A fully independent Australian capability to make missiles remains a long way off, even with the US now showing greater support.

Australian–US cooperation on missile production was one of the few noteworthy areas of progress at last month’s annual AUSMIN meeting of the top Australian and US defence and foreign policy officials. Announcements there underscored that building up Australian industry to produce guided weapons and explosive ordnance, an effort known as the GWEO Enterprise, is no longer simply a national project; it has become an alliance initiative.

It’s clearer than ever that each stage of Australia’s crawl-walk-run approach to developing the GWEO Enterprise will hinge on US assistance, including technical knowledge, initial manufacturing support and, critically, access to global supply chains. Consequently, US defence industrial capacity shortfalls and lingering nervousness about information-sharing will likely shadow Australia’s efforts.

US policymakers have made plain the rationale for partnering with allies on munitions production. Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to deplete US stocks and strain production capacity for strike weapons and air-defence interceptors at a disquieting pace. Concerningly, war games run by leading US think tanks suggest that the US would exhaust stocks of key long-range missiles less than one week into a war to defend Taiwan.

In that context, progress on federated munitions production with Australia is welcome. At AUSMIN 2023, Washington agreed to transfer technical data to Australia to enable the co-assembly and eventual co-production of GMLRS truck-mounted missiles beginning in 2025. This year, the allies committed to additional cooperation on training rounds for PrSM short-range ballistic missiles and support for Australian manufacturing of solid-fuel rocket motors for these and other weapons. Along with the 22 August announcement of an $850 million partnership with Kongsberg Defence to build cruise missiles in Australia, the government is clearly moving GWEO from concept to a defence-industry reality.

Both Australia and the United States need this partnership to deliver. US officials have described efforts with Australia to build collective defence production capacity as a blueprint for similar initiatives with other partners. Yet Canberra must heed several lessons as it builds out its GWEO Enterprise with US co-production efforts at the centre.

First, greater sovereign production in Australia won’t eliminate dependence on the US. Self-reliance is not self-sufficiency. Acquisition of US-origin strike weapons will remain central to Australia’s missile mix even once local manufacturing for select missile components is underway. Though recent AUKUS-inspired export control reforms in the US may simplify defence technology trade between Australia and the US, lingering restrictions mean that many US missile-related datasets and components remain closely protected. As a result, even as Australia grows its production capacity, it’s likely that sovereignty over key parts, such as seeker heads and guidance systems, will remain elusive.

This means Australia will continue to rely in part on US production capacity, which will ultimately remain the pacesetter for a federated missile supply chain.

Recent setbacks in Japan’s efforts to boost production of Patriot air defence interceptors demonstrate the challenges to federated defence production. Despite Washington’s encouragement, Japanese efforts to manufacture and export greater numbers of Patriot rounds are capped by shortages of critical components produced exclusively by the US. This demonstrates that transitioning from walking to running will not simply be a matter of Australia doing more and doing it faster. Rather, progressing the GWEO Enterprise will equally depend upon the US getting its industrial house in order—and the degree to which it is willing and able to further empower Australia to help.

Beyond industrial capacity, Washington’s willingness to share sensitive information and technology with one of its most trusted partners will greatly influence the scope of the GWEO Enterprise. Sharing details about national supply-chain vulnerabilities is the greatest constraint on configuring allied inputs for maximum output. Yet, even within the trusted community of AUKUS, the US government is reticent about sharing information and technical data, despite Australia’s insistence that it seeks to complement, rather than compete with, US industry. This reluctance is a Cold War muscle memory that must be overcome for GWEO cooperation to achieve its potential.

The upcoming announcement of the Australian government’s strategic enterprise plan for sovereign missile manufacturing this year will provide overdue and welcome direction for the GWEO Enterprise. That GWEO has rocketed up the list of priorities at AUSMIN is also a strong show of intent. But even as Australia expands its missile production footprint, the policy community must be realistic about just how far sovereignty or self-reliance can go in the GWEO project.

Each AUSMIN meeting, when the foreign and defence ministers from Australia and their American counterparts get together, generally each year, is marked by a communiqué.

These statements signal the matters of mutual agreement and shared concern, and typically mark progress and intent on initiatives of the two nations. Mostly they are fulsome, covering an exhaustive range of current issues. The 2022 communiqué is one such, albeit reorienting towards the Pacific and for the first time referencing indigenous peoples.

That’s what’s new. What’s often interesting are the absences and subtractions from earlier communiqués.

If we cast our eye back over previous outcomes, three differences stand out: a change in tone that reflects how the respective governments think about the world; a shift in emphasis of a specific threat vector; and the priority accorded a recent major initiative.

Let’s take the first: tone. Throughout the 2010s, leading into last year’s communiqué, there was a sense of a darkening world, increasing tensions and a rising existential threat. Democratic values were under pressure.

The focus this year was more on climate change and—as mentioned—on the Pacific and indigenous peoples. There was less of a sense of an existential threat generated by inimical revanchist powers. Instead, there was a return to language reminiscent of 20 years ago, urging Beijing to be a responsible stakeholder.

That language does not resonate with Washington’s recently released national security strategy, which evoked a strong sense of mission, of competing for the future and pushing back against nuclear-armed autocracies.

That suggests communiqué language driven by Australian wordsmithing. That’s not to say there’s a tectonic shift in the fundamentals of Australian defence and foreign policy—there remains the thread of continuity that typically binds consistency into those policies through changes of government.

But we are seeing a reallocation of priorities, a different lens and a purpose that is more about dealing with the messiness of the world. That could suggest a Canberra that sees its role as helping broaden support by addressing issues of regional concern, but risks being more easily distracted and potentially spreading itself more thinly across issues.

The second issue is the prominence accorded cyber. Cybersecurity receives but one mention, early on, along with technology, trade and commerce in a reference to a need for ‘rules of the road’.

That’s in contrast to earlier communiqués that identified it as a real threat, from its first mention in 2009 onwards. In 2011, it merited its own specific statement; in 2012, there were seven mentions; in 2013, five; in 2014, three; and in 2015, five. The 2017 communiqué was unusually brief; even so, cyber was called out as a threat. Once AUSMIN returned after a hiatus in 2020, cyber was mentioned twice and hit a high point in 2021 with eight mentions, including getting its own paragraph.

This year’s apparent lack of interest in cyber at AUSMIN, traditionally a forum for strategic, international relations and defence issues, may be a straw in the wind. Cyber will clearly be an ongoing issue for societies and businesses into the foreseeable future—it is an inherent feature of modern digital and data systems.

But the war in Ukraine raises questions on the value of cyber in conventional warfare. The failure of an anticipated Russian cyber offensive cast doubt on the prospect of a ‘cyber Pearl Harbor’. After all, it was that possibility that prompted the 2011 AUSMIN statement to reference ANZUS itself, should such a cyberattack be directed against either nation.

That, of course, is not to say that cyber has no effect—it evidently does—or that cyber isn’t being used in the Russian effort—it evidently is. And the prospect remains of heightened Russian activity over the coming months.

But it suggests that conventional policy mechanisms continue to struggle with grey-zone activities. Many of those activities go to the nature of government, concern domestic issues, and generally don’t lie within the remit of the defence and foreign policy establishment.

Still, policymakers are not sitting on their hands. We can find part of what may have fallen earlier under the label of cyber in the 2022 communiqué’s language on the need for trusted digital and network infrastructure, and its references to public–private partnerships and to the Quad. That, arguably, helps mature and progress the debate around cyber, by encouraging the civilianising of the defence effort.

The last matter is the absence of half of AUKUS. Yes, the nuclear submarines are there: they get their own paragraph. But there is nothing that explicitly recognises the second—and potentially much more valuable—pillar of AUKUS, the technology accelerator. Ideally that would have been called out.

Instead, technology issues have been either boxed into specific initiatives—such as the guided weapons and explosive ordnance enterprise and space surveillance—or shunted to the Quad, as with the earlier reference to emerging technologies, and conflated with cooperation and collaboration with the region. That’s potentially problematic. The language around working on the defence trade treaty promises more of the same rather than offering the breakthrough needed to access technology and kit.

One possible explanation may be that while Australia stands to be the greatest beneficiary of the AUKUS accelerator, and needs US assistance, it is also the one that needs to do the heaviest lifting and so make, proportionally, the greater investment. The US side may be waiting to see whether Australia is indeed serious about building capability or is content to remain a technology taker, reliant on its inherently extractive economy, helpful friends and good luck.

It can be easy to read too much into the absence of a thing. Yet, attention accorded in communiqués, like the allocation of resources, denotes priorities. This year’s AUSMIN communiqué suggests a government less driven by existential threat, less tolerant of cyber’s challenges and less across the broad technology space. We’ve yet to see whether the shifts noted here are simply short-term decisions of fit or indicative of longer-term trends.

Nuclear weapons are once more a serious political issue. They seem likely to be a topic of close discussion at next week’s AUSMIN talks, especially after Washington’s recent concerns that the Albanese government might seriously be considering signing and ratifying the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). That’s an area where Australian ministers will be treading carefully. What’s the basis for the US concerns, and how can Australia best address them?

Unbeknownst to most Australians, there’s a silent battle being waged at the heart of Australian strategic policy. It’s a battle over nuclear deterrence. Traditionally, Australian governments have offered bipartisan support to the doctrine. Coalition governments may have done so a little more enthusiastically than their Labor counterparts, but Labor leaders have put their shoulders to the wheel when required. Gloomy security environments have been a spur to hard choices. Parliamentary debates from the latter half of the 1980s, for instance, are riddled with proclamations of support for nuclear deterrence, in the wake of New Zealand’s anti-nuclear defection from ANZUS.

Still, the current debate is more than a rehearsal of old positions. Nuclear weapons have returned suddenly to strategic prominence after 30 years of relative obscurity. Both governments and publics have lost the muscle memory of nuclear deterrence—how it works and why it’s important. Moreover, advocates of nuclear disarmament have used nuclear deterrence’s ‘downtime’ to build a better-organised campaign against nuclear weapons.

A central plank in that campaign has been the drafting of the TPNW. Back when Labor was in opposition, many of its members happily signed ‘pledges’ to support the signature and ratification of the treaty if the party won government. Anthony Albanese was among the federal parliamentarians so pledging, and one of the keenest exponents of nuclear disarmament. It was he who formally proposed the motion at Labor’s national convention in 2018 to include in the party’s national policy program a commitment to join the treaty when Labor was in government.

True, that commitment was hedged with a range of caveats and conditions. And so far the government hasn’t signed and ratified the treaty. But in a recent vote at the UN, Australia changed its position on the TPNW from one of opposition to the treaty to one of abstention—simultaneously emboldening disarmament supporters and alerting Washington to the prospect of an Albanese government breaking ranks. Hence the US government’s recent reminder, pointing out that membership of the TPNW would be incompatible with the US’s extended deterrence relationships with its allies.

So, is Australia likely to sign and ratify the TPNW? Well, there are certainly some grounds for concern. For example, six of the nine ‘key people’ on the National Security Committee of cabinet have signed pledges of support (Albanese, Chris Bowen, Mark Dreyfus, Clare O’Neil, Katy Gallagher and Pat Conroy have pledged; Richard Marles, Penny Wong and Jim Chalmers haven’t; full list here). And the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the architect of the pledge strategy, has been lobbying intensely in favour of Australia’s joining the TPNW.

But becoming a party to the TPNW would precipitate the mother of all train wrecks in Australian strategic and defence policy. It would delegitimise not merely nuclear weapons but nuclear deterrence itself, including the nuclear umbrella under which 30-plus countries currently shelter. That would put Australia at odds with its major ally and many of its security partners. Canberra would have to tell Washington that while it was happy to be defended by US conventional forces—indeed, to the last marine—it was opposed to being defended by the use, or even the threat of use, of US nuclear weapons. That’s remarkably like the message New Zealand tried to sell in the mid-1980s, and it didn’t retail well in Washington.

ICAN has recently begun to campaign for a policy that would restrict US B-52s temporarily rotating through northern Australia to that group of aircraft confined to conventional missions. That’s reminiscent of NZ Labour leader David Lange telling US Secretary of State George Schultz in 1985 that New Zealand would not accept a port visit by USS Buchanan, but would welcome a visit by an Oliver Hazard Perry–class frigate. The Kiwis were told no, the Oliver Hazard Perry–class frigates did not constitute a separate non-nuclear US navy that could be exclusively devoted to New Zealand’s protection.

Still, the fact that ICAN thinks like the Lange government doesn’t mean the Albanese government does too. The arithmetic of the National Security Committee may not look encouraging, but remember the old rule: gloomy security environments spur hard choices. (The Americans would say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.) Australia has deep equities in its security relationship with the US, and it’s not about to throw them away. Australia in 2022 is not New Zealand in 1985.

There’s a serious conversation about nuclear weapons to be had at AUSMIN. But it’s not one focused on Australia’s potentially joining the TPNW. Rather, there’s an entire spectrum of potential discussion topics ranging from what evolving extended deterrence relationships might look like in coming decades to whether or not it is going to be possible to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in Western strategy.

We live in a time of escalating nuclear threats, whose source can be traced principally to the revisionist agendas of autocratic powers. Unilateral Western nuclear disarmament isn’t the answer. Indeed, it would only make the situation worse.

As Australia’s foreign and defence ministers and the US secretaries of state and defence prepare to meet for the annual AUSMIN consultations, ASPI is releasing a volume of essays exploring the policy context and recommending Australian priorities for the talks. This is an abridged version of a chapter from the collection, which will be published next week.

What’s integrated deterrence?

‘Integrated deterrence entails developing and combining our strengths to maximum effect, by working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, other instruments of US national power, and our unmatched network of Alliances and partnerships. Integrated deterrence is enabled by combat-credible forces, backstopped by a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.’

— US Department of Defense, 2022 national defense strategy

Deterrence as a concept and a strategy has made a notable return to the lexicon of US strategy and planning. This reflects the reality of a return of great-power competition, but it’s also a response to the threat landscape being more complex, more multidimensional (including with an uptick in grey-zone challenges) and multipolar. Integrated deterrence made headlines as a central idea in the unclassified versions of the US national security and national defence strategies, but ‘integrated deterrence’ also makes an important statement of intent in terms of process: the timing and integration of the national defence strategy with complementary reviews of both missile defence and nuclear posture provide an early example of integrated deterrence in action.

Deterrence fell out of vogue as an organising principle for strategy largely due to the absence of a clear, imminent ‘pacing or peer competitor’ following the end of the Cold War. The apparent success of the comprehensive US strategy against the Soviet Union, coupled with the difficulty of proving the effectiveness of deterrence (demonstrating why something specifically didn’t happen), made it easy to shift focus rather than study in depth how and why US deterrence strategy had prevailed, and its applicability for the future.

Nuclear deterrence, including maintaining and upgrading the US nuclear triad and enhancing US missile defence capabilities, remained a centrepiece of the US approach to managing North Korean and Iranian threats (rogue actors), but after the Cold War the US and much of the Western world shifted focus on a new set of challenges and a new approach: the 3Ds (defence, development and diplomacy). This was designed to address a more diffuse, lower intensity and less clearly defined set of challenges (in scope and geography): insurgency, failing states and terrorism.

Regardless of nomenclature, the shift of emphasis in the US strategy from ideas such as containment and deterrence to a ‘comprehensive approach’ for state and capacity building, and now the shift back again, are real and important. Strategic framing drives activity, resources and unity of effort across numerous actors: towards what end has shifted over key epochs.

Deterrence is a strategic framework necessary in times of great-power competition and potential conflict with catastrophic and direct consequences. Deterrence is fundamentally and crucially designed to avoid conflict or limit the severity of its consequences—something on which almost every actor can agree. When it comes to shared interests, avoiding conflict is the Holy Grail, especially in an Indo-Pacific region that’s complex and dynamic, decries confrontation and prizes consensus.

The return of deterrence as a core organising principle for the US Department of Defense fits the US’s strategic assessment of today’s requirement ‘to act urgently to sustain and strengthen US deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China … as the pacing challenge for the Department’. This isn’t business as usual. It provides direction to prioritise action in the face of a broad front of competitive interfaces. This doesn’t suggest that the US intends to compete on every front, but it will think hard about consequence, risk and strategic advantage, especially vis-a-vis China.

Integrated deterrence, and the deliberate approach detailed in the national defence strategy (using campaigning to tailor and unify lines of effort and focusing on building US strategic advantage, including through technology) should be welcomed in Australia; it offers a critical line of operations upon which to focus bilateral cooperation. A well-conceived notion of integrated deterrence offers a disciplined framework to focus on clearly defined threats. While we shouldn’t expect the unclassified version of US strategy documents to detail specifically what behaviours or actions the US is trying to deter, the need for clarity on these points within a deterrence strategy is abundantly clear.

A focus on accurate problem diagnosis and the identification of specific behaviours or actions to be deterred requires a strong intelligence capability. Deterrence embraces the psychological aspect of international relations, so solid intelligence focused on the right problems is fundamental to building good deterrence strategy. Assessment capability and highly accurate analysis, especially concerning the complex and multifaceted challenge presented by China, are essential. This has been a feature of Australian national security capability investment for several years now. It situates us well to contribute effectively to US integrated deterrence planning and operations.

How will ‘integrated deterrence’ be implemented?

This is where the biggest questions remain. It’s been a long time since the full range of muscles involved in integrated deterrence have been seriously flexed. One locus of sustained effort has been in US Strategic Command, which has consistently focused on deterrence planning that’s specific (adversary-centric) and coordinated to achieve strategic effects—not just across military domains but synchronised with other levers of national power. It will take effort and uplift to ensure that all relevant US actors can effectively orchestrate the deliberate use of select soft- and hard-power tools under an integrated deterrence strategy, including those across the sprawling US defence and national security landscape.

But we need to recognise that the conversation in the US has moved decisively. Bilateral engagement must now prioritise sharing assessments of China’s action and intent in the Indo-Pacific, and developing options to shape and deter, consistent with our respective and shared interests and values. AUSMIN 2022 offers an opportunity to direct our bilateral efforts to be optimised under coherent, complementary and tailored deterrence strategies. Those efforts need to include political messaging, geoeconomic and technology strategy and cooperation, high-level integrated military planning and military capability investment (moving to some co-development under AUKUS).

Australia’s AUSMIN principals could help the US more constructively converse with partners on its integrated deterrence approach. How? The US and Australia often suffer from a narrative that we’re investing in defence as ‘warmongers’. That’s untrue, but perceptions matter, so a better coordinated narrative that defence investment and deterrence strategy is about more than national security and is about the region’s security, focused on strategic stability over unilateral aggression, is in the AUSMIN partners’ interests.

What’s in it for us?

The US focus on ‘integrated deterrence’ in its national security and national defence strategies is an opportunity for Australia. There will be some serious asks of Australia on US force posture, including nuclear-capable (but not necessarily nuclear-armed) capabilities. These should be assessed on merit and with a clear deterrence (or warfighting) function in mind, as well as a clear-eyed understanding of the impacts of such decisions on our relationships in the region.

Australia has often claimed that integration is something it’s good at—a strength of a highly specialised but small and decentralised government. Our strategically relevant geography, sitting outside the second island chain, strengthens Australia’s position in discussions related to deterring China and to wider US policy in the Indo-Pacific.

In the military realm, the Australian Defence Force’s well-established joint approach to warfare has demonstrated its capability in conflict and provides a strong basis for ongoing development under a deterrence strategy. A relatively small but potent and professional military and cabinet-style decision-making are often cited as explanations for why Australia has often got the integration part of strategy right.

But it also has downsides. The small size of the ADF has often led to limited thinking about how it contributes to combined or coalition operations. Australia has looked to niche and contained approaches to operations, evidenced by ADF commitments to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, all designed to limit commitment in quantity and time. This was the right approach for a ‘limited war’ on the other side. A potential major-power conflict in our own region needs bigger thinking.

Integrated deterrence offers a clear framework for engaging the US in more substantive ways. Australia has always focused on quality and ‘interoperability’ with the US, and, in recent years, it has better resourced its defence posture. This continues to work for Australia as the US seeks to implement integrated deterrence with partners and allies.

US strategies are global (multi-theatre), and their approaches may need a harder edge (leveraging sophisticated high-end, combat-credible and highly capable conventional and nuclear forces at scale and a strong defence spend). Australia will need to stay focused on the ‘So what?’ question in our region, and on keeping the contest in the realm of competition.

The US will be challenged by the state of open warfare in the European theatre when it wants to lean into the Indo-Pacific. In terms of strategic and political messaging, the European theatre has demonstrated reinvigorated US convening power, large-scale rejection of military aggression, and the willingness of countries and their people to respond. Not enough has been made of this political win or its place in integrated deterrence, even though it has direct relevance for the credibility and perception of US integrated deterrence as it’s applied in the Indo-Pacific.

Ends, ways, means …

Deterrence by denial needs to be postured and structured to achieve that goal. That will require a focus on ensuring that the Chinese military and President Xi Jinping are worried about the US’s ability to breach the distance and contested logistical challenges of China’s anti-access/area-denial strategy (to push and keep the US out of the first and second island chains). Australia, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea are all important partners in this regard.

Australia needs the US to have protected force flow, mobility, logistics support and a full spectrum of capability options in the region, so that it can effectively undermine the confidence of the People’s Liberation Army in its ability to achieve a quick military victory far from US shores. Australia should look to AUSMIN to shape how our role and capabilities are integrated into US plans, and do so by being an active and credible participant.

AUKUS provides an excellent vehicle for integrated deterrence implementation, but Australia will need to know exactly what it wants from the partnership and be prepared to make difficult asks of the US system. Australian defence innovators and companies will need carve-outs under the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations for capabilities that we co-design and develop, or that we export to the US. Without that, the technology pillar of AUKUS is dead in the water. That will have implications for the credibility of the broader arrangement and will undermine deterrence. Obtaining US agreement at AUSMIN to prioritise practical successes through AUKUS in the next year is key.

The outcome of the recent AUSMIN meeting—the annual gathering of the secretaries of state and defence from the United States and the foreign and defence ministers from Australia—was a signal of the alliance’s increasing focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

The joint statement stemming from the meeting announced the creation of a ‘joint work plan’ that would focus future efforts on the Indo-Pacific, touching on diplomatic, security and geoeconomic activities throughout the region. On the defence collaboration front, a new agreement was signed to jointly develop, research and test new cyber capabilities. Hypersonics were singled out as an area where cooperation between the two countries should be strengthened, particularly on concept development, testing and ‘validation’ of high-speed flight technologies.

This was a welcome shift in direction. But considering the location of the meeting—Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley—it was a missed opportunity to drive an ambitious agenda for how the alliance can invest in joint defence technology projects and use private sector innovation to address shared national security challenges.

Since the Cold War, traditional defence companies and national laboratories have lost the monopoly they once had on developing the cutting-edge technologies that will be central to future military advantage. In select areas, research and development funding has also shifted from the government to the private sector. Innovative major companies and even start-ups are making advances in fields important to national defence, such as machine learning and quantum technology.

Harnessing these advances is critical for the future of the alliance. Despite growing defence budgets, Australia and the US can’t spend their way out of the mounting security challenges in the Indo-Pacific—ranging from an increasingly assertive and militarily capable China, to a still nuclear-armed North Korea and resilient terrorist networks in Southeast Asia. Harvesting technologies from the commercial sector can help offset the cost of new defence capabilities while addressing some of these shared challenges.

Focusing on ways Australia and the United States can work together on new defence technologies is also a practical and useful undertaking. With the White House’s approach to longstanding allies less predictable under President Donald Trump, it is increasingly important for countries like Australia to build new connections with the commercial sector in the US and across the American defence establishment.

Then there’s China, the primary challenger to the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing is actively pursuing what it calls ‘civil–military fusion’—or the leveraging of its corporate science and technology sector for advances in military capability. And it is succeeding: Chinese researchers recently set a new world record for quantum entanglement (an essential aspect of quantum cryptography), and the PLA is quickly forging closer links with both the private sector and universities.

To be sure, Australia and the United States are not standing still.

In early 2017, the Australian Defence Department established the Defence Innovation Hub and the Next Generation Technology Fund. Both focus on providing resources and promoting private sector engagement on national security issues. Despite being slow to start, the Defence Innovation Hub has begun to announce grants to Australian companies, including a $1.2 million contract to space engineering firm Sabre Astronautics.

The US established its own defence innovation unit in 2015. The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) has enabled the Pentagon to partner with start-ups in Silicon Valley and beyond that are developing technologies relevant to concrete military operational problems.

Yet these individual efforts haven’t yet translated into a concrete program of alliance collaboration.

Following on from this year’s AUSMIN, Canberra and Washington should start by picking off some low-hanging fruit. Modest steps, like an exchange of personnel between Australia’s Defence Innovation Hub and America’s DIUx, would create momentum and pave the way for future cooperation.

More extensive and high-impact collaborations will take time to realise. The two governments could evaluate the feasibility of establishing a platform for Australian and American entrepreneurs to come together to launch companies focused on specific national security themes. Australia and the US should also begin to map where each country possesses comparative advantages or pockets of technological excellence.

In an era of great-power competition, where gaining and maintaining technological advantage will be a defining feature, leveraging commercial innovation for defence must become a central element of the alliance. The time to start is now.