Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy’s fatuous and preposterous speech to the National Press Club on the coming missile age exemplifies everything that is wrong with defence policy under the Albanese government.
The speech groaned with big numbers, big statements, tens of billions of dollars tossed around like confetti, and missiles seemingly everywhere.
But almost nothing specific, in a meaningful time frame. Almost nothing that goes bang in the actual physical world.
Take a couple of examples.
Conroy made a big deal about the government’s decision to acquire Tomahawk missiles. They have a range of 2500km. We’ll be only the third country after the US and the UK to have them. We’ll get the first of them by the end of this year.
All fantastic. Except the government decided not to make serious upgrades to our decrepit ANZAC frigates so the only ships to carry Tomahawks will be our three Hobart class Air Warfare Destroyers. We might think about putting them on the Hunter frigates, the first of which arrives nearly a decade from now. Even the Hobarts will soon go in for long-term upgrades. That means we’ll have only two ships that can carry Tomahawks.
On Opposition, Labor indicated it would likely put Tomahawks on our six Collins subs. If you had Collins and Hobarts with Tomahawks, that would be nine Australian Tomahawk platforms. Instead it will be three, two as the Hobarts go in for refurbishment.
That’s urgency? No, that’s a government which decided, in order to save a few bucks, not to have Tomahawks on our major platform. By the way, how many Collins boats are available for service at the moment?
Senate Estimates processes have just revealed that in 2023-24 defence spending didn’t even reach 2 per cent of GDP, the NATO minimum. It was close, at 1.99 per cent. But this doesn’t remotely suggest strategic urgency.
Conroy celebrated a few new missiles for the air force. That’s all good. But it was the Albanese government that decided to kill the fourth squadron of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Adding the F-35s, the Super Hornets and the Growlers, we have about 100 fast jets to defend the whole of Australia. A government that believed even one per cent of its faux Churchillian rhetoric would have expanded the air force by one squadron.
Conroy lavished praise on his government because, according to him, the first of the new frigates will be in service by 2029. But what rational, empirical grounds are there to believe this claim? These frigates are second-tier combat vessels. The government has not as yet selected the builder or the design. No physical work has actually begun. It’s all still future vapourware, as one wag describes it.
Or consider the Joint Air Battle Management system Conroy boasted of. Although greatly bowdlerised in its published version, one of the clear recommendations of the Defence Strategic Review was not to go near a Joint Air Battle Management System. It’s experimental, developmental, does not yet exist, and eye-wateringly expensive.
It’s just the sort of hi-tech folly we always waste our money on without getting combat capability. Instead of an experimental battle management system at fantastic cost, how about actually getting some existing ground-based missile defence capability to place around our vulnerable northern air bases, and around other strategic targets?
We are still one of very few militaries without an armed maritime drone to attack ships.
The Houthis of Yemen are paralysing Red Sea maritime trade with such devices. The Ukrainians are sinking capital ships of the Russian fleet with drones. Our plan, if everything goes miraculously to schedule, is one new second-tier frigate in 2029.
With missile supply chains so difficult, as Conroy says, you would think the government would go for weapons, like drones, where supply chain isn’t a problem. Instead we plan to crawl, walk, then run in missile manufacture (the Houthis must be forever grateful they don’t have our strategic planning).
The truth is there’s no sign we’ll ever walk or run. We’re still basically asleep.
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