Are we ready for war?
TWO weeks ago, and as impossible as it may seem, Australian Defence Force chief General Angus Campbell looked more stony-faced than usual as he took to the lectern before a capacity 1000-seat auditorium. But then none of those assembled, from his senior officers to top brass from Indo-pacific nations including Indonesia, India and Japan, had expected anything less.
The army officer was there to update them with a review on the state of the region militarily and there was little to smile about.
Weapon and technology development and deployment had accelerated faster than envisioned and threatened to leave Australia’s military edge – if indeed it ever had one – behind.
General Campbell didn’t drop the “C” word (China) but said “powers” in the region were seeking to change the rules-based order to their advantage and were on a buildup that gave them the means to do it.
“Should the worst be realised and conflict eventuates in the Indo-pacific, it will not be confined to a single domain but take place across multiple and possibly all domains, on and below the sea, on the land, in the air, in the cyber realm and in space,” he said.
In military speak, the sit rep was bad.
But had he outlined in detail Australia’s capability gap and the picture would have been worse. At least five key Defence projects are either no longer fit for purpose, outdated, behind development schedule or simply not on the agenda.
Our current ships, planes, choppers and subs all have deficiencies, we barely have enough personnel to crew them and the new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and his Labor government will have their hands full just trying to unravel where it has all gone wrong and what can be done.
Top of their list will likely be submarines.
With the signing of the AUKUS security pact came
the ditching of the $90bn subbuilding contract with France and a pledge from old allies US and UK to provide Australia blueprints for nuclear-powered submarines. The cost of tearing up the French contract remains unknown but will be in the tens of millions of dollars if not more.
But unknown too is when a nuclear sub with an RAN ensign will be in the water. The Morrison government said maybe by 2040 but that plan is only halfway along being thrashed out. In the meantime Defence has committed $380m to upgrade and extend the life of the 1990s Collinsclass submarines but many remain sceptical about their potency and capability until 2040 let alone whether, realistically, a nuclear-powered
vessel will be ready by then.
Another schedule headache for the incoming Labor defence minister will be the $45bn Hunter frigate development program, with design issues already being flagged. Last month, retired navy chief Vice-admiral David Shackleton caused a stir when he called for the future anti-submarine warfare frigate program to be scrapped arguing the British design was inferior, limited and no longer fit for purpose in an evolving warscape.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute analysts and former executive director Peter Jennings said future submarines and frigates were his greatest concern.
“The frigate I think is possibly the project of greatest con
cern at the moment because there seems to be so many technical compromises on the design of the ship that you wonder if it will actually ever meet the requirement,” he said.
“The key problem we have is how Defence goes about doing this stuff. The organisation has learnt to do equipment capability development only in five- or 10-year increments so everything is so painfully slow and they just seem to be fixated around the large, highly expensive, exquisitely complicated platforms … we commit to buy nine frigates and yet the Ukraine experience shows us multibilliondollar vessels can be sunk with a relatively cheap cruise missile.”
Defence this month scrapped the much-vaunted
RAAF $1.3bn acquisition of the long-range MQ-9B Skyguardian drone. This is despite the Ukraine-russia conflict showing the obvious success Ukraine has had with killer drones replacing its dwindling crewed aircraft. This mindboggling decision, met with incredulity by some in Defence, is likely to now be revisited.
Our helicopters remain a notable capability gap. Defence committed to acquire MRH-90 Taipan helicopters to replace the ageing workhorses Black Hawk and Sea King but they have been grounded on and off due to a myriad faults for the best part of a decade. The unreliable Airbus choppers were famously even found to have doors too narrow to allow guns to fire while troops deployed. As late as 2020 they again had to be grounded to fix that and other problems.
Defence will now acquire Sikorsky MH-60R Romeo Seahawks, notably for the navy while the army has gone back to the idea of acquiring UH-60M Black Hawks, but both acquisitions are years away.
The nation’s most important military asset, the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) is also struggling and now tagged “obsolete” after failing to meet a number of engineering upgrade milestones. The early warning over-thehorizon is advanced technology but has had months of delays in its $1bn overhaul with final operational capability not expected now before December 2029, if not later. There is disquiet in the ADF ranks if engineering and design issues, the complexity of which have been underestimated, cannot be rectified, leaving northern and eastern approaches exposed.
There are also continued operational issues with the F-35 fighter jet and even the capability of the recent purchase of the RAN offshore supply ship ADV Reliant – yet to even arrive in Australia but set to be deployed to the Pacific to counter China influence – has come under question as to whether its design is fit for purpose for its humanitarian mission.
If there was one bright spot in the Campbell address it was recognition Australia alone could not win a war and just needed to hold an adversary at bay.
“Planning and operational execution will need to be truly orchestrated if a smaller skill force is to inflict significant damage to a sophisticated, numerically superior adversary, and we don’t necessarily need to defeat an adversary but we do need to disrupt their plan,” he said citing the UkraineRussia war that while 14,000km away showed conflict’s face had changed and a minnow with solid intelligence, communications and logistics could withstand a super power.
Just as well perhaps as Defence projects play catch-up to circumstances.