There’s every chance AUKUS could turn out to be the enemy of Australian defence self-reliance, or of any defence capability at all. Worse, it could ultimately go the way of the French submarines. People will lose faith in it because it’s not remotely on track to deliver anything at all in a meaningful timeframe.
Nothing much is happening about AUKUS in the physical universe. We haven’t even seriously begun upgrading the Stirling submarine base in Western Australia that is meant to host nuclear-powered subs by 2027.
Similarly, not a sod of earth has been turned to build the missile factory that has been announced a thousand times. Even when it’s built, it’s only going to manufacture the shortest-range artillery rockets that the modern HIMARS launcher uses.
This is apparently so we can prove our manufacturing credibility and in time make longer-range artillery rockets. Consider this astounding contradiction. We need to take baby steps building artillery rockets but magically, from a standing start, we’ll soon be building one type of nuclear-powered sub, operating another nuclear-powered sub, and still operating the poor old Collins-class as well.
Richard Marles must already be judged a failure as Defence Minister. He tried to get more money for Defence and failed. As a result, the whole show is in shocking disarray.
The Albanese government’s political calculation seems to be that the symbolism of the AUKUS subs means the public thinks the government is big on defence, therefore it doesn’t need to actually do anything else.
AUKUS is nonetheless important because it has become a central part of the symbolism of our alliance with the US. But that’s the only reason it’s important. For neither AUKUS nor anything else is actually delivering defence capability.
The whole defence project is in disarray. The next example will be the government’s response to the review of the surface fleet being headed by retired US vice-admiral William Hilarides. The very existence of this review is itself quite grotesque.
When the Albanese government took office, it established the Defence Strategic Review. The government didn’t publish the original DSR report but a highly doctored and diminished version of the report. It then said the DSR didn’t make recommendations about the navy’s surface fleet so this would be the subject of yet another review, due to report by September.
Now it seems the government may not even publish the report and its response until the new year. The Albanese government will be approaching its second birthday before any decisions at all are taken concerning our surface fleet. This is its response to the most dangerous strategic circumstances in 80 years.
In fact, the government has effectively done less than nothing because the DSR and all the other reviews have produced paralysis across defence decision-making.
Well-informed sources tell me that because of this paralysis Defence is on track for a significant underspend in this year’s budget.
If Defence underspends its budget it has to give the money back. When a department is in disarray, as Defence is now, the only way it can get out of an underspend is to make one-off opportunist purchases of off-the- shelf foreign capabilities. Thus we are to buy our fourth Triton surveillance drone.
Tritons are incredibly expensive and they are pretty much yesterday’s technology. The US has decided to cancel the program at a very small number of such aircraft. The Triton is a useful surveillance capability. Of course it’s unarmed. We still don’t have a single armed drone.
The government’s astonishing lack of urgency on defence generally, and the surface fleet in particular, reflects two realities. It has decided to spend no extra money. And it has also decided to make no effort to increase military capability over the next 10 years.
Retired admiral Rowan Moffitt, over the weekend, judged: “Our navy remains unfit to deliver the maritime defence strategy the government proposes. It is older, has less firepower, is less reliable and has fewer ships than a generation ago.”
So far the centrepiece of the planned acquisitions for the surface fleet are the troubled nine Hunter-class frigates we’re notionally building and are supposed to start getting in the early 2030s. Moffitt calls the Hunter frigate “probably the most under-armed warship of its size in the world”.
Marles can’t bring himself to say a word against the Hunter frigates. Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy has been savagely critical, saying the Australian people were conned when the previous government told them the Hunters were a mature program. Instead he described them as a developmental program.
Are the two ministers at loggerheads on the Hunters? Everyone has known the Hunter’s problems for years.
Similarly we’re spending enormous money building huge offshore patrol vessels, which are vastly bigger than is required for their police role. Everyone thought: why not stop the OPVs at vessel No. 6 out of a scheduled 12, and substitute similarly sized corvettes, which are smaller than mainline frigates but which you can pack with weapons? These and other basic questions have been with us for years. All the government does is continue not to answer them at all.
In parliament last week, Marles thundered that Peter Dutton had claimed the government was cutting defence expenditure. This was untrue, he said, and referenced an ABC fact check.
The ABC fact check in question does indeed say that because defence spending is rising incrementally each year you cannot describe it as a “cut”.
However, this same ABC fact check concludes: “Labor plans to spend $1,463.7 million less on the Department of Defence than what the former Coalition government planned to spend over the same three-year period.”
Here’s the state of our defence. The air force is modern, has hitting power, but is way too small. The army is tiny, has almost no hitting power and no concept of operations. The navy is a colossal mess with no hitting power at all beyond the Collins subs, nothing planned for 10 years and no way forward. Meanwhile the Chief of the Defence Force gives speeches about “truth-decay” and climate change.
Any nation that acquires nuclear-powered subs needs to spend a lot more money. If it doesn’t radically increase its defence budget it can spend that money only by eating up other defence capabilities. We already spend defence dollars staggeringly inefficiently.
We’re getting nuclear subs, but we’re not increasing defence spending within these forward estimates, and promises after that are just science fiction.
So far, the government is overseeing the decline of Australian defence capability. It really is a national tragedy.
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