Rhetoric or reality? Our security is the priority

If, as stated in the National Defence Strategy, the defence aim is to deter and hence reduce the risk of conflict, then we need to be doing different things, and doing them differently.

HMAS Perth is moved out of the dry dock at Australian Marine Complex at Henderson, WA after completing a major part of the Anzac Midlife Capability Assurance Program to upgrade radar capabilities, communications systems and crew habitable areas. Picture: Department of Defence

Defence planning in Australia has recently undergone a seismic shift. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update noted we no longer had the assessed 10-year warning time for potential conflict, which was reinforced by the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR). The DSR also noted that the force structure of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) was not “fit for purpose”, a damning assessment when the prospect of major conflict was “less remote”.

The 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) called for a new approach that focused on deterrence and the accelerated acquisition of critical capabilities. The government’s vision for the industrial support to the ADF, as stated in the 2024 Defence Industry Development Strategy (DIDS), is for a “sovereign defence industrial base that is capable, resilient, competitive and innovative in developing and sustaining Defence capability in areas of strategic priority”.

All sounds good, but what is the current situation? Are we on track to achieve such an outcome, or are the rhetoric and the reality diverging?

If, as stated in the NDS, the defence aim is to deter and hence reduce the risk of conflict, then we need to be doing different things, and doing them differently.

Graeme Dunk.

In the past, with an assessed decade of warning, we had the luxury of being able to focus principally on the economics of our force structuring. If it cost more to do something in Australia (itself a contestable point), then it was difficult to justify doing it here on national security grounds. That is, we were content that the international suppliers would take care of it. If that didn’t quite work, then any pain would be confined to late delivery. Little consequence, minimal harm, low risk.

This is no longer the case. But nothing seems to have changed.

It is no longer appropriate that the primary focus for industry for defence is on economic benefits (as measured by jobs), but that is where the government has remained: witness announcements on submarines, continuous naval shipbuilding, etc.

No warning time means the focus for industry needs to change to the strategic – to ­address the situation when the ADF is fully committed, when it needs to be expanded, and when it needs to be rapidly reconstituted. Cheaper prices from offshore suppliers, or easier paths for ­systems acquisition, aren’t going to count for much when the fighting starts, and when operations need to be maintained over the longer term.

If the assessment is that conflict is possible in the near term, it is not useful to place our emphasis on large, sophisticated platforms that will only appear in small numbers in the long term.

‘We need to get serious about what the latest rhetoric actually implies. We need to substantially invest in domestic capability and capacity.’

We need to learn the lessons from Ukraine and invest in cheaper, expendable systems, able to be produced in large quantities from multiple domestic suppliers. As the saying goes, “quantity as a quality of its own”.

Sceptics will argue that Ukraine’s lessons are less relevant for Australia due to the different operational circumstances, but this argument focuses on the symptoms and not on the disease.

We need mass, but we have a small population and a small defence force. We need an asymmetric approach. And we need it now, not sometime in the next decades. We have clever companies in Australia capable of developing and manufacturing the – mostly autonomous – systems we will need to expand and reconstitute the force. They are currently pushed to one side in the pursuit of the seemingly safe offshore purchase. This needs to change.

If conflict occurs, we are likely to be in that conflict with the same parties that supply our systems, weapons and other consumables. Therefore, it is not useful to rely on them for resupply. They will need to use these weapons and systems themselves. The only reason Ukraine and Israel can get resupply is that the US doesn’t need to use them.

We have strategic vulnerabilities that current defence planning doesn’t adequately address. And just fabricating weapons here doesn’t solve the problem. The resupply risks remain.

All this suggests that having domestic industry engaged in defence, not just the local incarnations of the foreign primes, is critical to being able to deter, and to fight if deterrence doesn’t work. However, we have allowed our domestic defence industries to be sidelined or procured in pursuit of the economic benefits of foreign supply. This graph (complied from a variety of sources including defence reports, white papers, and official data at austender.com.au) shows how the participation of Australian operated and controlled companies has declined since 2000.

If we are serious about deterrence, and about being able to fight in the near term, then we need to reverse this trend. Our local industry needs to significantly participate in the defence effort.

We need to get serious about what the latest rhetoric actually implies. We need to substantially invest in domestic capability and capacity. The secondary benefit will be in jobs.

At the moment our ambition does not even match that of 1998 when the intention was that “Defence will use the widest possible range of industrial support in peace because that is what will be needed in war”.

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Dr Graeme Dunk is a researcher into strategic policy at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University.