Every review of defence policy and capability is imbued with hope for change. The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) is no exception.
Some announcements have already been made, following delivery of the interim report in late 2022. Deputy Prime Minister Marles has emphasized strike—or, as he puts it, ‘impactful projection’—backing decisions to purchase a naval strike missile (NSM) and, for the Army, HIMARS. Defence will also replace and ‘extend’ its fleet of 12 medium-lift C-130Js aircraft.
And the government continues to commit itself to AUKUS, even as doubts have been expressed about US capability to deliver submarines The next AUKUS milestone will be March 2023, when the 18-month consultation period ends.
Defence should be suffused with a sense of urgency, given Australia’s strategic circumstances. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update recognised that a ten-year window for warning time was no longer appropriate, a judgment echoed by Paul Dibb and Richard Brabham-Smith. The outlook over the next decade is already much less forgiving than in 2020.
The nature of choices in the SDR will show how serious the government is about change, meeting strategic challenges and realising that sense of urgency.
Let’s look again at strike. Strategic strike is at the heart of Australia’s effort to shape and deter. Strike capability needs to be credible, sustainable, and available.
With the retirement of the F-1-11s in 2010, Australia lost a key strike asset, increasing its reliance on an aging, fragile platform, the Collins class submarine. New submarines won’t be in service for another 10-15 years, well outside the less-than-ten-year window of 2020.
I can’t improve on Marcus Hellyer and Andrew Nicholl’s analysis of the options for long-range strike. Their preferred option is the B-21 strategic bomber, arguing that while the cost of each aircraft is high—an eye-watering $1bn each—overall a fleet of 12 would be cost effective when compared with the nuclear-powered submarines. Further, over a sustained conflict, bombers are more likely to be cost-effective than missiles.
Still, missiles are the obvious short-term fix. Marles, it seems, would agree. But there’s an underlying problem: the conflation of area denial and deterrence.
Both the NSM and HIMARS missiles, the purchases thus far, are tactical in nature—in strategic terms, they are both short range (up to around 500km). They are better suited for area denial rather than strategic deterrence.
True, area denial can have strategic effect—if delivery platforms can be positioned, if sustainable, and if the missiles directed at, and destroy, the right target. That’s a lot of conditionality.
Positioning ADF platforms for strategic effect implies access, and survivability, across considerable and presumably unfriendly seas and terrain.
Sustainability is tough. The war in Ukraine is demonstrating how quickly the rate of use of munitions rapidly depletes available supply. The NSM alone costs close to $3m a missile. Extended reliance on missile is a fast way to burn money, assuming supply is available, and the more capable, longer-range a missile, the more expensive it is. Ensuring supply will take time—the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise (GWEO) will take 10 years to reach its ‘sustain’ phase, well outside anticipated windows of need.
Last, there’s the target. Deterrence requires threatening, credibly, something the adversary not simply values, but values enough: ‘[d]eterrence rests today on the threat of pain and extinction, not just on the threat of military defeat.’ (Schelling, p23)
Deterrence may be brought about by military means but it is essentially a political matter. Subsumption of deterrence into area denial incorrectly implies deterrence, and by extension strategy, is a military domain, not a political responsibility. It also risks muddying force protection and force projection: both are needed, but they aren’t the same.
It’s not clear much thinking has gone into what could deter likely or potential adversaries, as opposed to what areas the ADF would like to deny an opponent. In short, the answer to the former is not likely to be a convenient area of ADF operations; more likely it will be deep in unfriendly territory.
So while any missiles enabling the ADF to act at a distance is a good start—Australia is, after all, starting from a low base and behind the curve—more is needed. That includes a variety of capability options that can be realised in the short, medium and longer-term—a mix of missiles, strategic bombers, and submarines, to both hedge delivery bets as well as help ensure survivability and build credibility.
If Australia is serious about deterrence—defence on its own is immense and most probably unachievable—then the government has to do some deep thinking about purpose, intent, and targets. And it will need to build appropriate governance and habits around the application of deterrence. Deterrence’s political equation is not something with which Australian decision-makers have much familiarity, nor can it be simply delegated to military officers.
Time is shortening. How the SDR grapples with the political element of deterrence as much as the military capability mix will tell us much about whether the government is prepared to meet the challenges of what Patrick Porter has described as the age of ‘blood and iron’.
Update: A slightly edited version has been republished on the ASPI Strategist blog, with thanks to the team there.
Lesley Seebeck 