By Robbin Laird

The first of two seminars of the Sir Richard Williams Foundation in 2024 was held on 11 April 2024 at the National Gallery of Australia.

The seminar was entitled, “The Multi-Domain Requirements of an Australian Maritime Strategy”, and the aim of the seminar was identified as follows:

“To examine the enduring and emerging multi-domain requirements of an Australian maritime strategy in the context of the Defence Strategic Review. The Seminar examines the requirements through a Defence lens but will consider all national means that contribute to a maritime strategy and the need for coherence across concepts, doctrine, equipment, basing and preparedness. This strategic coherence is needed to synchronise effects across the Whole of Australian Government, Defence and industry, as well as international partners.”

Last year’s DSR highlighted the ramped-up threat to Australia and the need to focus on the region, its partnerships and the need to build a more effective defence effort by Australia in the regional deterrence context. The focus of the government in its subsequent priorities has tended to focus on longer term acquisitions, first in terms of nuclear submarines through the AUKUS relationship and then for a new surface fleet in its recently released surface fleet review.

A multi-domain operations discussion builds on the work of the Foundation during the time I have been writing the reports since 2014. The focus has been upon building a fifth-generation force, which after all revolves around sensor-shooter relationships built across an integrated force delivering multi-domain effects or what I prefer to call a kill-web enabled force.

The focus is upon how you get full value out of your force now and to build out that extant force in the future to become more lethal and survivable. If you are focused on the fight tonight, which any credible combat force must focus on, then long range assets are projections of the possible, not augmentations of the credibility of the operational force.

So any multi-domain discussion inevitably focuses on the way ahead for the force in being, rather than a force planning discussion of a projected future.

When you add a specific target of what is that force in being operating in support of, inevitably gaps are identified, and the question then is how do you close the most significant gaps which threaten your security and defence interests. Such a focus is in turn raised if one raises the question of the means to the end of what one might consider a maritime threat envelope and strategy to deal with that envelope.

In other words, one would expect the seminar discussion to focus more on the transition challenges of the ADF and the nation to deal with threat environment in the near to midterm rather than in 2040.

That is what happened at the seminar in which speakers started by highlighting the importance of focusing on the here and now rather than on the force that might exist in 2035 or 2040. After the initial presentations focused on the current challenges and the role of the ADF and the nation to prepare to deal with them, the discussion shifted to whether Australia had a maritime strategy and if so what were the priorities of such a strategy.

The majority of the presentations focused on specific services or industrial perspectives of how best to meet the multi-domain requirements for the evolving Australian defence challenge.

But at the heart of the discussion was really the major challenge facing Australia: how to close defence gaps? How to engage the nation beyond the ADF in the broader defence challenges facing Australia? How to build a sustainable force?

In later articles, I will provide detailed looks at the presentations and how the presenters dealt with these and other issues associated with the transition of the ADF. But here I am going to focus on the key issue of how does the ADF get more capable in the next three-to-five years and to do so in a way that is a prologue to the anticipated force transformation being designed?

Peter Jennings was the first speaker and he underscored that the DSR had highlighted the near-term threats but was putting its money in forces a decade away.

He put the challenge as follows:

Governments can and do promise to spend unbelievable quantities of money on the future force but you only know what you get when you open the box.

Not one cent of it buys deterrence today.

From a deterrence perspective there is potentially some risk in promising strong deterrent capabilities in the future while maintaining the military capabilities of a skinned cat in the present day.

That is the risk of pre-emption. Indeed, one reason why analysists are so worried about a mid- to late-2020s risk of conflict against Taiwan, or in the South China Sea, is that Xi Jinping may calculate that he faces a ‘use it or lose it’ choice with the PLA.

Xi’s best chance of strategic success to achieve unchallenged military dominance in the Pacific are maximised by early action before his opponents’ next generation military capabilities are realised and while the democracies are internally distracted and divided.

The tragedy is that there is so much which could be done with a bit of political and Defence push to strengthen ADF and national capabilities in the relative short term.

For example:

• Ramping up domestic ammunition production and stockpiling.
• Establishing offensive drone capabilities on the basis of existing technology – not everything has to be quantum, AI, hypersonically joint and enabled.
• Funding some of the incredibly smart military capabilities that have been developed by Australian businesses.
• Researching some of the remarkable military and operational achievements which the Ukrainians (with allied help) and the Israelis have used in recent months.
• Here I’m not just talking about drones; but also optimising air defence capabilities; integrating intelligence and battlefield situational awareness; finding the right balance between exotic and more prosaic technology; working out how to get things in production in less than a decade.

There is so much that could be done, so much so, in fact that our failure to do any of this makes me wonder if it is not the case that the government and Defence establishment is actually getting what it really wants?

The second presentation was by Mike Pezzullo, the former Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, who made an impassioned speech reminding the audience that building an effective defence structure is not simply the task of the ADF. The society needed to be engaged in shaping an Australia more capable of defending itself. You cannot outsource defence and security to an alliance or to the professional military for one needs to build a more resilient and sustainable Australian society and nation.

Jennifer Parker of the National Security College (ANU) provided a comprehensive look at the maritime security challenges facing Australia and argued that in fact there was no strategy to deal with these comprehensive challenges. Her talk focused attention on what is the demand signal and what is the product needed to deal with that demand signal for maritime security and defence.

Such an approach highlights what are the gaps to be met and how to meet them, which is quite different from force structure planning of an envisaged future force. Rather, one looks at demand drivers and what tools a nation has available to it, far beyond simply a professional military.

The remaining presentations provided insights regarding how the ADF is changing to deal with the evolving challenges and I will take a detailed look at these presentations and focus on them in later articles.

I will then return to the question of the match between the specific recommendations and the challenge of building an effective multi-domain force and sustainable society in dealing with the evolving threats and challenges.

By Robbin Laird

When shaping a relevant 21^st century defence approach, sustainability is a key aspect of any credible effort. Gone are the days where just in time delivery from distant global supply chains is an effective means for deployed defense assets.

Credible defense capability is built on a foundation of sustainability.

The war in Ukraine has exposed the Achilles heel of Western defense, namely the lack of magazine depth. Munitions and weapons have been in perilously short supply. Digging into one’s war reserves to help the Ukrainians is short term necessity and folly.

We collectively face the challenge of building a 21^st century version of the arsenal of democracy, whereby allies build munitions in common and cross support one another in a crisis. Just having a single point of failure or having to wait for delivery from a global supply chain almost certainly to be disrupted is a strategic failure of the first order.

If you are Australia, you face an especially difficult challenge as an island continent which is completely dependent in many areas on long global supply chains and a country in which manufacturing and self-processing of its rich natural resources has not been prioritized. Such a formula guarantees the absence of sustainable forces.

This situation becomes even more significant when one looks at the most plausible allied engagement strategy, namely working with all of its Pacific allies to cross-support one another, and not simply focus on the United States. By enhancing its indigenous supply capabilities, Australia can also form a strategic reserve for allies in the region or forces that might operate from Australia in the future.

But planning for such a future in the context of ongoing studies and briefing charts will not cut the cake. Briefing charts only kill the audience, not the enemy.

So what can be done in the three to five year period do achieve something real and concrete?

One answer is to build indigenous munitions capabilities, essentially a no-brainer from my point of view. If one looks at France, several years ago the government abolished the munitions facility established at the time of Louis XIV. Just in time was enough in our peaceful world. But with Macron focusing on the need for a war economy, the French have already rebuilt their munitions production capability and are proceeding apace.

It is rather obvious that Australia needs to do the same on a priority basis.

During my April 2024 visit to Australia, I had the chance to talk with a key munitions manufacturer, Robert Nioa about the challenge.

He is head of the Nioa group which is described on their website as follows:

NIOA is a privately-owned global munitions company. Established in Queensland, Australia in 1973, today the NIOA Group has strategic locations around the world. We are dedicated to the best practice supply and manufacture of firearms, weapons and munitions to Australian and allied nation defence forces, law enforcement agencies and commercial markets.

My main question to him was could they work an effective strategy of sustainable munitions supply for Australia in the timeframe which I think is critical.

According to Nioa: “Within a three-to-five-year window, we can enable Australia to provide the munitions required for an allied effort within the Indo Pacific region. We need dramatically eto xpand our energetics production, and we can do that within that three-to-five-year window.

“We don’t have enough production capacity in Australia currently to support what we need to do for ourselves, let alone to support allies in the Indo Pacific region.

“But we can build factories within that timeframe to provide the explosives required to produce the kinetic enablers for the ADF and as we scale up for allies in the region. We can build a factory to make solid rocket motors.

“We can build a factory to make the warheads. And then we can bring in technology for the guidance systems for long range strike or even expand conventional munitions production, everything from artillery munitions through to small arms production. It’s simply an allocation of funds and priorities.”

The demand signal for such expanded sustainable capability is clearly there with the shortfalls exposed in the war in Ukraine. By Australia expanding capacity they can become a strategic reserve for allies in the region as well.

And building such a sustainable infrastructure provides the material to enable lethal payloads in the future as new platforms and ways of delivering lethality evolve as well, such as I discuss in my latest book entitled The Coming of Maritime Autonomous Systems.

One can get caught up in imagining weapons of the future and building planning scenarios: but if you don’t have the building blocks in place for effective force sustainability, it really will not matter when you face a determined adversary that has built a sustainable force.

Photo: An Australian Army soldier from 1st Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, fires the 84mm Carl Gustaf on 5th January 2024, Townsville Field Training Area, Queensland. Australian Army Soldiers from 1st Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment conducted static live fire with the 84mm Carl Gustaf, engaging 450-metre targets at the Townville Field Training Area. The training aimed to build confidence in members when using the weapon system and qualify junior non-commissioned officers as a part of the Section Commander Battle Course (SCBC). 5 January 2024. Credit: Australian Department of Defemce.

See also the following:

https://www.eurosatory.com/en/ammunition-supply-the-growing-role-of-australias-nioa-group-on-the-international-stage/

 

 

By Robbin Laird

Recently, I talked with my colleague Robert Czulda by video link to get an update on the situation in Poland two years into the war in Ukraine.

We started by discussing the war seem from Warsaw.

Czulda: “When the Russian invasion first started, there was shock in the Polish public and much concern. But with the Ukrainians successfully turning the Russians back the public perception was to live with the war but being very wary of  the persistence of the Russians and what it means for Europe.

“Now two years later there is increased concern with the Russian versus Ukrainian capabilities and the government is increasingly concerned about the defense of Poland and of Europe against the Russian actions in Ukraine and their possible expansion.

“One response to the Russian threat has been increasingly concerned to put in place various direct defense measures, including restoring the underground bunkers built in the cold war and the possbuty of mining the border.”

Czulda has recently written a piece for us which focuses on tensions between Ukraine and Poland over the grain issue which does highlight the uncertainty of where Ukraine “fits” into Eruope either as possible member of the EU or of NATO.

And I would add that the efforts of the Nordics on defense integration as well as working the Baltic states in Poland has seen a kind of differentiation within Europe of states which see Russia as a direct threat in the near and mid-term and those European states which have expressed much less concern or commitment to enhancing their defense efforts.

I asked him about the challenge for Poland in term s of integrating their various arms effots into a more integrated force.

And he clearly indicated that this is a major challenge.

We then discussed the possibility of a cease fire in Ukraine to re-work the Western situation with regard to Ukraine. He saw that as a possibility but worried that Western leaders would take any pause as an end state whereas Putin would use the pause to re-organize for the next phase of the war in Europe.

But there is a clear danger that the much larger Russian state working with its authoritarian allies or states trading with Russia and generating revenue for them such as India would empower them to grab more Ukrainian territory and then positioning themselves to have a buffer zone from which they could expand their aggressive poicy towards Europe as a whole.

So what is the situation in Poland today?

Obviously, the Ukrainian immigration poses a challenge but the economic situation has in Czulda’s view improved over what is was at the beginning of war. Inflation is down but the pressure on Polish living conditions is substantial, such as in the housing market.

To quote Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Europe is entering a ˜prewar” era, cautioning that the continent is not ready and urging European countries to step up defence investment. “I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past. It’s real and it started over two years ago.”1

Credit Graphic: Bigstock

1 Lili Bayer, Europe must get ready for looming war, Donald Tusk warns, The Guardian, 30 March 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/29/europe-must-get-ready-for-looming-war-donald-tusk-warns

The Impact of the War in Ukraine on Poland

The Russo-Ukrainian War After One Year: A Central and Eastern European Perspective