Australia’s Flat-tops


Part 2 – Considering the Australian Defence Force’s new helicopter carriers / Artist’s impression of HMA Ships Canberra (2) and Adelaide (3) show them operating rotary wing aircraft while releasing landing craft from the internal docks. ADF Graeme Andrews* describes the new Australian LHDs and explains how they could offer two roles – if the RAAF decides to co-operate with the purchase of new fighters.

The term LHD refers to the description given to the new medium-large flat-tops on order for the ADF (Australian Defence Force). LHD (Landing Helicopter Dock) is a brief and clumsy description for the main roles of the new ships HMAS Canberra and Adelaide now under construction for the Royal Australian Navy.
The terminology is used because politicians and the ADF both appear anxious to avoid anyone referring to these ships as ‘aircraft carriers.’
Government, no doubt, recalls only too well the uninhibited and uninformed criticism, led by the populist press, back in the 1980s, when suggestions as to the replacement for the then aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne were generally anti.
These ships will be, effectively and accurately, small aircraft carriers – helicopters being aircraft. ‘Small’ is a relative term only by comparison with the massive monsters that lead the US Navy. They will be large ships by any other standard.
Where these new ships will differ from traditional-style and larger fixed wing aircraft carriers will be in the range of capabilities they will offer. Their primary roles will vary between carrying up to 1,000 Army troops and their wheeled equipment including the equipment needed to land that force for national disaster support, medical and physical evacuation and perhaps, military action.
This rescue and medical role will be increasingly needed in the South Pacific as Australia and New Zealand have accepted the role, perhaps reluctantly, of supporting the micro-nations and largely dysfunctional democracies that comprise Polynesia and Micronesia.
Universal peace did not suddenly blossom with the end of World War Three (aka The Cold War) in 1989.
Quite the opposite, but in addition to various nations maintaining at least some of their previous armed capabilities, there developed an increased interest in offering aid to those nations, developed and less so, that needed it in the face of a disaster, think tsunami, earthquakes, cyclones and more.
Australia’s new LHDs will be able to offer more and much better than have the present HMA Ships Manoora and Kanimbla. These two ships were cobbled together from 30-year-old ex-US ships by the RAN because, although an obvious need was there, the idea of building a purpose designed craft that looked like an ‘aircraft carrier’ could not then get backing from any government, or the support of the RAAF.
The new ships will have a greatly expanded rescue and retrieval capability. They will have integral major medical facilities up to advanced hospital standard. They will be able to unload ambulances, earth moving equipment and tracked vehicles in addition to carry a mix of up to 25 or more ADF helicopters.
Troopship HMAS Sydney showing her LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle Personnel) carried along the edge of her flight deck.In these fields they will be much more capable than were the previous two light aircraft carriers although they will have a lower top speed and shorter cruising range. Operationally, they will be able to work for as long as 50 days without resupply.
It is in a warlike role that I feel these big new ships may be vulnerable although the ADF has been at pains to discount these concerns. For self-defence they will carry only medium-sized machine guns. The intention is that the two ships should at all times be protected against surface or aerial threats by the three new air warfare destroyers, now being built.
Expecting these three ships to always be available is optimistic, allowing for refit and repair needs and ignoring enemy action. It means that in hostile situations the two ships will need to stay together to have the maximum protection in any area that is out of the range of RAAF air cover and that means almost anywhere.
The Spanish version will be able to operate short take off and landing fighters for self protection and could be backed up by the Spanish Navy’s small aircraft carrier in any hostile situation.
Troopship HMAS Sydney in 1971with her flight-deck vehicle ‘car park.’ The new LHDs will be able to carry a similar vehicle load and still operate their aircraft.The Canberra class LHD’s propulsion will be applied, not through propellers and shafts, using rudders, but through revolving ‘pods’. The ‘pods’ offer greater manoeuvrability than do propellers and rudders and operate in a manner similar to an outboard motor. A recent pod accident with the giant liner Queen Mary 2 suggests a certain physical vulnerability.
I’m neither marine engineer nor naval architect, but I well remember being master of a 300 tonne vessel that had no rudders and two steerable drive units. With one engine down, steering was impossible. This was not a problem in a port. It could be dangerous in an awkward situation. I also note that three similar ships built by and for South Korea are both faster and better armed than our LHDs. They are propelled in a conventional manner, with area defence of the ships by the Republic of Korean Navy being much greater than the smaller RAN could provide.
One not generally realised reason for the need for these capacious ships is the effective demise of the Australian merchant marine. The RAN can no longer call upon a mix of Australian owned and manned merchant ships in times of hostilities.
It is no secret that the RAN with AIF support has called for provision of an actual fixed wing carrier capability.
This ADF cut-away view shows the various stowage layers within the structure of the new-building LHDs.A joint parliamentary committee in 2004 recommended that some of the new F35 Lighting II fighters on order for the RAAF should include perhaps 20 of the F35B STOL version. These could operate from the new LHDs if the appropriate radar and other control installations were there. They could provide air cover in areas of danger well beyond the range of their siblings of the land version.
This plan and elevation view compares the LHD with the Kanimbla-type now in use.The option is for the RAAF to try to provide aircraft cover over the ships 24 hours a day. The Royal Air Force could not offer this during the Falkland Islands War in the early 1980s, when the RN did have a very few fighters on two small carriers – one of them previously having been offered to the RAN (see Part 1).
If the Indonesian Air Force had chosen to intervene in East Timor in the 1990s, the RAAF would have been in difficulty and so too would have been those RAN ships on site.
Will these big and expensive ships eventually get a fixed wing support component? Possibly, there are well-reasoned arguments both ways. If it happens it will probably have to wait until the ADF and the government of the day is given something like the kind of shock given to the Thatcher government of the UK by the sudden occurrence of the Falklands War.

For this article, I have, in addition to my own thoughts and conclusions, derived from many years of interest in the defence forces of Australia, drawn upon published works from the Sea Power Centre – Australia as well as range of discussion papers and news items available on the Internet.

*Graeme Andrews served in the RAN and the RAN reserve for 25 years. During the 1970s he published three books on the navies of the South Pacific. For more than 10 years he was the area correspondent for the world defence annual Janes Fighting Ships. He served aboard HMAS Melbourne in three commissions with the SEATO forces during the Cold War. The reason for this article is the paucity of discussion in the public press over the acquisition of, and probable limitations to, the role capabilities of the LHDs.