Military must adapt to changes

The army’s new Apache attack helicopters will arrive in 2025 and just before Christmas the RAAF took delivery of the final nine of our 72 F-35 fighter aircraft. Both are essential to the defence of Australia, for now and years to come. How many years depends on defence planners adapting to changes in the way war already is being fought. As foreign affairs and defence correspondent Ben Packham reports on Thursday, while officials are adamant about the effectiveness of the Apache, it will operate with drones.

Critics claim both the fighter and helicopter are already yesterday’s technology – hi-tech and high-cost platforms ($16bn for F-35s, $5bn for Apaches) flown by humans and vulnerable to remotely directed crewless drones that are no less lethal for being cheap to build and entirely expendable. They point to Ukraine to demonstrate how war is automating, with drones changing the way tanks and aircraft deploy in combat. Retired Australian major general Mick Ryan, a close watcher of the war there, reports a December battle where Ukrainian soldiers remotely directed an attack on Russian positions by drones and uncrewed combat vehicles. It is, Mr Ryan suggests, an important step towards wars that are not “a purely human endeavour”.

There is, however, a long march ahead before artificial intelligence replaces humans using hi-tech kit under fire. Israel deploys Apaches against Hamas and Hezbollah. The Poles, just about the closest possible observers of the war in Ukraine, want to buy them. And while the Israelis aren’t talking, it appears their F-35s had a significant role in electronically suppressing Iran’s air defence systems during Israel’s October airstrikes. And what works for drones in Ukraine will not necessarily work here. Australia’s defence requires control of vast air space, using F-35s, and sea – last October’s $7bn purchase of long-range missiles for the navy makes that point. Plus we need a capacity to deploy force in our region – the international mission led by Australian peacekeepers in Solomon Islands from 2003 to 2013 demonstrates the need for combat-capable helicopters.

The future case for uncrewed RAAF operations already is being made in Ukraine but the transformation will take time as experience demonstrates what works in Australian circumstances. That means the Australian Defence Force must deliver on developing and deploying drones that can form a combat team with crewed aircraft. The RAAF is on to it, working with Boeing on the Ghost Bat – a “loyal wingman” designed to fly with combat aircraft as a decoy as required, and there is talk of equipping it for combat in the future. It’s a start, but in the way of new military aircraft it will take time. A prototype flew in 2021 and this year there will be five, at which pace Australia will be relying on crewed combat aircraft probably for decades to come.

Perhaps this makes the case for picking up the pace on drone development for all three services. Drones may cost money but are cost-effective potential force-multipliers that, way more important, could save Australian lives in combat. But there is no reason right now to radically reshape the ADF’s combat resources on the basis of new technology now being tested. Certainly, commanders can prepare for the last war, not the next; there were cavalry divisions that had quite a time behind the Western Front during World War I. But in the Middle East the Australian Light Horse made a valuable contribution to victory. As remote control warfighting technology evolves, so Australia must adapt and adjust – but while the challenge is clear, the answer is not.