Is Australia ready for war? The army’s battle for relevance

Australia’s military identity is inexorably linked to the army. Historically, our notion of war has been largely informed by the two world wars, when Australia’s significant contributions involved heavy losses – young men who were willing to put their lives on the line from the bloody catastrophe of Gallipoli to the desperation of Kokoda.

More recently, the army has played a key role in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in peacekeeping and stabilisation missions in Bougainville, East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

But with China’s enormous military build-up, there is growing concern that Australia needs to prepare for a war with a major power.

While the likelihood of an actual war is still remote, Beijing’s actions – which include militarising disputed features of the South China Sea and increasing military pressure on Taiwan – have made the prospect of a conflict more likely, especially with the US intent on remaining a major power in Asia.

In this new era, the Australian Army has struggled to explain to the public its role and relevance in modern warfare. For example, why do we need tanks? Australia has not used a tank in anger since the Vietnam War.

In a war with China in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait, it is difficult to imagine Australia’s two amphibious warfare ships successfully landing a sizable contingent of soldiers and tanks on land in east Asia. Surely they would be sunk by enemy submarines, aircraft or land-based missiles before they got close to the foreign battlefield.

A $42 billion investment in the army

Over the coming years, Australia will spend up to $42 billion on armoured vehicles, including replacing its 59 Abrams tanks with 75 newer Abrams and building 450 tracked infantry fighting vehicles. That significant investment raises a pertinent question: could these billions of dollars be better spent on more submarines or jet fighters?

Marcus Hellyer, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and former adviser in the Department of Defence, says the fundamental problem with tanks and other heavy land capabilities is that they have a “huge logistics trail”.

“That’s OK if we are going to go up against an insurgent force, or some kind of state that doesn’t have an air force or a navy, because you can deploy all this stuff there and sustain it,” he says. “But if you’re up against a major power adversary that has significant maritime denial capabilities, how are you getting those heavy land forces there and how are you sustaining them?”

Hellyer says he isn’t against all armoured vehicles, but the focus should be on lighter, more deployable alternatives that can be sent to Australia’s near region, noting that the wheeled Bushmaster proved to be a good choice in Afghanistan.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton says he understands the arguments against Australia buying more tanks, but it is impossible to predict the future and the ADF still needs to prepare for as many contingencies as possible within a finite budget.

Dutton says Australian tanks may in the future be sent to help a country fight off a terrorist insurrection, or respond to “another 9/11, as much as I hope and pray that’s never the case”.

“What would be the requirements on the ADF if we were to join, in 30 years’ time, some strike back against ISIL or al-Qaeda? It would likely involve tanks,” Dutton says.

“The idea of the tanks is to provide support and protection to the infantry. And that has been a well-established military principle and one that we adhere to … the existing tanks have a shelf life and need to be replaced, and it’s a costly business.”

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Why a balanced force?

Ever since World War II, Australia’s military planners have been committed to what is called a “balanced force”. According to this objective, the Australian Defence Force should, at the very least, be able to do a little bit of everything. This means maintaining a capable army with dozens of tanks and other heavily armed vehicles.

Australia subscribed to this objective because for decades the advice from its Defence planners was that it would have a 10-year window to build up its defences against a major threat.

Realising communism couldn’t reach Australia, especially with the anti-communist president Suharto in Indonesia, the army was downgraded after the Konfrontasi – a three-year conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia between 1963 and 1966 – and the Vietnam War.

Instead, the navy and air force were given greater prominence in the 1970s and ’80s under the Defence of Australia policy.

The army returned to the forefront in the public consciousness during the 1990s with peacekeeping missions in the near region such as East Timor, followed by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

But the 2020 Defence Strategic Update changed everything, cautioning that Australia no longer had a decade of warning time to prepare for an attack. This now compels the government to make difficult choices, even with its promise to spend at least 2 per cent of gross domestic product on the military. And tanks are in the firing line.

Military strategist Hugh White has long argued for Defence to stop spending billions of dollars on tanks, saying money would be better spent on more jet fighters and submarines.

“The only role for the army – and this is bad news for the army – is to perform the kind of important and relatively low-level operations in the immediate neighbourhood,” White says.

“What you need for that is highly mobile, relatively light vehicles like the Bushmaster and up to the light armoured vehicle – the LAV style – wheeled rather than tracked.”

But John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University, believes Australia would need tanks in a potential war with China. This is because for Australia to make a significant contribution to a wider conflict, it will need to be able to send its jet fighters from bases deeper into the region, such as Indonesia.

“If we were to operate our F-35 Joint Strike Fighters through an airfield like at Ambon Island in Indonesia, you would need to provide protection around the airfield out to about 10 kilometres,” he says.

“They have to be protected with a force robust enough to fend off a would-be counterattack. And that takes military muscle. We’re talking about a situation, potentially, where the adversary is already well and truly muscled up and is developing the ability to project force through its amphibious capabilities from pretty much anywhere in the archipelago. So it’s a pretty grim scenario to think about.

“You don’t buy tanks and armoured vehicles to sing Kumbaya; you do it to fight wars or to deter an aggressor from thinking that they can beat you in a war. And it’s about demonstrating that you are not easily beaten.”

‘The last 400 metres’

Neil James, executive director of the Australia Defence Association, says the argument against tanks disregards “the last 400 metres” of a battle.

“It’s in that last 400 metres that most of the casualties occur,” James says. “And even in what they call empty battlefields – battlefields with not many people in them because of modern technology – you’ve still got that problem that people aren’t bulletproof.

“And all of these armchair theorists who suggest that tanks are outdated, that the army doesn’t need armoured vehicles and it’s going to be too heavy, I’d love to see some of them walk that last 400 metres.”

James says you only have to mention the term “balanced force” to some academics and “they go absolutely berserk because they misunderstand it”. He says these people never suggest the air force doesn’t need jet fighters or the navy doesn’t need submarines.

“But there’s a school of thought, particularly among some of the strategy academics, that all the wars are just going to involve the navy and the air force, and all you need for the army is some very lightly equipped paramilitary field gendarmerie. It’s an absolutely nonsense argument, and it will end up with a lot of really dead Diggers.

“But we can’t buy everything, so you’ve got to make painful choices. The problem is the army, generally speaking, is the victim of the nation’s painful choices, not the other two services.”

Long-range missiles and American troops

Considering the 10-year warning time is now gone, and the nation’s new submarines and frigates are more than a decade away, Defence is now pursuing the acquisition of long-range missiles, including ones that can be fired from the land.

These weapons – including anti-ship missiles, a long-range rocket system and surface-to-air missile systems – would be integral in stopping Chinese vessels from getting through the archipelago to our north in the event of an attack.

Today, Australia’s long-range capabilities lie largely with the air force, but even these are systems that can fire from only about 370 kilometres away; in other words, Australia is flat out sending a missile into the South Pacific, let alone into east Asia.

Meanwhile, China now has missiles that could hit northern Australia from its bases in the South China Sea.

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Australia last year committed to acquiring ​​precision-guided missiles for its land forces. The missiles are capable of hitting targets from more than 400 kilometres.

Dutton says the acquisition of these missiles is an “absolute priority” and Australia is “working with the United States and with industry partners in that endeavour”.

“There are issues around IP and export bans ... because the United States finds itself at capacity within their own system of production,” he says. “So it’s important for us to develop that sovereign capability and manufacturing capacity.

“Obviously, the technological developments have advanced to an unprecedented point compared to the Cold War, and that means missile technology can fire on Australia almost to any part of the country in a way that it wasn’t able to in the 1960s, or even in the early 2000s.”

The presence of Australian troops is also likely to be boosted in the coming years with more US soldiers in the top end.

Australia is making an $8 billion investment across the north of the country upgrading its bases, and some of this will be to accommodate Americans.

In addition to the rotational deployment of US Marines through Darwin for training purposes, American forces are likely to commit to a more permanent basing of their troops in Australia in the years ahead.

Dutton says: “I think you’ll see a greater engagement in the region, and not just from the United States – the United Kingdom will have more port visits, and I think there will be more from the Indians, more from Japan.”

Are we spending enough?

There are about 29,000 permanent soldiers in the army and 20,000 reserves. This doesn’t compare well with other countries in the region. Singapore has 45,000 active personnel and 240,000 reserve personnel; Indonesia has about 300,000 active soldiers; China has almost a million.

As Australia’s population and economy continue to shrink compared with the rest of Asia, this gap will only get bigger unless we invest more in the military.

This may mean Australia will have to spend considerably more than the $44.6 billion – or 2.1 per cent of gross domestic product – it spent last year on the defence budget.

While the total amount may seem like a lot, it is less than some comparable countries on a per capita basis.

Per person, Australia spends $1469. In comparison, Israel spends $3415 per person and Singapore $2526.

Then there’s the question of whether Australia gets value for money from that outlay.

At a total of $15 billion, Singapore’s defence budget is a third of Australia’s. Yet Singapore boasts a bigger army, 100 fourth-generation jet fighters, six small warships and five submarines.

Considering Australia has 44 fifth-generation fighters, 24 fourth-generation fighters and six submarines, it doesn’t seem like we get enough.

Israel’s defence budget is two-thirds the size of Australia’s, yet the country has 300 fourth-generation jet fighters and an army with 133,000 soldiers and 380,000 reservists.

France spends $73.09 billion, just shy of 40 per cent more than Australia, but has almost 250 jet fighters, 10 nuclear-powered submarines and an army of 117,0000.

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Here, the performance of Defence in its major acquisitions must be brought into question.

Late last year, Dutton announced the army would ditch its fleet of troubled Taipan helicopters a decade earlier than scheduled, and replace them with new Black Hawks from the US. This followed the decision to scrap a $90 billion deal with France for a conventionally powered fleet of submarines, and instead go nuclear with Britain and the US under the AUKUS agreement.

Labor’s defence spokesman, Brendan O’Connor, says that over eight years the Coalition has presided over “many delays and cancellations of very expensive contracts”.

“One of the priorities of a Labor government, if elected, will be to get an immediate briefing on the progress of these very large contracts with a view to expediting them without wasting taxpayers’ money,” he says.

Dutton says the government’s industry partners are now “on notice”.

“So we’re not going to tolerate significant blowouts in cost and time,” Dutton says.

“And, equally, I’ve been very clear with Defence that they need to have their house in order as well. They have made some mistakes in the past, and we learn from those mistakes, but we’re not going to repeat them.

“There’s a need to acquire capability and in some instances, such as guided weapons, we need to do that sooner than later.”

While Australia is still committed to a balanced force, some things are more pressing than others.

Part two of our series Is Australia Ready For War? will be published on Thursday. It takes a deep look at the Royal Australian Air Force.

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