Navigating Australia’s defence challenges

WRITTEN BY MELISSA CONLEY TYLER AND TOM BARBER

19 September 2022

As the United Kingdom was choosing its next prime minister, Australia’s Minister for Defence was visiting British shipyards. Why, and what defence choices does Australia face ahead? Recently, Australia’s Minister for Defence Richard Marles toured shipyards in Glasgow and Barrow-in-Furnes with UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace, along with a surprise appearance by outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

This trip clearly had something to do with the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security cooperation agreement, announced by the previous government and supported by its successor. But it was also part of a wider process of Australia’s defence planning, with Australia’s new Defence Minister announcing a Defence Strategic Review to be delivered by early next year.

Defence strategic review

The rationale for this review was foreshadowed in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update: the challenges to Australia’s strategic circumstances are accelerating at a rate faster than anticipated. It will consider both posture and structure, discussing where Australia’s defence assets are based, as well as the size, shape, and composition of capabilities that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) requires. Independently led by former Minister for Defence Professor Stephen Smith and former Chief of the Defence Force Sir Angus Houston, it will be delivered at the same time as a whole-of-government taskforce will present its recommendations on Australia’s “optimal pathway” towards acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

With a potential submarine capability gap, troubled procurement projects, and overall, a limited funding envelope in a deteriorating strategic environment, few would envy the Defence Minister’s job.

So, what issues does the Review need to consider and what current settings might it revisit? Its terms of reference are broad in scope. Much of the commentary in Australian defence circles has focused on procurement, as Australia’s current Collins-class submarines reach the end of their service life, creating a looming capability gap. While in the UK, Defence Minister Marles attended the commissioning of the HMS Anson — an Astute-class nuclear submarine that may provide the template for Australia’s submarines — and announced that Australian submariners would be trained aboard the vessel. Defence contractor BAE Systems’ facility in Glasgow also builds the Type 26 design of Australia’s Hunter-class frigate, with Australian engineers and mechanics working there to learn how to deliver the future frigate programme in Adelaide. The Review will presumably canvass options to plug capability gaps, but with the government’s coffers under severe strain and recent announcements coming from a funding model unchanged since 2016, there are no easy answers.

Systemic challenges

Defence must also grapple with broader systemic challenges, none more critical than climate change. The direct and flow-on effects of climate change include increased frequency of natural disasters and pandemics, food insecurity and political instability. A recent ASPI report noted that the Indo-Pacific “will be profoundly affected” as the “most exposed region in the world to climate hazards.” The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, made up of retired ADF leaders and senior security practitioners, identifies Australia’s “poor understanding of the reality of near-future systemic security risks posed by climate change” as a “major strategic gap“. There is an opportunity for the Defence Strategic Review to work together with the current climate security risk assessment and take a whole-of-government perspective in its climate prescriptions.

Another systemic challenge is the grey-zone activities; coercive statecraft and other actions short of war that are occurring in Australia’s neighbourhood. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update noted that “Defence must be better prepared to respond to these activities, including by working more closely with other elements of Australia’s national power”. This was reiterated in a May 2022 speech by Chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell, who said that “with the boundaries between conflict, coercion, and competition becoming increasingly blurred, there is a need today for a greater integration of power... [that] involves military power being brought together with other elements of national power — economic, diplomatic, trade, financial, industrial, scientific and informational”, in order to “lend weight and effectiveness against a continuum of twenty-first century challenges we now face”.

Using all the tools of statecraft

So, while there is a clear requirement for new military capabilities, they alone will not be sufficient to confront Australia’s strategic challenges. As Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong said before the election, “the ADF, as an instrument of hard power, is best at shaping our environment and deterring behaviour that is counter to our interests, when it partners with all of the other elements of national power”. With a more constrained environment for defence spending, it will be even more important to ensure that all the elements of Australian statecraft are brought together to maximise their impact.

As ASPI’s Michael Shoebridge notes, Australia’s Defence Strategic Review has “an enormous amount to do and almost no time to do it”. With a potential submarine capability gap, troubled procurement projects, and overall, a limited funding envelope in a deteriorating strategic environment, few would envy the Defence Minister’s job.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biographies

Tom Barber and Melissa Conley Tyler are, respectively, Program Officer and Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D). They thank Michelle In for her research assistance. Image credit: Flickr/US Pacific Fleet.