At ASPI’s recent conference, ‘Disruption and Deterrence’, Australia’s Director-General of National Intelligence Andrew Shearer praised the use of net assessments ‘because of their ability to take a wider aperture … It goes to the different dimensions of power, not only military, but economic, diplomatic and soft power.’

To some observers, that may not seem so unusual. Australian officials have spent the past 20 years embracing holistic approaches, such as ‘whole-of-government initiatives’ and ‘grand strategies’ that include non-military inputs. Yet dissatisfaction with these approaches has grown. Adding endlessly more areas of concern greatly increases the burden on policymakers. The need for consensus can often lead to formless lists of contributions and complications. We might term such approaches ‘gross’ assessments, in both senses of the word.

Net assessments are different, and the word ‘net’ explains why. First, the tool was designed to capture the relative power balance between two adversaries in specific theatres. Second, they are used to diagnose specific problems (or opportunities) in those theatres. These two attributes—of framework and problem-orientation—give net assessments their intellectual power, though they also make it hard to incorporate them into Australia’s defence and intelligence practices.

The modern form of net assessments was created by Andrew Marshall, the inaugural head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, a post he held from 1973 until his retirement in 2015. A net assessment for Marshall was ‘intended to be diagnostic. It will highlight efficiency and inefficiency in the way we and others do things, and areas of comparative advantage with respect to our rivals.’

For example, in the 1970s and 1980s Marshall highlighted Soviet weaknesses in technology and encouraged a focus on strategic policy choices as moves within a long-term competition. These ideas helped lead to the Reagan administration’s ‘Star Wars’ missile-defence program. The aim was to deliberate stoke a technological race between the great powers and create a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ dilemma for the Soviets. Compete and potentially go bankrupt, or refuse to compete and be humiliated.

Marshall was also insistent that net assessments not be viewed as prescriptive. He kept the Office of Net Assessment at arm’s length from force structure and budget choices, fearing that preferences for particular ‘solutions’ would impede analysis of what the problem really was. As one ONA analyst recalled Marshall telling him, ‘You keep giving me solutions. Stop giving me solutions. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is?’

How, then, can Australia gain the most benefit from net assessments?

First, Australia will need to create its own frameworks that signify what ‘net’ means in the context of its strategic circumstances. In the South Pacific there are plausible scenarios of direct competition where a true ‘net’ balance between Australia and China is meaningful. This seems to be how the 2023 defence strategic review envisages their use. In other scenarios, such as around Taiwan or in broader theatres in Southeast Asia, that framework is far less useful.

Other frameworks could be substituted. One idea that ONA explored in the 1990s was structuring assessments around ‘core competencies’. If we have specific advantages or strengths, how are they evolving over time? In a recent article in the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ journal Survival, I proposed other potential barometers such as ‘relative position’, given that it’s not asymmetry against a great power but standing within the wider community that may be most important for Australia. We need a framework for assessing how the moves we make in this competitive environment—such as AUKUS or stabilising relations with Beijing—are shaping our status and influence in our key regions.

Managing the diagnostic element of net assessments will in some ways be the harder challenge. The 2023 review deliberately links diagnosis and prescription, since it wants to use net assessments on specific military scenarios to shape the military’s force structure. That seems worthwhile given the need to move quickly towards a focused force. Still, the risks are obvious.

It will be up to our defence and intelligence leaders to ensure that Australian net assessments are vehicles for grappling head on with the core strategic problems we faces. The clarity and utility of net assessments comes from their focus on problems. They incorporate many factors, but only so far as they’re relevant to the specific problem that’s under examination. A really good net assessment may be long on questions and short on answers, recognising that ‘even not-so-good answers to good questions are better than good answers to poor questions’.

In the late 20th century, net assessments helped America compete against the Soviet Union as well as identify the emerging revolution in military affairs long before everyone else. The potential contribution of net assessments to the development of Australian strategy is equally vast. Yet incorporating them will require real effort to think through how to tailor the framework and the diagnostic, problem-oriented philosophy to Australia’s strategic context here in the early 21st century.

Australia holds key advantages in contributing to allied interests in space security, says Lieutenant-General Nina Armagno, the director of staff at the US Space Force, who was in Australia last week for ASPI’s space and national security masterclass and dialogue.

Armagno noted that Australia is a prime location for space domain awareness and has sites close to the equator that are ideal for space launches, particularly in northern Australia. This assessment is consistent with the Defence Department’s 2022 space strategy, which reinforces the importance of assuring access to space and maintaining a resilient space capability.

On space domain awareness, Australia plays a crucial role in countering threats from anti-satellite weapons, which are being developed by countries such as China and Russia. A C-band radar and optical space surveillance telescope are being established at Exmouth in Western Australia as part of Defence’s Joint Project 9360. This is the first step in strengthening US–Australia space surveillance capabilities under Operation Dyurra, while ensuring Australia is well placed to support intelligence sharing under the 2014 Combined Space Operations initiative. Phase 2 of JP9360 will add additional ground-based space surveillance capability. At the same time, commercial space surveillance companies such as LEOLabs and HEO Robotics will contribute both ground-based and space-based situational awareness of activities in the region between low-earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit.

As important as space domain awareness is, it’s vital that Australia be able to do more than just monitor space activity from the ground.

Australia is ideally suited for sovereign space launch, giving it a key role in augmenting and, if necessary, reconstituting space support in a crisis. There are three launch sites: Nhulunbuy near Gove in the Northern Territory, operated by Equatorial Launch Australia; Whaler’s Way near Port Lincoln in South Australia, operated by Southern Launch; and Abbott Point near Bowen in Queensland, which is being established. With Australian companies such as Gilmour Space Technology building its Eris expendable booster and Hypersonix Launch Systems developing a fully reusable hypersonic spaceplane called Delta-Velos, as well as the recent agreement for Virgin Orbit to launch satellites from Toowoomba Wellcamp airport, Australia is now well positioned to surge ahead with sovereign launch.

A launch capability is a key component of integrated deterrence in the space domain, in particular through deterrence by resilience, which complements space deterrence by denial. It’s important to have some understanding of these concepts to see how sovereign launch fits in with assured access.

The aim of space deterrence by denial is to reduce the effectiveness of any counterspace capability to the point where an attack fails to achieve its goals while the costs outweigh the benefit of such an action. Space domain awareness is required to detect, track and, if necessary, take defensive measures to avoid a threat posed by an adversary’s counterspace capabilities. That could include manoeuvring key satellites if an adversary is engaging in threatening, irresponsible or hostile behaviour. Also, attribution of an imminent threat through diplomatic warnings can be supported by political, economic and even military measures, which can raise the potential cost for the adversary.

However, space is a complex operational domain, and an adversary can conceal its intentions by exploiting grey-zone actions in orbit in a crisis or during peacetime, potentially involving dual-role capabilities. If the intentions of an adversary are unclear, deterrence by denial could fail to prevent its use of counterspace systems. That demands an investment in space resilience, which is where sovereign launch becomes crucial.

Space deterrence through resilience seeks to ensure our ability to recover from a successful counterspace attack, further instilling uncertainty in the mind of the adversary about the chances for success of any offensive counterspace campaign. This approach would first see space architectures move to disaggregated large constellations of small satellites that make it more difficult for an adversary to use its counterspace capabilities to launch a decisive and coordinated attack that results in a catastrophic collapse of US and allied space capabilities.

Greater investment in sovereign launch allows augmentation of existing satellites and rapid reconstitution of satellite constellations in the event that deterrence by denial fails. Australia is well placed to provide this capability from its three launch sites, and investment in rapid production of small satellites would allow Australia to directly support this task. But it’s vital that we use Australian launch sites rather than rely on overseas ones and risk being stuck in long queues. Defence must prioritise the establishment of a sovereign responsive launch capability as a next step for burden-sharing in orbit.

It’s vital that Australia’s sovereign launch efforts keep pace with technological developments such as reusability and, in the future, the potential offered by hypersonic spaceplanes. Future reusable launch vehicles, epitomised by SpaceX’s Starship – Super Heavy, will carry large payloads and thus will be able to deploy large numbers of small satellites quickly, at low cost, and at a high launch cadence. Launching many small satellites at once, and being able to do so potentially on a weekly basis, will dramatically enhance deterrence through resilience and reduce the ability of an adversary to effectively undertake space denial.

Sovereign launch will take defence and national security in space for Australia to a new level of activity. Australia’s approach to space shouldn’t be just about acquiring a small number of large satellites for communications or geospatial intelligence over a long project timeline. Instead, Australia must become a sovereign space power that can directly support US and allied space deterrence operations in orbit. We must have an active presence in space, led by Defence Space Command. This would have broader implications nationally for the commercial space sector as it continues to grow. The opportunity for the commercial sector to directly support Defence’s space deterrence mission, including through sovereign responsive launch, is a vital next step for Australia’s future in space.

Over many decades, Hans Ohff and Jon Stanford have made significant contributions to the defence debate in Australia and they’ve have earned the right to comment. As Australian shipbuilders and submariners engaged in the highest level of the defence debate, they make some good points.

Of course, you wouldn’t expect me with my years of single-service, joint and combined warfighting experience in peace and war, and some exposure to the political scene, to make the kind of appallingly ignorant comments about ships and submarines that they so freely and confidently made in their recent Strategist piece about armoured vehicles. This is parochialism at its worst and detracts from the value of their article.

No one who has ever fought in a war would say we don’t need armoured vehicles. Wherever you have infantry, you need armoured vehicles to protect them.

But I do agree that there is no sign of a defence strategy that might lead a cogent debate about what materiel and operational solutions constitute the best way to achieve whatever the strategy might be. And neither is there evidence that we have a national security strategy. If deterrence is important, there’s no use keeping everything secret. (If we’re bluffing, though, then perhaps there is!)

At first blush, I thought that the strategic goals of ‘shape’, ‘deter’ and ‘respond’ set out in the 2020 defence strategic update might indicate the existence of at least an operational concept as an integral part of a defence strategy. When I have questioned this, I’ve been told that there is a strategy, but it can’t be released. Interesting. And a simplistic three-word operational concept puts us no further ahead than we were in the 1985 defence review.

But how can there be a defence strategy without an overarching and comprehensive national security strategy? What good is it to have a brilliant defence strategy without national liquid fuel, industry, pharma, science and technology, manpower, diplomacy and stocking policies, and a plan to move from peacetime processes that Ohff and Stanford’s article refers to, to the wartime processes that are implied?

What good is it for us to be world class at anti-access/area denial based on brilliant materiel solutions if we can no longer feed the people due to a lack of diesel and if we’re unable to move smoothly from a peacetime footing to a wartime footing in government and the bureaucracy because we haven’t thought it through, and because we lack modern plans or processes? And if the government will put $270 billion into defence over the next 10 years because of the strategic environment, what are we doing for the nation as a whole? If we think vaccinating the population is difficult, try mobilising.

I have said publicly many times that in considering alternative security futures (threats) and preparing for them, this government has done much more for defence than most. Ohff and Stanford recognise this by acknowledging that the 2% of GDP to be spent on defence is now a floor and not a target.

We expect governments to take risks, but unless there’s comprehensive consideration of national security, how does the government know what’s a fair risk to take on defence? The greatest threat to national security, and therefore to defence, is a failure in public health or the economy, and that must be the government’s priority. But where is the medium- to long-term plan?

If the government is consciously taking a risk with our security and our money based on a strategy, we should be told a lot more about it. There should be a national security statement by government that’s based on a strategy and not just a political fix, that has substance and has been thought through.

Ohff and Stanford fell into the trap of decrying this lack of a defence strategy but, like so many commentators, relied on their own implied understanding of how the next war will go. From that they advocated a particular materiel fix. They might be right, they might be wrong, or they might be a bit of each.

I can only assume that they see the next war similarly to Hugh White, involving an attempt by China to reach into our region in some way (they say that invasion is unlikely), against which we use our anti-access/area-denial military force. That may turn out to be true, but it’s not all we need to be prepared for.

Here’s my view (which I’ve offered before) on the sorts of conflicts and wars that we need to prepare for, and smart people out there may improve on them:

• a continuation of the grey-zone conflict Australia is experiencing now, and which the government is handling well
• an enhancement of grey-zone conflict—for example, action against our maritime trade and air routes. Our ports are our single point of failure in the security of this nation and we have no capacity to carry our imports or exports in our own ships
• war between the US and China with Australia as collateral damage. Australia is unlikely to be the main target initially in such a conflict, but our allies may expect us to deploy forces to deter such a war. If that happens, we may be struck directly by cyberattack or by missiles aimed at coalition forces or strategic targets, and our commercial sea and air movements may be heavily restricted
• more direct attacks on Australia, depending on who wins the initial round of battles between the US and China. China’s aim will be to win decisively and early and to drive the US out of the region. If the US is forced out of the region by a military defeat—which is acknowledged by realists as more than a possibility—Australia may be on its own
• a regional war in the Middle East or in the Baltic or Black Sea, alone or in conjunction with conflict in our region. If Iran closed the Persian Gulf in a war with Israel or Saudi Arabia, Australia would be deprived of 90% of its liquid fuel, with US stocks still 40 days away from being able to power vehicles even if sea lanes were open. The US, given its limited military capability, might be weaker in our region if it has deployed forces to the Gulf or to NATO.

Unless we have a clear threat scenario, vagaries such as ‘drums of war’, ‘defence of Australia’, ‘shape, deter, respond’ and ‘balanced force’ are useless for real security planning.

If we had a comprehensive strategy directing all aspects of national security, including defence, we might understand what a cascading defence strategy should look like. Maybe we would find that we need a different form of ‘defence balance’ that might even involve armoured vehicles.

One of the joys of fatherhood is being reacquainted with the fairy tales and fables of youth. Such stories endure because behind their superficial narratives lies an important moral theme that can apply widely. As the People’s Republic of China’s wintry winds of change have begun to be felt in recent years, Australia’s behaviour reminds me of Aesop’s fable ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper.’

Most of the time, we are Ant-like, which means we’re thoughtful and industrious in our policy choices. We have begun putting serious resources into our defence force, and we have held difficult discussions with regional and alliance partners seeking new forms of cooperation. We have made compromises and put aside a preference for the past season, to accept the changes coming in the new order.

This hasn’t always been easy—witness the divisions over the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or our refusal of US requests to go beyond Operation Gateway in the South China Sea—but we’ve certainly been busy. Taken together, there is a hope that such efforts, while seemingly modest, will better prepare Australia for a difficult future. We aim for the deterrent power to refute, while seeking to modulate the nature and pace of change to preserve a hospitable region.

Australia’s approach to China also has its Grasshopper moments. Where the Ant is stolid, the Grasshopper is joyful in making music. That tendency is evident in much of our public rhetoric. We have clumsily misused Chinese slogans against them, we have been at the forefront of public criticisms, we have taken the lead and boasted of our success. And when the blows in the form of trade sanctions came, we welcomed them with a defiant smile and continued on our merry way.

For the time being, this division is likely to be sustained. While talk of a unifying grand strategy is much loved, most countries have somewhat inconsistent approaches. The bureaucracy sees the value of being the Ant, and an increasing number of politicians (across the political spectrum) know that the Grasshopper’s music is pleasing to the public ear. And so they play on.

It may even be argued that such an approach doesn’t really amount to a division. That the willingness to spend up on defence and call out China’s human rights abuses are part of the same approach. That in showing we won’t be intimidated on barley, we reflect our steel for a future battlefield. That we need to make noise about the errors of China’s current approach, to rally others to our cause and help Beijing realise that if it seeks genuine leadership in Asia a reckoning and revision are necessary.

Perhaps that is so, though most audiences seem confused. At home, the debate about China suffers from the fact that each side can pick a preferred narrative from our disparate words and actions to suit its case. The public has moved ahead of the government in concern about China, yet support for defence spending hasn’t risen, and divisive racism is growing in an ugly fashion. Abroad, our main ally is uncertain as to our approach (in the jargon of the day, ‘Why join the AIIB and the BRI while also joining the Quad and refusing FONOPS?’). Meanwhile, Beijing’s recent public diplomacy suggests that its Canberra embassy is utterly confused about what this country really is doing.

Summer in the southern hemisphere has now passed. The days are becoming shorter, the nights colder. It is therefore worth asking how each tendency will endure and provide for Australia in the seasons that follow. My own fear is that neither the Ant nor the Grasshopper quite realises the severity of the winter to come. The Ant is still only putting away just over 2% of the harvest for the lean months. It remains reluctant to pay the costs at home or regionally of necessary decisions. That includes directly engaging the public on future burdens and overhauling relations with Indonesia and the South Pacific to strengthen their help in regional security.

The Grasshopper, meanwhile, has won applause from abroad, but it’s hard to see what lingers beyond the pleasure of the moment. Take the current cause célèbre, Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. Even if China suddenly relented tomorrow and opened the camps, though the net benefit to humanity would be large, the specific Australian interest remains almost non-existent.

In some versions of this famous fable, the Grasshopper seemingly falls into deliverance. Its needs are few, or it finds a lucky fortune that sustains it. Others portray the Ant as a moralising schemer who secretly undermined the Grasshopper, a dullard who can’t see that life should be lived standing up. Maybe such good fortune awaits us too, in the form of a United States willing to provide us shelter. Aesop’s own story ends just as winter approaches and we don’t learn the protagonists’ fates. One can infer, however, that it isn’t pleasant for the Grasshopper.

Let us hope this remains just a children’s story.

Four years have now passed since the release of the 2016 defence white paper, the most recent comprehensive review of Australia’s defence policy and capability. The main contours of that document were set down as early as 2014, which was arguably too early to take full account of the geostrategic implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s island-building in the South China Sea.

Since that time, the defence policy of Australia’s friends and allies in the northern hemisphere has changed dramatically and now focuses on major-power conflict with Russia and China. Calls for a new white paper or a reassessment of defence policy in Australia are also getting louder—Hugh White has provided the most eloquent and radical, but far from only, call for action.

Why did it take three years for the government to announce a ‘re-assessment of the strategic underpinnings of the 2016 Defence White Paper’? Compared with Scandinavia, NATO or Japan, Australia is less immediately exposed to Chinese and Russian military adventurism. In addition, three elements of the 2016 white paper have contributed to a relatively stable defence policy but also present particular challenges for the future:

• a strategic policy setting that is so undefined that proponents of various policies could project their preferences onto the document
• a stable defence investment plan that the Defence Department has been able to deliver with unusual fidelity, thanks to sufficient and predictable government funding, but which will deliver significant growth to critical capabilities only from the late 2020s at the earliest
• the development of a continuous shipbuilding program that has already consumed much leadership attention and infrastructure investment, but will now lock in a significant part of the defence budget in perpetuity in return for efficiency and strategic agility that will, if at all, be realised only in future decades.

Although the 2016 white paper set out force structure priorities that reflected the demands of air and maritime operations in the Indo-Pacific, it nominally gave equal priority to the defence of Australia and its approaches, to security in Australia’s immediate neighbourhood, and to a stable Indo-Pacific region and rules-based global order.

It was the first white paper not to prioritise the defence of Australia, but it contained clear acknowledgement of the practical challenges that this entails. And while it was vague on what a ‘rules-based order’ might be, not restricting defence objectives geographically made it clear that Australia would consider supporting international coalition operations globally. Giving a central place to the concept of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ acknowledged the major challenge of the rise of China.

Eschewing the politically charged term ‘self-reliance’, the paper emphasised the need for Australian forces to be able to operate ‘independently’ instead. In this way, the white paper successfully skirted all the major policy debates of earlier years, which perhaps accounted most for its generally positive reception.

The cost of this fudge is that Australia’s current strategic policy contains remarkably little strategy, beyond the notion that working in partnership with countries close and afar somehow helps manage strategic risk. The presence of the ADF in general, and the navy in particular, in the Southwest Pacific and the wider Indo-Pacific has increased significantly since 2016. But those deployments are no indication of a coherent strategic policy framework, which would lay out the political–military cause-and-effect relationships through which government thinks the existence (and activities) of the ADF will translate into security outcomes and explain what Australia seeks to achieve though increased cooperation. Indeed, the few sentences of the navy’s strategy for 2022 (‘Plan Pelorus’) that are devoted to how it should operate focus almost exclusively on maintaining partnerships ‘to know and understand our region, our friends, and our threat’. Whereas the navies of Britain and Japan have a fairly clear, geographically grounded understanding of their strategic role in the defence of their home islands, Australia’s still does not.

The army, too, has been trying to develop a new future concept to replace the 2011 Plan Beersheba and the mid-2000s vision of a ‘hardened and networked army’, which remained the foundation for the army’s structure and acquisition projects even in the 2016 white paper. Given Australia’s geography, the army has always found it difficult to define its role and mission in a regional context, beyond the need for stabilisation operations in the Southwest Pacific. Under the current chief, Lieutenant General Rick Burr, it underwent a period of genuine reflection and analysis, resulting in the 2018 concept of ‘an army in motion’, which highlights accelerating regional strategic change and the consequent need for the army to be adaptable.

Burr’s statement also emphasises the blurring lines between cooperation, competition and conflict, and the need to fight at greater ranges than the army has traditionally considered, and into other domains (including the sea). Altogether, it presents a well-reasoned argument that the stability and predictability on which Plan Beersheba was predicated are no more, but not quite yet a clear road map to a new structure and purpose.

At the same time, the operational tempo for regional engagement isn’t slowing down. Whereas events since 2014 have pushed the US and its NATO allies to refocus on the possibility of major war, in Australia the ‘Pacific step-up’ has had the opposite effect. As a result, the ADF today remains focused on strategic demands that are ‘like the past, only more so’. That this continues to be appropriate to deal with the risks from an increasingly assertive China, and an increasingly unreliable US, is a difficult judgement to sustain.

Reassessing what the ADF is for is thus the most urgent question facing the current defence review—and it’s not a question that can be answered by simply narrating developments in Beijing, Washington or Tehran. The next post in this series will propose one way in which it might be done.