Tag Archive for: North of 26° south

Darwin should be a forward operating base for Australia’s submarines

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Building on its long history as a forward operating base, Darwin is ready to support our future submarine operations. Though it’s commonly seen as unsuitable as a home port for submarines, that doesn’t disqualify Darwin from playing a logistic support role to resupply and maintain the boats mid-patrol and rotate out their crew.

A 2016 report by the Defence Science and Technology Group contended, ‘The shallowness of the surrounding sea near Darwin that leaves submarines vulnerable to attack, the location of the city on Australia’s northern frontier closest to potential adversaries and the relative lack of industrial infrastructure make Darwin less than idea[l] as a submarine base.’ Let’s consider each point.

In the first instance, it’s hard to argue with geography.

It’s true that the Timor Sea is shallow at an average depth of 200 metres, compared with the 300 to 450 metres at which most submarines operate. Meanwhile, the Arafura Sea is even shallower with a depth of between 50 and 80 metres. That’s just enough for a Kilo-class submarine—with a reported minimum depth requirement of 45 metres—not to scrape the seabed.

On these grounds, some observers have expressed concerns about our submarines losing the stealth central to their deterrent effect. But submarine rotations to Darwin present an acceptable level of risk to train submariners to defend our approaches and surface combatants, as they might need to do in wartime.

A second concern is premised on Darwin’s proximity to the front in the Pacific War.

A 2011 Department of Defence report on future submarine basing options stated that Darwin wasn’t assessed partly because, as ‘Australia’s northern most capital city, it is believed to be inherently more vulnerable to hostile attack than any other city’. This would make chilling reading for people in Darwin who haven’t forgotten repeated air raids during World War II on our city, but we should reflect dispassionately on what it means for our national defence.

If Darwin was ever in such a dire situation again, contemporary weapons systems could likely bring Fleet Base West and all of our bases north of Tasmania within range. In today’s world, an enemy no longer needs to be at the gates to attack our cities, northern or southern. Geography is therefore a flimsy reason for not rotating submarines in Darwin.

Current strategic trends are increasing the value of Darwin as a forward operating base. If our cities were being targeted by long-range weapons, without intermediate-range missiles of our own and with our F-111s retired, the Attack-class submarine could present the most potent and maybe only means to counter attempted coercion. In this scenario, 10 days’ extra fuel could be tactically decisive in our ability to sustain a submarine forward presence to defeat a long-range threat.

Finally, let’s consider our local defence industry.

Some have argued that Darwin Harbour is inadequate for our future submarines because there’s only one entrance. But with the exception of Fleet Base West, all options assessed in the 2011 report—Sydney, Jervis Bay, Newcastle and Brisbane—also have only one entrance. What some ports gain in strategic depth they lose by being a very long way from anywhere our submarines might need to patrol or loiter.

It’s true that Darwin still lacks the skilled workforce to sustain submarine operations. Learning from our Collins-class recruitment woes, it makes eminent strategic sense to homeport future submarines on the densely populated east coast. For the foreseeable future, Darwin won’t contest the place of other larger cities in supporting our submarine industry.

Darwin’s comparative advantage is to serve as a forward operating base—a role which other capitals don’t want and can’t play. Darwin has solid logistical, airport and housing infrastructure to sustain a skilled local workforce to perform light maintenance, leaving the much trickier and longer full-cycle docking in South Australia or Western Australia.

In this connection, I salute the announcement by Rear Admiral Wendy Malcolm at the Pacific 2019 exposition in Sydney this month that Defence was moving towards a new model of regional maintenance centres in Darwin, Cairns, Perth and Sydney. Her presentation to industry confirmed that Darwin was considered important to sustain the navy’s operations, which will require a skilled local workforce rather than one working on a fly-in, fly-out basis. This will make it even more operationally attractive to rotate future submarines through Darwin.

Currently, when submarines visit Darwin from being ‘up top’, they tie up to the submarine buoy in the middle of Darwin Harbour. They’re not there for long, taking about a day to resupply. Ongoing redevelopment of facilities at HMAS Coonawarra to build a wharf structure and berthing dolphins will allow our future submarines to be even more quickly and effectively refuelled and resupplied. But we can do much more.

The 2011 Defence Department report concluded that ‘Darwin as a forward operating base for FSM [future submarine] operations will enhance FSM capabilities.’ One obvious way in which this will be true is the added range and presence Darwin will give our submarine operations. Diesel-electric submarines need more pit stops than their nuclear-powered cousins, making Darwin vital to any extension of their operational range. The upcoming strategic review of the 2016 defence white paper should explicitly note Darwin’s value in this regard.

Finally, Darwin’s enhanced profile as one of the navy’s key regional maintenance centres won’t be of use to just our own forces. Some speculate that Darwin could in future accommodate ships as large as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.

If that’s true, we’ll see more than Australian submarines frequenting Darwin to protect these high-value assets. And we’ll also need to step up our inbound port visits and naval exercises with Indonesia and other ASEAN partners for Darwin to continue to play its role as a crown jewel of our defence diplomacy.

Australia should invite more defence partners to use its northern training areas

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With Australia’s increasingly contested and uncertain strategic environment, defence diplomacy is more important than ever. The Australian Defence Force’s extensive and diverse training areas should play a key role in that effort.

The Australia–Singapore military training initiative and the US government’s force posture initiatives, including the Marine Rotational Force—Darwin, clearly demonstrate the value of our nation’s military training areas. However, the benefits of these agreements are by no means one way. While Singaporean and US forces come here to reap the benefits of our large training areas, Australia gains a high return on investment in terms of economic and strategic benefits and ADF interoperability.

The Singapore Armed Forces have been conducting individual and joint training in Australia since 1990, when the first Wallaby Exercise was held at Shoalwater Bay Training Area in central Queensland. These exercises have been growing in scale ever since.

In 2016, the Australian government announced that it had entered into a 25-year deal with Singapore under which the number of Singaporean troops training in Australia each year would increase to include as many as 14,000 personnel. These personnel will now stay in Australia for up to 18 weeks a year. The agreement also includes the co-development of a new training area in northern Queensland near Townsville. Singapore has pledged $2.65 billion to the project, which also includes an expansion of the Shoalwater Bay facility.

While it’s taken some time for the US Marine Corps to reach its target of training 2,500 marines in Darwin during the dry season, each of the US military services is cognisant of the benefits northern Australia’s training areas provide. The presence of the Marine Corps, and the accompanying Enhanced Air Cooperation initiative in Darwin, are important expressions of America’s strategic commitment to the security of the region.

To support the US Force Posture Initiatives, Australia and the US are investing around $2 billion in defence infrastructure and facilities at defence sites in the Northern Territory.

Even with the presence of the Marines and the SAF, we are yet to fully utilise northern Australia’s vast training areas, and their unique capabilities.

Earlier this year, our ASPI colleague Malcolm Davis highlighted the value of Delamere weapons range. But there are other training areas just waiting to be fully used. One of the most prominent and currently underutilised is the Bradshaw Field Training Area.

Bradshaw was established in 1996 on a former pastoral station near Timber Creek and the Victoria River in the northwest of the Northern Territory. Covering approximately 871,000 hectares, Bradshaw was initially acquired at a cost of $54 million to provide a training base for the 1st Brigade because the existing Mount Bundey Training Area was inadequate for manoeuvre exercises. Mount Bundey is limited in its capacity to handle some types of manoeuvre training, principally because of the impact of armoured vehicles on the environment and infrastructure.

In contrast with Mount Bundey, the Bradshaw Field Training Area is designed to support training in formation manoeuvres, field live-firing, and aerial live-firing and bombing. Its facilities include field firing areas, high explosive impact areas, manoeuvre areas, training sectors and infrastructure to support management and operational use.

Its remoteness also allows the ADF and its partners to use the full array of its electronic and cyber capabilities. It’s now part of the electronically networked North Australian Range Complex, which also includes the Delamere range and Mount Bundey.

Defence has already invested heavily in Bradshaw’s infrastructure, and it has promised more. With a road network of approximately 340 kilometres, maintenance areas, a range control facility, a 500-person campsite and support facilities, Bradshaw has become a turnkey capability that’s ready to go. Which is why it’s already regularly used by Australian, US and other forces (such as Singapore) for infantry and armoured formation manoeuvre and munitions training.

Of course, training at Bradshaw has its challenges. Northern Australia’s wet season makes year-round training, especially for land forces, particularly difficult. In addition to the practical mobility challenges of the wet, range users must be constantly mindful of their detrimental environmental impacts, which can get worse over time if they’re not careful. The Aboriginal heritage and cultural sites dotted across the training area also require careful management.

It’s clear that Bradshaw, like Delamere, is a critical defence asset. At present, however, the tempo of exercises by Australia, the US and Singapore at Bradshaw has plateaued, especially with the relocation of many of 1st Brigade’s armoured assets to Adelaide.

With the spare capacity in many of the north’s training areas, there’s plenty of opportunity to increase our defence diplomacy efforts by offering regional partners space to train.

Bradshaw, like other training areas in Australia’s north, has spare capacity that could be used by our Japanese, South Korean, Indonesian and Vietnamese defence partners.

As we continue to come to terms with our more dangerous and unpredictable strategic outlook, Australia’s defence diplomacy efforts should make use of these important assets to demonstrate our strategic commitment to cooperation in our region.

Water management in northern Australia is a national security issue

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In a recent Strategist article, Dr Paul Barnes raised the issue of water management and water scarcity in the Top End. He argued that access to water as an essential service may be underrated in national infrastructure planning. But how seriously is water being considered as a security resource, a capital resource or a developmental resource? We argue that water is not just one of these, but all three. This is an important notion considering the significant role it plays in Australia’s prosperity, security and, indeed, survival.

Within this water management trichotomy, there are different focuses and priorities, but also different forms of legislative operationalisation.

When it comes to water management, while the viability of the Murray–Darling Basin has been a persistent focus of Australia’s media and politicians, the issue has lacked the same focus in the Top End. The problems faced in the Murray–Darling Basin are ongoing and based largely on state and territory water access. But the immediate consequences of inadequate access to water in the Northern Territory must be a high priority in the nation’s conceptions of water security.

In the Northern Territory, 90% of water is supplied through bores, and the territory government has acknowledged that groundwater levels are running low in the Darwin area. Though the NT government has done a significant amount of work on improving water management, that’s something both territory and federal politicians need to increase their focus on.

In terms of national planning, water is controlled by the states and territories (with the exception of the Murray–Darling Basin Authority). Water management is run primarily through the National Water Initiative, which was agreed to by the Council of Australian Governments in 2004.

Currently, the National Water Initiative positions water as a part of Australia’s ‘natural capital’, with its purpose being to support and sustain economic and industrial growth. Indeed, former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce once reflected that ‘water is wealth and stored water is a bank’. As capital, water is managed through the statutory authority of the Productivity Commission and the environment department. Bodies such as the Critical Infrastructure Centre in the Department of Home Affairs can foster interstate and public–private consultation, but state and territory governments and private water companies have the biggest say in the capital resourcing of water.

As a developmental resource, access to water and sanitation is recognised by the UN as a human right. All Australians must be provided with access to drinking water, and governments must balance access with the strategic and capital considerations of water management. Equitable access for all citizens to water should be a major priority for all governments. In terms of realising this goal, developmental priorities are balanced between state and territory governments and the Commonwealth, and departments including the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities, and various state and territory departments.

But most importantly, water management is inadequately presented as a national security issue. While state and territory governments should have a leading role in policing and resource management, the federal government is the provider of national security. In deciding where and how water resources should be administered, the National Water Initiative does not engage with questions of exposure and vulnerability of water resources at the national level and mentions ‘security’ only in relation to entitlements and reliability of access. The National Water Commission did not make vulnerability and exposure a main focus in its 2014 report.

Looking more closely at defence, water security in the NT is essential for Australia’s warfighting capability. Bore drilling, for example, can create serious surface and structural issues for infrastructure, and sewerage and waste management have significant defence considerations. In the case of Darwin Airport, inefficient water and wastewater management could affect the operational continuity of the dual-use facility. Any such impact on the airport would drastically undermine the ability of the Australian Defence Force and the US Marines to operate from Darwin.

Strategic resourcing of water could help offset some of these issues. It would mean the siloing of water as a critical asset during military conflict, but also take into account the cascading risks and effects of climate change. While the Critical Infrastructure Centre considers water a ‘critical asset’, its position as a monitoring and assessment body means that it cannot force state and territory governments or industry to change their behaviour. Though the launch of the National Resilience Taskforce’s report, Profiling Australia’s vulnerability, is a great start in considering the systemic nature of risk and vulnerability, real ‘strategic resourcing’ would require a renegotiation of water’s place in Australia’s resource management, critical infrastructure and defence and national security framework.

How Australia considers this ‘trichotomy’ of water management will be a major part of future policymaking concerning risk and resilience in the territory. Water’s role as a strategic, capital and developmental asset will need to be considered in terms of balancing of responsibilities between the states and territories and the federal government, and the states’ and territories’ own resource management schemes. A failure to do so will constitute a threat to not only Australia’s operational capability during a conflict, but also its ability to respond to disasters and crises.

Stopping the drift to the south: Defence and northern Australia

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For over a century, Australian federal governments have periodically tussled with the question of what to do with, and at times how to defend, what they’ve long considered Australia’s underdeveloped and underpopulated north. The Australian government’s sporadic northern foci have over time led to the development and delivery of a long list of infrastructure investments and new policy initiatives.

Regularly, to the detriment of the Northern Territory, the benefits of those investments fail to be fully realised. The driver of this underperformance is probably the stopgap nature of Canberra’s commitments to developing the north, which favour short- to medium-term economic gains. It appears that this dynamic is once again playing out in Defence’s strategic posture in northern Australia.

In his 1986 review of defence capabilities, Paul Dibb argued that, ‘If we are to project credible military power in the most vulnerable part of the continent, we require a larger permanent presence in the north of Australia.’ Over the first decade following the release of the landmark 1987 defence white paper, and its ‘defence of Australia’ concepts, Dibb’s thinking would shape Defence’s force posture in Australia’s north. Bit by bit, the ADF moved army and air force units to the Northern Territory, eventually establishing Headquarters Northern Command as a fully functioning operational command.

On paper, the Australian government has made a strong declaratory commitment to northern Australia. The 2015 white paper on developing northern Australia included a pledge to strengthen Defence’s presence in the region.

The 2016 defence white paper stated: ‘Investment in our national defence infrastructure—including the Army, Navy and Air Force bases in northern Australia, including in Townsville and Darwin, as well as the Air Force bases Tindal, Curtin, Scherger and Learmonth—will be a focus.’

It also predicted that Defence’s presence and investment in northern Australia would gradually increase. Defence is still looking to upgrade the Bradshaw Field Training Area (Northern Territory), Robertson and Larrakeyah Barracks (Darwin) and RAAF Darwin, albeit with a much smaller budget.

In contrast with these grand statements, there’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that there’s an expanding gap between declaratory policy and actual Defence activities and presence in the north. While funding might be earmarked for facility upgrades in the Northern Territory over the next few years, there will be fewer defence personnel, exercises and units there to use them.

To start, Defence annual reports reveal that the number of personnel in the Northern Territory is already at an 11-year low (see figure below).

Defence personnel in the Northern Territory, 2007 to 2018

The large national-level tri-service exercises, such as the Kangaroo and Crocodile series, that once focused on the defence of Australia’s north have ended.

Headquarters Northern Command’s responsibilities have been downgraded, and command has become a part-time role for the commander of the Darwin-based 1st Brigade.

The unchanged environmental challenges of wet seasons have become, over recent years, a justification to move whole units and capabilities—such as the tanks of the 1st Armoured Regiment—south to Adelaide. The 7th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, along with supporting subunits from the 8th/12th Regiment, 1st Combat Engineer Regiment and 1st Combat Service Support Battalion, has moved to RAAF Base Edinburgh, just outside Adelaide.

These changes seem incongruous at a time when the US is continuing to implement its force posture initiatives in northern Australia.

Of course, a lot has changed since the 1987 white paper was drafted, and it wasn’t legally binding. However, there’s been little public discourse to suggest a reduction in the strategic importance of northern Australia.

As I noted in January, many of the factors that have shaped the assumptions of our ‘defence of Australia’ strategies have changed substantially, and in many cases even deteriorated, since 1987.

China’s projection of soft and hard power across Eurasia and its waters, at a time when the dynamics between the globe’s great powers are changing, is creating increased strategic uncertainty. The likelihood and consequences of miscalculations are rising.

Today, the security of the north is just as important to Australia’s national security as it was in the 1930s when Japan invaded Manchuria. In this environment, Defence is placing renewed emphasis on the 2016 white paper’s first strategic objective: ‘to deter, deny and defeat any attempt by a hostile country or non-state actor to attack, threaten or coerce Australia’.

Clearly, the ADF’s slow move south needs to be not just arrested but reversed. It may be easier and cheaper to raise, train and sustain capabilities in Australia’s southern states but, as stated in the 2016 white paper, the ADF’s significant presence in northern Australia is an important part of Defence’s strategic posture. The first step in achieving that outcome is for Defence to develop a single shared policy position on its presence in the north.

Arguably, security in the north isn’t just about boots on the ground and infrastructure development, but the promotion of economically and socially flourishing northern communities. The development of industry capacity in Australia’s strategically important north is critical for defence and national security. Policy success is predicated on the Australian government making a long-term strategic commitment to northern Australia and its economy.

In bridging the gap between policy and action, the government would do well to pay heed to three lessons from its historical northern experiences:

  • To be successful in the north, you must be there for the long haul.
  • Building a resilient and secure north depends on creating social and economic prosperity.
  • Defence’s social licence to operate in the north can’t be taken for granted.

From Bali to Sulawesi: the importance of northern Australia’s regional response capability

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More than 16 years after the 2002 Bali bombings, Australia’s National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC) in Darwin continues to demonstrate the importance of both geopolitical location and regional preparedness, particularly in the event of a natural or manmade disaster.

The NCCTRC is well situated at Australia’s natural gateway to Asia on the periphery of the notorious ‘Ring of Fire’. Before the centre’s establishment, Darwin and the Top End figured in a number of significant national events, none less than the first of many World War II bombings on 19 February 1942; the city’s levelling by Cyclone Tracy in 1974; and the unique strategic role of accommodating a ‘tent city’ following the 1999 Timor refugee evacuation.

The decision in 2002 to use Darwin and the Royal Darwin Hospital as the retrieval, rescue, resuscitation and then repatriation hub for the more than 75 Australians injured in the Bali terrorist attack was a strategic success. The north’s resilience and proximity have endured and continue to provide a regional soft-power lever in 2019.

The NCCTRC opened its doors in 2005 and has since evolved to become an important asset for enhancing Australia’s health security and disaster response capacity in the Top End. It is also active in building capacity and relationships across Asia and the Pacific. The NCCTRC provides a combination of readily adaptable and innovative response capabilities; training; teaching; exercising expertise; research initiatives; and mentoring and support for emerging medical teams across the Asia–Pacific.

The NCCTRC also works with the World Health Organization’s humanitarian and global outbreak divisions and plays a key role in the humanitarian aspects of Australia’s regional engagement.

Following the Haiti earthquake of 2010, a series of global standards for responding medical teams were developed on the NCCTRC site in collaboration with WHO. These standards are the benchmarks used by WHO across the world. Members of the NCCTRC assist with developing and mentoring other national teams across Asia and the Pacific, and further afield.

In 2016, the NCCTRC worked closely with WHO to achieve verification of Australia’s emergency medical assistance team, AUSMAT, as a WHO Emergency Medical Team Type 2 capability. AUSMAT is the official Australian government multidisciplinary healthcare team, which comprises doctors, nurses, paramedics, fire-fighters (logisticians) and allied health staff. These self-sufficient teams can be deployed in response to formal requests for assistance from a disaster-affected government. Australia’s AUSMAT was just the fifth team in the world to gain WHO certification.

The Australian government response to the devastating floods in Pakistan in August 2010 was the first time a large-scale joint civilian AUSMAT and defence team was deployed. The team—drawn from jurisdictions across the nation—was in the field for 11 weeks treating more than 11,000 patients. Australia’s response to the disaster has since been recognised as one of the most successful civil–military deployments.

The lessons from Pakistan shaped the AUSMAT and contributed to changes in global standards, with further refining occurring following the response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013.

The tragedy of the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005 has continued to provide an opportunity to galvanise the Darwin–Denpasar relationship, not just in disaster preparedness, but more broadly in clinical practice. An ongoing collaboration with the Sanglah Hospital—well supported by I Made Mangku Pastika, former governor of Bali—has enabled sharing of skills and knowledge with a focus on disaster preparedness and capacity building.

The NCCTRC continues to work with the Muhammadiyah Medical Group in Indonesia through an ongoing commitment following the 2018 tsunami and earthquake in Sulawesi.

Since 2009, with the development of a national AUSMAT capability, the NCCTRC has worked through federal, state and territory health services to ensure preparedness and participation of all jurisdictions and AUSMAT-trained clinicians.

A wider example of ‘soft power’ was well demonstrated in the strengthening of national relationships that followed the response to Cyclone Winston, which struck Fiji in February 2016.

Well before Winston, and as part of capacity and knowledge-sharing programs with regional partners, a small group of Fijian surgeons undertook AUSMAT training in Darwin. This not only raised both ability and awareness, but also lowered the threshold to seek ‘known’ and trusted support. Within hours of Winston’s making landfall, those surgeons deployed a rapid local surgical response to the disaster-affected areas and, with their encouragement, the Fijian government requested further AUSMAT assistance.

An Australian team worked closely with the Fijian government to identify and address areas of unmet need and provide support to the health system and their Fijian counterparts. At the conclusion of the AUSMAT response, the Fijian Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MoHMS) was provided with a report on the response to the disastrous cyclone. The review overwhelmingly reflected positively on the achievements of the health response in meeting the Fijian people’s immediate health needs and included additional recommendations on how key structures and coordination could be strengthened.

The NCCTRC has since developed a training package for emergency health responses in partnership with the MoHMS. This integrated education program will support the establishment of incident command and information management. It focuses on building the capacity of identified emergency health operations centres to address critical issues in a timely manner with available resources.

The partnerships forged through training and mentoring, and the sharing of exercising and educational modules, result in lives and limbs being saved and recovery occurring more quickly. When Tonga was struck by a severe cyclone in early 2018, it was satisfying to know that a well-prepared response could be quickly mounted locally and that additional support was unnecessary.

The defence of (northern) Australia—then and now

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Once governments have decided that their defence policies will focus on the defence of Australia, two conclusions immediately follow. First, priorities for the development of the Australian Defence Force will have a strong maritime dimension. Second, because of the nature of Australia’s strategic geography, there will necessarily be a focus on operations in or from the north of the country.

Such considerations set the framework for an extensive series of studies, starting in the 1970s, to work out the consequences of this central policy choice in more detail. There was also guidance from the key strategic observation of the time: in the shorter term, only lesser contingencies were credible, and more serious contingencies were credible only in the longer term, after years of warning.

The work included conceptual studies focused on the problem of defending Australia carried out by the Defence Department’s central policy areas, and some more technology-oriented studies conducted by the Defence Science and Technology Group. This program of analysis encountered terra incognita in both senses: such work had not been attempted since before World War II, so there was a distinct conceptual vacuum, and, in Canberra at least, there was precious little understanding of what there was ‘up north’.

Some important decisions ensued, and here are some examples. The government decided (in 1984) to develop the bare-base airfield at Tindal (near Katherine in the Northern Territory) into an operational base for a squadron of F/A-18 Hornets. The experimental Jindalee over-the-horizon radar was set up close to Alice Springs, with its surveillance arc looking north.

The army established a set of Regional Force Surveillance Units, including the Darwin-based NORFORCE (North-West Mobile Force), which drew on the detailed local knowledge of members of the army reserve. Other bases were to be modernised or developed (the patrol boat base in Darwin, and additional bare airfields), and there was a growing recognition of the vulnerability of ports to mine-laying (such as Darwin and the ore-exporting ports), and therefore of the importance of mine countermeasures.

Interpreting strategic guidance for priorities for Australia’s maritime capabilities was relatively straightforward. But there was no such convergence of views with respect to the army. To resolve the impasse, the government appointed Paul Dibb to conduct a review of Australia’s defence capabilities. The review dismissed the army’s arguments that gave priority to more substantial conflict (in particular, its plans for mechanisation).

In contrast, it gave priority to an army capable of countering a protracted campaign of dispersed raids across the north of Australia (while also allowing for modest capabilities in the expansion base against the remote prospect of a conventional land battle in Australia). It argued strongly for elements of the regular army to be based in the north, and for the establishment of the Northern Command (NORCOM) in Darwin. A specific role for the army would be the formidable task of protecting the bases from which maritime operations would be conducted.

The subsequent 1987 defence white paper (and later decisions) built on Dibb’s recommendations. Examples include the basing of the army’s 1st Brigade in Darwin (but with one of its battalions now based in Adelaide), the establishment of NORCOM, and the continued development of northern air bases and training grounds. The success of the experimental Jindalee radar led to the full-scale development of the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN, based in Laverton, Western Australia; Longreach, Queensland; and Alice Springs, Northern Territory), with a primary focus on the surveillance of Australia’s northern approaches and Darwin.

In short, the decades since the 1970s have seen an impressive level of investment in the ability of the ADF to conduct operations in and to Australia’s north. Yet there have been times when that focus has become blurred. Earlier this century, with ADF deployments to Afghanistan and the Middle East, it became fashionable in some quarters to talk about the return to an ADF designed for distant expeditionary warfare, and to be dismissive of ‘defence of Australia’ policies. In any event, the effort required to support the conduct of operations, both closer to home and further afield, led to less attention being paid to the defence of Australia’s own north. The overall significance of that neglect has been amplified in more recent times by the deterioration in Australia’s strategic environment.

In the 1970s, a fundamental conclusion was that there would be many years of warning before a potential adversary could develop the capabilities necessary for serious conflict with Australia. This situation has now changed, and will change further. In particular, with the economic growth of China and the expansion and modernisation of its armed forces, the warning time for more intense and technologically sophisticated conflict has shortened. This is not to paint China as necessarily our adversary, but it does increase significantly the challenges of strategic risk management, as Dibb and I have discussed. That has consequences for the readiness, sustainability and even structure of the ADF, and other parts of the national defence effort such as intelligence, science and industry.

What does it all mean for Australia’s north? Several matters require attention, all of them obvious and in some cases already recognised elsewhere. Bases in the north need to be modernised, including for the storage of advanced munitions. We need to recognise the likely demands of intensive operations in the Indo-Pacific, including strike operations, and the possible conduct of joint operations with such countries as Indonesia and India as well as with the US.

Serious consideration should be given to hardening to mitigate the risks associated with increasing regional strike capabilities. Fuel supplies, especially for sustained operations from northern bases, need to be highly reliable. Staffing arrangements for JORN (and other surveillance capabilities) need to be capable of sustained round-the-clock operations. Plans for mine countermeasures, including the use of the reserves, should be dusted off.

Similarly, plans for the use of the army to defend northern bases, again including the use of reserves, should be reviewed (among other things, the potential levels of threat will be higher now than in the 1980s). We also need more clarity on how the ADF would draw on the civilian infrastructure (much improved since the days of the 1970s studies), and on the relationship between military and civilian authorities in the event of contingencies.

There is now much to be done. While there is no cause for panic, it would be a serious breach of faith to be complacent in the face of such a call for action.

North of 26° south and the security of Australia

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In terms of Australia’s first, and primary, strategic defence objective—‘to deter, deny and defeat any attempt by a hostile country or non-state actor to attack, threaten or coerce Australia’—it seems that Paul Dibb’s 1986 review of defence capabilities was prophetic. Dibb’s assessment is as accurate now as it was 32 years ago: ‘There are risks inherent in our strategic environment that could pose difficult problems for the nation’s defence.’

Today, however, the time frame for change is much shorter. Over the past three decades, many of the factors that have shaped the assumptions of our ‘defence of Australia’ strategies have changed substantially, and often deteriorated.

In 1986, Australia was a long way from the global conflicts of the day. Of course, Russia made efforts to bring superpower competition to our region—with its presence in the Pacific and Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam—but failed. The Cold War between Russia and the US also fostered a comforting alliance of necessity between China and the West that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Australia now finds competition and potentially conflict far closer to home, especially in the South China Sea.

While Russia was declining, China was rising. In 1990, China’s GDP was estimated at US$390 billion; in 2016, it was more than 30 times that amount (US$11,779 billion). In 1989, less than 5% of Australia’s exports were destined for China. By 2015, the proportion had grown to almost 30%, making China our number one trading partner.

With its new-found wealth, China has been investing widely in its Belt and Road Initiative, creating new levels of maritime, air and land connectivity. All the while, it has been increasing, and very often asserting, its influence across the Asia–Pacific and Indo-Pacific.

Over the past decade, the defence technology advantages in the region that Australia once enjoyed have rapidly eroded. China continues to reform, build and modernise its military, and it isn’t the only one in our region doing so. Chinese efforts have also been backed by an ambitious research and development program.

Australia’s north has changed, too. In 1986, the Northern Territory had a population of 155,000; today it’s 247,000. Northern Australia’s contribution to our economy is also rising. It is a major exporter of commodities ranging from gold to gas. According to Deloitte Access Economics, northern jurisdictions will account for nearly 42% of the Australian economy by 2040, up from 35% in 2011. The Northern Territory’s LNG projects alone supply more than 10% of Japan’s annual global gas imports. Arguably, infrastructure investment in the north hasn’t always kept pace with this growth, which could in time affect future growth opportunities and national security.

The emphasis on ‘self-reliance’ in the 1987 defence white paper likely reflected the author’s wariness of abandonment by our key allies. The UK’s military withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1967, US President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Guam Doctrine and the fall of South Vietnam loomed as large in defence strategists’ minds then as the likely impacts of the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ policy do today. Although the Australian Defence Force’s presence in the north has increased, and further investments were foreshadowed in the 2016 defence white paper, the less favourable strategic circumstances still require new thinking.

Traditional national security threats have intensified over recent years and non-traditional ones have broadened. Transnational serious and organised crime in the maritime domain (including illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing; piracy; and trafficking of weapons, drugs and people), terrorism and an increasingly assertive Chinese maritime strategy are generating further security complexity.

In the 1980s, official strategic guidance indicated that our defence planners would have ‘at least 10 years’ warning of a substantial military threat’. That’s clearly no longer the case. The 2016 defence white paper set a firm foundation for developing Australia’s future defence capabilities; however, its projections of our strategic circumstances now look like wishful thinking. In 2019, Australia’s strategic outlook appears to be far more uncertain and susceptible to rapid changes with short warning.

Northern Australia’s dispersed critical infrastructure and primary resources remain vulnerable to traditional and non-traditional national security threats. Modern weapon systems put these resources within striking distance of conventional weapons, and they’re also susceptible to hybrid warfare strategies like that used by Russia in Ukraine.

While Australia has a long-term defence capability plan, we need to continue to test our assumptions about the defence of northern Australia and the north’s significance to national security.

In response to these changes, and with the support of the Northern Territory government, ASPI is establishing its latest research program, ‘The north and Australia’s security’. The program will provide a sustained research focus on the security of Australia’s north and the north’s critical role in contributing to the broader security of Australia. The program will concentrate on:

  • maintaining a strong public policy focus on the role of the north in the broader security of Australia at a time when strategic circumstances are driving new policy thinking in Canberra
  • developing a modernised way of thinking about the north and security by updating strategic frameworks that remain anchored in the 1980s ‘defence of Australia’ context
  • situating the north in a broader discussion about national security interests beyond defence—encompassing home affairs, border security and customs, space, cybersecurity, humanitarian and disaster response, biosecurity and energy security.