS makes us an extension of US strategy and utterly dependent on another country's supply chain.
Your diagnosis of the fatal math undermining legacy blue-water navies is entirely correct. Burning million-dollar missiles on $20,000 drones is an unsustainable strategy. Maritime power hasn't sunk—the 20th-century model of relying on a few exquisite, concentrated surface targets has simply run its course.
To survive the continental missile age and secure true sovereignty, naval architecture must shift to a distributed, high-low mix of stealth and autonomous mass:
Autonomous Mass: Deploying a dense uncrewed swarm (like Ghost Shark XL-AUVs and Sea Archer USVs) forces adversaries to waste missile inventory on low cost, expendable targets, completely flipping the attrition math in our favour.
Subsurface Primacy: Shifting the strike weight to stealth assets like Suffren-class SSNs carrying Naval Cruise Missiles allows us to hold continental targets at risk from deep water, bypassing shore based choke-point traps entirely.
Hardened Anchors & Independent Logistics: Protecting the command core with high-tonnage flagships sporting SPY-7 radars provides the necessary 360-degree ballistic and hypersonic shield. Crucially, pairing them with Extended Mogami frigates acting as mobile, organic refuelling hubs keeps the autonomous swarm sustained without relying on vulnerable forward bases or foreign supply lines.
Your critique is a necessary post-mortem for a fragile, outdated way of projecting power. The answer is to stop acting as a dependent vassal to an old offshore balancing strategy, and instead build a resilient, asymmetric maritime denial capability of our own.
This is indeed the Gorbachev moment,what Trump exposed is that the US politics is not reformable,thus ending all hope of US hegemony,the US now is a late stage Soviet Union that still have a long way to go,Trump essentially is Gorbachev in the sense that he is a political reformer while the bidens,kamalas,etc are the conservatives who want to perserve the system at all http://cost.In this sense,the US is run by principles no different from the one party state.
It won't be long before the US deems its military power incapable of challenging China,thus only way forward is to accomadate China's demand and negotiate settlements with China thus avoiding the war,or the US can bet on a final war against China thus ending the West as a political reality.
There will be a time when the leader of China will make a speech that will be quoted for a long time for it marks the end of US hegemony in Eurasia,a "tear down this wall" moment.
Reversing the Asymmetric Math
I come at this response to your article from a pragmatic, very Australian perspective. I don't like the AUKUS contract because it falls into the very trap you describe: an overreliance on high-dollar vessels at the expense of an effective area denial strategy more applicable to a nation like Australia. AUKUS makes us an extension of US strategy and utterly dependent on another country's supply chain.
Your diagnosis of the fatal math undermining legacy blue-water navies is entirely correct. Burning million-dollar missiles on $20,000 drones is an unsustainable strategy. Maritime power hasn't sunk—the 20th-century model of relying on a few exquisite, concentrated surface targets has simply run its course.
To survive the continental missile age and secure true sovereignty, naval architecture must shift to a distributed, high-low mix of stealth and autonomous mass:
Autonomous Mass: Deploying a dense uncrewed swarm (like Ghost Shark XL-AUVs and Sea Archer USVs) forces adversaries to waste missile inventory on low cost, expendable targets, completely flipping the attrition math in our favour.
Subsurface Primacy: Shifting the strike weight to stealth assets like Suffren-class SSNs carrying Naval Cruise Missiles allows us to hold continental targets at risk from deep water, bypassing shore based choke-point traps entirely.
Hardened Anchors & Independent Logistics: Protecting the command core with high-tonnage flagships sporting SPY-7 radars provides the necessary 360-degree ballistic and hypersonic shield. Crucially, pairing them with Extended Mogami frigates acting as mobile, organic refuelling hubs keeps the autonomous swarm sustained without relying on vulnerable forward bases or foreign supply lines.
Your critique is a necessary post-mortem for a fragile, outdated way of projecting power. The answer is to stop acting as a dependent vassal to an old offshore balancing strategy, and instead build a resilient, asymmetric maritime denial capability of our own.
100% Thanks for the comment!
This is indeed the Gorbachev moment,what Trump exposed is that the US politics is not reformable,thus ending all hope of US hegemony,the US now is a late stage Soviet Union that still have a long way to go,Trump essentially is Gorbachev in the sense that he is a political reformer while the bidens,kamalas,etc are the conservatives who want to perserve the system at all http://cost.In this sense,the US is run by principles no different from the one party state.
It won't be long before the US deems its military power incapable of challenging China,thus only way forward is to accomadate China's demand and negotiate settlements with China thus avoiding the war,or the US can bet on a final war against China thus ending the West as a political reality.
There will be a time when the leader of China will make a speech that will be quoted for a long time for it marks the end of US hegemony in Eurasia,a "tear down this wall" moment.