Tag Archive for: Defence

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Tag Archive for: Defence

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Tag Archive for: Defence

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Tag Archive for: Defence

The defence strategic review: a revolution in Australian defence planning?

Public discussion of the defence strategic review (DSR) has focused on the announced changes to major capability programs. On that score, the statement by Defence Minister Richard Marles that the DSR is ‘the most ambitious review of Defence’s posture and structure since the Second World War’ is hard to reconcile with its recommendations, as there were few specific changes beyond those to Army which had been long expected. A few short paragraphs on the way that Australia should fundamentally change its approach to defence planning and force design, however, hint at very consequential change—and it is important that the government does not lose sight of their importance, despite them not receiving an explicit mention in the minister’s statement.

Australian defence white papers tend to consist of an engaging essay on the strategic environment in the front, and a list of capability decisions at the back. In general, the links between both are always implicit, and often only tenuous. Indeed, translation of strategic guidance in terms of priority for strategic risks, geographic focus and general tasks for the ADF into capability is the main historic weakness of Australian defence planning—going back at least to the 1970s ‘core force’ concept.

A key exception was the 1986 Dibb Review and 1987 Defence White Paper, which provided an (implicit) force structuring scenario for the defence of Australia, and explicit guidance on how the ADF would operate the ‘defence in depth’ strategy. In this framework lies the real importance of these documents, as it was internalised by Defence and government and implicitly guided defence force design until the 2000 white paper. No similarly impactful and enduring framework has replaced it.

The DSR’s reference to past planning against ‘low level and enhanced low-level threats’ (para 4.7) shows that it was conscious of this history, and seeks to provide a new framework that can have similarly lasting impact. In that sense, the most important paragraph of the DSU is that ‘the ADF needs a much more focused force structure based on net assessment, a strategy of denial, the risks inherent in the different levels of conflict, and realistic scenarios agreed to by the Government.’ What does this mean?

The use of politically, operationally and technically realistic scenarios that align with government strategic intent is key to coherent force design. Internationally, explicit political endorsement of force design scenarios are key elements of defence planning as in the United States; or the NATO defence planning process. Not so in Australia, where historically capability scenarios have only been endorsed by the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Even in white papers, ‘force structure reviews’ often preceded decisions that the government wanted Defence to achieve in the first place. Political endorsement of ADF force structuring scenarios will be crucial for government’s ability to ensure that the process which produces the capability proposals it receives from Defence actually reflects its strategic priorities.

The review’s reference to a ‘net-assessment planning process’ and rejection of a ‘balanced force’ (para 8.3) , which it understands to be designed to be able to react to a ‘range of contingencies’, provide a crucial insight into what the review wants these scenarios to entail. Net assessment as an analytical method has many applications, but the context makes clear that the review wants the ADF to be designed to meet one, extant, actual, clear and present threat (from China) rather than a range of possible or notional adversaries. Also sometimes called ‘threat-based planning’, ADF force design should in future reflect much more closely the actual shape and challenges that a conflict with China would present. As was the case for the US and NATO during the Cold War, changes in Chinese force structure and capabilities will flow much more directly and urgently into Australian capability priorities. The review’s recommendation that government direct a ‘strategy of denial’ is a consistent and necessary element of this approach, insofar as it explains how government would want the ADF to meet this threat.

As Australia is likely to operate alongside the US in such a conflict, and China’s ability to project force against Australia would depend on US action elsewhere, the review likely has set Australia onto a path towards much closer cooperation with the US in force design than has been the case since the SEATO alliance. The review’s comments about ‘recent advances’ in the bilateral and trilateral relations between the US, Japan and Australia hint at this, insofar as the review of alliance ‘roles’, ‘missions’ and ‘capabilities’ and the ‘scope’, ‘objectives’ and ‘forms’ of cooperation are part of these. NATO has always had a process for force structuring at the alliance level, and we may now be on our way to a more informal version of one.

The final element is the explicit consideration of ‘levels of conflict’ (para 7.8). Since the late 1960s, the starting point of Australian defence planning guidance has been geography, as priorities and objectives were framed through geographic regions (Australia, Southwest Pacific, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and the global level), variations of which dominated the table of contents of every strategic review and white paper since 1968. In contrast, the DSR takes us back to the 1950s and 1960s when Australian defence policy was last dominated by the threat of great power conflict. Then, too, defence planning was framed in terms of what level of conflict Australia should focus on—in particular, Cold War (today: competition), limited war, and global (today: major) war.  These remain meaningful distinctions today and lead to very different geographic as well as force structure and posture foci.

In competition, the ADF needs to be able to best respond to the security concerns of those countries over whose alignment we are competing by reflecting the interests in economic, resource and domestic security of South West Pacific and Southeast Asian countries. Today’s lightly armed and lightly built offshore patrol vessels are an example of a capability almost only useful for competition.

In limited conflict, by definition both sides accept that limited stakes impose limits to escalation and acceptable cost of conflict. Territorial conflict over maritime features other than Taiwan, or confrontations over incidents at sea, may today reflect such circumstances. Australia and partners would seek to manage limited conflict by deterrence through forward presence of highly capable, visible surface and air forces—including in regions such as the South China Sea where they would not be survivable in major war. Kinetic use of submarines against surface vessels would likely be subject to direct political concern about escalation, as was the case of the Belgrano sinking in the Falklands war. The main axis of ADF operations would be north-south, from Australia to the likely areas of conflict.

In major war, both sides fight to disarm and thus impose their will on the adversary. War termination will come to rest on the nuclear balance (if only in the sense that one side accepts cutting its losses rather than risk escalation). Australia’s main concern will be to secure supplies to remain in the fight, to avoid catastrophic losses, and to influence the shape of a post-war settlement in our immediate approaches. The main axis of ADF operations would thus be east-west, reflecting the crucial sea lines of communication to bring supplies across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with US long-range strike forces operating north from the continent.

The guidance in the 2020 defence strategic update was arguably compatible with preparations for any three of these levels of conflict. While the review in its unclassified form is silent on what it would recommend government focus on, its insistence that the ADF is ‘not fit for purpose’ (para 8.2), emphasis on long-range strike, hardening of bases and fuel reserves in Australia hints at a classified recommendation to focus on major war.

The review and government have clearly internalised the need for much faster, and more robust and coherent adaptation than Defence has been able to provide. The effective admission that the post-2016 contestability agenda has failed (paras 12.2-3) shows the difficulty of reforming Defence, despite the clear efforts of Defence leadership and governments of recent years. Time will tell how long the intended biannual cycle for the new national defence strategy will survive a three-yearly electoral cycle, but it would in any case only be an outcome of the underlying defence planning framework. Hence, the review’s section on defence planning and force design is arguably not just the most brief, but also the most important, and—if implemented—would well warrant the minister’s moniker as the ‘most ambitious review’ of them all.

Australia must boost investment to ensure strategic fuel security

Ten years ago, retired Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn released a landmark study that revealed the fragile state of Australia’s liquid-fuel security. It highlighted the country’s sole reliance on oil-based fuels for national transport systems and described its limited and declining sovereign refining capability. It also noted that Australia, the world’s ninth largest energy producer, is reliant on imports of crude and refined petroleum products. Fuel remains critical to the nation’s military capability, as the 2020 defence strategic update recognised when it identified the requirement to expand the fuel-storage capacity at Australian Defence Force bases and facilities.

Australia has built up economic wealth and prosperity on the coat-tails of globalisation. As a nation, we have leveraged our rich natural treasures to build our economy through lucrative trade relationships with countries in the Asia–Pacific and throughout the world. If we can buy it cheaper overseas, we will. Pushed by market forces, most domestic refineries have been shut down and imports from Singapore and other countries make up 90% of our consumption—to the point where our just-in-time stocks are now on tankers making their way to Australia. Indeed, fuel security may well become Australia’s Achilles’ heel.

Based on current domestic demand and usage rates, Australia has enough fuel to last approximately 68 days, though it is less for some individual fuels. In the event of a supply shock—whether through a disruptive weather event, political unrest or a direct military threat—consumption rates could increase dramatically. According to a recent parliamentary inquiry, shipping lane disruptions are seen as a tactical response challenge to be met by alternative sourcing, rather than an issue of defence capability degradation.

Observations from the war in Ukraine have certainly highlighted the fragility of the global fuel supply chain. A conflict in the Asia–Pacific would have devastating impacts on Australia’s fuel supplies and directly affect our domestic and military capabilities.

The scale of this issue requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking about fuel supply-chain management, government spending and the security of the nation.

So, then, how much is enough? It’s difficult to tell, and there is no definitive answer to how much fuel we need to sustain domestic industry concurrently with intensified military operations. The Fuel Security Act 2021 incorporates a number of initiatives, including boosting Australia’s diesel storage, upgrading refineries, and encouraging the development of sustainable aviation fuels and biofuels. These are positive steps, but they amount to band-aid solutions to a systemic vulnerability.

The bottom line is that Australia needs to invest more in fuel security. The US recently started construction of a 300-million-litre aviation fuel storage facility for the US Air Force in Darwin valued at $270 million. Ownership is nine-tenths of the law, and I expect Australia will play second fiddle for fuel supply from these new facilities.

More sovereign Australian investment will require robust and honest supply-chain modelling to determine an acceptable level of strategic risk mitigation. In an economic climate still recovering from Covid-19, fires and floods, the pressures on the federal budget are many. For the ADF and Defence Department, increasing strategic tensions, domestic response requirements, personnel retention challenges, and ever-expanding capability scope lead to a dynamic and challenging operating environment. Any call to spend more comes with inherent trade-offs.

We myopically compromise capability when platform acquisition isn’t balanced with fuel-security measures. For example, Exercise Pitch Black is the most significant multinational large-force employment exercise hosted by Australia. It involves defence force elements from up to 16 nations, performing hundreds of missions. It ‘features a range of realistic, simulated threats which can be found in a modern battle-space environment and is an opportunity to test and improve our force integration’, and yet reported fuel-supply issues and shortages hamstring the rehearsal of significant defence capabilities throughout the exercise.

Inadequate fuel security has a direct impact on the employment and effectiveness of our defence capabilities. Prudent fuel security helps to optimise the effectiveness of our modest arsenal of defence capabilities so that they don’t end up as expensive museum pieces. This is true of all current, developing and future capabilities.

My proposed radical paradigm shift is to take a portion of every budgeted defence capital expenditure item, such as capability development and acquisition projects, and allocate those resources to national and defence-related fuel-security projects. The portion set aside will, no doubt, be the subject of much political debate and scrutiny. For the purposes of this argument, however, I propose an arbitrary 10% allocation. If we consider the $16.76 billion in capital expenditure apportioned to defence for departmental programs in the 2022–23 budget, this would result in a fuel-security allocation of $1.68 billion. Investment should be made in projects that further Australian fuel security, including the expansion and deepening of current initiatives.

Balancing the desired effects of defence capabilities with a further restricted project budget will require some lateral thinking, moving from an all-exquisite-capability mindset to more innovative and out-of-the-box thinking. This self-reliant-by-design model will not only drive large, wide-scale investment in fuel-security solutions, but will also spur innovation and creative thinking within defence capability projects.

To simply state that Australia needs more fuel security may seem flippant, but it’s a function of the wicked problem our nation is facing. The current policies and initiatives offer a step in the right direction, but a radical paradigm shift is needed to build fuel security, almost from scratch. Whatever future challenges Australia may encounter, securing a dependable and self-reliant fuel supply chain is worthy of our attention and investment for the prosperity and welfare of current and future generations.

We must act now to avoid turning fiction into reality; to quote from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, ‘Without fuel they were nothing. They’d built a house of straw.’

The ADF needs to see at long range to strike at long range

The debate on how best to defend Australia in a worsening strategic environment is likely to be substantially settled with the defence strategic review, due for completion in March. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles recently emphasised the need for long-range strike capabilities, including by referring to ‘impactful projection’. He reinforced the requirement for Australia to project military effect at long range, saying: ‘We must invest in targeted capabilities that enable us to hold potential adversaries’ forces at risk at a distance and increase the calculated cost of aggression against Australia.’

Marles is being very clear that long-range strike and, by extension, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) are priorities that will be reflected in the strategic review. That ISR capability has to have a targeting component based on multi-domain capabilities, notably including space-based sensors.

Simply put, we need to see far to strike far. The sensor ends of that ‘kill chain’ must be resilient, even in highly contested environments, and have a sustained hemispheric gaze from Australia’s shores. Crewed aircraft such as the P-8A Poseidon or autonomous aerial vehicles such as the MQ-4B Triton are but one part of any future ISR capability for the Australian Defence Force.

The increasing ability of a major-power adversary such as China to project military force, along with uncertainty over our access to forward basing, raises the risks in sustaining these aircraft on station, distant from Australia’s air and maritime approaches. The small number of aircraft Australia operates reinforces these challenges—only six MQ-4B Tritons will be available, for example. Certainly, submarines can also play a role in tactical intelligence gathering, as can surface combatants, but we only have six ageing Collins-class diesel–electric boats, and the nuclear-powered submarines being acquired under AUKUS won’t appear until the late 2030s at best. Naval surface combatants are becoming more vulnerable inside an adversary anti-access/area-denial envelope characterised by ever more sophisticated long-range missiles and long-range surveillance systems.

Reliance on close-in surveillance that only allows us to respond to a threat within Australia’s air and maritime approaches is not sufficient. That surrenders the initiative to the adversary, which could then strike our key northern infrastructure from outside the reach of coastal defences and short-range tactical fighters. We’re recognising that our ‘strategic moat’, traditionally perceived as the sea–air gap to our north, is not so defensible in these days of precision conventional ballistic missiles, hypersonic cruise missiles, and cyber and counter-space capabilities. China has all these already and is continuing to expand and develop them.

Chinese ships can target northern Australia from within the Indonesian archipelago, and Australia is in range of Chinese land-based missiles and long-range bombers in the South China Sea. So, our gaze must penetrate far and deep across the Indo-Pacific region. Space-based ISR that is pervasive and resilient, even in the face of adversary counter-space threats, seems to be the best answer.

Last year on this forum, Daniel Molesworth highlighted the importance of building a dedicated surveillance and target acquisition capability for the Australian Army’s long-range fires, based on tactical uncrewed aerial systems. He suggested that the Defence Department re-establish Project Air 7003 to acquire remotely piloted drones such as the MQ-9B Sky Guardian. That’s a good idea, particularly in relation to the employment of shorter-range guided missiles on the US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) that Australia will be acquiring.

However, space-based capabilities take us the next step to hemispheric surveillance and targeting for very long-range strike. Those capabilities will be essential if Australia acquires much longer-range power projection, such as that implicit in platforms like the B-21 Raider or an evolved version of the MQ-28 Ghost Bat. The nuclear submarines will also require targeting for both land-attack and anti-ship operations.

Defence is already supporting key space projects, such as the recently announced National Space Mission for Earth Observation, a civilian-oriented project led by the Australian Space Agency, CSIRO and Geoscience Australia. The satellite capability it provides will have some utility in tasks such as bushfire response, disaster relief and maritime domain awareness, but it’s not a dedicated defence capability.

Defence needs to acquire its own satellite constellation in low-earth orbit that can provide high-resolution imagery for target detection and precision tracking to support long-range strikes. Such a constellation could complement larger geospatial intelligence-gathering capabilities, such as those to be operated by the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation under Defence Project 799 Phase 2.

Last year, Australia supported two launches for the US National Reconnaissance Office, in cooperation with the Defence Department, under the ‘Antipodean Adventure’ program. Although they are US satellites, Australian involvement gives Defence valuable experience ahead of acquiring sovereign space surveillance capabilities. Also last year, Gilmour Space Technologies announced a partnership with LatConnect 60 to launch eight satellites on Gilmour’s Eris launcher from 2024 to provide commercial earth observation, including for defence applications.

These are good steps forward. But projects such as the earth observation mission and the lack of current information on Project 799 Phase 2 reinforce concerns that the traditional defence-specific requirements for space-based ISR may be subsumed under a broader, softer focus within a civil capability, where the priorities are climate change, urban planning, crop management and national resilience, rather than cueing and targeting of long-range missile systems in wartime.

If Defence were to enhance its space-based ISR capabilities beyond these projects, there would be advantages in embracing the ‘small, cheap and many’ over the ‘large, expensive and few’. A mega-constellation made up of low-cost small satellites is more difficult for an opponent to attack than a few large, complex multibillion-dollar satellites.

There’s also a commercial dimension that’s important to consider. A small-satellite constellation in low-earth orbit that’s dedicated for tactical ISR and targeting would be ideally developed as a sovereign capability by the rapidly growing Australian commercial space sector. Designed, built, launched and operated from Australia, it would be a true sovereign space surveillance system that could directly support the ADF’s ISR and strike requirements, without dependence on foreign actors for access or control, but with the opportunity to work with complementary US or UK systems, perhaps under AUKUS.

It would also create a vital opportunity for Australia’s space sector to demonstrate experience in building such a capability, which could in turn reduce government risk-aversion to expanding the role of Australian small to medium enterprises in providing Defence with vital space capabilities. The greater the ongoing role for Australia’s commercial space sector, the greater the opportunity for the government to invest in Australian companies.

The lower cost of small satellites would also mean that our space-based ISR capabilities could be more regularly refreshed by new locally built satellites incorporating the latest technologies, enabling us to better exploit accelerating innovation cycles rather than wait for overseas providers. That will generate further confidence within Australia’s commercial space sector in its ability to support defence missions.

Australia needs to start thinking about building and operating a sovereign mega-constellation with a sufficient number of small satellites to ensure constant and pervasive surveillance and targeting. The ‘impactful projection’ task suggested by Marles creates a valuable opportunity to develop sovereign space-based ISR systems that enhance our ability to strike far and fast against any threat.

Australia’s defence workforce needs to upgrade to Industry 4.0

The defence sector in Australia is facing many challenges, not least of which is transitioning its workforce to a ‘smart workforce’. This is a clear and present challenge for all sectors, but the Defence Department’s and defence industry’s dependence on technology provides an opportunity for them to better connect ‘Industry 4.0’ with workforce outcomes.

Workforce shortages are a global issue, but Australia has some specific challenges such as very low unemployment and high growth in some sectors. But we shouldn’t think just in terms of the availability of people; we need to think about why an organisation needs people and what they—and only they—can contribute to the organisation’s outcomes.

The fourth industrial revolution isn’t simply about advanced technology. It’s also about how we rethink what’s needed and how we apply technology to support people. Industry 4.0 will enable small-scale, point-of-distribution or point-of-use production and allow products to be tailored to meet specific needs. Smart innovation is underpinned by a smart workforce.

My ASPI report on Industry 4.0 earlier this year emphasised a range of opportunities as well as some big challenges to solve. The report highlighted that the high level of innovation by small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those based outside the major cities, and a focus on collaboration were key success factors.

However, Australia is starting from a low innovation and skills base. We’re ranked 25th in the Global Innovation Index, just behind New Zealand, and eighth in the OECD skills for employment index. Australia has also historically rated poorly among OECD countries for its management capability. Poor performance in these areas not only hinders Industry 4.0 opportunities but also adversely affects workforce capability.

When people refer to the ‘workforce of the future’ they give the impression there is a skilled-up workforce waiting in the wings. Given Australia’s low unemployment rate of 3.4%, there isn’t an excess of skilled people, which means the ‘future workforce’, in large part, is in our organisations today.

Retirees continue to be a valuable untapped resource. A lot has been invested in those who have now retired from the defence sector and related sectors such as national security, technology, engineering, law and innovation. Many are willing and able to contribute but are seeking flexible and tailored opportunities. Generation Y (those born between 1980 and 2000) will increase as a proportion of the Australian workforce to comprise 75% of our workforce by 2025, but without supplementation, a significant productivity load will be placed on that one age cohort.

Australia is experiencing very high job vacancy rates and some sectors stand out. In healthcare and social assistance, for example, there are around 68,900 vacancies; in accommodation and food services, the estimate is around 51,900 vacancies; and for professional, scientific and technical services it is 42,900.

In a tight employment market, people have choices and they are exercising those choices.

While the government’s renewed focus on skilled migration, including through the Pacific engagement visa program, is welcome, it’s only part of the solution and unlikely to address the nation’s technology capability shortfall in the short or medium term. The shift in workforce capability must be done by transitioning current workforces from obsolete sectors to technology-driven ones.

The Jobs and Skills Summit in September 2022 recognised the challenge and highlighted a range of new and existing measures. These initiatives are worthwhile, but years will pass before we see results. So, what do Defence and defence industry need to do today?

The first thing is to radically rethink what various parts of Defence do and how Industry 4.0 opportunities will be optimised. There are savings to be made that can be reinvested in upskilling the workforce.

Next, the defence sector needs to understand what only people can and must do. Most organisations do this badly or not at all. Continuing with Industry 2.0 people-heavy internal workforces and Industry 3.0 efficiency drives is not what’s needed in an Industry 4.0 world.

After that, the sector must focus on being the place where people want to work. It’s important to appreciate that pay has shifted down the list of reasons for leaving a job: employees say the top three reasons are ‘lack of career-development potential’, ‘meaningless work’ and ‘uncaring leadership’. It’s much easier for someone to say they’re leaving for more pay rather than because they weren’t treated well, their contribution wasn’t valued or their manager was terrible.

Finally, Defence and defence industry need to join forces with other sectors and across regional Australia. In practice this means secondments, joint teams, joint delivery and even sharing commercial opportunities. It may also mean investing in local communications infrastructure to facilitate virtual engagement with regional workers. The benefits include evening out demands on local workforces, more efficient delivery and enhanced workforce capability. To be successful, it will require a deliberate blurring of management lines.

The emphasis on recruitment and retention also needs to be changed to ‘build, borrow and then, if you need to, buy’. Building is about actively developing people to upskill and retaining them.

Borrowing requires working with others to share capability. It means thinking about common skills in allied sectors, particularly if there are peaks and troughs in demand. There may also be opportunities to partner with others to develop creative ways to even out cross-sector demand. Borrowing isn’t about poaching; it’s about working together.

Buying means recruiting new people. But studies continue to show that it is far more effective (and much cheaper) to keep a workforce than to recruit a new one. In a tight labour market this is more relevant than ever. It’s also important to avoid the trap of paying people more to stay with or join an organisation—that’s a short-term fix that often ends in tears.

The workforce of the future is here, but it needs upskilling to fit within reimagined organisations. For Australia to be an Industry 4.0 success story, we need to rethink job design and embrace the potential rather than stress about the challenges.

Employees are motivated by more than a decent wage and an impressive job title. People want to be treated well, they want their contributions to matter, and they want to know they have a future in their organisation.

If Australia’s defence sector can achieve these three things, it will be ahead of most.

Artificial intelligence and the future of warfare

Artificial intelligence is changing the world we live in. It will redefine the workplace and have significant implications for everything we do, probably by the end of this decade. Some AI applications are already a part of our everyday lives, such as intelligent car navigation systems.

So, what is artificial intelligence? AI can be defined as ‘the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence’.

AI has in fact been around for several decades. The IBM chess-playing computer called ‘Deep Blue’ defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov as far back as 1997. But the development of AI has been accelerating rapidly in recent years with a substantial increase in the number of real-world applications where AI is now practical.

According to the US Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the reasons for this are more massive datasets, increased computing power, improved machine-learning algorithms, and greater access to open-source code libraries.

Let’s look at these in turn.

First, massive datasets. Today, computers, digital devices and sensors connected to the internet are constantly producing and storing large volumes of data, whether in the form of text, numbers, images, audio or other data files.

Second, increased computing power has come from graphics processing units, or GPUs, that are highly parallelised, which means they can perform large numbers of calculations at the same time. Massive parallelism is speeding up the training of AI models and running those models operationally.

Third, better algorithms have made machine-learning models more flexible, more robust and more capable of solving different types of problems.

Fourth, access to open-source code libraries now allows organisations to use and build on the advanced work of others without having to start from scratch.

In defence areas, it means that autonomous platforms could in the future operate without the need to carry a vulnerable or capability-limiting human, be they airborne or underwater systems. Platforms should still be controlled by humans for moral, ethical and legal reasons, but ‘kill’ decisions could end up being distilled down to simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ commands.

A control problem might arise in a conflict situation where there’s difficulty in maintaining a continuous link to an autonomous platform. In those circumstances, for example, an underwater attack drone placed on the ocean bottom in the Sunda Strait could be programmed to identify enemy submarines and automatically destroy them if they pass by.

The same decision delegation could be made to long-endurance solar-powered drones programmed to eliminate key insurgents and terrorists through facial or gait recognition.

AI could mean that high-tech countries like Australia will have far fewer battle casualties, but glamourous hotshot jobs like being a fighter pilot or stealthy submariner might no longer exist. Instead, commanders and combatants would more likely be controlling robot attackers from behind computer screens in relatively safe locations.

The ‘risk to blue force’ factor will of course depend on the nature of the enemy—whether it’s a low-tech insurgent group like al-Shabaab or a high-tech nation-state like China.

The most practical areas to invest in military AI—at least in the short term—are those that are relevant to technologically uncontested domains, like Afghanistan. In state-versus-state conflict we must assume that potential adversaries are a match for us in AI—if not more advanced in the case of China—and will attempt to manipulate our AI systems or destroy them kinetically.

For the time being at least, AI is still short of human achievement when it comes to multitasking. A soldier can identify an enemy target, decide on a weapon system to employ against it, predict its path, and engage it. AI cannot currently accomplish that simple set of related tasks.

Potential AI problems can also arise from biased data and context misunderstanding. AI systems have problems distinguishing between correlation and causation. (One example is the correlation between drowning deaths and ice-cream sales. An AI system fed with data about these two outcomes would not be aware that the two correlate because they are a function of warmer weather. AI might conclude that to prevent drowning deaths, we should restrict ice-cream sales.)

However, AI is rapidly overcoming these basic limitations and we could see a much more comprehensive range of AI capabilities by 2030, particularly in the defence sector.

In the interim, we are likely to see an exponential increase in the use of AI in crewed platforms to allow humans to concentrate on the tasks that humans do better.

In the longer term, removing humans from combat platforms is a logical and likely progression. The US Air Force’s next-generation air superiority fighter is expected to include optional unmanned autonomous operation. And autonomous unmanned underwater attack platforms are expected to be in service with China’s navy long before Australia gets its first Attack-class submarine in the mid-2030s.

What would it take for Australia to walk away from the French submarine deal?

An RAAF AP 3C Orion snaps an allied submarine during an Anti Submarine Warfare evolution during RIMPAC 2010 off Hawaii. submarines suffer from severe command and control limitations, including the requirement to be close to the surface to make radio contact.

Media reports this week have claimed that Prime Minister Scott Morrison has commissioned a Defence Department review into potential alternatives to the Attack-class submarine. That’s prompted a flurry of speculation about whether the government is walking away from France’s Naval Group as its partner in the future submarine program, despite the sunk costs approaching $2 billion, plus several hundred million more in penalty costs.

Would the government do that? It’s hard to imagine. Conservative governments in this country draw their credibility and mandate to rule from their reputation as good economic managers. Admitting that they had mismanaged the largest public sector project in the nation’s history would strike at the heart of that credibility.

Walking away would also destroy Defence’s credibility. Every significant government decision in this space beyond the initial decision to build the submarines in Adelaide has been based on Defence’s advice.

Defence recommended the submarines’ very demanding set of operational requirements on factors such as range and endurance. Defence recommended the three contenders for the competitive evaluation process, and Defence picked the French as the eventual winner. Defence requested and got the $89 billion budget for the Attack class. Defence rearranged its investment program and delayed other projects to free up cash for the submarines.

It’s hard to see Defence now recommending a different course of action, and for the government to adopt a different course against its recommendation would be a massive vote of no confidence.

Then there’s the hit that would come to relations with France and to Australia’s international credibility as a partner. We’ve already done that once to a strategic partner in the submarine saga in choosing the French after raising the hopes of the Japanese that they would win the contract.

You don’t decide to change course in a $90 billion program without good reason. So, what would prompt the government to do it? Many commentators have expressed a vast range of concerns about the program and the constant questioning is a public relations ulcer for the government. But the government itself and Defence have been resolute in their support for it.

At Senate estimates hearings, Defence has consistently insisted everything is on track—for example, stating that the cost estimate has been steady at $50 billion (in constant dollars) for five years and the design is progressing well. It has conceded a few months’ delay here and there to some design milestones but suggested it could make that time up. To suddenly walk away would mean that narrative was not true—another hit to credibility.

That’s unless the government has suddenly learned something truly new and significant about the viability of the enterprise.

Then there’s the issue of what the government would walk away to. There’s no immediate stand-out candidate for a Plan B. Any developmental submarine that sets new records for size is going to come with risks and take a long time to deliver, plus the French have a five-year head start. Potentially, if the government and Defence downsized their capability aspirations, that could open up the field somewhat—potentially to the Sweden’s Saab Kockums and its ‘Son of Collins’ design.

It was always been mystifying that the Swedes were not invited to participate in the original competitive evaluation process. A number of voices have suggested the government should fund them to develop their design in parallel with Naval Group, generating competition and providing the government with some choice. That could send a strong message to the French firm.

On the other hand, if the point is to make France prioritise the Attack-class program, particularly as its own future ballistic missile submarine program commences, then telling them that we might not go with them after all could send mixed messages; we want them to commit but we won’t do so ourselves.

Much of the discussion around the future submarine has related to the level of local industry content. Ironically, the government originally said it had no intention of imposing a hard target for local content—until it came under irresistible pressure from industry and the opposition to accept a guarantee of 60% that Naval Group itself had offered. Now there is some suggestion the government should walk away because Naval Group might not get there, at least in the early stages of the program.

But this is letting the industry tail wag the capability dog. If the government is convinced it’s getting the right capability at an acceptable price delivered when it needs it, then walking away over a few percentage points of industry share, well before the design is complete, is short-sighted.

And that’s where the discussion needs to focus—on the capability. Are we getting the capability we need when we need it, and is it value for money? Many minds are already made up, such as those who believe we should be getting nuclear-powered submarines, or those who believe other approaches offer more capability for less money and/or risk—whether they involve smaller submarines, autonomous systems, long-range strike missiles and aircraft, or combinations of them all.

The government isn’t in that camp. But it does need to know what triggers would mean it wasn’t getting what it needed. For example, at what point do delays mean that a Collins life-of-type-extension can’t fill the gap? Or what technological developments that put the survivability and therefore utility of conventional manned submarines in doubt would make it reconsider the current path?

To define those triggers and know when they have been tripped, the government needs independent advice. It’s not clear that the government is getting it. From its Senate estimates testimony, it appears the Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board takes a narrow focus, looking at the program from a project-management perspective. Broader questions about whether it provides the right capability or value for money are outside its remit.

Morrison has reportedly asked senior naval officers to review something relating to submarines (although it’s not clear what exactly). But again, this is not an independent review. Those who developed the original advice to government are not the best placed to evaluate it.

Certainly, the government is right to be concerned about Defence’s capability program. Despite concluding in last year’s defence strategic update that we can’t rely on having 10 years of warning time before a conflict, much of the program is still more than 10 years from delivery—including the future submarine. But walking away from the Attack class won’t necessarily fix that problem.

Getting submarines right is important, but we also need to cure ourselves of the fetish that has grown up around them. They’re a valuable capability, but not the only one we need. Defence needs a range of complementary assets to cover the risks and shortfalls associated with each one.

To do this it has to more aggressively develop and acquire emergent technologies—regardless of the path we take with submarines. The recent announcement of a cooperative program with the US in the development and production of hypersonic strike missiles is certainly a step in the right direction. The rapid acquisition of large unmanned underwater vessels would be another.

Whatever kernel of truth is sitting behind the recent media reports, it’s good to see the prime minister getting energised about defence capability. Defence is a monopoly provider of security services to the government and therefore the Australian people. The government is planning on spending $575 billion in taxpayer dollars for those services over the next decade, so it needs to be a smart, questioning and demanding customer on our behalf.

Mid-year defence budget update shows big spending still on track

The Australian government has released its mid-year budget update in the form of the portfolio additional estimates statements. If you’re looking for screaming headline material in the defence portfolio’s PAES you may be disappointed. But the fact that there’s been little change since the portfolio budget statements were released in October, several months later than normal due to the Covid-19 pandemic, is in itself newsworthy.

Let’s take a step back. The big new news in the past 12 months in the defence budget realm is that the government reaffirmed its 2016 defence white paper commitment to increased defence spending, despite the hit to GDP and the government’s bottom line caused by the pandemic. July’s defence strategic update confirmed the steady increase to funding first presented in the white paper and extended it for a further four years out to 2029–30.

The bulk of that increased funding flows to the Defence Department’s acquisition budget to pay for the government’s ambitious capability program. Over the next few years, the acquisition budget’s share grows to around 40% of the total. To get there, Defence and its industry partners will have to climb some steep steps; the PBS stated that Defence’s planned acquisition spend for 2020–21 is around 27% more than last year, up from $11.2 billion to $14.3 billion. Considering that Defence has only managed annual increases of 5% on average over the past few years, and that Covid-19 is disrupting the global supply chains that feed defence industry both here and abroad, one could be forgiven for thinking that spending that money was going to be a challenge.

So how is Defence going at hitting that number? According to the PAES, it’s on track. The budget top line is virtually unchanged. The PBS estimate for 2020–21 was $41,715 million. That’s decreased by $291 million in the PAES to $41,424 million.

The adjustment can largely be accounted for by three things. The first is a foreign exchange adjustment of $287 million—since the Aussie dollar has recovered marginally against the US dollar and euro, Defence needs less money to buy equipment from overseas. The second is an additional $55.5 million for pay for Operation Covid-19 Assist. And the third is a $32 million decrease in funding for Operation Manitou, Australia’s contribution to maritime security in the Middle East, which the government decided to reduce in October in order to refocus on the near region.

When we dig one level deeper, spending in the three big subcategories of acquisition, sustainment and workforce is largely on track as well. The capital acquisition program is anticipating a reduction of $376.3 million, but a lot of that can be accounted for through the foreign exchange adjustment.

Within that, the military equipment program is looking like it could end up underachieving by $200 million even after that exchange adjustment is factored in, but that’s not bad against a $10.7 billion target, particularly in the middle of a global pandemic. Overall, according to the picture in the PAES, Defence is going to come pretty close to achieving the big increase in acquisition spending set out in the PBS.

That may seem a little counterintuitive when you look at the individual projects in the PAES’ top 30 acquisition projects table (table 66), which states that many of them are going to underachieve, some by a lot. Cumulatively, they amount to a $748 million underspend.

So why isn’t that showing up in the top line? Because Defence always plans on underachieving in its capital program. In Defence’s terminology, it’s called slippage and accounts for the real-world phenomenon that projects never perform as well as their managers hope. In the PBS, Defence built in a margin of $1.2 billion in slippage (page 93). Or, put another way, it budgeted to spend $1.2 billion more than it has on the reasonable assumption that in a $10-billion-plus equipment program, a lot of projects will underspend to the tune of around $1.2 billion and it will all net out. So the $748 million spending shortfall in the top 30 is covered by that. Defence could still underachieve by another half billion or so in the remainder of the financial year and it wouldn’t show up in the top line. You can call it planning for failure, or you can call it astute risk management.

There’s another element that seems counterintuitive. Covid-19 has had a major impact on the air force’s and navy’s flying hours. Cumulatively, their aircraft are predicted to miss their flying-hour targets by more than 17,000 hours, or 17% (page 47). The F-35A fleet is one of the worst hit, predicted to achieve only 5,250 hours—better than last year’s 3,097, but far short of the planned 8,204.

But when we look at sustainment spending on aircraft in the top 30 sustainment products (table 67), Defence is only anticipating a 2.3% reduction in costs despite the big fall in flying hours. Granted, a large part of sustainment budgets is tied up in fixed costs, and you certainly don’t want to lay off a highly skilled maintenance workforce because of a temporary blip in flying tempo. But when the flying hours of the C-27J Spartan fall by over 50%, from a planned 7,500 hours to only 3,360 hours, but its sustainment budget decreases by only 1.2%, from $84 million to $83 million, you wonder whether Defence could structure its sustainment contracts better.

There are the usual ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ stories. The recent announcement that Defence would acquire the Apache attack helicopter to replace the Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopter hasn’t solved all of the army’s aviation woes. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the flying hours in the PAES, which says that the army is still planning on flying every one of the 16,550 hours predicted in the PBS for its fleets, including all 7,950 for the MRH-90 utility helicopter and all 4,500 for the Tiger that was so unreliable it had to be replaced ASAP (page 45). That’s hardly credible in light of the air force’s adjusted targets.

In fact, the PAES confirms the MRH-90 is still struggling. Its entry in table 67 says it will underachieve against the target rate of effort and explains that ‘The reduced rate of effort is the result of low availability of serviceable aircraft due to delays in the return of repair parts from European vendors, a complex maintenance system and a lack of responsiveness in engineering support’. That’s a damning assessment of a supply chain that’s had well over a decade to sort out its teething troubles.

And it’s not just sustainment; 16 years after getting second-pass approval in 2004, the original acquisition project still isn’t finished and is planning to spend $100 million this year. It has never been clear to me why the army pushed to replace the Tiger even though most of the effects it sought from it can be delivered either by the Tiger itself or by other, complementary systems, yet it clings on to the MRH-90 despite its underperformance and the lack of other systems that can take up the slack.

That aside, the main takeaway from the numbers presented in the PAES is that Defence is hitting the ambitious numbers in the government’s acquisition program. That should mean that defence industry is absorbing the spend and delivering capability. What we can’t see in the PAES, however, is how much of that is being spent locally and how much overseas.

Despite the government’s defence industry policy, which aims to develop a more robust, sovereign Australian defence industry, the portion of the equipment budget that is spent locally has remained stubbornly stuck at around a third of the total. After seven years of budget certainty, sustained investment increases and substantial policy and spending measures to develop local industry, it would be nice to see whether that share is starting to grow.

Cabinet’s gift of independence to ASPI

Cabinet created the Australian Strategic Policy Institute as a small body with a big brain—and, most importantly, a strongly independent voice.

Creation stories tell much. And the release of the cabinet records for 2000 by the National Archives detail the genesis of ASPI, which reaches its 20th birthday this year.

Two decades ago, the Howard government knew why it needed ASPI. The Defence Department was a monopoly provider of advice and expertise. Cabinet wanted fresh perspectives on big equipment headaches like submarines and, more broadly, Oz strategy.

Taking office in 1996, the Howard government found defence one of the last policy areas without a sustained contest of ideas between the bureaucracy and outside experts. ‘Well’, said John Howard’s first defence minister, Ian McLachlan, ‘we must change that’.

ASPI came to be born so the defenceniks at Russell could no longer win arguments and drive policy because they held most of the knowledge and much of the history.

Defence would pay for a body designed to make life tougher for Defence. Sharp Canberra logic drives such counterintuitive ambition. Strong design must ensure the mission can’t be mugged by bureaucratic bastardry or strangled by money.

At the general election in October 1998, the Howard government’s defence policy promised to establish an institute of strategic policy.

In April 2000, McLachlan’s successor as defence minister, John Moore, brought to cabinet a proposal for the creation of ASPI.

The purpose of the institute, Moore told cabinet, was to ‘provide a centre of expertise of direct value to government by providing independent policy relevant research and analysis that will enhance the quality of policymaking on defence and strategic issues’.

The need for independence was repeatedly stressed: ‘The credibility of the ASPI will be substantially determined by the reality and appearance of the independence of its operation and outputs from government.’

Moore offered cabinet two key arguments for ASPI.

First, to develop alternative sources of advice to government on strategic and defence policy:

The principles of contestability have been central to our Government’s philosophy and practice of public administration, but these principles have not yet been effectively implemented in relation to defence and strategic policy, despite the vital national interests and significant sums of money that are at stake. The Government has found in relation to the Collins Class Submarine project for instance, and more generally in relation to the [Defence] White Paper process, that there are almost no sources of alternative information or analysis on key issues in defence policy, including the critical questions of our capability needs and how they can best be satisfied. The ASPI will be charged with providing an alternative source of expertise on such issues.

The second argument was that defence policy was inhibited by a poor understanding of the choices and issues involved:

The ASPI will be tasked to contribute an informed and independent voice to public discussion on these issues. These roles will take some time to develop, but there are significant advantages to launching the ASPI now, at a time when public interest in defence issues is high. It is intended that the foundation of ASPI should be seen as a long-term investment by the government in good strategic and defence policy, and as such it fits in well with the White Paper process.

How to structure a new, nimble, noisy beast was one puzzle of a protracted birth, a five-year process from idea to election promise to cabinet debate to establishment. In April 2000, cabinet liked the idea but asked the defence minister to do more work on ‘alternative structuring arrangements’ for ASPI.

By August, the defence minister was back with seven options: an internal Defence strategic policy cell; an independent board within Defence; a university-based research centre; a special research centre also based in a university; or a stand-alone centre which could be a statutory authority, an executive agency or an incorporated company.

Cabinet went with the original proposal, establishing ASPI as a wholly Commonwealth-owned company.

In the words of the defence minister, endorsed by cabinet, the institute would maintain a small staff; ‘the centre would not publish views in its own name, it would publish views of the authors of particular research without endorsement’; and ASPI ‘would be required to publish a range of views on contentious issues’.

ASPI has lived out those principles, making it a marvelous place for any analyst—or, indeed, a journalist fellow. ASPI embraces its independence by giving its people the freedom to think and write.

Those principles are the basis for the sentence I put on any submission I make to a parliamentary inquiry: ‘As ASPI does not offer institutional views, this is my personal submission.’ The day-to-day lived experience is that in eight years penning a weekly column for The Strategist I have never once been told what to write. As importantly, I’ve never been warned off by being told what not to write.

Independence, indeed. And, just quietly, a weighty freedom, depriving the writer of all excuses—the only person responsible for those words is you!

See the culture at work in this farewell piece by one of the ASPI originals, Mark Thomson, as he retired after 16 years writing about defence economics. It’s classic Mark: clear-eyed judgement that’s both balanced and sharp. This, after all, was the man who revolutionised Canberra’s debate on military spending by explaining the defence budget to Canberra (and to much of the Defence Department, as well).

Handing over the torch as he departed, Mark offered a simple read of the ASPI creed: the most valuable thing you have is your independence.

Cabinet’s plan has worked. ASPI has a distinct identity, clearly separate from the Defence Department. One secretary of Defence told me ASPI could say things to the minister that he couldn’t. Another was so enraged by ASPI criticism of a Defence position that he declared hostilities and froze contacts (a difficult thing to do simultaneously).

In 2000, cabinet was told the initial cost to Defence of paying ASPI’s total budget would be $2–3 million a year. In the latest five-year funding agreement, running to 2023, the annual payment by Defence is $4 million; ASPI is a smaller slice of Defence’s budget than when it started. These days, though, ASPI gets only 35% of its budget from Defence, and 32% from other federal government agencies. The rest of the cash comes from state and territory governments, overseas governments, defence industries and the private sector, and universities and civil society.

Such diversity is another strength of cabinet’s design, and one more element in the independence that cabinet mandated.

Thinking big about northern Australia’s national security posture

What a difference a year can make, so the saying goes. In August 2019, ASPI published Strong and free? The future security of Australia’s north. Since then, Australia has battled bushfires, wild storms and a global pandemic, and the defence strategic update has made fundamental changes to our strategic thinking. Today ASPI launches the North and Australia’s Security program’s latest report, Thinking big!’ Resetting Northern Australia’s national security posture.

The 2019 report argued that more federal government policy attention was needed if northern Australia was to be ready to support future defence operations and contingencies. It also argued that there’s a need to reconceptualise northern Australia—defined as those areas north of 26° south of the equator—as a single, scalable defence and national security ecosystem.

The report called the concept ‘FOB (forward operating base) North’ and outlined in broad brushstrokes the requirements for developing an ecosystem to deliver integrated support to current and future defence and national security operations. The FOB North concept focused on creating a vision of northern Australia and its defence infrastructure being in a state of readiness to support a range of defence contingencies with little warning.

By late 2019, Australia was already key political, military and economic terrain in a new era of major-power competition that spans security, technology, economics and politics.

At the same time, as highlighted by ASPI’s Robert Glasser, climate change has continued to drive increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and natural disasters domestically and regionally. We’ll need to be prepared, on short notice, to provide disaster response and humanitarian assistance to support our neighbours. At the same time, we need to be ready to evacuate our citizens from across the region, if not the world, in the face of more frequent natural disasters and political turmoil.

Over the past seven months, the Covid-19 pandemic has rocked the world, with effects and implications that reinforce the strategic value of our north. Beyond the successes of our direct pandemic response and the rapid, large economic stimulus that has cushioned people and businesses from the worst of the economic damage, Covid-19 has brought some painful lessons for Australian policymakers.

In addition to its immediate health challenges, the virus’s second-order social, economic and geopolitical impacts have exposed numerous fault lines in Australia’s national security arrangements, across our economy, our infrastructure and the industry that we would need in future crises—health and natural disasters as well as military crises and conflicts.

While the full economic, health, social and geopolitical impacts of the pandemic (and indeed their duration) are yet to be realised, there are already many national resilience and security lessons. Australia’s 30 years of economic growth have led to an almost religious belief in globalisation and good luck—a dangerous combination.

In the meantime, without a socially and economically prosperous northern Australia, there will be insufficient industry and infrastructure support for future defence operations, including regional engagement and power projection.

Alternatively, we can act to ensure that the north contributes to building the more regionally active, more offensively capable ADF that Prime Minister Scott Morrison envisaged when he launched the defence strategic update, and so use our strategic geography to help deter conflict and support regional prosperity and security.

While this latest report focuses primarily on the need to ‘think big’ about nation-building in northern Australia, it also engages with the reality of Covid-19 and the lessons that this pandemic has provided.

Defence’s real and financial commitments to northern Australia are critical to Australia’s broader national security and economic development, and an economically and socially prosperous northern Australia is essential for our national security. The second- and third-order impacts of defence spending serve to inoculate against the social implications of economic recession, reduce the possibility of foreign interference and contribute to social cohesion.

The report makes the case that while defence spending is vital to northern economies and nation-building, it’s focused more on the defence organisation’s more narrowly conceived portfolio of capital investments in bricks and mortar rather than on much-needed broader national security and economic decisions.

Northern Australia needs people, infrastructure and investment. It needs a critical population mass that will allow it to become sustainable and grow further. While defence spending has a place here, it ought not be considered the sole source of national security investment in the north.

Defence can’t, of course, be the sole designer of the kind of nation-building investment that’s needed. While Defence isn’t the only answer, there is room for consideration of how defence spending can assist national security and nation-building. It should be part of a broader strategy, which shouldn’t end up solely promoting sugar hits of economic investment that have little impact on underlying resilience and prosperity.

A paradigm shift in policy thinking on northern Australia is necessary to achieve the kind of national security and resilience we need.

The report argues that there’s a need for the federal government and the Northern Territory, Queensland and West Australian governments to take a more holistic perspective on northern Australia’s critical economic and national security role. The Australian government needs an integrated national and economic security strategy that encourages collaboration and synchronisation with state and territory governments.

Veteran diver: Rescue contract dispute puts Australian submariners at risk

Last week Defence announced that the Royal Australian Navy’s contract for a new submarine rescue system is on the department’s ‘project of interest’ list. US company Phoenix International may receive millions of dollars in compensation after a report recommended that the contract it was awarded be terminated. Defence has assured the public that the delays ‘do not impact our ability to provide an ongoing submarine rescue capability for our submarine fleet’. That’s wrong.

For starters, Australia has a responsibility to ensure the safety of its submarine crews.

As the material quality of submarines has improved, accidents have become less frequent. When they do occur, though, they attract a lot of attention. Almost exactly three years ago, the Argentinian submarine ARA San Juan disappeared with all hands and the global submarine rescue community mobilised on a scale not seen since the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk in 2000.

Many navies can operate collaboratively to meet their rescue responsibilities. But Australia’s geographic isolation creates an obligation for a sovereign capability, since the amount of time it would take for any other country’s system to react, transport and mobilise exceeds the ‘time to first rescue’, which is usually 72 hours from the time of an accident.

If a submarine sinks and can’t surface, it’s because it has taken in more water than its buoyancy can address. Submariners are trained to escape individually through an escape tower (similar to an airlock), but beyond a depth of 180 metres (approximately equivalent to the continental shelf), a submarine rescue vehicle is necessary.

The rescue vehicle, fitted with a skirt that resembles an inverted teacup, is positioned on the flat surface (or seat) surrounding the escape tower. Pumps are used to reduce the pressure inside the skirt so that the vehicle is ‘stuck’ to the seat by hydrostatic pressure. Once the water is pumped out, the hatches are opened and survivors transferred into the rescue vehicle. The vehicle then returns to the surface and those rescued are transferred to a support vessel.

Australia established its submarine escape and rescue project in 1994. In just 13 months, the project delivered a complete capability centred around a tethered remotely operated rescue vehicle, known as Remora, and a comprehensive hyperbaric transfer and treatment system. Remora could be used to rescue survivors down to the collapse depth of the Collins-class submarines and could operate in all the environmental conditions that prevail in Australia’s submarine operating areas.

Sadly, Remora suffered a severe mishap in 2006 and, after its two crewmen were rescued, sank to the seabed. Although recovered and restored, it was refused certification.

In its place, the government acquired the services, based in Australia, of the UK’s LR5 piloted submersible, which had just been superseded by the NATO submarine rescue system. LR5 can accommodate 16 distressed submariners at a time and can make up to eight trips to the target submarine before it needs to recharge its battery, meaning a rescue capability of 120 personnel.

Since 2009, submarine rescue firm JFD has maintained, operated and upgraded the system. It is now approaching the end of its lifecycle. As a result, in 2015, the government approved project SEA 1354 Phase 1 to deliver a submarine escape rescue and abandonment system, or SERAS, capability that will be compatible with the new Attack-class submarines before LR5 reaches its end of life in 2024.

LR5 is not the solution for SEA 1354 but, in the absence of a workable arrangement to deliver the new SERAS, it may become the gap-filler. There are several areas where its operating limitations give cause for concern.

The most serious of these is that the LR5’s maximum operating depth of 425 metres is about 25% less than the crush depth of the Collins-class submarine. While the area between 425 metres and crush depth could be small in some places because of the slope of the seabed beyond the continental shelf, such a situation would be unacceptable to the offshore oil industry, for example.

If a submarine sinks in water too deep for the rescue vehicle but too shallow to be crushed, a nation should possess the capability to rescue the survivors.

Should a submarine accident occur, this capability gap would require mobilisation of the US Navy’s submarine rescue system. It would be a struggle to mobilise that system to Australia within four to five days of an accident.

The system proposed for SEA 1354 by Phoenix International is a follow-on capability—essentially a third-generation Remora controlled remotely from the surface. The proposed design would comfortably exceed the depth requirement for the Collins and Attack classes and feature a launch and recovery capability in all expected sea states. It would also be able to ‘mate’ at any angle up to 60° in all prevailing currents where Australia’s submarines regularly operate.

The cancellation of the contract will delay the introduction of a new rescue capability for five or six years. The LR5, which is unsuitable anyway, will be out of service in 2024 and Australia will be dependent on other countries’ submarine rescue systems with little prospect of achieving an acceptable time to first rescue of 72 hours in the event of an accident.

Defence needs to work towards a solution with the current contractor and rationalise some of the features of the contract described as ‘inappropriate’ in the report written for Defence. Negotiations between the government and the contractor must progress more quickly for such a serious capability requirement.

A more radical approach, akin to that taken with the Remora project, is needed. There will be solutions to the engineering requirements that seem to be at the heart of the problem and Defence may need to call for more internal assistance to help the navy achieve this. A traditional approach to procuring a new submarine rescue system would not only cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but also take time, a commodity that is in short supply.