Technological top guns

Maintaining the best technologies in the region has been one of the fundamental planks of Australian defence planning for decades. In the absence of an immediate and obvious threat against which our own force structure might be shaped, Defence strategists have decided, not unreasonably, to hedge their bets by establishing technological superiority. Their thinking is that, should a serious threat emerge, the resultant ADF will be well-placed to deal with it regardless of the nature of that threat.

Because Australia is an island nation with immense air and sea approaches, this methodology has emphasised maritime (air force and navy) capabilities. The RAAF in particular has been central to its logic. Thus, it is no coincidence the RAAF has been the region’s leading air power for seventy years.

Air Marshal Binskin’s observation raises at least three issues: the extent of regional defence modernisation programs; the status of the RAAF; and the never-ending competition within the ADF for a shrinking defence dollar.

There is no question that significant modernisation is happening in the Asia-Pacific region. China is the exemplar, with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force rapidly acquiring air and naval capabilities incorporating stealth, long-range precision weapons, advanced situational awareness, and networking. Major advances in these essential 21st century warfare technologies are being accompanied by increasing numbers of platforms and systems.

It would of course be reckless to suggest that Australia might become involved in an extended military confrontation with China by itself. If it did, there could only be one outcome. At the same time, a small power can cause a great power considerable grief by forcing it into a disproportionate response. The key would be the small power’s ability to impose a perceived high – or preferably unacceptable – cost on any military action the great power might contemplate. It is this concept of ‘disproportionate response’ that makes Australia’s geostrategic setting as a maritime nation so important, and which in turn explains the significance of ADF capabilities such as submarines, ISR/networking (Jorn, AEW&C, AP-3C, Vigilair), precision strike (F/A-18, F-35, advanced weapons), long-range (KC-30), and electronic warfare (Growler).

There should be little doubt that today’s RAAF could impose very high costs on any potential aggressor.

This concept, incidentally, also illustrates why commentators who have criticised the ADF’s orders for F-35s and Growlers have missed the point. The technology battle is never won, and unless boundaries are constantly pushed, the gap will be narrowed. In terms of maintaining the leading edge, the F-35 and the Growler, supported by the broader ADF, will represent unique regional capabilities which demand a challenging disproportionate response.

As far as modernisation in the rest of the region is concerned, numbers of high-performance strike/fighters and submarines are increasing. But as this column has previously argued, hardware in itself does not a capability make. Among Australia’s neighbours, only our ally Singapore has the necessary combination of systems, command and control networks and, most importantly, qualified and experienced people that are needed to translate hardware into capabilities. It took the RAAF thirty years to develop today’s world-class system, and it cannot be replicated overnight.

Finally, there is the matter of the budget. The issue here is that the service with the least relevance to the direct defence of Australia, the Army, is the one with the highest public profile and the most political influence. There is no more powerful image in Australia’s national consciousness than that of the digger, Gallipoli, and Kokoda.

The problem for the Army is that in the next eighteen months Australian soldiers will be withdrawn from Afghanistan having fought in a losing counterinsurgency campaign for the third consecutive time. It is hard to imagine a government of any persuasion allowing our forces to be drawn into another unwinnable land war for many years. The question therefore becomes: What is the Army’s role in a maritime strategy? Some analysts believe that the shrinking defence budget may see Army manpower – a very expensive commodity – reduced by up to 3000 people, the equivalent of a couple of battalions. An alternative would be to reduce the orders for, say, F-35s and Growlers.

The trade-off between people and platforms is not new and is never easy. In this instance, the price could be the ADF’s standing as the region’s technological top gun and the integrity of the maritime strategy.