James Morrow: Australia needs to be ready for new style of warfare

The nature of war has changed and Australia had better keep up, writes James Morrow, because right now we are vulnerable and our defence facilities sit virtually undefended.

If it wasn’t clear before Israel launched its devastating assault on Iran’s nuclear program two days ago, two truths should be abundantly clear now.

The nature of war has changed and Australia had better keep up. Just think about all that has happened in the past few weeks.

A fortnight ago, Ukraine, using drones their intelligence people managed to sneak acrossthe border, destroyed as much as a third of Russia’s fleet of long-range, nuclear-capable bombers.

Then, just days ago, Israel delivered a sharp and potentially fatal kick to Iran’s hopes to build its own nukes, smashing atomic facilities across the country while decapitating the country’s Revolutionary Guard leadership for good measure.

There, too, drones which had been pre-positioned in Iran by Israeli agents, played a key role.

An explosion is seen during a missile attack on Tel Aviv, Israel on Friday. Picture: AP

In a rare glimpse into Israel’s secretive intelligence planning, officials revealed to The Times of Israel that a joint effort by the Israel Defence Forces and Mossad enabled them to sneak drones and other weapons into Iran.

These weapons targeted surface-to-surface missile batteries aimed at Israel and took out Tehran’s air defences.

This allowed Israeli warplanes to fly freely and even refuel midair in the skies above Iran.

Both of these events should be chalked up as wins by anyone concerned about Vladimir Putin’s push to absorb his neighbours, or Tehran’s mad mullahs and their grand schemes to blackmail the world with nukes.

But despite these shafts of light in what seem like increasingly dark times, there is a third truth Australians must also remember.

Namely, the good guys don’t always win – because not just the past two weeks but the past two years have shown us what wars of the future will look like.

Israeli Iron Dome air defence system fires to intercept missiles over Tel Aviv. Picture: AP

This next generation of warfare, driven by drones and other autonomous tech not necessarily launched from an air base or carrier group, means even seemingly rag-tag enemies can make big trouble for relatively little cost.

Just look at the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched a harassment campaign on global shipping that has forced, by some counts, nearly half of all container ships that would have once gone through the area to instead chug their way all the way around Africa.

Australia is incredibly vulnerable to this style of warfare.

Before he died in 2023, former major-general-turned-senator Jim Molan warned we needed to put our own jets under hardened shelters, anticipating the sort of attack that devastated Russia’s air force.

For the most part, our planes still do not have hardened shelters, while facilities such as our over-the-horizon radar network appear virtually undefended, easy targets.

Not only do we need to spend more on defence, we need to spend smart to make sure we are not dealt out of the fight from the get-go.

Originally published as James Morrow: Australia needs to be ready for new style of warfare