Tag Archive for: defence capability

In national security, governments still struggle to work with startups

AUKUS governments began 25 years ago trying to draw in a greater range of possible defence suppliers beyond the traditional big contractors. It is an important objective, and some progress has been made, but governments still lack key processes for getting technologies from disparate new suppliers into service.

This is leaving security gaps. Even if they are building economical dual-use products that should be easily adapted for national security purposes, many companies find it hard to work with the government.

For example, an intelligence service may be better able to detect a hostile state threat if it could use an investigative tool already sold to banks for monitoring financial transactions. But if working for the government takes too long, the vendor will simply stick with its financial customers.

The issues are complex, but the ball is in governments’ court. If governments want to benefit from vendor diversification in defence and security, they’ll have to be more open on the problems they are trying to solve, quicker to contract with startups and more willing to learn through rapid iteration.

Governments can seek to solve their hardest security-technology challenges in a few ways. They have traditionally tried to build the solution in house or have paid a large defence prime to do it. This century they’ve slowly realised that their hard problems are not always unique and that solutions already exist in the marketplace—just not within their traditional supplier base.

In 1999, the CIA set up In-Q-Tel and in 2004 US Grand Challenges were established; these were competitions open to many entrants, often newcomers. Britain has published technology challenges since 2008 and recently set up a Co-Creation Centre. Australia joined In-Q-Tel International in 2018 and has similar programs to engage the startup community.

That’s a lot of effort in the right direction. Yet governments still find it hard to engage with non-traditional suppliers. One reason stands out: officials trying to pull-through new capabilities have to fight against the system to take a risk on a novel supplier.

Venture capitalists, on the other hand, are prepared to take risks early, backing a company with millions of dollars based on potential sales. Many Silicon Valley investors actually discourage startups from trying to sell to governments, even if the products are directly relevant to national security or defence. Government sales are too sporadic and slow for them.

Unfortunately, the best choice for many companies is often to stick with making products for commercial customers and just being ready for government customers to turn up if they want to. The attitude is: ‘build it and (maybe) they will come.’

Governments would ideally be able to exploit a product for defence and security operational advantage before it reaches the open market. They now regretfully acknowledge that game-changing products are being sold before they can be exploited in secret.

The best approach to solving this is countercultural to organisations who want to keep everything under wraps secret and built in-house. The answer is to be more open, less secretive and to accept more risk.

Governments openly talk about what technologies they care about in the longer term (such as quantum or synthetic biology) and how they are improving what’s called ‘pull-through’—the gap between technology demonstration and deployment. The mechanisms include grand challenges, grants, co-investments and quick contracting.

But governments are not good at explaining why some technologies are important and where they will be deployed operationally, often because of a preference for secrecy. If a government takes years to build a technology platform in secret, the result is likely to be secure but will be quickly overtaken by commercial technology.

The conflict in Ukraine means military technology is being conceived, developed, tested and deployed at eye-watering speeds in front of social media and the public. Governments are only now being more open about the operational context in which the technology will be deployed, share specific requirements and constraints openly and upfront (that is, explain the why); meaning the right solution can be developed more quickly.

Britain is leading the way. For instance, the Ministry of Defence has publicly tendered for one way attack drones and autonomous maritime weapons for Ukraine.

Sharing of why and where technology will be deployed results in quicker operationalisation. New and better versions can be created with user feedback; the first version can be discarded and replaced with a new one, which itself might not last long as iterations appear. In this paradigm, the rapidity of pull-through becomes a source of operational security, because the adversary is forever trying to catch up on what you’re doing.

With more global competition and the West’s diminishing technological superiority demands government embrace proper processes to harness dual-use commercial technology—of the speed and scale that nimble companies normally focused on private customers can deliver. We must make it work.

The US alliance is precious, but Australia should plan for more self-reliance

If our strategic position was already challenging, it just got worse.

Reliability of the US as an ally is in question, amid such actions by the Trump administration as calling for annexation of Canada, threating to disband or leave NATO, and suddenly suspending support for Ukraine. This follows the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, which declared Australia’s strategic circumstances the worst since World War II.

As Australia seeks to urgently enhance its defence capabilities and sovereign capacity—including by acquiring nuclear submarines, long-range strike options, war stocks and emerging and disruptive technologies—our key ally of more than 70 years has become highly unpredictable.

In Australia’s immediate region, three critical questions arise. Can Australia depend on US military support, particularly the delivery of nuclear submarines within the AUKUS agreement?  Will the United States continue to develop and honour security agreements with Japan? And will the US help Taiwan in the face of potential Chinese aggression? This is not a complete list of concerns for the Australian government and Defence officials.

We should be careful not to throw our most fundamental alliance out with the bathwater of one US administration. But we had better start thinking now about what we would have to do if we needed greater defence self-reliance. To some extent, that implies preparations now.

As the old joke goes, if Australia asked for directions to a self-sufficient defence policy, the reply would be, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to be starting from here.’  But here we are.

Despite early speculation, it is unclear how isolationist this Trump government will be. Its responses to Ukraine and Gaza present contrary pictures. It is important to remember that the US was isolationist and leaned heavily towards non-interventionism after the beginning of both World Wars I and II. Ultimately, it entered both conflicts on the same side as Australia. The bonds formed between Australian and American military forces in those conflicts are deep and enduring and are often invoked by politicians and service personnel alike. The dominant feature of the Australian defence headquarters in Canberra is a towering, stylised eagle symbolising Australia’s gratitude for US help during the Pacific war and the more than 100,000 Americans who died fighting there. America has been hard to predict and slow to react at times, but it has turned up for the free world when it matters most.

Despite some unnerving pronouncements from Trump, over the longer term the US has been more predictable and positive to Australia’s global interests. Australia benefits from American influence, even unpredictable American influence, as it helps maintain the mutually beneficial status quo. Beyond military advantages, our US alliance delivers essential intelligence through the Five Eyes intelligence partnership. The scale and breadth of that partnership would be nearly impossible to replace fully in any new arrangement.

I don’t like to imagine an Australian Defence posture without the US alliance, but I understand the need to consider the possibility. Australia would face an increasingly volatile world without the US as a strategic ally. It is wishful thinking to assume that Russia, China, North Korea or Iran would benignly fill any power void left by America. In such a world, deterring the use of force as a policy option would remain paramount. Deterrence is achieved through credible military capabilities, political resolve and, more often than not, alliances that complicate and overwhelm any opportunistic use of force. Deterrence is the starting point for any defensive national strategy.

A self-reliant Australia would have choices in how it achieves deterrence. The spectrum of deterrence options extends from neutrality to nuclear weapons. The most recognised example of neutrality is Switzerland’s armed neutrality. This is supported by more than 90 percent of its people, while defence costs less than 1 percent of its GDP. Although Switzerland’s approach has worked in a geopolitical sense to date, it is challenged by pressure from allies during crises to align with such policies as sanctions on Russia and by emerging security threats, such as cyber.

Nuclear weapons and the policy of mutually assured destruction have helped ensure there have been no global conflicts since 1945. Russian threats to employ nuclear weapons also appear to have restrained further escalation by other nations in Ukraine. The grim reality is that nuclear weapons remain the ultimate deterrent. However, these weapons are expensive to build and maintain, and a decision to acquire nuclear weapons is not straightforward or guaranteed.

Australia could consider each of these options. How a neutral or a nuclear-armed Australia would be accepted in our region is an open question. Whether the Australian public could be convinced to go down either path is doubtful. Domestic opinion will probably remain somewhere on a middle path. Australia would need greater self-sufficiency or a revised alliance framework without American military capability as a backstop. Defence self-sufficiency would not come cheaply and could not be achieved without a defence budget beyond 3 percent of GDP. It is impossible to determine the precise requirement, but it is sobering to note that Australia’s defence budget in 1942–43 was 34 percent of GDP.

A revised alliance framework could help mitigate costs. It would also bring the advantages of burden-sharing, enhanced mass and breadth, and more significant strategic complications for adversaries. Beyond the US, our traditionally nearest and most predictable military partners are New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. However, they each spend less than 1 percent of GDP on defence. They offer limited practical capability in either scale or deterrence. Indonesia will remain an important partner, but our relationship with it will—for historical and cultural reasons—continue to wax and wane.

Further afield but closely linked to our region and interest in the status quo is Japan. It has a credible military force, and the national and military relationships with Japan are developing strongly. There is good potential for an alternative alliance here. Our relationship with India is less well developed. India’s strategic worldview is also less aligned with ours than Japan’s is. There is potential with India, but building a trusting relationship with it will likely be slower.

We could look at the possibility of working more closely with Singapore, which is well armed for its population of 6 million and is highly skilled in regional statecraft. Our former closest ally, Britain, remains a trusted and capable partner, but it is far from our region and must remain focused on European concerns.

These are a few obvious options for a new alliance framework. No combination will replace the US military’s global reach and scale (including its nuclear capabilities) or capacity for deterrence. Nor could the new alliance replicate the Five Eyes intelligence apparatus in any reasonable timeframe. Australia’s relative security position would be degraded without US military backing.

What, then, would Australia need to prioritise in defence policy if it judged that the US was no longer a reliable ally?

The two key elements of military capability are the ability to shield (defend) and to strike (attack). Each requires a third element, intelligence, to be effective. Australia would need to enhance all three to be more self-sufficient. None would come cheaply in dollars or workforce. Typically, these capabilities take decades to establish. Building them up would require bipartisan agreement through successive government terms of office. In all three, we would be better off maintaining the US alliance through thick and thin. But let’s imagine what we’d do if we were unsure of the alliance, as follows.

Intelligence would require new trusted partners and additional technical and human capabilities for collection and analysis. AI will help but will demand ever-larger supercomputers and data centres. The workforce is specialised and complex to scale, let alone quickly. With national resolve, we could be more capable in a decade.

Concerning shielding, strategically, we would have to decide whether to defend forward (in our near region) or back (on our home shores). Either would have implications for our close neighbours.

Regardless of that choice, we would have to step up preparations that we are already undertaking. Critical infrastructure and locations already require hardening from physical and cyber threats. We need proven air and missile defence capabilities such as Patriot and THAAD ( both, incidentally, US systems) and an ability to integrate them. In a policy and coordination sense, we require a national alert system for air and missile threats and enhanced capabilities to counter sabotage, subversion and espionage within Australia. All this would become more important if the US alliance looked unreliable.

Similarly, additional strike options and weapons holdings are necessary and would be all the more so if we needed to be more self-reliant. The current Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance program to expand our domestic munitions-production capability is worthwhile but needs additional funding and acceleration.

Greater reach, particularly to strike targets from the air and sea in the maritime domain, and an ability to fight for protracted periods are key. It would be expensive to buy additional weapons and platforms (such as aircraft and ships) and to make genuine effort to expand domestic production. Increased domestic production is already necessary, and more of it would be needed for greater self-reliance.

Nuclear submarines are essential to our deterrent posture, because they most credibly contribute to intelligence, shielding and striking. Their full cost is still being realised but they do more to complicate an adversary’s strategic and tactical calculations than any other kind of platform. Walking away from the effort to acquire nuclear submarines (if we could) would undermine our greatest deterrent.

If we are determined to achieve greater maritime reach and influence, the debate about Australian aircraft carriers should be revisited. Again, the cost of these ships would be significant, and having an ally that might deploy a few in our region would be very attractive.

Autonomous air and sea systems offer potentially more cost-effective surveillance and shield and strike options. We already need to incorporate more of these with greater urgency. Even more of them would be part of an Australian Defence Force that might have to stand without the US.

We are already in a world where almost nothing happens without some ability to maintain our operations from space. Satellites and the ability to protect them are increasingly essential (and expensive) capabilities in which we are underinvested. A shift away from the US alliance would necessitate very substantial investment here.

These are only a few of the most critical areas for consideration in a more self-sufficient defence posture for Australia. If we broke our alliance with the US for any reason, we would need to increase defence spending enormously to maintain credible deterrent forces.

A final point should be emphasised: a move away from our alliance of more than 70 years—and a military partnership founded in World War I—should not result from the term of office of just one erratic US administration. The ramifications for Australia would be profound.

Australia needs greater defence self-reliance, and extra funding

Two recent foreign challenges suggest that Australia needs urgently to increase its level of defence self-reliance and to ensure that the increased funding that this would require is available.

First, the circumnavigation of our continent by three Chinese warships in February and March puts in question our capacity to keep even one flotilla under persistent surveillance. To remedy this, we need to re-examine our intelligence and surveillance capabilities. We knew well enough where the Chinese warships were but not what they were doing.

Second, the aggressive behaviour towards Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy by President Donald Trump in the White House on 28 February raises the question of our need for a higher degree of defence self-reliance. This does not mean abandoning or jettisoning the alliance with the US. But it does mean we need better ability to manage military contingencies in our strategic approaches without depending on the United States.

This will demand greater capabilities in longer-range weapons and supporting capabilities for intelligence, surveillance and tracking. These contingencies raise the need for a significantly greater degree of defence self-reliance. The US under Trump will expect us to manage them by ourselves.

Further, the principle of extended deterrence in the Asia-Pacific—under which the US remains the strategic guarantor for its allies in the region, especially against nuclear attack—has not (yet) been challenged by Trump or his administration officials. That guarantee seems a curious exception to Trump’s transactional approach to other security commitments.

However, short of nuclear war, we need to ascertain whether our strongest ally has transformed overnight into our most immediate problem. Already we see that Russia’s long-standing ambition to divide NATO is several steps closer.

The assumption still reigns in Australia that military threats are something that happen to other people a long way away and will never come to our homeland. With that belief, we have indulged ourselves in the luxury of merely incremental increases in defence budgets, rather than the transformative investment that is now needed.

Such transformation is now needed to ensure, first, that the Australian Defence Force can surge to meet the demands of new, short-warning contingencies and sustain the associated higher rates of effort and, second, that the ADF can continue to be the basis for further military expansion in the event that our strategic circumstances deteriorate further.

Underlying these concerns is the need to understand that the US is undergoing radical change under Trump. As Sir Lawrence Freedman observes, ‘The US is shrinking before our eyes as a serious and competent power.’

Taken together, the observations set out above reinforce Australia’s need for a greater level of self-reliance. These new issues are demanding because of their severe and sudden impact on our strategic environment. They require Defence to revisit its allocation of resources.

Defence must review operational requirements for anti-ship missiles, drones and associated ammunition, sea mines, uncrewed submarines, air-to-air missiles and strike missiles. The review must result in a new allocation of resources to such systems.

In the past few years, it has become quite trendy for defence experts in Australia to assert we need to spend 3 to 4 percent of GDP on defence, compared with barely 2 percent now. That would mean finding an additional $28 billion to $55 billion a year and bringing the overall defence budget to between $83 billion and $110 billion a year, compared with $55 billion now.

On 7 March, the nominated US under secretary of defence, Elbridge Colby, bluntly called for Australia to spend 3 percent of GDP on defence.

Making such arbitrary claims for an additional $28 billion a year is not a responsible approach to defence planning. Instead, what is needed is a much finer-grained definition of the ADF’s needs for such materiel as mentioned above, particularly for long-range missile strike capabilities and their associated deterrence through denial. Australia’s Defence organisation now needs to get on with this as a matter of urgency.

Our focus now needs to be not so much on additional, hugely expensive major platforms, such as ships and crewed aircraft, but giving new priority to surveillance and targeting capabilities, missiles and ammunition and uncrewed systems. Such an approach would be much less expensive, and much more timely.

The fact remains that today’s ADF, together with supporting capabilities, has little ability to sustain operations beyond low-level contingencies. Moreover, assumptions about force expansion made over many previous decades are no longer appropriate, particularly with respect to major platforms. In contrast, a way forward is presented by the government’s 2024 Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) plan, which is aimed at establishing domestic supply of advanced munitions. It can significantly increase the ADF’s ability to sustain high-technology operations and credibly support powerful force expansion based on modern long-range precision strike and targeting. Again, this is much quicker and cheaper than buying yet more large and costly platforms.

Despite rising strike ranges, geography is not dead. As the 2024 GWEO plan says, ‘With vast maritime borders and critical northern approaches, Australia must be able to defend against any adversary who may project power close to our territory.’

At present, Defence is spending $28 billion to $35 billion to develop and enhance targeting and long-range strike capabilities out to 2034. These will give the ADF a greater capacity to hold at risk a potential adversary’s forces that could target Australia’s interests during a conflict. But this is just the beginning. There are more expensive investments to be made—for example, in integrated air and missile defence.

Merely asserting that a particular percentage of GDP is appropriate for the defence budget is not adequate. Arguments that say only ‘more is better’ will get us nowhere. Defence needs a story to tell—a conceptual framework, agreed and accepted by the government and by the machinery of government—as the basis for considering more specific issues and initiatives. It must be suitable for public presentation, not just to get public understanding of the need for increased funding but potentially to get acceptance of the need to handle what looks like an extremely worrying emerging strategic situation in the shorter term.

The issues to be confronted include the level of strategic risk that the government is prepared to accept. What options in this respect does it want to consider? How much further down the path of self-reliance and sovereignty does it want to go in this new strategic environment? What would be the right level of reliance on the Trump government for intelligence, operational and combat support and logistics support? What range of options (and at what cost) should Australia now develop for contributing to US-led operations in the Indo-Pacific? This consideration will need to address a wider choice than in the Cold War, when Australia’s need to support the US in the Western Pacific, and US expectations of support, were much lower.

Further, Australia needs to consider its options for working more closely with other countries in the region, such as Japan, especially in the event that the US reduces its commitment to the area.

In many ways, the key point is how best to position Australia’s national defence effort (not just the ADF) to be able to surge in response to short-warning contingencies involving China as a potential adversary and, in a different way, the US, presumably as an ally.

The short-warning contingencies of today’s strategic circumstances will be potentially much more demanding than those of earlier years.

The legacy of five decades of assuming extended warning time is, in effect, an ADF with little capacity today for sustained operations, especially at an intense level. So, positioning Defence to have this surge capacity requires close attention.

It is good that governments have, progressively, recognised most of these issues. But implementation has been slow. The end of the era of extended warning was made clear in the 2016 Defence White Paper, drafted in 2015. This was 10 years ago, the length of time during which previous defence policies assumed we would respond to strategic deterioration and expand the ADF. But in terms of more potent defence capabilities, we have very little to show for it.

Even so, Defence’s adoption of net assessments (modelling likely enemy capabilities against ours, including both sides’ logistics support) is a powerful tool contributing to decisions about the force structure, preparedness, and strategic risk. Decisions on communications, surveillance and targeting capabilities reflect the importance of Australian sovereignty in these vital areas.

Defence is grasping the opportunities presented by the new technologies of remotely operated uncrewed platforms (combat aircraft, small submarines and surface ships). Such platforms offer a more expeditious and less expensive mode of force expansion than the acquisition of major crewed platforms, just as local manufacturing of modern long-range precision strike missiles does.

The matters set out above would contribute to the basis for estimating the costs of defence policies, including the costs of different policy options such as different levels of self-reliance and strategic risk, more or fewer options for contributing to US-led Indo-Pacific operations, greater or lesser reliance on the US for sustainability stocks of spare parts and munitions during contingencies.

Other factors include the need to address workforce issues, including the difficulties that the ADF has in attracting and retaining its personnel. If the latter difficulties persist, there may well be a need to consider radically different approaches to the ADF workforce, including some form of national service, an increased focus on the Reserves, or both.

Arguments for increased funding based on the above analysis would be much more likely to carry the day than mere assertions that a particular arbitrary fraction of GDP should be the target for the Defence budget.

Finally, the authors of this article are of the view that Defence’s decision-making abilities are not adequate, even for peacetime governance. It is, therefore, but a short step to be concerned that the arrangements for decision-making in the event of the more serious contingencies that have now to be part of the defence planning basis would be even less adequate. This also needs attention.

Something old, something new: the very practical rules of Chinese aircraft development

Year-end revelations of two new Chinese combat aircraft designs, the Chengdu J-36 and the Shenyang J-XX, should have put an end to the idea that China’s aerospace and defense industry just copies the West.

Yet sometimes China does produce copies, for good practical reasons. At other times it just does its best with the technology it happens to have available.

Here are some principles that Chinese military aeronautics development follows.

Copy if possible and necessary. The Xi’an KJ-600 configuration copies the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye’s, down to details. As on the E-2, one of the inboard fins of the four-fin tail has a moving rudder and the other doesn’t. That works on the Hawkeye, so why do it any other way? There’s a reason that the Hawkeye is still in production after 66 years.

KJ-600. Original image source unknown.

Good enough. The Xi’an H-6 bomber is the Soviet Tu-16, 12 days younger than the B-52. But at the age of 55, the design got a complete makeover from the Chinese industry: a new forward fuselage housing a three-member crew, all with ejection seats and glass displays, and a multi-mode radar. 1970s Russian engines replaced the 1950s originals.

The H-6K update and later versions provide the Chinese air force and naval aviation force with a heavy weapons platform with some features that even the forthcoming B-52J (a B-52 update with new engines) cannot match: the Chinese bomber has six wing pylons and an ability to carry an outsize store on its centerline.

Innovate to meet urgent needs. Those stores include not only an air-launched boost-glide weapon but the AVIC WZ-8, one of a group of very innovative Chinese military drones that represent a much more creative culture than what we see in Western aerospace.

WZ-8. Image: Wikipedia.

The WZ-8 is an air-launched, runway-recoverable drone with a blended-delta shape and rocket propulsion. It has (by US intelligence estimates) a speed of Mach 3 at 30,000 metres altitude and a range around 500 nautical miles (900km) including a long gliding descent.

In most respects, it could have been designed and built in the 1950s. But a remarkable feature of the WZ-8, visible on the website of a company specialising in additive manufacturing, is that the entire center-section box, the structural heart of the aircraft, is 3D printed in titanium.

The WZ-8 is the definition of a point design—an inflexible one intended for a single purpose. China regards the ability to attack US aircraft carriers as a strategic goal. And it’s well known that the US Navy relies on its carriers’ ability to move fast and far in the time between when they’re detected and when an attack on them arrives. Jamming and decoys help. The WZ-8’s job is a last-minute reconnaissance sortie to locate the carrier.

Borrowing technology that the West has ignored. The Guizhou WZ-7 Soaring Dragon drone, in service in small numbers, resembles a Northrop Grumman Global Hawk in size and body shape. But it has a four-surface joined wing.

Advantages claimed for the joined wing include combining a skinny wing shape (high aspect ratio, to the aerodynamicists), thinness and sweep. The result is an unusual combination of high speed and low drag.

The joined wing was invented in the US and has been studied by NASA several times, but the space-fixated agency never found budget to demonstrate it in flight. The Chinese designers would have found plenty of open-source data to work from.

 

WZ-7. Image: Wikipedia.

But another drone, Shenyang’s WZ-9 Divine Eagle, has no parallel. It is a high-altitude carrier for two large-aperture radar arrays. Its status is uncertain. It was first seen in 2015 and reappeared on video in late December. The two radar antennas occupy separate fuselages, connected at their front and rear extremities by a wing and canard, with a single engine above the wing. With no crew and high-aspect-ratio wings, the drone can fly higher than a big-cabin crewed platform and has a longer radar horizon.

The WZ-9’s unique shape indicates something about China’s electronics technology. The designers must believe that their radars are so efficient that the cost in weight of carrying two separate units, each with its own power supply, is acceptable. The concept also shows that China can rely on using datalinks alone to operate a complex radar system.

The WZ-9 and WZ-8 typify another trend in China’s technology: firing weapons from one platform (a ship, submarine, aircraft or ground vehicle) by using targeting data from another source. Western experts already believe that China’s growing, diverse fleet of airborne radar systems can be used for direct weapon guidance. The WZ-9 allows weapon-quality guidance to be extended farther without endangering a large crew on an aircraft that cannot defend itself.

Viewed as a group, alongside new combat aircraft like the J-36 and J-XX (J-XDS, according to some sources), these programs also illustrate another, hugely important feature of Chinese aerospace development: the sheer number of new and unique projects.

An engineer who started at Chinese fighter specialist Chengdu Aircraft in the late 1990s could have successively joined new development programs for four combat-aircraft types—the JF-17, J-10, J-20 and J-36. That engineer could also have worked on major upgrades and engine changes for the first three of those. All have entered service or are on track to do so. Working at rival Shenyang Aircraft would provide a similar experience level, with Xi’an Aircraft not far behind.

That engineer’s US counterpart might have worked on one new program from inception to service entry—if he or she had chosen the right company to start with.

It is that growing experience gap, rather than individual systems, that should worry us more than it does.

Air and maritime defence, not ground combat, should be Indonesia’s priorities

Indonesia isn’t doing enough in acquiring advanced naval and air systems. Too much money and focus are still being spent on the army, the traditionally dominant service—yet the country hardly faces a risk of a ground war.

The greater concern would be a threat from China, which can only come by sea and air. This is seen in Beijing’s increasing provocations against its neighbours, particularly Taiwan and the Philippines.

Indonesia’s main military shortcomings are its lack of airborne-early-warning, land-based anti-ship and surface-to-air capabilities. Establishing or strengthening them would mean reallocating funds from the army.

The risk of military escalation between Indonesia and China cannot be taken lightly despite their close diplomatic and economic relations. One of the main reasons for taking it seriously is that China already has ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea with some other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, particularly Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

While Jakarta is not a claimant in the territorial disputes, Chinese incursions into Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone have become increasingly frequent. In October and November 2024 alone, the China Coast Guard made multiple infringements in the North Natuna Sea, off Borneo, prompting Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency to dispatch vessels in response.

Yet, the head of the agency, Vice Admiral Irvansyah, has highlighted the stark inadequacy of Indonesia’s maritime patrol capabilities. With only 10 ships distributed across three operational areas, the agency falls far short of its ideal fleet of 90 ships needed to patrol Indonesian waters effectively. This inadequacy reflects the broader imbalance in Indonesia’s defence priorities.

Jakarta continues to favour the modernisation of the army, while the navy and air force fall behind.

Of the approved 155 trillion rupiah ($15.1 billion) for the 2025 defence budget, 54 trillion rupiah ($5.3 billion) is allocated to the army, while the navy and air force receive just 20 trillion ($1.9 billion) rupiah and 18 trillion rupiah ($1.8 billion), respectively.

As an archipelagic nation, Indonesia’s security depends on a strong navy to protect its vast waters and a capable air force to secure its skies.

History has shown the importance of maritime power, as demonstrated by the might of the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires, which both originated from Indonesia. Today, Indonesia must adopt a similarly maritime-focused strategy, supported by modern technology.

Airborne early warning aircraft, coastal-defence batteries and air-defence missile systems are particularly needed for monitoring and deterring potential threats.

Indonesia has only a weak ability to see what is going on in its own airspace. Foreign aircraft or even cruise missiles may fly into that airspace without the armed forces knowing, or if they are discovered the Indonesian response could be far too late. A group of airborne early warning aircraft would go a long way towards remedying the problem. Options are the SAAB GlobalEye and Boeing E-7.

Lack of a coastal-defence missile batteries leaves Indonesia vulnerable to maritime incursions. The government has made progress in modernising the navy through the procurement of Scorpene submarines, FREMM frigates and indigenous patrol vessels. But these efforts must be complemented by anti-ship missile systems on shore, which would be easy to hide and hard for an enemy to deal with.

Options include the BrahMos missile developed and manufactured by Russia and India, the US Harpoon, the French Exocet, the Turkish Atmaca and even the Chinese YJ-12E. Media last year reported plans to buy YJ-12Es, but Jakarta should carefully consider geopolitical implications of such a deal and whether weapons that China offers for export would be as effective as competitors’.

Indonesia has also shown interest in acquire the BrahMos missiles. This would make Indonesia the second ASEAN country to acquire such technology after the Philippines. The deal would include versions for launch from ships and the shore.

Buying BrahMos missiles would help diversify Indonesia’s sources of weapons and make it less vulnerable to arms embargoes or other interruptions of supply. The French and Turkish missiles would still be good alternatives, however.

Such weapons might be operated by the army, but the navy is the service that has expressed interest in acquiring them.

Finally, Indonesia’s spending on modern air-defence systems must also be expanded. While the acquisition of Turkish Hisar batteries, firing anti-aircraft missiles of short to medium range, is a step in the right direction, more systems are needed to cover key strategic areas. Only with a robust air-defence network can Jakarta counter potential sorties and incursions by adversaries.

Since the Ministry of Defence allocated the NASAMs surface-to-air batteries to the air force, that service would be the likely operator of any air-defence systems of medium or long range from future acquisitions.

Indonesia’s defence strategy must evolve to reflect changing geopolitical circumstances. As a maritime nation, its security depends on a strong navy and air force equipped with modern technology. It needs to reallocate defence spending before it is too late.

India’s defence industry is benefiting from cooperation with France

India’s defence industry is benefiting from the country’s switch away from Russia and towards France for weapons acquisition.

India and France have cooperated on several key defence projects, such as Kalvari-class submarines, the Chetak and Cheetah helicopters and the Shakti helicopter engine. These projects involved technology transfer to India under licensed production from French companies.

Since the 1960s, Russia has been India’s primary defence partner and weapons supplier. However, India’s arms imports from Russia have fallen to a historic low. According to a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute report, India’s defence imports from Russia fell from 76 percent during the 2009–13 period to 36 percent during the 2019–23 period. It marks the first time since the 1960s that less than half of India’s arms imports came from Russia.

The Russia–Ukraine war, ensuing Western sanctions on Russian entities and growing camaraderie between Russia and China have further prompted India to reduce its reliance on Russian defence exports. Additionally, India has faced significant delays in the delivery for several orders from Russia, such as the S-400 surface-to-air missile system and T-90S tanks. All of this has led to India placing no fresh orders with Russia since the beginning of the Russia–Ukraine war.

Instead, it has increased arms imports from Western countries, mainly France and the United States. France emerged as India’s second-largest defence supplier during the 2019–23 period, when 33 percent of Indian imported arms originated from France. (The US supplied 13 percent of India’s defence imports in the same period.)

Now that France has become a significant arms supplier, the Indian government is looking for possible opportunities for collaboration with it on advanced defence technologies.

French aerospace maker Safran and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation are negotiating to manufacture an engine for India’s fifth-generation fighter jet, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft Mk 2. Moreover, Safran is willing to engage in 100 percent technology transfer across various project phases, including design development, certification and production.

The project involves not only the transfer of technology to develop jet engines—usually the most technically challenging part of an aircraft—but also allows the firms to work together on advanced materials and metallurgy, which are important for making aircraft engines.

Such a partnership will give India access to technologies and industrial processes necessary for making the engines. The ability to domestically manufacture fighter engines may help the Indian Air Force to address its extreme shortage of combat squadrons.

Safran will also collaborate with India to develop helicopters that are likely to be the mainstay of the Indian Armed Forces rotorcraft fleet. The company is supporting the propulsion side of the Indian Multi-Role Helicopter program. The program aims to develop medium-lift helicopters to replace India’s Mi-17 helicopters. Safran has also agreed with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to transfer forging and casting technology for the Shakti engine, which powers the Indian state company’s Dhruv, Rudra, Light Utility and Prachand helicopters.

On the naval front, India’s Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers have signed a memorandum of understanding with France’s Naval Group to collaborate on surface ships. The collaboration will support a ship design based on the Naval Group’s Gowind class for the Indian market and friendly foreign countries.

Political reliability and longstanding defence ties make France a dependable defence partner for India. Its emergence as a significant weapons supplier is benefiting India’s defence industry by equipping it with the technology and expertise to manufacture defence products domestically.

China’s big new combat aircraft: a technical assessment

China’s aircraft industry celebrated Mao Zedong’s birthday in style, unveiling three aircraft developments that will comprise an air warfare family of systems for the 2030s and beyond. One, from Shenyang, looks like a demonstrator for a fighter-size aircraft with next-generation stealth, possibly carrier-compatible. Also new was an airborne warning and control variant of the Xi’an Y-20 airlifter, the latest in an unparalleled air-surveillance line-up.

The most spectacular debutant, making its maiden flight on December 26 was from Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group: a stealth combat aircraft that various anonymous commenters on the Chinese internet identify as the J-36. It is the largest combat aircraft designed and developed in China, and the second-largest to fly anywhere in 35 years.

The J-36 (if that really is its name) is designed to combine supersonic performance with all-aspect stealth. That’s also the goal of the US Next Generation Air Dominance program, currently stalled by budget and policy issues. (A second article in this series looks at the J-36’s roles.)

There may be more. Anonymous Chinese internet commenters with better records for accuracy than others say that the new arrivals are part of an air warfare ‘tea set’ and that we have not yet seen the ‘teapot’—the long-expected H-20 stealth bomber; this will probably be an analogue to the Northrop Grumman B-21. Nonetheless, the J-36 alone has given observers enough to chew on.

Its revelation followed the pattern as the appearance of the J-20 fighter exactly 14 years earlier. No technical details have been released officially, and it’s unlikely that any will be soon, but a prototype for the design flew in daylight from an airfield in a dense urban area, and the Chinese government permitted images to be released.

The aircraft was chased by a two-seat J-20B, giving a good indication of its size. It’s longer than the J-20—about 23 metres—and its double-delta wing spans an estimated 19 metres, with around 200 square metres of wing area. (The F-22’s wing area is 78 square metres.) As I commented on the Global Combat Aircraft Program’s Tempest design, large, moderately swept deltas can accommodate a lot of fuel and are very useful if the designer is looking for long range.

The tandem-wheel main landing gear units point to a big aircraft, since single wheel, tyre and brake units are inadequate at weights above about 35 tonnes. The main weapon bay, about 7.6 metres long, and supplementary side bays for smaller weapons also suggest considerable size. A 55-tonne take-off weight is a reasonable guess, two-thirds more than the J-20 and compared with an estimated 82 tonnes for the Northrop Grumman B-21.

The J-36 planform unequivocally speaks of stealth and supersonic speed. It is a modified version of the Hopeless Diamond, the first shot by Lockheed’s Skunk Works at all-aspect stealth, which got that name because it could not be made to fly with 1970s technology. Another variation on the planform was tried in 2003 with Northrop Grumman’s X-47A Pegasus unmanned combat aircraft demonstrator, which did fly. Once.

On the J-36, the diamond is stretched into a double-delta to reduce transonic and supersonic drag. It has a leading-edge kink, a change in sweep angle. That’s not ideal from the standpoint of radar cross-section but, as Northrop Grumman’s cranked-arrow designs have shown, it can be lived with. There is an unbroken edge and chine line around the aircraft, and all sensor apertures are inside it (not the case with the J-20 and other fighters). That is the foundation of all-aspect stealth.

There are no vertical tail surfaces and no visible control surfaces other than the wing trailing edges, with five moving panels on each side and one behind each engine; such surfaces are called ‘elevons’. (It’s possible that there are flight-control effectors that we have not yet seen, such as inlaid panels in the upper surface of the wing.) The hinge lines of trailing-edge surfaces appear to be covered by flexible skins. The outer pair of surfaces are split horizontally to form brake-rudders, as on the B-2 and B-21, and were fully open in all pictures of the first flight.

Elevons have reliably provided pitch and roll control since the 1950s, but dispensing with the vertical tail is a challenge, and more so with a supersonic aircraft. The J-36 can rely on its brake-rudders when it is not close to an enemy. But, for stealth in a threat zone, it will need to keep them closed and use both aerodynamic and propulsive effects to keep the pointy end in front—which brings us to another almost unique feature.

J-36 has three engines, side-by-side at the rear of the broad centre-body. F-22-like inlets of caret shape, with swept and canted lips, under the wing leading edge, supply the left and right engines, and the center engine is fed by a diverterless supersonic inlet above the body.

The three engine exhausts are ahead of and above the trailing edge, which comprises what appear to be articulating panels. Full turbofan reheat boost would impose scary thermal and acoustic loads on the trailing edge structure. (The trenches at the rear of the Northrop YF-23 into which its engines exhausted did not endure the environment as well as expected.) This tends to support the idea that the J-36’s engines are either non-afterburning or have limited afterburning used for transonic acceleration.

Some commentators have suggested that the J-36 has three engines because China does not have an engine design large enough to power it in a twin installation. This doesn’t seem likely. Even if your available engines were delivering only two-thirds of the thrust required for a production-size twin-engine aeroplane, you could build an 80 percent linear-scale demonstrator with two-thirds the wetted area, and it would be both easier to develop and more representative of the final configuration.

There has to be a good reason to justify the added complexity. One possibility is that the two outer engines provide enough thrust for subsonic flight, while operating at full thrust and peak efficiency, and the third cuts in for supersonic cruise.

A variation on this theme would be to have a center engine optimized for supersonic flight, which would deliver some of the advantages of a variable-cycle engine without its complexity and risk (I can hear the logisticians screaming, 12,000km away) but in a configuration that could be fitted later with a VCE.

One former combat aircraft designer suggests that the trijet arrangement could be influenced by stability and control considerations, allowing for symmetrical thrust vectoring in pitch with one engine inoperative.

The trailing edge flaps would provide thrust vectoring in pitch when used symmetrically and in roll with the outer engines’ exhaust deflected asymmetrically (while still using the center engine for pitch). It is entirely possible that fluidic control (injecting fan-stream air asymmetrically into the nozzle) could be used in the yaw axis.

Three engines in the thrust class of 22,000 lb (10,000kg or 100-kilonewtons) should be enough to make the J-36 a supercruiser—an aircraft that can fly supersonically without using fuel-guzzling afterburning. Its sweep angles point to doing this at Mach 1.8 to Mach 2.0 (1900km/h to 2200km/h, depending on altitude). The key is not so much achieving enough static thrust but building the engine to withstand the high temperatures at the exit of its compressor. China’s engine technology has been headed in this direction.

Agility? High maneuverability is in opposition to combining supersonic cruise and range—the F-22 being deficient in the latter—because it demands large control forces and high installed thrust (and the weight it brings). Physics are a limitation: the J-36’s trailing-edge controls and thrust-vectoring systems must provide all the control force for the aircraft, unassisted by vertical stabilizers, canards or pitch-recovery devices like the Sukhoi Su-57’s movable leading-edge root extensions.

As for the need for maneuverability by a supersonic stealth aircraft packing a heavy weapon load and long-range sensors, the reader is referred to the classic movie short, Bambi Meets Godzilla.

We will learn more about the J-36 as it follows the pattern of the J-20 through a pre-production and service test phase. There are other puzzles about the design: apparently large electro-optical sensor windows on either side of the nose, and a dark-tinted canopy that wouldn’t be road-legal in many US states. But one thing can be said firmly: those who accuse Chengdu chief engineer Yang Wei and other Chinese designers of being copyists need to take a seat.

Australia’s guided weapons program needs to get moving

The Albanese government’s new strategy for the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise adopts a crawl-walk-run approach to building a skilled industrial ecosystem able to co-design and produce advanced guided weapons with allies and partners within 10 years.

This approach, revealed in a speech on 30 October, is sensible, since Australian capability is beginning from low base. But it also risks moving too slowly in a deteriorating strategic environment to produce the right type of weapons in large enough volumes to meet likely scenarios this decade. GWEO must succeed against the odds to deliver capability at the time it is needed most. This will be a tall order if events do not wait for the GWEO ecosystem to fully mature.

The record of GWEO development hasn’t been great. The initial steps for GWEO date back to the 2020 Force Structure Plan of the government of prime minister Scott Morrison. Because four years passed before we got to the specific GWEO plan announced last month, getting guided-weapon rounds out of factory doors and into the hands of the Australian Defence Force is increasingly urgent.

Nonetheless, the GWEO plan’s objectives are sound. It aims to increase readiness by expanding priority war stocks while enhancing preparedness and national resilience through domestic manufacture of key components and weapons, initially supplemented by foreign components. Australian manufactured components will eventually replace those sourced overseas, allowing greater participation of sovereign small to medium enterprises.

In the interim, GWEO will see Australia assemble foreign components of weapons such as Lockheed Martin GMLRS surface-to-surface missiles for use with HIMARS launcher trucks; Kongsberg JSM air-to-ship missiles to be carried on F-35As and F/A-18Fs; and Kongsberg NSM ship-launched or ground-launched anti-ship missiles, which will replace elderly Harpoons.

The timelines are important. On JSM and NSM, the GWEO plan notes that the Australian government has partnered with Kongsberg Defence Australia to establish a new purpose-built factory beside Newcastle Airport in New South Wales. The factory is due to be completed in 2026 and start production in 2027. Combined NSM and JSM full-rate production of 100 rounds a year will be achieved in 2028.

Separately, planned establishment of an Australian Weapons Manufacturing Complex, pending a decision in 2025, will support manufacture of GMLRS components from 2029. At around 4000 rounds a year, the facility’s capacity will be more than a quarter of the current global production rate and more than 10 times current ADF demand.

Focusing on shorter-range weapons such as GMLRS will enable Australia to build for the United States. This may lead to consideration of more sophisticated and longer-range weapons, including the PrSM, a surface-to-surface weapon with a range of more than 400km. Once PrSM has been developed to a design called Increment 4, it will have a range of 1000km and also be an anti-ship weapon. This leap from the 70km GMLRS would make a much more valuable contribution to ADF requirements for what Defence Minister Richard Marles called ‘impactful projection’.

Beyond that, the GWEO plan signals local production of hypersonic missiles, such as the under-development Raytheon and Northrop Grumman HACM, that will be integrated on the F/A-18F. Such production is set to begin in the 2030s. The GWEO plan also emphasises that in addition to assembling components of missiles, maintaining such weapons is vital and will allow Australia to grow expertise to sustain missile capability for the ADF and for allies.

Aside from missiles, the plan calls for local manufacture of 155mm artillery rounds—including the M795 HE All Up Round—with a desired production capacity of 15,000 per year and the capacity to scale up by 2029 to 100,000 per year to meet ADF and global requirements.

Finally, the plan seeks to establish a domestic rocket motor manufacturing capacity by 2030, responding to the inadequacy of global supply. This would allow Australia to meet the needs of the ADF in making missiles here and contribute to allied requirements.

Though it will be some time before Australia begins to see results, the GWEO plan is welcome guidance and much needed by the Australian defence industry. Government and industry now need to work together to meet the objectives of the strategy and ensure progress remains on track.

Success depends on the ability of Australian primes to demonstrate industrial competence in assembling NSM, JSM and GMLRS missiles. The outcomes of this first tranche of effort will shape Australia’s access to global demand with industry partners and the United States government across the spectrum of GWEO-relevant technologies (including seekers, guidance sections, warheads and rocket motors). The outcomes of these efforts will directly inform Australian decisions about research and development into the technologies that are less likely to be shared with us.

The GWEO plan makes it clear that a credible domestic missile and munitions production base is vital for national defence. In future, it is likely the effectiveness of Australia’s strategy of deterrence by denial will be judged on how well the GWEO enterprise performs, what capabilities it delivers, and when.

Northern defence is getting more talk than action

There is a glaring disconnect between policy and practical action in the Northern Territory.

Focusing the Australian Defence Force on Northern Australia is a straightforward decision. The Defence Strategic Review, National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Plan all highlight the necessity of deterring potential adversaries from projecting power against Australia through our northern approaches. These documents also emphasise the need for a well-connected and resilient network of bases to enhance the ADF’s operational capabilities in the north.

But transport and port infrastructure still look inadequate, ADF forces in the Northern Territory are decreasing, not building up, and it’s not clear that the area has Defence and civilian capacity to cope with demanding military contingencies. This needs to be tested.

Australia and the United States have made significant investments in the Royal Australian Air Force’s Tindal base, near Katherine in the Northern Territory, recognising its strategic importance in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia has committed to further upgrading infrastructure and enhancing capabilities at Tindal, including for airfield operations and logistics support. Meanwhile, the US has bolstered its presence through initiatives such as increased deployment of aircraft and personnel, consolidating Tindal as a critical hub for regional security operations.

Despite these investments, questions remain about whether the base and connective transport and logistical infrastructure are sufficiently networked to ensure a robust response capability in the face of evolving geopolitical challenges. For example, it’s uncertain whether there are enough suitable trucks available to move fuels from Darwin to Tindal during periods of high operational tempo, or, without a rail link to the base, how munitions and other items can be brought from Adelaide to Tindal.

The ADF has recognised the need for enhanced training areas in the Northern Territory, spending significantly to ensure personnel are prepared for diverse operational scenarios. This includes expanding existing training facilities and developing new sites that exploit the region’s unique geographical features, allowing for more effective live-fire exercises and joint operations. However, the challenge remains that fewer, not more, Australian soldiers will be in the Northern Territory to fully use these enhanced training areas.

The Darwin-based 1st Brigade was once the most lethal formation in the Australian Army. In 2019, it was stripped of its tanks, armoured vehicles and mechanised designation as part of the army’s restructuring efforts.

All Darwin-based helicopters will have left by the end of 2024. The army is concentrating helicopters in Townsville.

In September 2023, the government announced army restructuring. The 1st Brigade was designated as a light combat brigade focussed on agility and deployment in the littoral environment. The Townsville-based 3rd Brigade was designated as an armoured brigade suiting amphibious operations with the Royal Australian Navy. Most of the army’s new amphibious vessels will be based in Townsville. The 1st Brigade’s amphibious vessels will be based in the already crowded HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin.

The army’s long-range fire capability, deterring potential adversaries from projecting power against Australia through our northern approaches, will confusingly be based in Adelaide. This is despite road and rail infrastructure between Adelaide and Darwin remaining unacceptably vulnerable to weather disruption. Moving by air is hardly an answer since airlift capacity never seems sufficient even in exercises, and Australia barely has any merchant shipping to call on.

The Royal Australian Navy has several vessels based in Darwin, including the Armidale-class patrol boats and the soon to commissioned Arafura-class patrol ships. The versatile Arafuras will bolster the navy’s capabilities in northern waters. However, the navy has limited moorings and options for supporting and rearming vessels in Darwin, Australia’s most northern deep port. Thus, the ships would all have to travel great distances from likely combat zones just to be combat ready once more.

There is a clear gap between the Northern Territory policy in the National Defence Strategy and action. While the US strengthens its presence and capabilities in the Northern Territory as part of its force posture initiative, Australia’s action is spending on bases and training areas.

There can be no doubt that Defence faces logistical and workforce challenges in the Northern Territory, and policy to address these comes with a price tag. Arguably, this is why, during a meeting in Hawaii earlier this year, a senior Australian defence official told US Army Pacific representatives that there was neither room nor industry-support capacity for them to preposition equipment in the Northern Territory.

For years, Defence has suffered from cultural resistance to being in the Northern Territory. It’s time to move beyond that.

The next step in continued implementation of the National Defence Strategy should be to hold a nationally coordinated, simulated stress test of the region’s Defence and civilian capacity to withstand a range of contingencies. The simulations should involve desktop exercises that access datasets from industry, state and the territory government. In addition to testing legal frameworks, strategic reserves, logistics and transport infrastructure, and force posture, attention should be directed to questions of time and space for responses.

 

Australia’s defence is lost in a fog of strategic failure and a lack of imagination

While I’m wary of joining the chorus of defence commentators yelling at clouds, our government has boxed itself into a corner. We must spend more on defence, but creeping suppression of informed public debate coupled with dire cost-of-living realities make this an unlikely option for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. 

Australia’s defence and foreign policy is entrenched in short-term domestic political considerations, devoid of strategic imagination. The idea of nearing an inflection point in international security is routinely trotted out but misses the fact that Australia passed that point long ago. Perhaps the Cold War never ended; it just mutated and incorporated multipolar elements. 

There are two sets of external changes shaping Australia’s defence problem. First, new groupings of states are emerging—with some firepower to boot—that prioritise different values to us. On values we share—say, the continued survival of the state—they are often interpreted differently. Australia might look to the multilateral rules-based order to shore up support for our right to exist. Another state might view this order as a legacy system that is not willing to facilitate the transfer of power to rising states. Problems ensue. 

It is getting harder to tackle these problems thanks to the second set of changes influencing Australian security. There are new approaches to navigating the international system. Where alliances and shared interests are central to Australia’s international engagement, the new grouping of powers has normalised a sense of transactional statecraft in international relations. Security ties are not infused with a liberal-west dose of morality. Interests are king. 

Government has failed to grasp at a strategic level these two sets of changes. Lazy conceptual frameworks have been tabled without adequate funds to deliver. Capabilities needed yesterday are earmarked for two decades’ time. Word-soup statements of ‘unprecedented unpredictability’ feature heavily, disingenuously attempting to engage Australians. We know the international environment has always been unpredictable, to a point, and contestation has never not been a feature of international security. 

In a word, Australia is lost – lost in reviews, lost in rhetoric and lost to a government fixated on complicating a rather straightforward problem set. Australia is unprepared and unserious about our position in the emerging international strategic environment. 

We must be willing to have this discussion publicly. Government needs to come to the party and rapidly enhance its appetite for risk. Canberra should rediscover the agility of a relatively smart population and urgently craft a sustainable defence footing for the nation. This requires a strategic culture overhaul, which must come from the top.

We can’t do all the things, and a realistic plan for the defence of Australia need not be gold-plated. Of course, the inability of government to articulate in basic terms our vital national interests will continue to stupefy our debate. Where is our national discourse on the costs of Australian prosperity and security? Where is the funding for foresight analysis of strategic trends. Sure, China is a challenge, but what of India? 

I offer the tale of Australia’s Bangladesh strategy. We continue to pump millions of dollars of humanitarian aid each year into Bangladesh. Yet, by the end of this year, two of the four planned units at Bangladesh’s Rooppur nuclear power station will be operational. Nuclear power will continue to lift Bangladesh towards prosperity; its economy has just become the second-largest in South Asia.

Built by Russia on a site where ground was broken in 2017, the plant will have sanctioned fuses that China stepped in to provide. In late 2023, Bangladesh settled the final payments to Russia in Chinese yuan. The point is, Australia has a surface-level grasp of the intricate regional relationships on our doorstep. This continues to undercut adequate manoeuvring of our international political environment. We must know our environment if we want to prosper and compete within it. 

Australia is part of a group of states, in a club, of minority power in the international system. Humbling ourselves to accept this strategic reality will allow for hard but necessary discussion of our plan to adequately defend Australia. Australia has a middle-power ego on a small-power budget. Canberra must be creative. 

A sense of strategic culture can’t reside in the halls of departments—nor can it remain a job of government. National security is every Australian citizen’s duty. Education therefore becomes paramount. As the saying goes, ‘if one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.’ If we don’t know what we are competing for, and why, how can we possibly begin to chart success? 

The Albanese government’s legacy may well be that it failed to discern between the concepts of intent and capability. Intent is the thing that can change overnight. Capability, not so much. From platitudes to policy, our strategic narrative is narrowly fixed in terms of intent. It is time to focus on capability—or at least craft a viable concept of a plan to do so.