Tag Archive for: Australian Defence Force

The future of US Indo-Pacific policy

How might US policy in the Indo-Pacific change over the next four years? In anticipation of a new US administration and Congress in 2025, ASPI USA held an “alternative futures analysis” exercise in mid-October 2024 to explore the drivers of US policy and how they might evolve through to November 2028. The workshop involved seven Indo-Pacific experts, who discussed a range of factors that could determine US policy and assessed how key factors could drive different outcomes.

The participants determined that the two key drivers affecting the US role in the Indo-Pacific over the next four years that are simultaneously most uncertain and most determinative for US policy are:

  1. Washington’s perception of China’s strength in the Indo-Pacific
  2. the level of US attention to the region.

The former is a key determinant of Washington’s threat perception, and the latter is a key determinant of Washington’s capacity to sustainably engage in the region. The nexus of those drivers produced a skeleton of four potential scenarios:

  • Failing to walk and chew gum: Perceived high China power and a low level of US attention. In this scenario, Beijing continues to advance its interests across the region while Washington fails to prioritise imperatives in the Indo-Pacific amid ongoing conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
  • Follow US: Perceived high China power and a high level of US attention. In this scenario, the possibility of Chinese regional hegemony is growing, but the US adopts a focused, harder-edged security strategy and leads like-minded states to confront the challenge.
  • The Peaceful Pivot: Perceived low China power and a high level of US attention. In this “stars align” scenario, the perception of diminishing competition and conflict with China couples with the US implementing the decade-old promise of a pivot to Asia.
  • Leading from behind: Perceived low China power and a low level of US attention. China’s capacity to project power falters in this scenario, but the US—pulled into global events elsewhere and distracted by its own domestic politics—does not provide forceful leadership in the region and leans on allies and partners to carry the load.

The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia

Australia faces an emerging national security threat from Brazilian transnational crime groups. Once a domestic concern, Brazilian organised crime has evolved into a powerful narco-insurgency with transnational reach, making Brazil the world’s second-largest player in the cocaine trade after Colombia.

While Brazilian organised crime previously posed little threat to Australia, this report, The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia, examines how Brazil’s expanding role in global cocaine supply, rising criminal network sophistication, and growing demand in Australia’s lucrative cocaine market are increasing the presence of Brazilian organised crime on Australian shores.

The report highlights how Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) has become a major transnational criminal threat, exploiting weaknesses in political, legal, and economic systems. It explores Brazil’s geography and criminal networks with South American cocaine producers and examines the PCC’s global distribution networks, with a focus on how the Pacific is increasingly used to transport drugs destined for Australia. A recent case study demonstrates the prioritisation of the Australian market in these operations.

The report concludes with recommendations for strengthening police cooperation, enhancing financial surveillance, and proactively detecting and disrupting PCC activities. By addressing key enablers of the PCC’s resilience and closing gaps in international information exchange, a coordinated approach will not only mitigate the immediate threat but also bolster Australia’s long-term defences against transnational organised crime.

North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: Views from The Strategist, Volume 10

The Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre’s latest report, North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: views from The Strategist, Volume 10, contains articles published in ASPI’s The Strategist over the last six months.

Expanding on previous volumes, this edition introduces thematic chapters focused on a range of subjects relevant to northern Australia. These include:

  1. Northern Australia and Defence,
  2. Developing Northern Australia,
  3. Northern Australia new policy opportunities,
  4. Critical Minerals, Energy, and Commodities,

Articles are authored by a range of experts across these varied topics.

Volume 10 also features a foreword by The Hon Lia Finocchiaro MLA, Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. Chief Minister Finocchiaro calls readers attention to the Northern Territory’s unique place in Australia’s defence history, its enduring strategic importance, and the Territory’s defence capabilities.

The 34 articles in this Compendium provide practical policy options which government could implement in the short term. Facilitating both the security and economic prosperity of northern Australia.

Cyclone Tracy: 50 years on

This year marks a powerful milestone in Australia’s history: the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, a disaster that reshaped the nation’s approach to resilience and recovery. When the cyclone struck Darwin on Christmas Day in 1974, it killed 66 people, displaced thousands, and left the city in ruins. Yet, it also sparked an extraordinary national response that redefined how Australia prepares for and recovers from natural disasters. Darwin, once devastated, now stands as a modern, resilient city—built not just to recover, but to withstand the worst.

ASPI’s new report, released in honour of this anniversary, takes a deep dive into Cyclone Tracy’s lasting impact on Australia’s disaster management. It explores how the event prompted major shifts in urban planning, building codes, and national security frameworks. From the pivotal role of the Australian Defence Force in the immediate response to the Whitlam government’s establishment of the Darwin Reconstruction Authority, Tracy set a blueprint for modern disaster recovery. But the legacy goes beyond infrastructure. The report also highlights the resilience of First Nations communities and the growing role of the private sector in disaster preparedness—elements that continue to shape Australia’s response to climate risks.

As we face increasingly frequent and severe climate events, the anniversary of Cyclone Tracy serves as a sharp reminder: resilience is not just about bouncing back—it’s about building forward. The report argues that northern Australia must go beyond traditional recovery strategies, urging a renewed focus on proactive resilience measures that address not only infrastructure but governance, community involvement, and climate adaptation. Tracy’s lessons are not just historical—they are essential to ensuring Australia’s future readiness.

The implications of emerging changes in land warfare for the focused all-domain defence force

Many elements of 21st-century warfare echo those of the 20th century. The nature of war as a brutal and fundamentally human endeavour has endured despite the introduction of stealth aircraft, precision missiles, drones, satellites and cyber capabilities to contemporary battlefields. Making sense of this context is just one of many challenges confronting the Australian Army and how it best contributes to the joint force.

This report is an analysis of emergent features of contemporary warfare coupled with a range of lessons learned from the history of war relevant to developing solutions for how land forces might contribute to the all-domain ADF. The author’s analysis is proffered in good faith for the sake of further discussion and contest of ideas.

The first section of this report explores the effects of emerging technologies and social circumstances on warfare and how armed forces might adapt. The second section examines the implications of the features of contemporary battlefields for the Army’s role in the focused ADF. The third section explores the implications of the tendency for wars to go on much longer than the belligerents would like. The fourth section explores the often-overlooked role of land forces in deterrence. The fifth and final section makes note of the challenges surrounding the logistics of ADF land warfare in a maritime environment and discusses the relative merits of heavier land forces in the Indo-Pacific.

Stepping up military support to humanitarian assistance in the Pacific

On October 3 the South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting (SPDMM) endorsed the establishment of the Pacific Response Group (PRG), a novel multinational military cooperation initiative that will seek to address the need for more efficient and effective cooperation between Pacific militaries to deliver military support to Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR).

In the coming years, the PRG will have to address challenges surrounding the potential expansion of the group and its mission, including into areas like stability operations, and Australia will need to commit greater resources to ensuring that it successfully adapts to the region’s needs. It is important that the thinking, consultation and some of the planning for that starts now.

Any decisions regarding the PRG will be made by SPDMM members as a collective, but each member state will have its own perspectives on the group’s development. This report provides 12 recommendations focused on areas including resourcing, encouraging a whole-of-government support, and expansion of the group in size and in scope. The report is intended to inform policymakers in Australia as a contributing member of the PRG, but many of the recommendations could also be valuable for, and hence adopted by, other members of the group.

A summary of the recommendations contained in the report are as follows:

Recommendation 1: PRG members states should consider the need for an expansion of the PRG beginning as soon as the 2025/2026 high risk weather season and must be able to deal with concurrent disasters.

Recommendation 2: The end goal of the HADR component of the PRG should be dedicated forces from each military able to be readily deployed in immediate response to natural disasters in the region.

Recommendation 3: PRG member states should consider ways it can guarantee capabilities for PRG use in the high-risk season from Australia, New Zealand and France for much needed transport, including maritime and air assets.

Recommendation 4: The Australian government should acknowledge that the PRG is not designed to address all of Australia’s domestic HADR demands so should consider other solutions to bolster its domestic disaster response.

Recommendation 5: The Australian government should consider how a whole-of-government approach can actively coordinate across departmental initiatives so that the PRG, and other initiatives, can make the best contribution to regional environmental security concerns.

Recommendation 6: SPDMM member states participating in the PRG should address the potential for the inclusion of police units or paramilitary from countries such as Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in the future.

Recommendation 7: The PRG should think ahead and consider outlining a role for SPDMM observers such as Japan, the UK and the US in supporting the group without changing its core makeup. This could include financial support for transport, maintenance or infrastructure and supplies.

Recommendation 8: Australia should be willing and ready to support the expansion the PRG mission as desired by its member states to address instability through a coordinated multilateral response, provided this is desired by other members of SPDMM.

Recommendation 9: If there is an expansion of the mission to include stability operations, Australia should lead the way in the development of a multilateral security agreement that formalises the PRG’s approach to stability operations in any SPDMM member state.

Recommendation 10: Together, PRG members should publicly push-back against any narratives that suggest this initiative is competition driven and remind other states that successful security initiatives inevitably lead to a reduced need for other external support. Australia should also be more transparent about its concerns with a greater Chinese security presence in the region.

Recommendation 11: Australia should encourage some of the region’s key partners to support the PRG with supplies, funding and – if needed – additional vessels and aircraft for transport.

Recommendation 12: If, in the future, the PRG is requested to support alongside Chinese security forces, Australia must combat potential narratives pushed by China of welcome cooperation and partnership between Australia as a PRG-member and China in the region that legitimise a Chinese security presence while respecting the sovereign decision making of recipient countries.

Lessons in leadership: Interviews with 11 of Australia’s former Defence Ministers

In a time of growing strategic uncertainty, 11 of Australia’s former defence ministers have shared valuable lessons they learned over decades running one of the toughest portfolios in government.

In this compendium, the former ministers from both sides of politics give their views on topics ranging from the complexity of dealing with a massive department, to the grief they shared with families at the funerals of slain soldiers.

The pieces are drawn from interviews with former ASPI executive director Peter Jennings and links to the original video interviews are available in the posts on The Strategist site.

Gender mainstreaming in United Nations peace operations: An unfulfilled promise?

The principle of gender equality is a cornerstone of the United Nations (UN). Centred on equal access to rights, opportunities, resources and decision-making powers irrespective of gender, it’s embedded within the UN Charter and championed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mechanisms such as the inaugural resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agreed to in 2000 by the UN Security Council (UNSC), and the adoption of an additional nine WPS resolutions, further represent the critical intent to achieve this goal. The purpose of such WPS mechanisms is to cultivate gender balance, foster diverse leadership and champion gender equality in a global effort to establish sustainable peace after conflict.

Yet, as we stand on the threshold of the 25th anniversary of UNSC resolution 1325, the UN’s stride towards gender equality for uniformed women in peace operations has been ‘exceedingly slow’. The lofty aspiration of ‘equal opportunity peacekeeping’ through gender mainstreaming policies and practices remains elusive, entangled in a web of misconceptions and entrenched systemic barriers and institutional challenges.
The purpose of this ASPI report is threefold.

First, it examines the blocks to implementation and the effects of gender mainstreaming strategies.
Second, it advances three strategic interventions for the UN system and its global peace and security community:

  • redefining peacekeeping benchmarks for an efficient and effective uniformed component
  • shifting the narrative on peacekeepers’ contributions regardless of gender
  • incorporating feminist voices and practices in the development of policies and practices for the deployment of peacekeepers.

These proposed interventions offer a unique prospect for the final section of this report: encouraging Australian Government departments and agencies that have responsibilities for and commitments to execute the Australian National Action Plan (NAP) on WPS. Those commitments extend to fostering gender equality in both domestic and international WPS endeavours, thereby strengthening Australia’s position as a proactive UN member state.

Full tilt: The UK’s defence role in the Pacific: Views from The Strategist

Britain has a new prime minister, Keir Starmer, leading its first Labour government in 14 years. Key questions for us now are how Britain under Labour will approach the security partnership with Australia and whether London will remain committed to investing defence resources in the Indo-Pacific.

This report provides vital context for addressing these questions. In this series of articles, originally published in ASPI’s The Strategist this year, ASPI authors review the historical underpinnings and future course of Britain’s strategic recoupling with Australia and this region, especially the Pacific Islands, from perspectives ranging from deterrence to climate resilience.

The report makes some recommendations for how to strengthen the Australia-UK defence partnership and shape Britain’s approach to our region.

A national strategic warning intelligence capability for Australia

Australia’s strategic warning time has collapsed—in response to profound geopolitical shifts. As the ADF is adapting to the hard implications of this change, so must the national intelligence community (NIC).

Australian Government decision-makers need time and insight to identify and prioritise threats (and opportunities) and devise effective responses. Strategic warning intelligence enables and empowers them to do so. But it must be done in a way that keeps up with the rapid pace of geopolitical and technological change, and a widening array of non-traditional strategic threats, and in a fashion best suited to Australia’s circumstances.

To meet this need the NIC should develop a discrete, institutional strategic warning intelligence function—an Australian Centre for Strategic Warning (ACSW). This would recognise the distinct skills, analytical focus and interface with decision-making entailed—and the vital national interests at stake. In implementing an ACSW, much can be learned from our own and other intelligence communities’ ongoing efforts to adapt to threats other than invasion—notably terrorism and pandemics. This will be especially pertinent in its application to grey-zone threats such as economic coercion.

Done right, an ACSW would be an important addition to the suite of Australia’s statecraft tools.

Tag Archive for: Australian Defence Force

Defence budget doesn’t match the threat Australia faces

When Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers stood at the dispatch box this evening to announce the 2025–26 Budget, he confirmed our worst fears about the government’s commitment to resourcing the Defence budget commensurate with the dangers Australia now faces.

A day earlier, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles had advised that the government’s sole Defence initiative for the 2025–26 budget cycle would be to bring forward a paltry $1 billion from the 2028–29 financial year, shared across 2026–27 and 2027–28.  So, the much vaunted ‘generational investment in Australia’s Defence’ has been put off for a few more years, at least.

This marginal reprofiling of funds ($900 million additional in 2026-27 and $237 million additional in 2027-28 – so, in fact a little more than $1 billion) has been applied to submarine and missile capabilities, which continue to take up an expanded amount of defence capital expenditure

Consolidated funding for Defence, the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Submarine Agency in 2025–26 is estimated to be $58,988.7 million. It’s a nominal increase of $2,380.5 million (4.2 percent) over expected 2024–25 spending. Adjusting for expected inflation, as expressed by the 1.0 percent GDP deflator, the real increase will be 3.2 percent.

And to our considerable frustration, a detailed reading of the defence budget highlights that the government continues to pay only lip service to the readiness and sustainability of the current force-in-being, with the largest spending increases on capability sustainment tied to the F-35 Lightning force ($190 million) and Collins-class submarines ($235 million). While $133 million is allocated to sustainment of a new Defence Logistics program, there is little to no change overall to sustainment funding, usage and workforce from last year’s budget.

As we noted in The cost of Defence: ASPI Defence budget brief 2024–2025, the urgency of our current security environment (eloquently expressed in the independent Defence Strategic Review in 2023, confirmed by this government in the National Defence Strategy (NDS) in 2024, and made manifest by the inability to properly track the Chinese naval flotilla’s circumnavigation of Australia just weeks ago) is not being matched by resources from the public coffers.

There are four possible reasons why the government continues to stint on resources that match the threat Australia faces.

Firstly, it may not really believe that the threat is as great as it spelt itself out in the NDS. The rhetoric of Australia ‘facing the most challenging strategic environment since the Second World War’ may conceivably have been used solely as a means of mobilising some action within the government but without any real concern that Australia was becoming increasingly vulnerable.

This would certainly be backed up by this government’s actions: a focus on military capability spending almost entirely as additions to the order of battle well into the 2030s and in the 2040s, while continuing to underspend on the readiness and sustainability of current forces.

A second possible explanation is that the government may not yet trust the Department of Defence’s ability to spend more. Marles has certainly been critical of Defence, claiming that it lacked the culture of excellence necessary to deliver on the government’s agenda.

The NDS speaks to the need for both strategic and enterprise reform of the Defence organisation, and for the organisation to become fit-for-purpose if it is to gain access to the resources needed to build the force set out in the 2024 Integrated Investment Program, the long-term spending plan. This would not be the first government to hold back on funding defence until it actually sees reform resulting in a more effective and efficient delivery of Defence’s outputs.

Thirdly, the government perhaps does not want to be seen responding to the Trump administration’s call for allies to increase defence spending. There has certainly been a huge spike in anti-US, anti-AUKUS commentary since the Trump administration came to office in January.

Fourthly, the government may not believe that the politics of additional funding to Defence make sense less than two months before the election due by May. At a time when average Australians are struggling with cost-of-living challenges, and this pre-election budget seeks to allay concerns within the electorate that the Albanese government has not done enough to meet its previous election commitments to making Australians better off, funding Defence may not be seen as an election winning strategy. A February Ipsos poll shows defence being quite far down the list of concerns that face Australians.

The 2025–26 budget is, sadly, an opportunity lost. In failing to adequately fund defence, the government has lost the opportunity for at least one year to convince our interlocutors in the US that Australia is doing enough to build up its forces. As defence funding will reach only 2.33 percent of GDP in 2033–34, we are still a far from the expectation of the nominated under secretary of defence for policy, Elbridge Colby: that we will spend at least 3 percent of GDP on defence.

The budget is also a lost opportunity for Australian industry, which is becoming increasingly frustrated at slow defence procurement. More and more companies are abandoning the defence market due to the risk averse, overly bureaucratic and delayed or abandoned project cycles they are forced to deal with.  Without market signals that Defence is seriously investing in Australian industry and is committed to building the Australian national support and industrial base it needs to deliver capability, we stand to lose considerable expertise, workforce and sovereign industrial capability, that can never be replaced.

And finally, the budget is a lost opportunity for Australia’s defence and security.  Since the 2020 Defence Update, successive Australian governments have warned that the security environment facing Australia is worsening exponentially. Recent events have demonstrated just how fragile peace and stability is and highlighted the need for Australia to have a force-in-being that is prepared and ready to defend Australia. The ministerial foreword to the NDS started with the axiom that there was no ‘greater responsibility for the Government than defending Australia’.

The failure of this year’s budget to meet that responsibility will make all Australians less secure.