Red Sea call ‘risks telegraphing capability concerns to adversaries’

“If you’re a potential adversary looking at Australia ... you’ve got to be asking yourself, ‘why did Australia not send a ship to a place they have traditionally operated when requested by an ally who is under pressure?’,” she said.

“If that looks like a signal to a potential adversary, that we may not have credible capability in the maritime domain as an island. I think that’s dangerous.”

Ms Parker said the Albanese government must not take a narrow view that the Red Sea was outside its direct regional responsibility given how much important trade flowed through the region.

“I think for a long time we have misunderstood the impact of Middle East security on our own trade routes,” she said.

“I would have no qualms taking a Hobart into the Red Sea right now.”

However, Peter Dean, director of foreign policy and defence at the US Studies Centre at Sydney University, said Australia had made the right choice in deciding against wading into a Middle Eastern operation.

“It was fine to send in the 1990s and early 2000s ships to the Middle East to contribute to that global mission, but Australia has responsibilities much closer to home, our regional security environment, is not anywhere near as benign any more,” Professor Dean said.

“We are not a global power. Ambitions can be limitless, resources are finite and strategy is about making hard choices.”

Professor Dean said Australia was a regional power, not a global power, and needed to act accordingly.

“The navy is not flush with capability,” he said.

“I don’t often see the Netherlands, Norway, Spain or Italy providing ships into the South China Sea or the East China Sea.”

Professor Dean, a senior adviser and principal author for the independent leads of the Australian Defence Strategic Review, disagreed with assertions that Australia risked flagging internal concerns by not joining the Red Sea operation.

“If we make a decision not to send [a warship] because we’re concerned about our regional security environment, that says the government’s being responsible, it’s putting major strategic interests first.”

The Hobart destroyers have 48 vertical launch systems, which can fire several types of surface-to-air missiles, compared with the Anzacs which have just eight.

The limited number of launch systems aboard the Anzacs make them almost obsolete for the operation in the Red Sea, where Houthi rebels are using drones to attack ships.

Australia’s Defence budget is tipped to exceed $50 billion in 2023-24, and is growing at a rate of about 6 per cent a year. Meanwhile, KPMG has entered into contracts worth $274.5 million this calendar year, half of which came from Defence.

Professor Dean said sending one Hobart destroyer to the Middle East would effectively impact all three because of how the navy rotates its ships through service, maintenance and training.

Senior analyst for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Euan Graham said Australia’s failure to send a warship was a missed opportunity to develop skills in air warfare and missile defence.

”That, in my view, outweighs the opportunity costs of taking a warship out of its training and exercise cycle. Given the extraordinary range of threats posed by the Houthis, the platform of choice should be one of the three air warfare destroyers [AWDs],” he said.

“The real-world experience the crew would bring back could be transposed helpfully to the Indo-Pacific strategic environment, and stress test the AWD’s performance across the board in ways that scripted exercises cannot.

“The argument that Australia needs to marshal its limited military resources to focus exclusively on the immediate region is a false one.”