Australia Rejects US Request to Join Red Sea Naval Operation

There is the official government line, which the media is reporting ("we need to focus our resources on the indo-pacific"), which is different from the truth, as per below.

First, some background: The Royal Australian Navy's two main surface combatant warship classes are 3 Hobart Class air defence destroyers and 8 Anzac Class frigates.

The destroyers are quite limited in number and are going to be needed for existing deployments or close to home. So they're out.

Meanwhile, the frigates are not optimised to counter drone threats, which the Houthi rebels are using. This is because the ships lack (are fitted "for but not with") a gun-based close-in-weapons-system like the Phalanx CIWS.

To be clear, the frigates are equipped with point-defence missiles (RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrows), but those are problematic to use against drones due to high cost and required reloading infrastructure.

Basically, the only ships the RAN has available to contribute are not suitible against drones.