Australia has closed its Afghanistan embassy before its military involvement ends as part of the United States–Taliban peace deal for the withdrawal of all foreign troops by 11 September 2021.

While that’s not unexpected, Australia is the first country in the Western alliance to end its on-ground representation and it has set the scene for other US allies, especially smaller ones, to do the same. This runs contrary to the assurances given to Kabul by Washington and its allies that their support will continue after troops withdraw.

Canberra’s actions, although with a caveat that it may reopen its embassy in the future, make sense when its own position is considered. It could not guarantee the security of the embassy which was not protected by Australian troops but by a security firm at a very high cost. Australia will now have non-residential representation through one of its embassies in the region.

The closure of Australia’s Afghanistan venture raises questions about its goal and effectiveness from the start. Was it to support its United States ally in fighting such terrorist groups as al-Qaeda and its Taliban harbourers, who facilitated the 9/11 attacks on the US? Or was it to help the people of Afghanistan rebuild their lives and their country?

It was probably a bit of both, but with emphasis on the anti-terrorism aspect as the main official justification. Australia’s diplomatic mission was there primarily to help Afghanistan with its reconstruction and to observe and report on the country’s changing circumstances while liaising with the Kabul government and other missions.

However, Australian troops were there to fight the Taliban and their affiliates as part of a wider US-led mission. Their task was to contribute to processes of stabilisation and securitisation that were essential for Australia to carry out its non-military activities in Afghanistan.

In general, Australia’s diplomatic and military operations made a positive contribution, especially to the reconstruction and security of the province of Uruzgan, albeit at high human and financial costs, which have now proven to have brought short-term gains. Australia lost 41 soldiers, with 260 injured, some crippled for life. Many among the 35,000 Australian troops who rotated through Afghanistan have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, causing dozens to commit suicide over the years. The financial cost came to around $10 billion.

Yet, most of the good work that Australian diggers and aid workers performed in Uruzgan is now in ruins, as the Taliban have regained control over much of the province.

The closure of the embassy ahead of total military withdrawal releases Australia from a very costly and unwinnable war. Yet, being the first country to disentangle itself from Afghanistan, basically cutting and running, is not a very good look.

And the closure is bound to hamper the investigation of the circumstances surrounding 39 Afghan civilians alleged to have been killed by Australian special forces and the justice that needs to be delivered in this respect. The initial justification of fighting terrorism rings hollow.

The Taliban, who have become peace partners of the Americans and their allies, have not severed their close relations with al-Qaeda. That’s been confirmed by Western intelligence services and the United Nations. The two groups are now well placed to play a critical role in determining the future of Afghanistan.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has said that it will be able to combat any terrorist actions out of Afghanistan from bases in the region. But this will not be as effective as having forces on the ground to conduct counterterrorist operations. For their part, the Taliban have warned Afghanistan’s neighbouring states against allowing the US to have bases on their soil for such a purpose.

A better option would have been for Australia to keep even one mid-level diplomat who could operate from the US embassy, which will be protected by a residual American force. This would have been at least symbolically pertinent to its on-going commitment to the people of Afghanistan.

It is now time for Canberra to take stock of Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan and to question whether it pursued the right strategy—and if it ever had an appropriate end game. Its participation in the conflict demonstrates that following the US into every war without a strategic necessity of its own to Australia can be futile.

As the regional strategic situation becomes more dangerous, and with threats likely to escalate rapidly, Australia needs to appoint a senior intelligence officer to assess daily the possibility of a surprise attack.

The warning is contained in a new report for ASPI by two of Australia’s most highly respected military thinkers, Paul Dibb and Richard Brabin-Smith, both former senior Defence officials now with the Australian National University.

In Deterrence through denial: A strategy for an era of reduced warning time, Dibb and Brabin-Smith say that in view of the radical contraction in warning time ahead of a conflict from the long assumed 10 years, Australia needs to appoint a national intelligence officer (NIO) for warning.

Possible threats extend from coercion and ‘grey zone’ unconventional attacks with little or no warning through to sustained high-intensity military conflict testing Australia’s sovereignty and security.

Dibb and Brabin-Smith say there may little or no warning of cyberattacks able to disable key elements of society, such as the internet, electricity generation, water supply, air transport and the financial sector. ‘Those are examples of so-called grey-zone threats in which it might be difficult to declare whether we were under deliberate attack or not—and, if so, from which state or non-state entity.’

During the Cold War, when 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, an NIO and a national intelligence warning staff, could be located in the Office of National Intelligence or the Defence organisation. The team should include officials from various disciplines including intelligence officers skilled in the interpretation of political, strategic and military warning indicators, and some should have policy backgrounds.

This officer would need access at the highest levels of decision-making—including briefing cabinet’s national security committee in times of impending crisis.

Dibb and Brabin-Smith say Defence also needs to establish a directorate of net assessments to rigorously test conflict contingencies and the capabilities of ‘blue’ (Australian) and ‘red’ (adversary) forces with particular emphasis on Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

The challenges of short- and medium-term contingencies would be formidable, the authors say, with round-the-clock operations needing to be sustained over months rather than days and resulting in increased demands on fuel supplies, aircrew, munitions and maintenance spares.

‘Ministers need to be left in no doubt about the risks relating to the ADF’s ability to move quickly to higher states of readiness and then to sustain operations, including with respect to timely resupply from the US, potentially at a time when US forces would also be operating at a higher tempo.’

Given the likely maritime nature of those contingencies, priority needs to be given to investing in increased preparedness for the navy and the air force.

The authors say Taiwan requires separate assessment because of the increased military pressure with which China is now threatening it and the raised prospects of conflict with the US.

It’s not credible for Australia to imagine that a military crisis involving China and the US won’t occur in the Taiwan Strait, say Dibb and Brabin-Smith. Nor is it credible for Canberra to believe that Australia can get away without fighting alongside its US ally.

They warn that the prospect of a military emergency in the South China Sea involving Australian warships needs to be seriously analysed with a clear understanding of the risk.

‘While it’s unlikely that China would directly attack our continent, we must prepare for credible contingencies involving Chinese military coercion in our immediate strategic space.

‘That coercion could involve the threatened use of military force, including from future Chinese military bases located to our north and east. Ignoring such probabilities risks strategic surprise involving our key national security interests.’

The directorate of net assessments will need to simulate high-level political and policy decision-making with a real time sense of urgency rather than playing theoretical war games. It must involve a wide range of talent and skills—civilian and military—across all domains of conflict.

Since 1973, such an office at the Pentagon has provided long-term comparative assessments of trends, key competitors, risks, opportunities and future prospects of American military capability to the US government, military commanders and intelligence agencies.

Dibb and Brabin-Smith strongly support the intention in Australia’s 2020 force structure plan to equip the ADF with long-range strike missiles, including anti-ship, air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missiles. ‘We now need to think in terms of missiles with strike ranges in thousands, as distinct from only hundreds, of kilometres.’

These can provide a decisive deterrence edge in the coming decades. ‘We note here that the ADF no longer has F-111 long-range strike bombers and that the new Attack-class submarines won’t be available until well into the 2030s.’

The 2020 defence strategic update says the introduction of additional, longer range strike systems, along with cyber capabilities and area-denial systems, will be critical to the ADF delivering a credible deterrent.

The intention is to be able to hold potential adversaries’ forces and infrastructure at risk from a greater distance to make them consider the likely cost of threatening Australian interests.

Dibb and Brabin-Smith say highly accurate, long-range missiles will provide ‘deterrence through denial’ and lessen Australia’s dependence on warning time.

Acquiring that deterrent capability must now assume the highest priority in the government’s defence planning, they say.

There needs to be an increase in weapons inventory across the ADF to ensure that stockholdings and resupply arrangements can sustain combat operations—including in high-intensity conflict—if global supply chains are at risk or disrupted. A sovereign guided-weapons manufacturing capability would underpin this deterrence.

‘Any credible future enemy operating directly against us will have highly vulnerable lines of logistics support back to its home base in North Asia. Therefore, having the capability to destroy an adversary’s forces and infrastructure directly threatening us would greatly enhance our deterrence posture. Solid deterrence provides a hedge against surprise, raises the costs to an adversary of acting against Australian interests and, if sufficient, makes an enemy’s attack irrational.’

Dibb and Brabin-Smith weigh the concepts of ‘deterrence through punishment’, which is attacking the adversary’s territory, and ‘deterrence through denial’, which is limited to attacking the adversary’s forces and associated infrastructure directly threatening Australia.

‘The bottom line for defence policy is that, as confidence in deterrence by denial goes up, our dependence on early response to warnings should go down.’

They say the idea of Australia being able to inflict unacceptable punishment on a big power such as China is ridiculous.

The great disparity in military power is reflected in Australia’s cautious approach to freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea.

‘If, nevertheless, Australia were to decide to position itself to be able to make such contributions, it would need to accept that close-proximity freedom of navigation operations could risk the loss of one of our warships and significant casualties.’

In 2013, the architect of Russia’s hybrid warfare, chief of the general staff General Valery Gerasimov, declared a new warfare doctrine in which conventional war between armies would be a thing of the past.

Instead, he called for ‘long-distance, countless actions against the enemy … Informational actions, devices and means … with the information space opening wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy’, and said a perfectly thriving state would sink into a chaos under such an attack.

Dibb and Brabin-Smith say drones and artificial intelligence can be added to Gerasimov’s list as weapons making it difficult to define who the enemy is.

‘So, we must now factor in a new definition of defence warning that has to embrace not only the traditional use of force but grey-zone activities in which the precise moment of attack might be difficult to detect. This calls for a radically new approach to warning and the sorts of intelligence indicators that may—or may not—confirm that we’re under an enemy attack.’

Dibb and Brabin-Smith make a sobering observation about Australia’s reliance on the US.

Traditionally, they say, governments make few intelligence assessments about their allies and it’s been considered improper for Australian agencies to assess the strengths and vulnerabilities of the US.

That has changed.

‘It would be irresponsible, given the recent domestic turmoil and unpredictability in Washington, not to undertake a well-informed analysis of where we think the US is going in its confrontation with China and Washington’s support of allies, including the role of extended nuclear deterrence,’ say the authors.

‘We need to accept in our strategic thinking that America is now a more inward-looking country that will foreseeably give more attention to its domestic social and political challenges. It also needs to be remembered that the US has—from time to time–undergone severe bouts of isolationism. We don’t think that’s likely to happen under the Biden administration, but it could recur under a differently motivated presidency.

‘We need prudent analysis about how the US will react to its own warning indicators of potential military attack and what it would expect of Australia. In our own broader region, we can’t afford not to be fully informed about US contingencies in Taiwan or the Korean Peninsula, so we need to assess US military capabilities as well as Washington’s intentions.’

For even the most casual of observers, it’s clear that over the past decade the global strategic security environment has become increasingly complex. With a rising and increasingly assertive China, a resurgent Russia and a growing number of capable and unpredictable non-state actors, the US finds itself relying on its allies more than ever. This is particularly the case in the Indo-Pacific, where the US is trying to nurture greater cooperation with partners and allies. The good news here is that while long-time ally Australia isn’t writing blank cheques, it’s both willing and able to work with the US, where the two countries’ mutual interests align.

The geographic location of northern Australia is of significant strategic interest to the US, as the sea lines of communication are open to the broader Indo-Pacific in multiple directions. And there’s space for investment in adequate infrastructure for future expansion. The US and Australian defence strategies and policies are aligned in the Indo-Pacific and the national interests of each country are easier to navigate when our like-minded democracies cooperate.

The US should continue defence cooperation to leverage Australia’s strategic geography and modern defence capabilities to counter the recent corrosive and aggressive actions of China in the Indo-Pacific. This is why, today, ASPI is releasing its latest Strategic Insight, Stronger together: US force posture in Australia’s north—a US perspective of Australia’s strategic geography.

The new report argues why, and analyses how, Australia’s defence force capabilities and strategic geography can enable US force posture initiatives in the Indo-Pacific and promote greater regional cooperation in ways that advance US and Australian national interests.

There are several practical and tangible areas for US–Australia cooperation and growth, which include: expanding the Australian defence industrial base while securing and hardening supply chains; increasing US Army force posture in northern Australia; increasing multinational training opportunities; and, in conjunction with Australia, expanding the defence partnership with Indonesia. These actions should be explored to counter the growing influence of the Chinese state, as part of a broader national strategy.

The report’s first recommendation is that Australia should contribute to the US force posture initiatives with an expansion of its defence industrial base through a US–Australian joint venture to manufacture critical ammunition in Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison voiced support for a similar initiative when he stated the Australian government will ‘accelerate the creation of a $1 billion Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise, boosting skilled jobs and helping secure Australia’s sovereign defence capabilities’. Investment in the defence industry is part of Australia’s $270 billion, 10-year investment plan outlined in its recently published force structure plan.

An increase to US force posture in northern Australia would be in the strategic interest of both nations. Any force increase in US Army Pacific forces in northern Australia could be rotational, with the capability for rapid expansion during a crisis, to a semipermanent presence if conditions warrant. Such an increase would act as a strong grey-zone deterrent to China during a time when Australia has been subject to economic coercion from Beijing, apparently for Australian decisions made in its national interest over recent years. Australia can enable US Indo-Pacific Command’s force posture initiatives by allowing additional US Army pre-positioned stocks to be stationed in northern Australia, complementing the already planned US strategic fuel storage projects. This kind of investment will also mean more jobs and increased foreign investment for Australia.

A third area in which Australia could contribute to the US force posture initiatives is by offering an expansion of multinational training opportunities for additional US forces and those of other like-minded democracies, such as Quad members Japan and India. An increase in multinational training opportunities that compliment Marine Rotational Force – Darwin seems feasible given the $747 million recently announced as investment in training facilities in the Northern Territory. Through its strategic geography and economic leverage, Australia can be an important part of the connective tissue required to bring Quad members closer together.

The final area of cooperation is the expansion of the strong defence partnership between Australia and Indonesia, a relationship that’s important to the US and the region. A 2018 study from Australia’s Lowy Institute make the case for a recalibration of the Australian Defence Force’s defence cooperation program, with a focus on increased maritime security operations and defence industrial collaboration. Through expanded defence cooperation, Australia will build greater trust with Indonesia, which, together with the changing strategic environment in the region, could encourage Jakarta to re-evaluate its own defence policy.

The US now relies on increased cooperation from partners and allies to regain the initiative from China in the Indo-Pacific. Australia’s defence strategy and policies are better aligned to US defence strategy and policies today than ever before. Military modernisation alone will not effectively expand the competitive space and disrupt China’s grey-zone activities.

Australia can and should use its strategic geography and defence capabilities to enable US force posture initiatives to promote greater regional cooperation and, through greater deterrent posture and capability, reduce the risks of conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

Australia has a highly capable, professional military equipped with small numbers of very complex, extremely expensive aircraft, ships, submarines and land vehicles. Australia could fight other middle powers and win, but Australia should only ever plan to be in a major conflict against a great power if we are in very good company.

The idea that Australia should have a military able to fight alone against China is deeply flawed. Fortunately, the prospects of a neatly bilateral conflict between China and Australia are remote. Australia deciding to fight alone would be an outstandingly stupid act of unilateral disarmament that discounted the value of powerful partners, notably the United States.

While our military has an impressive force, it has large vulnerabilities in being able to sustain itself in combat. It’s been slow to take up the power that comes from low-cost, semi-autonomous systems like armed drones and unmanned systems such as sensors, whether they’re in the air, under the sea or on the ground. And Australia is not taking advantage of our ‘strategic geography’ to support how our military and partner militaries can operate in times of conflict.

Addressing these gaps in a way that fits with the urgency of our darkening security environment is the best contribution Australia can make to deterring conflict in our near region and in the wider Indo-Pacific—and to being prepared if that deterrence fails.

To do this, big changes are needed in how all the ‘consumables’ of conflict are supplied. That’s highlighted in the case of advanced missiles, which Australia has only in small numbers that would be consumed rapidly. And we rely on lengthy global supply chains for resupply. Having the best missiles in your military’s ‘order of battle’ doesn’t matter if you run out of them days or weeks into a war.

Our military’s expensive manned ships, aircraft, submarines and army vehicles are also vulnerable to the new kinds of weapons that other militaries—including China’s—have in numbers and which we have so far been slow to adopt.

This is about missiles, but also the new and lethal semi-autonomous and autonomous systems that are the force multipliers for modern militaries. The Azerbaijanis used cheap but lethal armed drones to destroy Armenian tanks last year. The Iranians used them to put one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil refineries out of business in 2019.

In the era of low-cost lethality, our defence organisation is taking the same approach to unmanned systems and missiles that it has to manned systems such as naval ships in past decades: buying small numbers of elaborate, very expensive systems that are hard to get, slow to replace and not made here.

As examples: Defence is buying 12 armed MQ-9B Sky Guardian drones, based on the Predator used against terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, for around $2 billion, and four large MQ-4C Triton long-range maritime surveillance drones for $1.8–2.7 billion, and both are made offshore.

This has to change. Defence needs ‘consumable’ weapons that are able to be used, lost and replaced in large numbers during conflict if the Australian government is not going to get some very nasty surprises in a future war. That could include the loss in combat of air warfare destroyers, F-35 joint strike fighters and tanks—together with the men and women operating them. Losing one destroyer’s 180 crew in combat would be 4.5 times the casualties the Australian Defence Force suffered in the entire Afghanistan conflict.

Such sobering possible combat losses are because potential adversaries have understood the implications of advanced missiles and drones operating with their militaries’ planes, ships and submarines—and they’ve gone beyond small-scale experimentation to supplying their militaries in high volumes.

Avoiding such tragic losses will take a radical reordering of thinking for a Defence organisation that’s operated with a peacetime mindset, where ‘attrition’ is about training accidents and equipment wearing out, not brutal contact with another powerful military, where small stocks of missiles are lovingly tended and used very sparingly in training.

Discretionary missions by highly specialised forces with overwhelming technological advantage like those in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t Australia’s likely future.

There are some limited but refreshing indicators of change that Defence Minister Peter Dutton can welcome and expand. Rapid development of the ‘loyal wingman’ drone to operate with the F-35 is one. So is Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s plan to manufacture in Australia at least some of the $100 billion in advanced missiles Australia’s military will buy over the next 20 years.

Buying Boeing’s large unmanned Orca submarine now would add to Australia’s undersea capability well before the launch of the first Attack-class submarine in the mid-2030s. This would add significantly to the Collins submarines’ combat power. Four Orcas would come at a fraction of a manned submarine’s cost and be in the water more than 10 years sooner.

Some of these ideas are in the government’s 2020 force structure plan, but on timelines that stretch into or even begin in the 2030s. The shift needs to happen faster and in a much bigger way to give our military considerably more firepower, and for it to be able to survive in a conflict lasting months, maybe years—not days or weeks.

That would give Australia a military force able to exert control of our territory and our near region, most logically working with partners across Southeast Asia, PNG and the South Pacific.

For this additional combat power to be effective in deterring conflict and keeping our near region strategically benign, though, Australia also needs ‘places and bases’ domestically and in our near region that our military can operate from.

Domestically, all roads lead to Darwin as an essential piece of strategic geography to be able to operate naval and air forces from. There’s focus now on how to end the lease of the Chinese port operator, but the bigger picture should be Australia investing in a major expansion of the Darwin port for the purpose of multinational naval operations in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

That fits with the US ‘global posture review’, which is looking to disperse its forces in places other than Guam, Japan and South Korea to make them more survivable in conflict with China. Our Quad partners would welcome this Australian move, which is likely to make more sense over coming years.

In our near region, if our military is going to be able to project power and deter growing Chinese presence, then the Pacific step-up needs a rethink. Right now, its defence aspect is almost a public relations campaign to make the South Pacific less likely to welcome rising Chinese military presence and access at ports, airfields and other infrastructure.

Given the darkening strategic environment, that’s not enough.

Australia needs to take advantage of our near region’s strategic geography, not just seek to deny that advantage to others. One example would be a bigger Manus Island base than planned, with Australian naval vessels based there working with Papua New Guinea’s patrol boats.

That starts with confronting but frank discussions about the emerging security environment with our Pacific island partners, making the case that enabling joint operations and activities with Australia helps bring stability, and is fundamental to regional security.

For those thinking this plan makes Australia so secure we don’t need our alliance with the US, that’s a mistake. Although the US gets considerable value from Australia as an ally, Australia gains much more from the US.

Access to US technology and intelligence, combined with our own research, intelligence and industry capabilities, gives Australia a far more powerful military than we could achieve otherwise. That’s leaving aside the likely enormous advantages through cooperation with the US in emerging areas like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, hypersonics, space and offensive cyber systems.

But can we rely on the US in the world we see emerging? The public debate on this neglects the fact that US strategy recognises its own deep need to act with allies and partners to meet the China challenge.

That judgement has been driven home by the experiences of the Trump administration, which experimented with unilateralism. President Joe Biden’s administration learned the lesson from those four years. But it’s also understood in Congress, the State Department, think-tanks and in the giant US defence organisation.

The development and use of Chinese power under an assertive Xi Jinping will reinforce this strategic understanding.

Australia invests in its own security. That means we’re not just a customer of US security but a contributor to American and global security. Closing some urgent gaps and vulnerabilities in our defence capabilities will make Australia and the world safer, and help deter future conflict.

Last year’s war between Azerbaijan and Armenia was short, sharp and decisive. By effectively employing precision guided weapons, the former rapidly forced the latter to capitulate and accede to its political demands. The conflict confirmed the centrality of guided weapons to modern warfighting and showed how small states can now master the technologies and techniques needed to use them.

Last year also witnessed the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the supply-chain crisis it triggered. That provoked much soul-searching from governments and companies about how to manage the risks presented by modern just-in-time supply chains that span the globe.

When we take those two events together, it’s clear that the Australian Defence Force will not only need many kinds of guided weapons across the spectrum of conflict, but also need to guarantee their availability in times of crisis when supply chains will be under pressure and threat. That will be difficult, since Australia currently manufactures virtually no guided weapons.

The Australian government is also aware of both needs. Its 2020 defence strategic update plans on investing tens of billions of dollars in guided weapons over the next two decades. It also directs the Defence Department to explore the potential for new sovereign guided-weapons production capability to mitigate supply risks. It appears that exploration has determined that the potential can be turned into reality: on 31 March, the government announced that it was ‘accelerating’ the development of a sovereign guided-weapons manufacturing capability.

In a new ASPI report, launched today, I examine two fundamental questions. First, would the manufacture of guided weapons in Australia enhance ADF capability and provide greater self-reliance? Second, is it viable to manufacture guided weapons in Australia? The answer to both questions is ‘yes’. The report also presents some key considerations about how the industry should be established.

No single measure is a panacea for supply-chain risks, but domestic guided-weapons production, combined with greater stockpiling and cooperative development and production arrangements, would greatly reduce those risks.

Australia has the industrial capability to produce guided weapons here. In fact, we have a long and successful living history of doing just that. We can also draw upon ‘missile-adjacent’ sectors such as space and autonomous systems as well as leverage the power of the fourth industrial revolution to accelerate the design and manufacture of weapons. We can also leverage our alliance with the US to establish production lines for US weapons here, to the benefit of both partners.

A multibillion-dollar investment in the local manufacture of guided weapons is also consistent with broader government policy; for example, it supports the government’s modern manufacturing initiative, which is a key element in the effort to wean the Australian economy away from a dangerous over-reliance on the export of commodities and build on some other national strengths.

The government has announced that it’s establishing a guided-weapons ‘enterprise’, although it has released few details. What should that enterprise look like? To maximise the prospects for success, Defence needs to adopt a programmatic approach to its selection of guided weapons and actively manage the ‘missile matrix’. That is, rather than allowing the number of types of weapons that it uses multiply by letting individual projects choose different weapons for different platforms, it needs to make decisions that take all relevant factors into account and choose weapons or families of weapons that will be used across multiple platforms.

That approach will have many benefits. Acquiring more weapons of fewer types will increase the economies of scale of local production. It will also help to contain the overheads of ownership, such as sustainment costs, the logistics chain and integration costs.

A programmatic approach will necessarily involve ‘backing winners’ up front. While some may have concerns about the potential loss of commercial leverage, Defence is already using such an approach with success, for example in the navy’s combat management system, for which the government has decided that all classes of ships must use Saab’s combat system. This will involve seeing industry as long-term partners, rather than simply as suppliers—but that’s already a fundamental tenet of the government’s defence industry policy. Moreover, losing commercial leverage is a manageable issue, as Defence would be a more powerful, larger customer if it procured missiles using domestic co-production and the ‘family of weapons’ approach I outline in the report. And reduced commercial leverage is a different order of risk compared to losing a conflict owing to a lack of missile supplies.

A national guided-weapons enterprise could adopt many of the measures in Australia’s naval shipbuilding plan, including enhanced funding for research and development, support for the establishment of precincts for the design and production of guided weapons, and coordinated training and education programs to develop the workforce. Making guided weapons one of Defence’s ‘sovereign industrial capability priorities’, supported by an implementation plan, also makes sense as part of this broader plan.

But we can’t wait until the perfect plan is developed. The urgency of our strategic circumstances means we need to start now. There are many mature weapons that the ADF is already using or has decided to buy that we can start producing here now with minimal risk. But the government should also make some ‘big bets’, investing in the development of technologies such as hypersonic weapons that can be put into production here once mature, rather than waiting to see that maturity demonstrated elsewhere and then trying to retrofit Australia with a production capacity for these powerful new weapons.

The government has established a national enterprise to build ships, submarines and armoured vehicles in Australia, but, without guided weapons, those platforms will have limited utility. Put simply: a small number of military platforms without a large supply of advanced missiles is a force fitted for but not with combat power. The government’s decision to establish a guided-weapons enterprise, if implemented well, will be a key step in providing the ADF’s platforms with the advanced missiles in the types and quantities they need to deliver lethal and survivable capability.