Last Thursday’s announcement of Australia’s plans to pursue nuclear-powered submarines and the launch of AUKUS—a new security grouping between Australia, the UK and US aimed at promoting information and technology sharing as well as greater defence industry cooperation—will be serious considerations for Canberra’s neighbours and key strategic partners, particularly Indonesia. Despite the periodic disruptions, Australia–Indonesia ties have continued to deepen. Both sets of foreign and defence ministers met in Jakarta on 9 September for the seventh ‘2+2’ meeting, upgrading existing bilateral agreements, announcing new initiatives and pledging to uphold regional order. In light of this seemingly positive trajectory, how are these developments being viewed in Jakarta?

Starting with the submarines, one of Jakarta’s major concerns will be the impact on the region’s military balance. Not only will Australian nuclear-powered submarines be able to undertake long-endurance, high-speed, stealth operations, but they could be equipped with upgraded missile systems. The Indonesian government issued a statement on Friday saying that it was viewing the submarine decision ‘cautiously’ and was ‘deeply concerned over the continuing arms race and power projection in the region’.

To be clear, the long-range operations that Australia is likely to pursue won’t be in the seas directly to its north. And while strategic trust and communication have improved in recent years, suspicions arising from Australia’s involvement in East Timor’s independence ballot and revelations of Australian spying remain. These open the door for hawkish figures in Jakarta to call for more muscular military capabilities in light of a potentially threatening southern neighbour. As Evan Laksmana flagged on Twitter, questions will be asked about whether Australia will take its new subs further down the nuclear road, going quickly from nuclear-propelled to nuclear-armed.

Also of concern to Indonesia is how Australia’s enhanced ability to conduct long-range operations, particularly alongside the US and other Indo-Pacific partners, will factor into Beijing’s strategic calculus. The Indonesian government’s statement reiterated Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi’s declaration after the recent 2+2 joint press conference that both Australia and Indonesia were committed to be a part of an ‘effort to maintain peace and stability in the region’.

Canberra’s decision to power up its maritime capability, in addition to the assets of other allies and partners, increases the costs for China to engage in conflict. However, this could equally provoke China into developing more sophisticated anti-submarine options and expanding its operating areas, both of which would generate anxiety not just in Jakarta but in other Southeast Asian capitals.

Raising the costs for major Indo-Pacific powers of going to war is in Indonesia’s interests, but not if that means China has greater maritime capabilities which threaten Indonesia or are used in grey-zone operations. Strengthening the Indonesian archipelago against maritime incursions has been a particular concern for President Joko Widodo’s administration, with Chinese fishing fleets accompanied by coastguard and other vessels flagrantly operating in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

The threat of the Chinese navy has remained over the horizon. Jakarta has watched Beijing use not just white but grey hulls against the Philippines and Vietnam. While Indonesia has been slowly modernising its military, particularly its navy and air force, the government would prefer to focus on internal matters like post-Covid economic recovery and infrastructure upgrades.

Looking more broadly at the launch of AUKUS, from Indonesia’s vantage point it is a sign of greater alignment not just with the US’s strategic interests but with its identity. AUKUS is a pact described by the White House as binding Australia ‘decisively … to the United States and Great Britain for generations’. This coalition, as John Blaxland wrote, ‘puts more eggs in that basket’, sending an even clearer signal that Canberra is investing in a strategic destiny tied to Washington.

The optics of AUKUS contrast with Canberra’s desire to expand its regional outreach. The government’s 2020 defence strategic update clearly states an intent to deepen Australia’s alliance with the US. But it also says Australia will ‘prioritise [its] engagement and defence relationships with partners whose active roles in the region will be vital to regional security and stability, including Japan, India and Indonesia’. Australia’s increasing appetite for greater ASEAN engagement as well as for trilateral groupings with India and Indonesia and with India and France (possibly awkward under a cooling-off period) suggested a posture leaning towards regional enmeshment and away from American dependence.

Despite concerns in Jakarta about appearing to contain China, the Quad’s inclusion of Japan and India render it a more credible grouping of Indo-Pacific states with, crucially, both Western and Asian representation. In some ways, AUKUS could become a necessary complement to regional strategic bonds like the Quad and the US’s bilateral alliances.

If optics matter, history does too. Certainly the UK has interests in the Indo-Pacific and is playing a more active role, particularly in the South China Sea. However, AUKUS feels like a throwback to the colonial era, when Great Britain held strong interests in the region via its colonies in South and Southeast Asia. There are benefits in keeping the UK engaged in the Indo-Pacific beyond the Five Power Defence Arrangements, yet from an Indonesian point of view, AUKUS risks entrenching even further a Western-dominated narrative about regional order, sidelining Asian states, especially Indonesia.

Since US President Joe Biden took office, Indonesia hasn’t received any official visits by high-level American officials, despite Vice President Kamala Harris travelling to Singapore and Vietnam in August and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visiting Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines in July. While Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman dropped by Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand in May and June, the Jakarta Post’s editorial team expressed disappointment in the ‘two successive snubs’. An unsocialised announcement that potentially heightens a sense of military competition in the region is certainly not going to ease these concerns of dismissive exclusion. In this Western-led vision of the Indo-Pacific, AUKUS unequivocally signals which relationships really matter for Australia.

While it’s early days for AUKUS, the pact will bring a number of key technological benefits for Australia—in cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, among others. And there is comfort in that.

However, it’s worth remembering that what helps some in Canberra sleep better may keep others in the region up at night.

Australia is going to build nuclear submarines as part of a new broader defence technology pact with the US and the UK. How much the world has changed since just April 2016.

Back then, Australia chose a conventional, diesel-powered submarine as its key undersea weapon, to be built in partnership with the French. A nuclear submarine was ruled out then because of the sensitivity of military nuclear technologies, the complexity and cost, and because we were told our strategic needs would be met by the diesel submarine.

The sensitivity, complexity and cost remain. What’s changed is our security environment. That’s summed up in three words: China under Xi.

Any doubts about the direction Xi Jinping is taking China were ended in Tiananmen Square on 1 July, when he doubled down on his vision that a great China is one that can use its power in the world however it deems fit, engaging in a great struggle against others who seek to make their own decisions.

And it’s more than China that has changed. In 2016, the UK government would almost certainly not have been seized with the urgency of sharing nuclear secrets with Australia and the US would only have done so with a huge amount of arm twisting, notably of submarine folk in the US Navy. We would have been regaled with stories about how the US and UK only share their nuclear defence technology with each other, under an agreement signed in 1958.

So, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison standing together (virtually) also signals a shift to a more robust deterrence of China by some of the world’s most powerful and activist democracies. That shift began to be obvious in June at the Cornwall meeting of the G7 group of nations, with Australia, India and South Korea along, but it’s been reinforced and accelerated today. This is the huge geostrategic news behind the announcement—and that will be understood in Beijing and the wider world.

There are many questions and issues to be resolved in the wake of today’s announcement. That’s why the three governments have set out an 18-month planning timeline for this challenging international enterprise.

The Australian government is crystal clear that when it comes to submarines, details, planning and implementation really matter. Since 2016, they’ve had the uncomfortable experience of the troubles, challenges and delays in Defence’s pursuit of the holy grail: a diesel-powered submarine with all the attributes of a nuclear one.

Our French partners will have some interesting discussions with our increasingly important and close strategic partners in Japan—because this is the second time it’s looked like we were building a submarine with a new partner, only to radically change course. The French will rightly note that they’ve spent six years trying to turn their nuclear Barracuda-class design into a diesel-powered version for us because we said we didn’t want a nuclear boat.

In an understatement, Naval Group has said the announcement is a ‘major disappointment’. Keeping any momentum in the French strategic partnership, which was taking on more weight through things like the new annual foreign and defence ministers’ forum first held just a few weeks ago, is going to be plain hard, but important given France’s global and regional roles.

But why a nuclear submarine? Put simply, it’s about range, stealth and power. A diesel submarine, even a ‘bleeding edge’ design for one, just doesn’t have the range or endurance to get from Australia to somewhere like the South China Sea or Malacca Strait and stay on station for long. A nuclear submarine does. A nuclear submarine is stealthier and harder to detect because it doesn’t have to run near the surface during a mission to recharge its batteries and it has the speed to get out of harm’s way if the risk of detection grows. And the nuclear power plant produces as much electricity as even the most power-hungry systems and sensors our future technologist can imagine will need.

The 18 months of joint work on all the complexities is essential. We’ve heard that Australia creating a civil nuclear industry isn’t part of this announcement and nor are nuclear weapons. Both things clarify what’s left to be done and at least don’t add enormous further complications—like becoming a nuclear-weapons state while maintaining strong commitments to non-proliferation of such devastating weapons.

Even with this, we’ll need every bit of the close partnership with UK and US institutions, companies and agencies that the three leaders have directed. As examples, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency currently monitors and regulates the visits of nuclear-powered warships, submarines and surface vessels, from partners like the US and UK to Australian ports. This is largely a matter of monitoring and environmental safety. But short visits by such vessels are quite different to basing, managing and maintaining nuclear reactors on Australian submarines.

Blistering onto the US nuclear submarine infrastructure, and building our own capacity and skills in parallel, will be Australia’s primary approach, and just like the one the UK has taken since 1958. That probably applies to things like the fuel—we’ll probably use the US and UK fuel cycles, including for the management and storage of reactor waste, rather than building our own onshore facilities for this.

The expenses will be eyewatering, but so were the costs of the Attack class—$90 billion at last count just to build the 12 submarines and more than that again to operate them. The advantage is Australia gets an enduringly powerful deterrent capability, and with it we can work even more closely with powerful partners to deter conflict. But it seems unlikely we’ll see the first Australian sub at least until the late-2030s—around the time the first French boat was to be delivered. So, pressure on the Collins-class submarines now in service will grow.

It’s hard to see Defence’s current submarine program management delivering this, given they were at the core of the decision to go down the Attack-class path. And it’s hard to see it being done out of a small part of the Defence department, given that a nuclear submarine is a national and international endeavour. The requirements for operating nuclear submarines extend far beyond the traditional expertise of Defence. Now more than ever we need to treat the national shipbuilding enterprise as a true national endeavour with leadership and organisation to match, rather than as a loosely confederated group of Defence projects managed from within the department.

The long-term nature of the AUKUS partnership is the strongest possible statement that the challenge we face from China is equally long term—no change of tone or even the shrewdest diplomacy is likely to change Xi’s instinctive path and mindset of struggle. Deterrence by a growing set of powerful nations just might.

Now that the last Western aircraft have been sucked into the sky above Kabul airport—a ravaged monument to what might have been—thoughts here should turn to where the West’s latest failed Afghan adventure leaves Australia.

First, the collapse of Kabul should mark the end of Australian military involvement in West Asia—where since the Gulf War we have been part of a continuum of events driven principally by American interests. These in turn have derived from the imperatives of revenge, strategic influence, oil, terror and ideology.

While Australia’s cited reasons for involvement in West Asia have covered all these imperatives, the most convincing has been alliance dues to the United States.

Since the Americans have lost their own appetite for military involvement in that region, there’s little left for us to do there.

But it is not the end of the affair.

Let us not seek solace from President Joe Biden’s remark that the West’s departure from Afghanistan gives it some sort of automatic infusion of political energy to deal more comprehensively with China.

While Australia may now largely be off the hook in West Asia, try telling the big beasts—China, Russia and India, to say nothing of Iran, Turkey and Pakistan and the more powerful Europeans—that the Great Game is over. Try telling the warring Islamist groups to stop it. West Asia has always counted.

In fact, the bomb blast by Islamic State Khorasan against both Taliban and US targets suggests the complex internecine Islamist feuding and its anti-Western targeting will be around for a while yet.

A resurgence in Islamist activity could impact the region and the West as did Islamic State a few years ago, and could revive the discomfort posed by belligerent Islam to our friends in the region such as Indonesia and the Philippines.

Second, the adverse reputational impact of the Kabul exodus on the US will be serious but not necessarily straightforward.

The attack on Congress on 6 January confirmed the monstrosity of the Donald Trump tribe and the depth of the malady within the American polity—demonstrating the paucity of America’s power of example.

The fall of Kabul is of a different order. For most of us, it did not drag down the qualities of American society. But like the fall of Saigon—and to a lesser extent the Tehran hostage crisis—it has raised questions about American strategic sagacity and national competence.

These questions will be telling as the US seeks to maintain its influence in West Asia and counter Chinese pressures in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in the competitive crossroads of Southeast Asia.

It would, however, be a mistake for Australia and its neighbours to interpret severe strategic setbacks and current reputational damage to the US as automatically leading to its longer term strategic degeneration. That could happen, but need not.

For example, the 1970s were a bad decade for America. Yet the following 10 years saw the diminution and then the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the growth of a workable, if unglamourous, system of Asia–Pacific regional architecture.

Times change. China is a more formidable rival than the Soviet Union, and America has spent much of its wealth. But even major geopolitical errors do not always spell out the future of empires.

Third, Australia’s response to the fall of Kabul deserves special mention.

None of the Western allies deserve credit for their management of a limited evacuation of their citizens and Afghan employees from Kabul. The difference in performance between Australia and most of its allies is that the latter tried a great deal harder.

Western governments have been on notice since April of the dangers of the precipitate collapse of major Afghan cities. Some, like the British and Canadians, tried to do something about it. We could all remember Saigon. Australia dragged its heels taking refuge in the arcane pettifoggery of a Dickens novel—ignoring the views of those who understood what was happening on the ground.

In demonstrating this attitude, just as Australia showed a disinclination to bring Australians back from India and Indonesia during crucial periods of their Covid-19 crises, we showed scant generosity of spirit. The latter is not always a central element of statecraft. But it can become so when we are seeking to suggest—even in these unhappy times—that our global approaches deserve respect.

In recent months we have lost our capacity to argue from the high ground. Sadly, we are no longer a leader, but have become something paltry and second rate.

ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI’s work since its creation in August 2001.

Australia can no longer take refuge in the barriers of time and distance as a defence against the pestilence without. It is clear that geographical notions of security and national stability defined in terms of territorial sovereignty and integrity are not the only relevant factors in today’s environment. Not only has the transnational spread of infectious disease transformed our view of national security by producing threats without visible enemies, but it has also rendered the ‘national’ insignificant and replaced it with the ‘international.’

Peter Curson, Invisible enemies, 2005

At the start of the 21st century, terrorism redefined Australia’s threat calculus.

Canberra’s response remade the national security community, even as the terms of the terrorist threat evolved.

Terrorism merged with the cyber world. Violent political extremism eventually became as much of a danger as militant jihadism.

Then, in 2020, the pandemic redid the threat calculus again. Australia experienced the expanded notion of security as old warnings about disease arrived as fact. The pandemic became the threat confronting every Australian.

In the 2020 Counterterrorism yearbook, Isaac Kfir and John Coyne identified three themes:

• Salafi-jihadi terrorist activities had continued a decline that was noticeable from 2015: ‘The decline is very much linked to the demise of ISIL and the fact that al-Qaeda has changed its strategy.’
• Dealing with returning foreign fighters and those convicted of terrorism offences coming to the end of their prison sentences: ‘[T]here’s a drastic need for the international community to adopt a united, cohesive approach to tackle not only foreign fighters but their dependants.’
• The role of technology, especially social media, in the evolution of violent extremism: ‘[W]e’re likely to see more cyberterrorism and … extremist groups are likely to continue to use the internet to promote their intolerant views, placing an enormous strain on states that must balance the right to free speech with security.’

The yearbook’s fifth edition in 2021 stressed the continuing development of terrorism as well as the evolution of ideas about resilience, the multiplying roles of technology, and the threat of the new far right. Leanne Close judged: ‘Terrorist ideology now attracts larger, more diverse sections of our societies because propaganda and online rhetoric are increasingly sophisticated, making the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation harder to contain.’

ASPI produced three books on the coronavirus in 2020, each with the general title ‘After Covid-19’; volume 1 in May was subtitled ‘Australia and the world rebuild’, volume 2 in September was ‘Australia, the region and multilateralism’ and volume 3 in December was ‘Voices from federal parliament’.

In the foreword to the first volume, Governor-General David Hurley wrote:

‘The way forward’ is a topic occupying the minds of many Australians at the moment. When I think about Australia in 12 months and five years’ time in the context of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, I frame my thoughts in the simple, post-operation review process that I was taught in the ADF: to achieve our agreed outcome, what must be sustained and what must be improved? In our current situation, therefore, what policies, programs and actions must be sustained and in what areas must we improve?

The editors of volume 1, Coyne and Peter Jennings, said that in the years leading up to the global crisis, Australia, like many countries, failed to heed health specialists’ warnings. Critical pandemic readiness was an insurance policy deemed too expensive by most nations:

The pandemic has shown that far too much of our national resilience, from broadband bandwidth to the capacity to produce basic medical supplies, has been left to market forces and good luck rather than planning. While the global Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, it’s clear that the crisis has brought about seismic social, economic and geopolitical changes to our world.

The editors of volume 2, Michael Shoebridge and Lisa Sharland, said Australia needed to think big:

Simply accelerating or continuing current policies and engagement won’t produce the results we want. Waiting for others to define a post-Covid-19 agenda for us, whether that’s the UN, Washington, Delhi, Tokyo or Brussels, just won’t work, because everyone is groping about in search of solutions.

Notably, in several areas, Australians have done at least as much thinking about this as anyone else on the planet. It turns out that we aren’t bad at navigating concurrent crises and making decisions that attract domestic and international support. Australia’s policy and influence can help lead debates and decisions, just as we have in China policy and in technology policy, notably with 5G and countering foreign interference.

This volume of articles shows us that Australia is entering a more disorderly, poorer world where there’s a real risk of nations and peoples turning inward and hoping that big problems—such as intense China–US struggles over strategic, economic and technological power—will go away without anyone having to make hard choices; that, if we just wait, we can get back to business as usual. That won’t work. The risk of military conflict between the world’s two big powers, involving US allies such as Australia and Japan, will be greater in coming months and years than at most times since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Volume 3 asked Australia’s federal parliamentarians to consider the world after the crisis and discuss ‘policy and solutions that could drive Australian prosperity through one of the most difficult periods in living memory’. That drew responses from 49 MPs and senators.

One key theme was concern about supply chains, focusing on both security and prosperity. Australia could play a substantial role as a stable and predictable source of exports, including agricultural products, critical minerals and rare earths, and as a provider of high-quality education.

The global outlook was dominated by China, and four contributions focused on how to respond to Beijing during and after the crisis.

The editors, Genevieve Feely and Jennings, concluded:

How Australia assures its prosperity and security after the pandemic is a central concern for our parliamentarians. Different contributors offered alternative models for society, such as using wellbeing as a metric instead of economic output or emphasising improving the climate in the recovery phase of the crisis.

Whatever the topic, our MPs clearly have an intuition that there’s an opportunity for change and that the opportunity needs to be seized to improve Australia’s security and prosperity. It’s obvious that there are strongly divergent views on policy choices here, but a common uniting theme is the need to ensure that Australia learns lessons from the pandemic experience.

In thinking about the pandemic, ASPI could call up one of its early papers—Invisible enemies: infectious disease and national security in Australia—on the threat of emerging pandemics and the need to reassess preparedness for a major outbreak of infectious disease.

In 2005, Peter Curson wrote that approximately 40 newly emerged infections had been identified around the world over the previous 30 years, including AIDS, legionnaire’s disease, mad cow disease, SARS and bird flu.

Traditionally, national security had been defined by the dynamics of international relations, the defence of national territory, the protection of citizens from external threats, and the state’s survival. Rarely, Curson wrote, had infectious disease played an integral part in the ‘high politics’ of states.

Curson’s proposition in 2005 became the experience that Australia and the world grappled with in 2020, when infectious disease threatened national security.

The health of Australia’s population was a critical resource vital to the stability of the nation. Disease would threaten ‘not only the livelihood and way of life of individuals, but also … the stability and viability of the state’.

Curson went on to discuss how people handle fear in their lives, the problems of ‘panic, avoidance, scapegoating, rumour-mongering, violence and other personal adjustment strategies’, and how the media would report pandemics, playing to the ‘desire to sensationalise, to exaggerate, and play on people’s emotions’.

The re-emergence of infectious disease had become a top-order security issue, no longer the sole preserve of the physician or public health specialist, as Curson had forecast:

Transnational health threats involve every aspect of modern life, including food safety, human rights, organ transplants, travel, commerce and trade, education and environmental law. HIV/AIDS illustrates the extreme challenges faced by countries and their citizens when faced by a virulent infection that affects a large proportion of the population and for which no specific cure or treatment exists. There are many lessons and challenges for Australia here, but the underlying message is that infectious disease needs to be near the top of the national security agenda.

The Indian Ocean is an increasingly contested strategic environment. A growing Chinese naval presence raises the prospect that Beijing may seek to challenge US naval dominance, potentially sparking a competitive naval arms race in the region. This would be of huge concern to Australia, forcing us to divert limited defence resources from other priority areas in the Indo-Pacific. Australia and its partners need to consider how to best leverage their strategic advantages to deter or limit China’s naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean.

One of the biggest advantages of Australia and its Indian Ocean partners, and one of China’s biggest vulnerabilities, is in maritime domain awareness. The ability of even large vessels to effectively disappear in the vastness of the Indian Ocean puts maritime domain awareness at a premium. If you can find a naval adversary and they can’t find your ships, the odds are definitely in your favour.

The Chinese navy already has significant disadvantages in the Indian Ocean, operating with limited logistical support far from home ports that are accessible only by transiting the narrow straits through Southeast Asia, where they can be easily located and tracked. China also lacks a comprehensive maritime picture of even significant parts of the Indian Ocean (although it is working to plug that gap, including through the use of satellites and other new technologies).

Individually, Australia and partners such as the United States, India and France already have significant capabilities, including maritime patrol aircraft and uncrewed aerial vehicles, and facilities that, if combined in a collaborative network, would allow comprehensive maritime surveillance of much of the Indian Ocean. The level of maritime domain awareness that could be achieved through such a network would make any Chinese naval presence highly vulnerable in a conflict.

Such a collaborative network would require information sharing, as well as collaboration in use of facilities to support maritime air surveillance. Crucially, adequate surveillance coverage of the Indian Ocean by maritime patrol aircraft would depend on access to air staging points and facilities across the region.

The US and its allies already have arrangements to provide access and logistical support in each other’s facilities, including the US bases at Diego Garcia and in the Persian Gulf. But India, with its growing fleet of Boeing P-8I maritime patrol aircraft and staging points around the region, is an essential partner in building a comprehensive regional network.

Over the past several years, India has reached mutual logistics support agreements with the US and France. The signing of an Australia–India Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement in 2020 represented a big step in building a web of agreements, opening the possibility of mutual use of facilities throughout the region. But the Australia–India piece is yet to be put into practice.

India undertakes surveillance of much of the northern Indian Ocean with P-8Is based at INS Rajali, near Chennai, and INS Hansa in Goa, as well as airfields in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Indian P-8s are increasingly also using facilities of regional partners such as Seychelles, Mauritius and French Reunion in the western Indian Ocean. It is anticipated that Indian P-8s will soon also be able to operate from the new Indian-built airfield on Mauritius’s Agalega island near the northern end of the Mozambique Channel.

Australia has its own strengths in the eastern Indian Ocean. Since at least the 1980s, the Royal Australian Air Force has undertaken aerial surveillance of the country’s northwest approaches and the Malacca Strait/Bay of Bengal as part of Operation Gateway.

The RAAF’s use of P-8A maritime patrol aircraft now provides an opportunity for collaboration with India in sharing of facilities and logistics across the region. Both countries are becoming more confident working together following Exercise AUSINDEX 2019, which saw RAAF and Indian Navy P-8s cooperating in anti-submarine warfare exercises in the Bay of Bengal, as well as the Quad exercises off Guam earlier this year.

Australia has several facilities in the eastern Indian Ocean that could substantially extend the range of India’s operations. There is an existing offer by Australia for Indian P-8s to use Australian facilities at Darwin and potentially also the Learmonth and Curtin air bases in Western Australia. There has been discussion of potential Indian use of the airfield on Australia’s Cocos Island, and an agreement was reached in February for India to place a temporary satellite tracking station there. But until the runway on Cocos is strengthened and widened (currently scheduled for 2023), it won’t be suitable for P-8 operations.

If Indian Navy operations from Australian facilities were normalised, there might also be opportunities for the RAAF to extend the area of cooperation throughout the Bay of Bengal and further afield into the western Indian Ocean. In particular, the ability for the RAAF to stage out of Indian bases in Tamil Nadu and/or Goa would help extend Australia’s reach in the central and western Indian Ocean. US Navy P-8s have already conducted operations from these Indian bases, providing opportunities for combined cooperation among the three countries.

Port Blair in India’s Andaman Islands is another potential staging point. Foreign militaries in the past were rarely given approval to use those facilities, but in October 2020 a US Navy P-8 aircraft was permitted to refuel in Port Blair for the first time. While the facility could deliver additional operational flexibility for Australian P-8s, given Australia’s access to Butterworth in Malaysia, the use of facilities on the Indian mainland would be more advantageous.

All these facilities could be considered as part of a new network of air staging points and facilities around the Indian Ocean potentially available to Australia, India, the US and other partners. This would support a collaborative maritime surveillance system that, potentially, could help deter a damaging naval arms race in the region.