Getting airborne with defence

After decades of bipartisan neglect of the national defence, Peter Dutton’s budget reply speech was as refreshing as it was relevant. The problem for an incoming Coalition minister would be how the Australian Defence Force could have its equipment cake and eat it too. The Opposition Leader promised to invest so Australia could “deter aggression and maintain peace”. He is airborne already, previously promising $3bn to buy a fourth squadron of F-35 joint strike fighters to add to the 75 now in service.

RAAF Air Vice-Marshal Nicholas Hogan welcomes the possibility of 28 more F-35s, perhaps because the RAAF expected them until they were cancelled by the Albanese government. The fighter, when equipped with on-order air-to-sea capable missiles, will be essential to our maritime defence – certainly whenever the navy’s resupply ships are out of service with mechanical faults, as they are now.

But hi-tech, low-cost kit the F-35 is not, and it certainly does not deliver on Mr Dutton’s other promise “to energise our domestic defence industry” and “re-tool the ADF with asymmetric capabilities to deter a larger adversary”. This makes a case for the Ghost Bat, an uncrewed aircraft designed and test-flown in Australia by the RAAF and partner Boeing. Whether it will be armed – indeed, whether the RAAF will deploy it at all – appears undecided, but its purpose is to fly combat missions as a lower-cost force-multiplier that preserves the air force’s most valuable asset, aircrew. The air force must pick the drone that does the most for the least cost and can enter service in the quickest production time, but the Ghost Bat is an obvious example of how to meet Mr Dutton’s brief for more of Australia’s defence materiel to be made in Australia.

Critics of the cost of such an expansion say, variously, it can’t be done or need not be done. The response to the first claim is that we need to learn how and learn now. There is a bipartisan commitment to start work on a nuclear-powered submarine in Adelaide this decade. Defence industries need the practice in the immensely complex planning and training programs that will require. As to the second claim, any argument that Australia faces no threat was answered in February by a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy squadron circumnavigating Australia. It was a projection of power intended to intimidate. And the idea that Ukraine’s heroic defence demonstrates wars can be fought by off-the-shelf drones does not apply – close-order infantry fighting on the steppes and short-range air raids are nothing like the vast distances of the Pacific. The US gets this, announcing a new fighter aircraft program, the piloted F-47, which will work with but not be replaced by drones.

There is now no low-cost exclusive AI option to expensive, human-crewed aircraft and submarines. But, as the Ghost Bat could show, affordable AI could increase their firepower. Australia’s strategic environment is transformed and we no longer can assume that we are free of threat for years to come. This means we need to arm up or be willing to give up. The more of our defence that can be made efficiently in Australia, the better.