Does Australia's military need such tentacles of defence?

Date
    October 25, 2015
    Canberra Times

People paid to spend their days thinking about what Australia needs for its military have a bit of fun by drawing a comparison with the blue-ring octopus. A small creature, gentle and relatively docile, but armed with just enough deadly venom to make anyone think twice before daring to stir it up.

The analogy is elegant and compelling – but what if Australia's ambitions to build a sophisticated arsenal leaves the country to instead resemble a puffer fish? Prickly, bloated, unpleasant, and ultimately, full of air.

Think about how Australia must look to the world outside. We've spent a lot of time in recent months talking about submarines, where to build them and how many billions they might cost. Sitting in Australia, the principal discussion tends to be who will get a local job out of all this defence spending.


Yet the nations of the neighbourhood look at the assembly of war machines, left with the unmistakable impression Australia is feeling vulnerable and fearful. Australia has talked the good talk of regional co-operation and engagement for decades now, but what we do sends as much of a message as what we say.

The full shopping list of new military hardware the nation is intending to buy is nothing short of staggering. The air force will get stealth fighter-bombers, at least 72, but maybe as many as 100, costing anywhere up to $24 billion to buy and operate. The army wants a fleet of new armoured fighting vehicles with more potent guns, with a price tag somewhere around $10 billion.   

The promise of 12 new subs for the navy could cost as much as $36 billion. Add to these boats the three new "air warfare destroyers" and a pair of towering amphibious assault ships, one already on the water and the other, moored at the Williamstown docks, expected to be launched in the coming months.   


In April 2014 Tony Abbott announced Australia would buy 58 more F-35 fighters.

That's a lot of pointy spines Australia has ready to flash. But do we need so many, and what's the intention?

Where successive governments have failed in recent years is to provide a meaningful explanation as to why Australia has decided to adopt such an aggressive posture, especially when the security threats that grab most of the headlines are asylum seeker boats and teenage terrorists with mad dreams of mayhem.   

This is where the octopus-analogy falls down, because the military is not merely intended for the protection of Australia's territory, but for the projection of power in service of Australia's interests. The military is typically the heavy side of national power, cast in terms of "strategic weight".


There has been plenty of coded talk about the need to "hedge" against regional uncertainty, or to "deepen" ties with partners. The rise of China is doubtlessly central to this narrative, and there is good reason to focus on the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea and challenge Beijing's declarations for what this means.

Nor is Australia alone in its military build-up. Academic Michael Wesley points out in his new book, Restless Continent, that Asia's "narrow seas are becoming crowded with increasingly effective military hardware".

Yet there has been very little plain speaking about what Australia intends to achieve with this military might – and just as importantly, how Australia's decisions might in turn influence other nations in an escalating regional arms race.


Take the subs as just one example. Why does Australia need 12 – not eight, or even six, as it has presently? As a practical concern, how will the government ensure it has enough personnel to keep the boats operating, given the past problems in the volunteer submarine arm? And what of unmanned drones – and warnings of a dramatic technological transformation in undersea warfare that might make the role of submarines, if not obsolete, then vastly reduced?   

For decades Australia's defence planning has been predicated on the notion of maintaining a technological edge over potential adversaries, seen as a necessary counterweight to the vastly larger populations of nations in the region. But with Asia's increasing wealth, can this edge be sensibly maintained, and at what cost to Australia?