China shines a laser on our defence weaknesses

A Chinese PLA-N Luyang-class guided missile destroyer, left, and a PLA-N Yuzhao-class amphibious transport dock vessel leaving the Torres Strait and entering the Coral Sea on Fridyay. Picture: AFP

The outrageous action by a Chinese war vessel of aiming a laser at an Australian surveillance aircraft is shocking and destabilising.

You generally use a laser to attack an aircraft’s radar. It could possibly be used generally against a plane’s electronic warfare capabilities, or to try to blind pilots.

As Scott Morrison says, such attacks can disable a plane. For a Chinese warship to do this to an Australian military surveillance aircraft operating within Australia’s own exclusive economic zone in the Arafura Sea is deeply disturbing.

However, instead of a screaming and shouting response, it should lead to this utterly shocking recognition. Australia does not have the military capability to dominate and secure its own territorial waters. Forget about defending Taiwan, we can’t defend our own maritime approaches.

Authoritarian dictators are on the march, militarily and politically, and the scandalous truth is that for all the billions of dollars we have committed to defence, we have done almost nothing to increase our ability to defend ourselves, much less to strike an enemy or keep one at bay.

This is because of deliberate Australian decisions and our own wilful neglect. Instead of screaming about China, the government should set about acquiring relevant defence capabilities straight away. Capabilities that might come on board in 2040, such as the nuclear-powered subs, or the mid-2030s, such as our wretchedly beleaguered frigates program, have no relevance to today or to the next 15 years.

In December, the government quietly, and shamefacedly, announced it was going to spend billions of dollars acquiring new tanks. It will soon announce with which company it’s going to spend $30bn on heavy armoured vehicles. These capabilities have no relevance to our urgent maritime challenge. Their military use in the defence of Australia, or answering the urgent maritime needs of our region, is zero.

Our defence organisation, deeply devoted to campaigns it has waged in recent years, is focused on brigade-level niche deployments with the Americans in the Middle East. We’ll be in great shape provided the Chinese come at us through Iraq or Afghanistan.

When Vladimir Putin sent a giant Russian warship to sit off the coast of Brisbane during the G20 meeting Tony Abbott hosted in 2014, we could muster one small Anzac frigate to sail near it.

We normally plan to have a pitiful 100 fast jets for the defence of the whole of Australia and our near maritime approaches. At the moment, we have about 80, all up, and we don’t have enough pilots to man them.

Instead of announcing submarines literally decades away, and extremely uncertain whether they will ever exist, and instead of unnecessary rhetoric about China designed entirely for domestic politics, the government could actually do something on defence.

Nearly two years ago, it first announced Australia would build its own missile production facilities. Great decision. It re-announced it in March last year. Great decision. It’s on the brink of re-announcing it again. But here’s the rub. Nothing has actually happened. Not a molecule in the physical universe, beyond meetings and papers, has actually been displaced by these measures.

This is urgency? What about this contemptuous Chinese action in our own waters? What could we do to make sure at least we can protect these waters?

First, put some serious weapons – anti-ship missiles and elementary air defence – on our big but impotent offshore patrol vessels. Given the OPVs are the only vessels we are actually capable of making, and willing to do so, put some real weapons on them.

Second, buy several more squadrons of fast jets. The Super Hornets have the longest range and are the best missile trucks.

Third, buy big numbers of missiles. We announced, several times and with great fanfare, we were getting long-range anti-ship missiles. But we only plan to get 200; 200 is a joke capacity, it’s an exhibit in a stamp collection, not a military capability. And have any LRASMs actually shown up yet?

Fourth, instead of tanks and armoured vehicles we will never use, get long-range missiles for the army, in large numbers and quickly. Station them on the coasts where they can add to our maritime capabilities.

Fifth, get large quantities of armed drones optimised for maritime conflict, not minuscule numbers optimised for anti-insurgent activities in the Middle East.

Sixth, build more warships we actually know how to build, such as the air warfare destroyers. Sheer volume of weapons and platforms is critical in actual conflict. It’s not as if our phantom naval shipbuilding industry is doing anything else of consequence at the moment.

Seventh, build more Collins-class subs. The 2009 Defence white paper said we needed 12 regionally superior subs as soon as possible. We’ve done net nothing on that. The government claims, implausibly, that the Collins will still be regionally superior in the late 2030s and 2040s. For all their limitations, the Collins boats are still our most lethal asset. Build six more, as we need them urgently.

The government could do all this tomorrow. It would make more actual contribution to our security than all the hollow grand announcements about intentions. And tone down the China rhetoric. No one is strategically more critical of Beijing than me. But this recent stuff is ill-disciplined and entirely driven by domestic politics. If you keep abusing Beijing needlessly, you will certainly provoke it into gestures like we’ve just seen in the Arafura Sea. That does not optimise Australian security.