Tag Archive for: ADF

Changing our perspective on ADF recruitment and retention

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A cultural shift is required around how we think about careers in the Australian Defence Force and metrics of capability and retention. Counterintuitively, we should consider not only how to recruit and retain ADF members, but also how to support them to leave, thereby retaining extended service.

The core function of the ADF is deployment and operation of a tri-service fighting force. To maintain this capability, we must consider that the arc of national service can be life-long and take many forms. Metrics of recruitment and retention can look beyond short-term service obligations to how ADF capability can be retained following full-time service. This requires a shift in perspective from recruitment to post-discharge retention.

Australia needs to consider innovative approaches to generate the same commitment through schemes and marketing the benefits of service. Redeveloping financial supports for members to enter the housing market has been suggested, as well as flexible career paths, improved compensation and opportunities to upskill in new technologies.

None of these ideas are new. Nations such as Denmark and Finland have long-term service commitments with their citizens. In Sweden, military service marks conscripts for excellence to potential employers due to high standards in selection. These countries also use varying approaches to conscription. Their decisions are also supported by centuries of history and by having a nearby nuclear-armed great power prosecuting war in Ukraine.

Similar connections between Australian military service and employable skillsets would provide similar effect. This could be facilitated through strengthened ADF-industry partnerships in critical technologies, which would not only build skills and establish the calibre of ADF training and education but also capitalise on recruiting from existing capacities in the civilian workforce. ADF-delivered microcredentials could also support member transition.

Further supports and incentives could be targeted towards issues facing modern Australians. Options could include subsidising past and ongoing government education loans in non-military disciplines, retailer benefits for service members similar to those provided to community volunteers and other methods of reducing cost of living and housing pressures.

Any potential benefit schemes can be tailored so maximum benefit for the individual is gained incrementally over the longer term. This contrasts with service benefits that scale over time and increase over years of service.

This benefits schemes would also require consideration of how ADF careers can continue following initial service obligations. Potential transitions out of the ADF and exit pathways should be considered and advertised as a normalised component of military service.

It has become a common approach in the modern civilian work environment to shift careers several times. For the ADF, this could take the form of supported transitions with partners in defence industry, the public service or alternative service options such as emergency services. This service pathway can then be advertised during recruitment and as a means of retention. Using existing service category and service option systems to allow for maximum flexibility in ongoing service opportunities into ADF reserves would further help in retention over the long term.

The attraction of a career beginning with ADF service followed by supported transition into a second profession, alongside supports such as housing and education, would allow the military to advertise a unique, flexible and varied opportunity in a competitive employment market.

The aim is to cultivate a transformation in how the public views military service: not as an outlier for only those with a military interest or family history, but as a career-starter and life-starter.

Other initiatives could involve following the lead of the British reserves in decentralising responsibility for recruitment to local units, many of which already cultivate their own social media presence through savvy videos displaying a relatability that official Defence communication often lacks. Local parliamentarians or celebrities could act as unit patrons and support ADF recruitment in their areas, an approach taken by Canada. Further, adapting basic and ongoing ADF training into tertiary electives could support university-level recruitment.

Reserve compensation likely needs to be revisited also. Analysis has shown a fully trained private earns more working a weekend at Woolworths than at a reserves weekend. There are also arguments for adopting variable tax and superannuation systems, as well as pro-rata remuneration, to further improve the attractiveness of ongoing reserve service for civilian applicants or full-time members transitioning out of the ADF. This could entail an opt-in system, whereby members choose the most appropriate tax arrangement for their needs; university students might prefer the tax-free salary, while older members could choose taxed payments alongside superannuation.

We need to acknowledge that recruitment into the military is unlike that of any other employer. Any attempts to raise recruitment and retention levels must reflect this difference. To improve the current retention and recruitment problems, the ADF must create a culture that supports members during their service and beyond.

Job-sharing and flexibility: ideas for ADF recruitment

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The Australian Defence Force needs new approaches to recruitment and retention. It should look at sharing people with industry and consider reducing induction training, while also getting people into limited service before their long security clearances are complete.

As things stand, long processes, inability to retain experienced staff and difficulties attracting critical technology skill sets are hampering the ADF’s ability to prepare for a heightened strategic threat environment.

Much can be learned from recent conflicts abroad, which have demonstrated approaches to rapidly scaling a military workforce and leveraging specialised industry skill sets for adaptive campaigns. Critical technologies, such as cyber, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, have proved transformational in the modern adaptive battlefield, as highlighted in the Russo-Ukraine War.

Applying those lessons to further emerging technologies, such as quantum computing, robotics and space-domain, geospatial long-range strike and influence campaigns, will be essential for ADF transformation and deterrence. A shift in perspective is needed to attract those skill sets to the ADF and retain them without competition with the organisations where those skills have been cultivated.

Take the example of an AI specialist: defence and industry or academia will be sharing his or her important skill set that’s probably integral to an organisation’s core function and business. A new model for engaging with industry based upon reciprocity and shared benefit, as opposed to competing with civilian employers for the time and energy of their experts, can shift the recruitment calculus in the ADF’s favour. Flexible and non-traditional approaches to service would allow for the sharing of skilled personnel with the ADF, while potential links and access to defence projects grants, and public-relations opportunities, could be incentives for organisations.

Personnel working on ADF projects not only contribute to their organisations’ ongoing links to Defence, but also bring those experiences and learning back to their core organisational work. That benefit can be multiplied through ADF opportunities for courses, upskilling and cross-discipline work across technologies. The intangible benefits of opportunities to use critical skill sets in new domains and upskill in areas beyond the scopes of their civilian organisations are what will attract those members and gain the support of their employers.

Established entry pathways for recruits between industry and the ADF can offer further unique opportunities to those participating. Consider a cybersecurity business that offers prospective employees the chance for a career in the private sector while also providing access to unique and exclusive ADF projects. Potential members can then consider a form of national service in their skill area that likely doesn’t fit into the usual notion of a military career or involve long days in the field.

The ADF Total Workforce System can be leveraged to enable such innovative engagement with industry. Using the existing service category system (SERCAT) for maximum flexibility is needed to ensure that critical skill sets are retained wherever possible, whether through a regular pattern of service or even through short-notice calls for duty, irregular service or full-time service for brief periods.

Part-time service, including SERCATs 3, 5 and 6, can enable the recruitment and retention of personnel with critical skills. Experts in industry require the flexibility to maintain dual careers in the military and civilian sectors, as well as to continue to hone and develop their skills in industry and academic domains. SERVOP D (dual civilian–military employment) and the SERCAT system can then be leveraged for ongoing flexibility. For example, the AI specialist could be seconded by his employer to work on a defence project full time for a short period before falling back into irregular service until the next period of need.

Paradoxically, by allowing for less service obligation, the ADF will be likely not only to maximise its return on investment in staffing key projects and research, but also to benefit from the experience that personnel will continue to accumulate in their civilian careers. The ADF can further offer access to unique and interesting projects, technological sandboxes including AUKUS Pillar 2 technologies, and collaboration with domestic and international peers on work that will benefit the nation.

Recruitment pathways for skilled members should be revitalised to cater for what is needed. That can include reduced induction training, flexible approaches to medical requirements, and rapid entry into service in a sanitised environment while security clearances are processed. An AI specialist doesn’t need to spend three weeks at basic training to be effective in his or her specialty in the ADF. A bespoke approach is needed, depending on the specialist area, as has proven successful within the UK Joint Cyber Reserve Force.

Conditions of service could also be revisited. This might include pro-rata remuneration with full-time members, superannuation or leveraging the existing retention bonus system. Highly skilled part-time personnel are unlikely to be retained in the long term through the traditional binary reserve compensation system that allows for daily renumeration only at either three or six hours per day, regardless of actual service length.

The ADF’s acute workforce challenges require new approaches and flexibility to overcome. Beginning with industry engagement trials would be a good idea, particularly with an aim of accessing specialised and niche skill sets. Regional industry engagement cells can be established, and a flexible approach to the total workforce system and its varying service categories will be essential to enable their success.

Whole-of-nation readiness demands whole-of-nation exercises

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Australia must develop robust, interdepartmental and whole–of–nation exercises based on potential conflict scenarios or it risks discovering when lives are at stake that it’s ill–prepared. 

The Covid-19 pandemic and increasingly destructive natural disasters have demonstrated repeatedly that what may start as a localised issue can rapidly become a national emergency. Poor organisational readiness and inadequate coordination across the government can amplify the damage. 

The strains in responding to natural phenomena show just how pressing it is that the Australian Government identifies and trains for conflict scenarios in which the enemy not only has a say but wishes to actively do harm. Running such exercises will improve whole-of-nation coordination and response, demonstrate resilience and strategic capacity and serve a vital educational role for the civilian populace. 

The National Defence Strategy said that ‘the concept of National Defence [is] a coordinated, whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach that harnesses all arms of national power …’ 

Shifting away from stovepiped thinking on security is long overdue, but rhetoric must be matched by action. Given the increasingly interconnected nature of war and conflict, it’s impossible for the Defence Department to adequately respond to large-scale conflict without support from other government agencies and civil-society actors. 

Developing and running interagency exercises based on potential conflict scenarios, such as mass casualties following a naval engagement, will identify weaknesses, pressure-test current planning, and give the government the opportunity to rectify problems. Exercises should involve the public, local communities and non-government organisations in simulating a conflict as close to reality as possible. 

When directing exercises for sailors, one of the present authors often found that one of the biggest stumbling blocks would be knowing whom to contact for needed support, even within the defence organisation. In the case of an emergency, ironing out such wrinkles as who is the point of contact for local mass-casualty support now is vital to seamless responses in the event of a kinetic conflict. 

New, more robust best practices will emerge from the process, which would be tested in follow-on exercises, generating a virtuous cycle and sharing the preplanned responses as widely as possible. 

Covid-19 and the 2019 bushfires highlighted the interconnectedness of the Defence apparatus and the whole-of-government effort, but information-technology systems needed to enable whole-of-nation coordination were not fit for purpose. The ADF isn’t geared to operate in environments with minimum to no security classification. Even if all parties knew exactly whom to contact, there would be difficulties in getting the required information to all necessary recipients. 

Successful deterrence requires that a potential adversary believes you have both the capacity and the will to respond to its actions. These exercises would demonstrate that in a high-intensity conflict Australia has the capacity and the competence to continue effective operations while managing losses. 

It’s not enough to show that the ADF can execute integrated and joint combat operations. The support functions spearheaded by society writ large must be demonstrated as well. Wider public engagement shows that it’s not just the roughly 58,600 uniformed members of the ADF who are in play but that Australian efforts truly are whole-of-government, as the National Defence Strategy advocates. 

This show of support would prove that the ADF couldn’t be taken out in the first round and that it can provide a continued material impact on decision-making in the region during protracted fighting. If a potential adversary doesn’t think the Australian public can be split and forced to settle a conflict on disadvantageous terms, it will perceive a higher risk in taking kinetic action. The deterrent effect of the ADF is thus higher. 

Even if the needs facing a democratic country are existential and immediate, a population that doesn’t understand the scope or speed of action required won’t give the government its support. The number of those actively serving or with direct relations to those who serve is rather low within Australia, so even larger exercises, such as Talisman Sabre or command post exercises such as Vital Prospect, have minimal reverberations within the wider community and government. Running complex, whole-of-government exercises would serve as excellent educational opportunities for the general populace. 

The involvement of numerous government agencies, such as the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, emergency service organisations, hospitals and the finance and critical infrastructure sectors, in these exercises would give a broader swathe of Australians first-hand knowledge of what’s required to adequately resource and run complex conflict responses. Exercises also give the government the opportunity to engage with citizens and explain why such readiness is necessary and to counter efforts at dividing the country with misinformation and disinformation. 

No plan survives first contact, but the skills and institutional knowledge needed to adapt and overcome can and must be developed in peacetime. Designing and running whole-of-nation exercises will ensure that Australia is ready for whole-of-nation efforts in the event of a high-intensity conflict in our region. 

Bringing non-traditional players into these exercises also gives the government the opportunity to educate the wider populace, creating vital buy-in for the tough strategic decision-making required to prepare for worst-case scenarios. A well-trained, prepared country has the capacity and latitude to withstand coercive policies and force adversaries considering violence to say, ‘not today.’ Complex, multiplayer drilling is integral to Australian security. Australia owes it to itself to build the strength needed for tomorrow today. 

Why defence warning time requires urgent attention

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In this government’s National Defence Strategy, published in April, Defence Minister Richard Marles reaffirmed that ‘Australia no longer enjoys the benefit of a 10-year window of strategic warning time for conflict.’ This was one of the key judgements of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review and, indeed, of the Morrison Government’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update. So, there is bipartisan agreement on this critical subject. However, as argued below, this new era of shortened warning time requires a radically new approach to Australia’s defence policy.

The National Defence Strategy goes on to describe this ‘fundamentally new approach’ as one that leverages and coordinates all arms of national power to achieve an integrated approach to Australia’s national security. It specifically identifies the need for a robust National Intelligence Community capable of providing strategic decision-making advantage and strategic warning, as well as direct support to ADF operations and domestic security.

So far, so good, but—as far as we are aware—little is being done yet to address the radical new concept of little or almost no warning time, to quickly reorder Australia’s defence posture and preparedness, as well as the urgent need for more strike weapons.

It is important in this regard to have a good understanding of what has changed to Australia’s defence policy, and why. In brief, Australia’s defence policies for most of the past 50 years have been based on the key strategic conclusion that only lesser contingencies were credible in the shorter term, with higher levels of military contingency credible only in the longer term, after an extended period of strategic deterioration. From the mid-1970s to 2020 a strategic warning period of 10 to 15 years was envisaged. (The 2016 Defence White Paper even predicted no major threat before 2040.) Intelligence analysis would provide this warning, leading to a timely response by the machinery of government. This response would include expansion of the Australian Defence Force.

These policies were appropriate for the time but resulted in an ADF which, while capable in many respects, was of modest size, was at low states of readiness and had little capacity for sustained operations beyond the routine: in other words, a peacetime force.

Similar observations may be made about the areas necessary to support military operations, such as intelligence, policy and industry.

As is now widely recognised, the rise of China’s economic and military strength, together with its aggressive foreign policies, has rendered invalid this earlier Australian conceptual framework. The consequences of this are far-reaching and change radically the framework within which Australia’s government needs to manage strategic risk.

The key is that China’s military capabilities now give it the potential to conduct and sustain sophisticated operations against our interests, were it to develop the motive and intent to do so. The timescales within which motive and intent can change are much less than the timescales which previous Defence policies concluded would be needed for an adversary to develop the readily detectable capabilities to be used against us.

This leads to the conclusion that warning times now would be much less than those assumed in earlier decades.

Further, assessment of motive and intent is inherently difficult and subject to ambiguity. There would likely be the absence of an obvious warning threshold. Yet the consequences of getting it wrong would be severe, much more so than in the past.

With this in mind, we have proposed that the Office of National Intelligence set up a National Intelligence Warning Staff. This is set out in our paper Deterrence through denial: A strategy for an era of reduced warning time (ASPI Strategy, May 2021).

Our recommendations included the following:

In view of the radical contraction in defence warning time, Australia needs to appoint a National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Warning. In the Cold War, which was a highly demanding era in which warning of a surprise attack was a critical priority, the CIA had an NIO for Warning whose sole task was to scrutinise daily the incoming evidence from intelligence indicators and subject them to critical assessment.

In Australia, such an NIO, together with the position’s National Intelligence Warning Staff, could be in the Office of National Intelligence. It would be important, however, that the Intelligence Warning Staff include officials from various disciplines—and not least intelligence officers skilled in the interpretation of political, strategic, and military warning indicators, some of whom should also have a policy background.

We would now add that this new intelligence body would also require new skills, such as threats with no warning from cyber and artificial intelligence and from unmanned air, sea and submarine platforms and drones. There will be an obvious need for more political warning advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which, given cuts to their already modest budget, suggests additional expertise and funding for this purpose.

We said also that an alternative would be to locate the NIO in the Defence Organisation and that, wherever its location, ‘the NIO needs to have influential access at the highest levels of decision-making—including briefing the National Security Committee of Cabinet in times of impending crisis.’

We made the further suggestion that the program of national assessments increase its focus on the United States. This reflected a concern that US security policies could become more volatile than over recent decades. Among other things, Australia needs a well-informed analysis of where it thinks the US is going in its confrontation with China and in support of allies, including the role of extended nuclear deterrence. The latter has received no new focus in Australian defence policy since the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago.

Australia needs prudent analysis about how the US will react to its own warning indicators of potential military attack and what it would expect of Australia. Australia cannot afford not to be fully informed about US contingencies relating to Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula or China’s or Russia’s clash with Japan over disputed territories. So, we need to assess both US military capabilities and US intentions.

There is also the question of the capacity of our National Intelligence Community to respond in a timely way to the outbreak of hostilities and to sustain the necessary level of support to decision-making and military operations. As mentioned earlier, the policies of earlier decades have resulted in an ADF and supporting capabilities that currently do not have the levels of readiness and sustainability that are needed in Australia’s new and more demanding strategic circumstances.

Governments are unlikely to accept that standing forces and their associated support need to be kept at a level sufficient to handle today’s more-demanding contingencies without at least a degree of preparation. This is because some element of warning would be expected, even today, and because the additional costs would be significant and best avoided.

We note here the conclusions of Richard K Betts in his seminal book Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning (Brookings Institution, 1982). Betts argues that governments should expect to be surprised. He believes that governments’ ability to interpret other people’s politics is always limited. But he also acknowledges that inadequacies in warning are rarely due to the absence of anyone in the system ringing an alarm. He suggests that the principal cause of surprise isn’t the failure of intelligence but the unwillingness of political leaders to believe intelligence or to react to it with sufficient dispatch.

In our view, to analyse the implications of greatly reduced warning time, defence planners now need to address three interrelated questions: Readiness for when? Readiness for what? Readiness of what? As all those who have ever been involved in defence planning know, a major interaction between answers to these questions comes from their implications for resources and allocation of money. Competition between decisions on resource allocation is now even more inevitable for Australia’s defence planners, and the resolution of that competition must be integral to defence planning and—dare one suggest it—prompt decision-making.

The new demands we now envisage might best be described as a need for a surge capacity:  the ability, quickly and confidently, to move to higher states of readiness and to sustain higher rates of effort for as long as contingent developments might require. This kind of attribute has been little needed in previous decades and represents a new departure for Australian security policy.

The on-going challenges of setting priorities for intelligence collection and analysis suggest there is unlikely to be much current spare capacity within our National Intelligence Community. While some extra capacity could be made available by the reordering of priorities, this is likely to be limited in extent. This implies the need for a clear pathway for the NIC to move to a higher level of capacity, although what this path might be is not clear, not least because of the requirement for personnel to have high levels of security clearance and the need for secure facilities.

Following the publication of our ASPI paper in 2021, we gave a presentation on its key findings to a senior Defence group led by the chief of the defence force, and we also had a separate discussion with a senior group in ONI.

In summary, we encourage the current Independent Intelligence Review to examine whether the National Intelligence Community is correctly structured and prepared to meet the urgent requirements of Australia’s new defence policy. In particular, the dramatically changed nature of Australia’s strategic circumstances—recognition of which is a basic bipartisan policy—means that policymakers need to be sure that the NIC can meet the challenges of short-warning contingencies involving the support of round-the-clock military operations sustained over months rather than days. Ministers must be left in no doubt about the NIC’s ability to move quickly to higher states of alert and then to sustain operations on a 24/7 basis.

For the first time since the Second World War, the NIC needs to be able to respond rapidly to the demands of such military operations, in circumstances of serious military threat to our key national security interests and survival.

Closer Pacific integration could help solve the ADF’s recruitment problems

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Australia needs to develop more creative and bold recruitment and retention strategies for the Australian Defence Force.

The recruitment of foreigners into the ADF, particularly Pacific islanders, is one solution that commentators have proposed in an ‘on-again, off-again’ debate.

Based on our research, and our conversations with Pacific island country security officials, the creation of a ‘Pacific Battalion’ possibly offers the greatest benefit across the broadest set of criteria and is the preferred option among those officials.

Ultimately, there are many benefits to opening up pathways for Pacific islanders to serve in the ADF, with the clear caveat that any process to formally establish a program must be culturally and politically sensitive, be informed by detailed risk and impact assessment, and have strong monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in place.

In our ASPI report published today, ‘Regional security and Pacific partnerships: recruiting Pacific Islanders into the Australian Defence Force’, we explore three options:

  • direct recruiting from the Pacific region into the ADF;
  • closer integration and operation between existing Australian and PIC forces;
  • and a broader partnership model drawing on lessons from the US’s ‘compacts of free association’ and from the UK’s defence recruitment initiatives.

We’ve demonstrated that enhancing and deepening regional security mechanisms and cohesion is a necessary corollary to any solution focused on outcomes for the ADF. Although broadening the ADF recruitment scheme to directly recruit Pacific islanders would go some way towards addressing the ADF’s recruitment shortfalls, other options, such as the co-operative development of regional military forces, may be a better investment of time and money over the long run if it’s well planned and executed in genuine partnership and consultation with PICs.

An initial ‘Pacific Battalion’ option could build and evolve over time, learning and implementing lessons through an effective monitoring and evaluation framework. That may prove a tremendously useful way for Australia and the region to coordinate and cooperate on regional security.

The security and stability of the South Pacific and Australia are deeply intertwined. Australian Government policies have, for more than a decade, consistently prioritised the Pacific for international engagement, including in defence, development and diplomacy.

The Australian Government’s ‘Pacific Step-up’, first announced in 2016, delivered a heightened level of effort by Canberra in the region, as did Australia’s strong support for the Pacific Islands Forum’s Boe Declaration. The Albanese government’s increased policy focus on the region, and on a coordinated, whole-of-government approach to the Pacific, demonstrates the centrality of our immediate region to the Australian Government’s strategic planning.

Australia’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) outlined the need for innovative and bold approaches to recruitment and retention in the Australian Defence Force (ADF), which is seeking to grow by 30 percent by 2040 but is not yet hitting existing recruitment targets.

Budget figures released for 2023 show that ADF personnel numbers dropped by more than 1,300, or more than 2 percent of the total force. The Budget projections for 2024 to 2026 indicate that the government requires more than 6,000 additional personnel—in addition to replacing those lost through attrition in the next three years—to meet stated growth requirements.

In the context of a competitive recruitment environment in Australia, especially for skilled labour, that trend indicates that the Defence organisation will struggle to meet forecast requirements using existing recruitment options and will need to seek alternatives. This challenge of competition for talent and to retain skilled workers is not limited to defence, nor Australia. It is an economy wide issue, and global.

Obviously, such an initiative could help the ADF’s recruitment numbers, but, importantly, it could open up economic, skills and training opportunities for Pacific islanders.

It could also provide a powerful cultural and practical engagement opportunity for the ADF, while also providing Australia with avenues to help shape the region’s security environment in positive and culturally relevant ways. Such recruitment—especially if it involves bilateral agreements between governments— would also put Pacific Island governments in a unique position to inform Australia’s security assessments and contribute to shared outcomes.

Those outcomes could include enhanced regional interoperability, especially for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) and supporting combined stability operations, and stronger two-way cultural and social engagement, bolstering familiarity and understanding between the ADF and Pacific Island countries (PICs).

There are, of course, arguments against such recruitment. For example, the recruitment of Pacific islanders to fight for Australia could be viewed by some as ‘colonialist’ in a region understandably sensitive to that history. But this concern could be addressed through PICs retaining agency through bilateral arrangements.

In addition, any scheme seeking to relocate workers to Australia could be seen as taking skills from a much smaller nation, and risking brain and skills drains. We look at these, and other, considerations in this report.

These policy options aren’t exhaustive but they are plausible and represent different approaches (which could be combined) to achieve outcomes related to ADF recruitment and retention as well as to improved regional collective security.

A critical consideration in developing these options was a two-way flow of benefit: from the Pacific to Australia and from Australia back to the region. For example, we recommend that, where possible, Pacific recruits receive focused training in HADR, which would help build sovereign PIC capabilities and facilitate the application of learned skills upon recruits’ return to their home countries.

Transforming the ADF requires a new approach to digital infrastructure

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As the strategic environment continues to darken, the defence force built by Australia in the decades after the Vietnam War is being completely reconfigured. Long gone is the reliance on light infantry combat capabilities that could be quickly and seamlessly deployed to our immediate region or blended into allied forces. Despite the lessons of the Ukraine conflict, the hardened army seems to be limited to a single brigade in the plan outlined in the 2023 defence strategic review.

The emphasis now is on rapidly acquiring disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and hypersonic missiles and on adopting a more focused and agile force posture out of northern Australia.

Strategists can debate the wisdom and the viability of these changes as much as they like, but it’s beyond dispute that if Australia hopes to realise its vision for a more lethal dispersed defence force with shorter internal lines of communication, a modernised and more decentralised approach to information and communications technology will be required.

The new technologies that Defence wants require huge computing power. Emerging AI and machine-learning capabilities would, if adopted across the Australian Defence Force, completely overwhelm Defence’s existing ICT infrastructure. Storing and managing the torrent of data these new systems will both generate and use to function effectively will involve a massive digital infrastructure uplift.

These changes are dry and technical. They tend not to attract the attention of journalists, commentators or strategists. Digital infrastructure can’t be used to cross an obstacle; nor can it be used for long-range strike. But in the information age it will include critical enablers of other capabilities and Defence is simply not ready for the world ahead.

Currently, Defence’s ICT infrastructure is deployed in three ways: on-premises via the private network operated in Defence-owned and -operated data centres, in the cloud with centralised service providers such as Vault Cloud, Amazon WebServices or Microsoft Azure, or in a hybrid of the two.

While this enables Defence to consolidate resources and achieve relative economies of scale with reduced costs, it also presents security and scaling challenges.

All network, hardware resource, data and control is consolidated in and controlled by a central entity, which can lead to a single point of failure and opaque security and performance.

More importantly, though, the concentration of cloud hosting services in nine urban centres across Australia leaves a major capability gap in the northern bases, the very area the DSR nominated as central to the ADF’s future force posture.

Recognising the limitations of the current infrastructure, and a need to improve interoperability with allied forces, the government has agreed in principle to the DSR’s recommendations to shift Defence to an open ICT architecture.

However, the future of an open architecture is intertwined with and dependent on the broader defence strategy and technology estate. The success of this shift hinges on a balanced investment in core infrastructure alongside the pursuit of a more decentralised approach, which will have the most benefits where capabilities are at their most feeble while being required the most.

Unlike centralised cloud service providers, a decentralised infrastructure relies on a distributed network of computers and hardware devices that can be operated without the need for intermediaries or centralised control.

Decentralised infrastructure offers a paradigm shift in security, control, cost and accessibility compared with traditional centralised cloud networks. It enhances security by distributing data across a network of computers, meaning there’s no single point of failure.

Users also gain increased control since their data isn’t managed by third-party providers and the risk of potential data misuse is minimised. Decentralisation frees data from specific locations or devices, enabling users to access their data across multiple locations. This will be critical as Defence disperses large sections of its workforce across the country, including into remote locations.

A priority identified in response to the DSR is improving the ADF’s ability to operate from Australia’s northern bases. Defence’s emphasis on littoral operations in the northern land and maritime domains, coupled with the need for a long-range strike capability and seamless collaboration with partners, will require more efficient and adaptive infrastructure.

Decentralisation emerges as a crucial strategy to address a critical capability gap in northern Australia, given that there are no core data centres in the region, and interoperability will be paramount. Adopting a more decentralised architecture promises to enhance access to data and improve interoperability with partners. In addition, a decentralised approach offers cost advantages by allowing Defence to start small and providing a scalable framework. It also helps bolster network security, fortifying the overall resilience of Defence operations in the north.

As Australia accelerates its acquisition of disruptive technologies, including autonomous systems and hypersonic missiles, operationalising these advancements will require a modernised and decentralised approach to ICT.

Decentralised ICT offers enhanced security, control, cost-efficiency, scalability and accessibility—all especially important as Australia develops its critical northern bases.

This paradigm shift is crucial to reshaping Defence’s digital backbone to meet the demands of a dynamically evolving strategic landscape.

Australia must rein in the defence bureaucracy to achieve its strategic goals

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After 40 years of reform experimentation that has seriously weakened the Australian Defence Force, it’s time for the government to bring the defence bureaucracy back onto the rails.

Australians are becoming increasingly anxious about Australia’s strategic circumstances as they’re told we won’t have much warning of an armed conflict in our region. To address this, Defence says it wants to be able to hold an adversary’s forces at risk further away from our shores. This strategy necessarily emphasises sea and air capabilities, as recently acknowledged by former Australian Army chief Peter Leahy. If there was ever a need for bold, decisive government action, it is now.

The public version of the 2023 defence strategic review didn’t sufficiently acknowledge the maritime emphasis of its approach. It should have addressed the changes that would be required in the integrated investment program across the services to build a maritime-focused force. The acquisitions announced around the time the review was released, none of them actually new, didn’t address the urgent need for new maritime combat hardware. There has been only more delay since.

There are two major impediments to equipping the Australian Defence Force to execute the new strategy. The first is a lack of urgency. The change required must come at a pace that Defence seems incapable of generating. The second is the scale of the enterprise. Enormous investment will be required to quickly replace our worn-out naval combat capabilities and significantly expand our maritime airpower. This will require people as well as new money and it must happen well before our nuclear submarines arrive. Yet not only is the investment not forthcoming, quite the opposite is happening. Sustainment budgets have been cut severely this year, which will impact ADF preparedness.

Changing the combat force structure has been an alien concept in Defence since it was brought into a single department in 1973. Under an initiative of the powerful mandarin Arthur Tange, the individual ministries for each of the three services, in place since 1939, were unified under one minister with a few deputies and parliamentary secretaries. This followed similar moves in the US and UK designed to reduce inter-service rivalry and promote efficiency. Australia achieved neither outcome.

Problems with Tange’s model were accurately foretold. Defence analysts warned that the abolition of ‘the direct Minister to Service Chief (and vice versa)’ and the ‘strategic, financial and moral accountability (and mutual knowledge) this entailed’ would result in a ‘giant step’ along the road to public service—as opposed to parliamentary—control of the armed forces. That’s exactly what happened. One reason for this was that it became almost impossible for a single minister to master the complexities of such a large and challenging portfolio, even with the help of a junior minister or two.

In trying to eliminate rivalry, Tange’s changes also reduced the possibility for a real contest of ideas about how to address any strategic objective. In a system where the chief of the defence force was required to represent all three services impartially and the minister was unlikely to be in a position to challenge military leaders on details, in practical terms any substantial change in the force structure became impossible.

This contention is supported by a letter from Paul Dibb to Defence Minister Kim Beazley covering Dibb’s 1986 review of defence capabilities: ‘The Review could obtain no material centrally endorsed by the higher Defence structure which explained, for example, the strategic rationale for a 12-destroyer Navy, three fighter squadrons, six Regular Army battalions … Most [documents] focus on justifying the present force structure rather than estimating what our strategic circumstances require.’ While Australia and the region have changed enormously since then, our combat force remains essentially the same.

Even if major changes were agreed, Defence too often opted for ill-advised, unnecessarily complex and risky hardware that was beyond its competence to manage. Poor performance in managing the timely and cost-effective acquisition of new capability has required Defence to keep obsolescent equipment in service far beyond the end of its practical life, weakening the ADF overall.

Australia’s sclerotic performance in acquiring major military hardware this century has produced some dismal outcomes and wasted vast amounts of money. Among the likely causes are the burdens of bureaucracy and process for its own sake, and the emergence of an empire of ill-equipped and poorly advised senior decision-makers. This has been accompanied by the minimisation of the service chiefs’ authority, outsourcing of technical services, centralisation of scientific support and abolition of in-house academic research capabilities.

Late last century, Defence’s commercial support and strategic reform programs, followed in 2014 by the first principles review, continued to worsen the impact of the Tange-era changes. Many specialised, dedicated domain-specific functions on which the services depended for their effectiveness were either outsourced or centralised in a complex shared-services matrix organisation. In common with other departments, some elements of the Defence matrix became heavily reliant on contracted labour and consultants. The ADF’s effectiveness has been seriously damaged as a result.

ADF technical staff were stripped of functions that were then largely contracted to the private sector, which has been unable to sustain delivery reliably, effectively or efficiently. So, too, with the scientists, laboratories and academic researchers. Without these vital, specialised resources in-house, service acquisitions have been persistently characterised by costly and avoidable problems.

The 2014 review marginalised the service chiefs further by removing their right of access to the minister. This was based on, at best, contestable logic. Most recently, the 2023 DSR centralised away from the service chiefs true authority over their people, one of the few remaining vestiges of formal control they had. The service chiefs are now little more than staff officers to the chief of the defence force and are removed from being, in any sense, commanders of the specialised institutions of state over which they preside.

Where once they outranked all military officers except the chief and vice chief of the defence force, with whom they were equal, today the service chiefs must compete for resources—including their own people—with seven military officers and nine public servants of equivalent rank. Holding anyone accountable is impossible, while advice to ministers is filtered, struggled over, tightly controlled and frequently avoids the whole story.

Much of the extensive organisational change since the late 1980s has pursued ‘efficiency’ (read: cost-cutting), which is a non sequitur. The DSR uses the same language. The evidence shows, however, that very few efficiency gains have been achieved. Defence is costly, and while financial efficiency is rightly demanded, no evidence has been presented to show that much inefficiency ever existed at all. Labyrinthine bureaucratic processes are hardly efficient, yet they proliferate unchecked. Today’s ineffectiveness is a far worse outcome than effectiveness with a bit of inefficiency—that bit of fat that provides the resilience so very valuable in a small force like the ADF.

Resolving profound differences of view about strategy and acquisitions within the bureaucracy, rather than around the cabinet table, has been a failure. While coordination and harmonisation are certainly required across ADF endeavours, as professional heads of their services the service chiefs should be authorised, responsible and accountable for all matters concerning them, from military strategy to the full range of operational and tactical elements of equipping, employing and sustaining it.

The top end of the ADF has both ballooned in numbers and been professionally dumbed down as a result. The government certainly seems to think so. Why else would it have asked a retired US Navy admiral to tell Australia what surface combatants our own navy should operate?

That the defence minister position has become a revolving door hasn’t helped. Ministers have averaged fewer than two years in the role in the past 30 years, and the chances of a government gripping Defence properly have become remote. Even as governments have flailed around looking for independent advice, too often from overseas, effective control has been held in the hands of Defence officials rather than ministers, as should be the case under Australia’s Westminster system of government.

Appointing an individual minister for each service and restoring the authority of the service chiefs would help address these systemic problems. The explosion of senior ADF positions must also be critically examined. The services don’t have the capacity to supply the suitably experienced and competent decision-makers required to meet current demand. Crucial in-service technical and scientific resources must be restored to help the individual services function better.

The Albanese government got off to a good start. It described eloquently the threat to our national security and designed an appropriate strategy to address it. But it must now move decisively to provide the military with the teeth it needs to implement the strategy. It’s time the rubber hit the road. Urgently.

Time for a rethink of Australia’s approach to defence industry

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Australia faces a deteriorating geostrategic environment, and the recent defence strategic review has found that the military’s force structure is not fit for purpose. In line with the review’s recommendations, the government has adopted the concept of a ‘focused force’ and of ‘national defence’—the defence against potential threats arising from major-power competition—as a new approach to defence planning and strategy.

The introduction of national defence will require a coordinated, whole-of-government approach that includes enhanced sovereignty in defence industrial capacity in key areas, and a renewed focus on national planning for defence preparedness.

Since the 2016 defence white paper, industry has been considered a ‘fundamental input to capability’ (FIC), in recognition of its role as a critical enabler of defence activity. Without a defence industry of appropriate size and shape, the ability of the Australian Defence Force to operate as required would be extremely limited.

But the war in Ukraine has demonstrated once more that the importance of defence industry goes further than that: Ukraine is now constantly producing (and consuming) drones and weapons in large numbers, integrating new capabilities into its forces on the fly, and establishing new production of indigenous and foreign platforms. In other words, deep and adaptive industrial capabilities are critically important in a major conflict because they are what sustains a country’s ability when its forces need to be expanded, replaced and evolved.

The Department of Defence’s treatment of industry as a FIC isn’t consistent with the move to national defence and the new realities of major war. Viewing industry as a FIC compartmentalises thinking around domestic industrial support to Defence to discrete capabilities; limits consideration of the domestic defence industry as a system with application across multiple capabilities; and inhibits the development of broader concepts such as industrial surge, mobilisation and preparedness that will be required during periods leading up to, and including, conflict.

Defence industry in national defence: rethinking Australian defence industry policy, a new report by the Australian Industry Group and the Australian National University, argues that a new way of looking at the domestic industrial base is required. Put simply, industry needs to be considered as a national capability, rather than simply a means to produce individual military capabilities.

The report highlights that, although the government has repeatedly acknowledged the strategic value of certain capabilities and the critical contribution of local industry to delivering those capabilities, the focus has remained on achieving value for money and minimising project risks through the acquisition of military-off-the-shelf solutions.

While attempts have been made to build specific industrial capability (shipbuilding and the guided weapons enterprise are examples), they have been hampered by a lack of clear purpose and intent, a lack of direct connection between strategic objectives and industry policy, and a continuing project-by-project approach. The result is a domestic defence industry that is poorly structured and not equipped to deliver what the ADF is likely to need in a major conflict.

This is simply not good enough for the situation in which Australia finds itself. As one observer of US policy recently commented: ‘You go to war with the industry base you have, not the industry base you want.’

Instead, Australia must consider industry as a capability. Drawing on the approach to defence industry in France, Sweden, Israel and Canada, the report argues that this will require substantial changes in both defence industry and the broader national industry policies. It will require the government to define clear industry requirements as part of its overall defence planning and force design process.

Defence industry must be embedded within and managed as part of Australia’s broader national industry structure and policy. That will require strategically prioritised defence industries to be actively supported to achieve scale and be positioned for surge and flexibility. It will also require changes to the way that value for money is assessed. If industry is a capability, the government needs to appoint a capability manager for it who is resourced and empowered to monitor and develop Australia’s defence industrial base.

The government has an array of powers that allow it to shape and foster the industrial structure that it wants to develop, and to control and incentivise industrial behaviour. It is not just a contractual partner to industry, but can also be legislator, regulator, provider of direct or indirect support, landlord and part or full owner. If the government is to develop and manage defence industry as a national capability, it is important that it make use of the full range of these tools.

A sovereign but internationally linked defence industry is a necessary asset during a period in which the risk of major conflict is rising. Action needs to be taken now to set the nation on the path to the industrial capability it needs to meet the challenges of today’s strategic environment.

The defence and security implications of the Australia–Tuvalu treaty

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The Falepili Union has shifted up the paradigm of Australia’s strategic policy in the Pacific by several gears. It represents a grand bargain, albeit in microcosm, that aims to address security needs from both Pacific islander and Australian viewpoints. The extension of a treaty-level security guarantee to the small island nation of Tuvalu, population 11,000, is currently within the Australian Defence Force’s capabilities, but nonetheless carries portentous implications for Australia’s defence and diplomatic settings in the Southwest Pacific. Has Canberra bitten off more than it can chew?

The decision to extend a formal security guarantee to Tuvalu as part of the agreement announced on 10 November was a surprise to many, but not exactly a bolt from the blue. The idea of linking Australia and the Pacific under a formal security arrangement has been debated in defence circles for over a decade, reflecting deep and long-term engagement. Australia’s security support, including through fisheries monitoring and military advisers, has primarily been delivered under the Pacific maritime security program and the defence cooperation program, with priorities determined jointly through annual talks.

For more than a year, Australia has been developing its thinking across government about how to integrate more closely with Pacific island nations by offering a broader policy package that addresses islanders’ climate, economic and human security needs, while simultaneously satisfying Canberra’s desire to staunch China’s growing security profile in the region.

The Falepili Union is not an obviously transposable template for other Pacific island countries to adopt. This is because its provisions echo a bespoke request from Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano—including protection from climate threats, but also the possibility of ‘military aggression’. But it is also because the Pacific is so diverse in its people and its politics. There is no one-size-fits-all model. That said, the agreement will provide a ‘shop window’ for other small island states in the region to monitor progress as they mull over whether to pursue similar arrangements with Australia or other parties.

Australia consulted widely across the Pacific Islands Forum before announcing the Tuvalu agreement, with particular attention to Nauru and Kiribati—the most likely candidates for a similar package deal due to their geography, demography and existing partnerships. For domestic political reasons, Canberra may also see advantage in trialling a special mobility scheme with a Pacific microstate before scaling up.

Attention has focused on the mutual agreement clause in the treaty, widely interpreted as giving Australia de facto veto power over Tuvalu entering into security-sector cooperation with third countries. That aligns with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s public explanation of the treaty’s provisions. In practical terms, Canberra’s external concerns centre on Beijing and the desire to avert any replication of the Solomon Islands–China security agreement of April 2022.

Tuvalu is one of just four Pacific countries to maintain official ties with Taiwan. Yet before approaching Australia, Tuvaluan officials pursued exploratory talks with China. This is important context to understanding Canberra’s decision to negotiate a legally binding agreement, both to pre-empt a Tuvaluan move to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan in favour of Beijing—as Solomon Islands and Kiribati both did in 2019—and to protect itself against future reversals. The treaty is open-ended once it enters into force, though it may be terminated by either party with a year’s notice.

So far, China’s reaction to the Falepili Union has been muted, limited to a brief response by the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson and state media commentary from the Global Times. Beijing is still likely to be suspicious of Australia’s intentions, because the treaty will have the effect of shoring up Taiwan’s precarious diplomatic position in the Pacific. China’s suspicions are compounded by the fact that Nauru, which also recognises Taiwan, has been identified as the next cab off the rank. Taipei’s other two regional allies, Palau and Marshall Islands, are in compacts of free association with the United States that have both been renewed in 2023. The Federated States of Micronesia has also renewed its compact agreement with the US, and while it recognises Beijing it maintains very close relations with Washington. China is likely to read common purpose here between the US and its ally Australia.

Australia’s immediate motivations for offering Tuvalu a defence guarantee appear to be to deny China influence gains and a security foothold there. While no obvious threat of military aggression to Tuvalu is looming over the horizon, a treaty defence guarantee is an unprecedented commitment for Australia to make in the Pacific. Tuvalu is around 3,500 kilometres away from Australia’s closest bases, in Queensland. Mounting any kind of military operation over such a distance is no small undertaking. Even peacetime humanitarian and disaster relief operations in locations such as Tonga have strained the ADF’s capabilities.

In case of threatened or actual aggression against Tuvalu, Australia’s challenges would be exponentially harder. The ADF would be operating far beyond the range of unrefuelled land-based air cover, and Funafuti’s 1,500-metre runway is too short for high-performance aircraft. Even presupposing that Fiji, 1,000 kilometres away, was available for staging purposes, contested ADF operations in the vicinity of Tuvalu would be a stretch without help from the US. One of the noteworthy implications of ‘military aggression’ is that it points unambiguously to third-party contingencies in a way that previous Australian security commitments, to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, have not.

Defending Tuvalu against external aggression may appear to be an unlikely worst-case scenario. But formal defence guarantees need to be credible for the long term, particularly in a deteriorating security environment. Australia and China already compete most directly in the Pacific. If strategic competition between Beijing and Canberra intensifies, China could employ well-rehearsed grey-zone tactics—for example, encroaching on Tuvalu’s large exclusive economic zone, with the aim of sowing doubts about Australia’s resolve as a security guarantor, or simply tying down the ADF in logistically taxing long-range presence operations. Beijing is already using information operations and other hybrid threat actions in Pacific island countries to try to undermine trust in traditional partnerships with Australia.

Canberra has secured access to Tuvalu’s territory for the ADF under the Falepili Union, but forward-garrisoning Tuvalu on anything more than a symbolic scale would appear to be a tall order given the ADF’s capacity constraints. Is Canberra prepared to invest money in prepositioning stores and equipment, at the expense of existing defence infrastructure commitments under the 2023 defence strategic review? That also sounds unlikely, without supplementary funding. Even allowing for promised reclamation projects, land use in Tuvalu is going to come under increasing pressure. Nauru’s prospects aren’t much better in that respect. Kiribati is bigger, though the fact that Beijing already has a diplomatic foothold could frustrate Canberra’s efforts to secure terms similar to the security agreement with Tuvalu. Rollback is always more difficult than denial.

National defence and the RAN (part 2): tasking for deterrence by denial

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Part 1 of this series examined how the Royal Australian Navy contributes to the new national defence strategy of deterrence by denial. This part analyses the primary tasks the RAN must be capable of. A third post will address the required primary force structure.

The 2023 defence strategic review (DSR) reinforced objectives in the 2020 defence strategic update to shape Australia’s strategic environment, deter actions against Australia’s interests, and respond with credible military force, when required. These are the navy’s primary tasks.

The RAN has long been a major contributor to shaping Australia’s strategic environment. Participation in international exercises of varying levels of sophistication at home and throughout the region have been a hallmark, as have regular, lengthy goodwill visits, sometimes involving half a dozen ships or more and submarines.

An important component of these activities in shaping regional perceptions—and contributing to a deterrent mindset—is that the RAN is seen as a highly professional fighting force that is well-equipped for sustained combat operations in the region, if necessary.

The navy plays a highly valued role supporting regional humanitarian operations. Australia’s gifts of patrol boats to Pacific island nations, with supporting RAN operational and technical advisers, have helped small nations become more self-reliant in sovereignty protection and law enforcement.

These activities demonstrate our national capability, capacity and willingness to respond, while helping build confidence that we pose no threat. All are vital in shaping perceptions that Australians consider themselves part of the region. Reinforcing this view is essential for our security as some neighbouring nations’ economies surpass our own.

Australia must also demonstrate its willingness to look after its own sovereignty, especially in its vast exclusive economic zone. Maritime patrol and response is always a major naval task, no matter the circumstances. This is why the RAN is equipped with small patrol boats that are relatively inexpensive to operate and well suited to assisting the Australian Border Force in operations. The navy has been forced occasionally to supplement the patrol boats with larger and more sophisticated ships, but this drives up the cost dramatically and contributes little to the navy’s combat efficiency and effectiveness.

As the DSR implies and this discussion shows, achieving deterrence by denial has many strands, some of which are more nuanced than delivering a warhead, but all are important to its accomplishment.

The nature of potential military operations in the region is hard to predict, but an Australian government will always look for options to respond. Whatever hard power Australia might have to counter, the DSR sets out a response that will be in mass, extremely lethal and swift.

The DSR notes that Australia may have little warning of a regional conflict. If our efforts to achieve deterrence have failed, the RAN’s contribution to denial combat operations and impactful projection must be in place already. Operations extending possibly from the Cocos (Keeling) Islands across northern Australia into the Coral Sea would necessarily be part of a very large Australian Defence Force effort to defend the nation.

Use of the advanced sea mine capability being sought would help close off southbound routes, and our submarines would help close off choke points north and south of Indonesia and eastwards. But the overwhelming effort of Australia’s firepower would be delivered against any adversary through precision guided missiles from all three services. For the navy, the main contributors would be its surface combatants and submarines.

Developments in long-range precision weapons mean surface combatants and submarines can play a wider role. The navy’s destroyers with Aegis combat systems can contribute to the air defence and the land campaign over considerably longer distances than a few decades ago.

Several other capabilities are highlighted in the DSR as critical for ADF success. They are networked sensing and targeting for long-range strike in all three dimensions, integrated air and missile defence, an upgraded operational logistics capability and appropriate theatre command and control. Strongly implied also was an expeditionary air operations capability and a ‘fully enabled, integrated amphibious-capable combined-arms land system’. It has to be assumed that these operations will not be against a strong opposing force, but the ADF will be required to undertake forward-deployed operations for which the RAN is a critical enabler. Its associated lift ships are very lightly armed, placing greater onus on escorting forces for protection.

Distributed maritime operations can avoid or reduce the effectiveness of an adversary’s surveillance and constrain its ability to neutralise our forces through massed attacks. But these concepts require sophisticated, resilient, high-capacity communication networks to coordinate our own attacks. This poses significant technical and doctrinal challenges. Well-armed, suitably equipped surface combatants and submarines capable of long endurance are needed in sufficient numbers to participate in networked missile attacks. All require communications for command, control and coordination—and they must be able to defend themselves. As the technologies mature, uncrewed surface, air and submersible vehicles may enhance the volume of lethality and extend the length of time a presence can be achieved.

Our navy exists to fight at sea if we must, with as good a chance of winning as we are willing to afford. Owning a navy that is consistently capable of winning is difficult, complex and expensive. An unfaltering national commitment is required. It demands consistent investment in equipment and its upkeep, constant training and renewal, assessment and evaluation of performance, research and development, experimentation and sometimes taking risks with untried technologies in search of a capability edge, perhaps asymmetric.

Most of all, a navy requires a motivated, skilled and dedicated national workforce comprising uniformed, public service and blue and white collar private sector people. The RAN must ensure Australians want to be part of that endeavour.

Large vessels axiomatically contribute greater endurance and larger magazines that provide the firepower for distant, higher-end operations. They are also generally better suited to the environmental conditions faced in this region.

Adoption of the DSR’s vaguely worded tiered typology for warships implying that more but smaller vessels should be acquired has not met with support from experienced practitioners. The review of the RAN’s surface combatant force, still to be made public, could reset its combat capability to meet its future needs. Public commentary suggests there’s scope for serious and long-lasting mistakes.

Protection of shipping is a major task of the navy and air force, and interruption of fuel, largely imported from Southeast Asia, would have a major impact on our economy and military operations. In 2010 the RAN concluded that shipping was best protected by creating a safe corridor and umbrella for selected ships carrying strategically important cargoes. Our submarines, large surface combatants, and air surveillance and air combat capabilities will have to create and keep those routes secure. Mine countermeasures forces would ensure the safe passage of shipping through or around potentially mined areas. Naval marine science ships would gather data to help evaluate risks on shipping routes and define areas in which ship sensor performance is enhanced or degraded. The quantity and geographic distribution of ships requiring protection implies that several concurrent dispersed and demanding operations would be required.

Creation of a plausible anti-access and area-denial capability for the ADF is essential to convince any potential adversary that Australia can inflict much damage on a force intending to strike our nation. All the peacetime efforts of the ADF must be applied to prevent hostilities—with the ability to immediately switch to combat operations if required to help force a return to diplomacy.

A RAN equipped with heavily armed ships and submarines, complemented by an effective logistic support force, with other capabilities in prospect for the ADF’s four other domains, will give Australia confidence in its ability to withstand coercion—and will give any adversary pause for thought.

Part 3 will propose what the primary force structure of the RAN should become.