ADF must become combat-ready
Provided he succeeds, Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Minister Pat Conroy’s intention to use the authority that comes with his promotion to cabinet to accelerate delivery of new weapons and equipment will be in Australia’s interests. After years of both sides of politics over-promising and underdelivering, a circuit-breaker is needed to strengthen the Australian Defence Force’s combat readiness amid increasing strategic tensions.
Mr Conroy’s elevation to cabinet, alongside Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles is timely. The wake-up call in The Australian on Friday by former chief of army Peter Leahy, who said Australia had become a “strategic liability” to the US because our military was “stretched too thin” and unprepared to fight at short notice, is too serious to ignore. Writing in the commentary pages, Lieutenant General Leahy and fellow RSL national security committee member John Powers said the government could not warn of urgent strategic challenges while putting off necessary investments to make the ADF “battle-ready”. Their critique, Ben Packham reported, followed indications by Mr Marles this week that the government would defer investments in missile protection for the nation’s Top End bases until at least the 2030s, relying on the US to provide the capability “in the here and now”.
Government must restore the ADF’s combat readiness to deter and defend us now rather than putting it off into the future, wrote General Leahy and Mr Powers, a former senior special forces officer in the US Army and senior intelligence officer for the US. “If it does not, we will remain a strategic liability to ourselves and our allies – possibly losing not just the first battles but the war.”
Anthony Albanese rejected that analysis on Friday. “I reject any idea that we are anything other than an asset internationally,” the Prime Minister said. But in addition to Australia’s geography, which is a strategic advantage for the US and other regional allies, the nation needs to pull its weight militarily in the increasingly volatile Asia-Pacific region.
In his first announcement since his promotion this week, Mr Conroy, who has been given additional defence responsibility for capability delivery, will approve a new production facility for the Ghost Shark underwater drone program. A $40m investment will fast-track its first operational model by next year. As he told Packham, this was “light speed” progress for a capability that began as a conversation with tech company Anduril in 2022. Headway also was being made on progressing the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines and a program to produce guided missiles in Australia.
Such developments will be essential in the event of conflict, about which warning times would be shorter than what was expected in more stable times.