Australia’s dangerous military weakness
IT’S a recurring theme: Australia helped revive the effectiveness of a Cold Warera submarine torpedo. But now it has to expand its warready stockpile by buying them from the US state of Virginia.
The story of the Mark 48 Mod 7 torpedo is not uncommon.
Most precision weapons used by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) are bought from the United States. High prices, limited supplies, and the risk of technological obsolescence mean purchases have generally been limited.
But recent war games and simulations have validated longstanding fears that precision ammunition supplies will quickly evaporate in the opening days of any highlevel conflict.
And the experience of Ukraine has left the US and UK struggling to replenish their own stockpiles, let alone those of their allies.
The ADF’s deputy secretary of the Capability, Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) admitted at an Avalon Air Show symposium this week that this “is a vexing problem”.
Building up Australia’s military production capacity has been a loudly proclaimed objective of successive governments in recent decades. “We’re not doing that well at this point in time,” Chris Deeble admitted.
“I’ll be very honest with you here, Australia has underperformed on defence exports,” defence industry minister Pat Conroy conceded. But he says he hopes technology transfers under the AUKUS agreement will mean “not only can we produce missiles in Australia for Defence needs, but be a second supply line for the United States”.
Canberra appears to be banking on this. It has finalised a $558 million deal to purchase 20 armoured trucks. Each carries a six-barreled missile launcher. And the delivery includes 130 HIMARS missiles (including dummy training rounds).
That equates to just one load for each truck.
The Defence Science Technology Group (DSTG) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) contributed to the rejuvenation of the primary US submarine-launched torpedo, the Mark 48 Mod7.
It first entered service in 1972. Australia contributed guidance algorithms and performance enhancements to the digital upgrade that began replacing its analogue technology in 2011.