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The latest Williams Seminar held in Canberra on April 11, 2019 focused on the strategic shift for Australia within the context of the evolving global situation.
Facing the rising challenges posed by the 21stcentury authoritarian states, and by the changing nature of alliances in the Pacific and in Europe, Australia needs to enhance its sovereign capabilities to operate within a regional or global crisis.
And this requires, Australia to have more capability to sustain its evolving integrated force and to do so in the service of the direct defense of Australia.
The Williams seminars over the past five years have focused in detail on the reshaping of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) as a more integrated force, one which can operate as discrete Australian force packages able to operate with allies or on their own.
The acquisition of the F-35 is seen as a trigger for accelerating the kind of force integration which Australia is seeking, namely a very capable force package within which fifth generation enablement enhances the lethality and survivability of modular force packages.
But the goal is to have such capability both for the direct defense of Australia and to work with allies during sustained periods of crisis.
It was clear from the latest Williams Seminar that this is not just a technical force packaging effort. It is part of a broader reset within Australian thinking about how to move ahead as the global competition changes.
As Williams Research Fellow, Dr. Alan Stephens put it, Australia needs to focus on Plan B:
“A military posture based on the premise that Australians will assume the burden of combat of defending their own country.”
“For most of our history, Australia has been unwilling to confront the imperatives of a defence posture which would require us to assume the burden of responsibility. Consequently, when faced with our only existential threat, in World War II, we were left dangerously exposed; while on other occasions, the apparent need to pay regular premiums on Plan A has drawn us into morally dubious wars of choice.
“In short, Plan A has distorted our strategic thinking and compromised our independence.
“If Australian defence is to be credibly self-reliant – if we are to have a Plan B – we can start by looking to the examples of those individuals and local industries that have challenged traditionalists and science-deniers, and have instead embraced innovation and transformation.”
Dr. Andrew Carr then followed highlighting what this means in terms of the strategic reset for Australia in dealing with the direct challenges from China and the changing dynamics of the American Alliance. Carr argued that Australia needed to focus on its regional interests rather than following American proclivities over the past three Administrations to pursue conflicts significantly removed from direct defense challenges to Australia itself.
“This is not to suggest an isolationist or inward-looking turn. Far from it. Nor is it about returning to the 1980s Defence of Australia concepts.
“Rather, it is a position which takes seriously the idea that we may be early into a half-century or more of strategic competition. This means knowing what we will fight to protect and how we can do so. And then being able to go forward from a secure continent. That is what a return to fundamentals means.
“To do otherwise, to keep focusing on what we can do at the furthest limits from our core interests, attempting merely to hold firm to the status quo is to risk our own version of a grey zone style crisis.
“A world where we are making commitments to our allies abroad that we can’t be sure future government’s and the Australian public will want to keep.
“Nor does this extended approach make sense in the face of our specific adversary on the field today. A strategy of simply trying to give ‘110%’, year in and year out, by tired and debt-ridden Western nations, finding ourselves always on the defence against a better resourced and fresher People’s Republic of China is not a winning approach.”
He posed a key question: What are the fundamentals of continental security for Australia?
Carr underscored that Australia needed to deal with the new strategic challenge and to do so by rethinking its defense and security strategies.
“Unfortunately, this is a question we will need to think through afresh, rather than hoping that past generations have done the work for us. The Defence of Australia policy, which was in place from roughly 1972 to 1997 took shape in a very different world, politically and technologically. This was an era where our continent was secure – something that is not obviously true today.”
The well-known Australian strategist Brendan Sargeant then contributed his thoughts on the way ahead in this new historical era. Sargeant has had many policy positions in the Australian government and spoke from that experience to discuss the challenges facing Australia in this new period of history.
His focus was upon how best to take the capabilities Australia has built and is building and how to leverage them effectively in Australian interests
“The development of capability is important, perhaps the most important element of defence policy, but also important is understanding how these capabilities might need to be used in the future.
“How should we shape the force to respond to future crises?
“How we think about that question will in part determine how we want to evolve capabilities, and how powerful and sustainable we will want the force to be.
“Have we thought sufficiently about how we might need to use defence capability in the future, and are we building for that day or days?”
The remainder of the seminar focused on what one might call the eco system for a more sustainable ADF. A key element of shaping a way ahead clearly is to shape a more sustainable force which can endure through a crisis. This meant taking off the table the capability of the Chinese to disrupt the supply chains into Australia and choking off the sustainability of the ADF. This clearly needs to be dealt with by crafting “buffer” capabilities to sustain the force.
Another key aspect being worked is enhanced local industrial support to ADF forces, as well as new approach to stockpiling parts and skill sets to sustain the force.
There are clear security issues as well. There needs to be enhanced security of Australian civil as well as military infrastructure, in terms of IT, C2 and energy security.
Put in blunt terms, with a focus on direct defense of Australia comes a broader social recognition of the long-term challenges posed by its powerful neighbor in the region as well as finding ways to rethink crisis management tools. An integrated ADF which able to operate in flexible force packages as a key enabler for sovereign options in a crisis is a different trajectory than envisaged in the last White Paper.
But to enable, you need to survive and be sustained. This is why active defense measures are being stood up and rethinking about logistics and industrial support under way.
It is clearly a work in progress.
But the new Aussie approach will have significant implications for Australia’s allies and industrial partners as well. A focus on sustainable direct defense will clearly mean a shift in focus and reorientation of how Australia will work with global partners and industry. And this has direct consequences for programs such as the British frigate, the French submarine and US produced 21st century air combat assets, such as P-8, Triton, Growler and F-35.
Dr. Carr highlighted how different the way ahead is from the recent past.
“We should find a new language instead of the term self-reliance.
“This term has always been used by Australians to mean an exception to usual practice. Self-Reliance was we did in the worst-case scenario, or did on the margins while normal allied cooperation was the mainstay.
“Instead we should think of this issue as most other countries do. Defending ourselves is our task and our primary responsibility. We will build alliance cooperation on top of this, we will seek to use our geography to support and sustain a regional order that has been very valuable to us. But what we do alone is not the exception, but a fundamental part of a re-invigorated, and resilient approach.
“So let us take this moment to rethink and regroup. The siren calling us back onto the pitch is sure to blast very soon, and the next half is going to be even tougher. But with a better plan, based on the fundamentals, I am confident the game’s momentum will soon run our way.”
Kim Jong-un arrived this Wednesday in Vladivostok on his armored train. It is his first time in his northern neighbor since he took power eight years ago.
It is going to be also his first meeting with Vladimir Putin.
The summit will take place at the Far Eastern Federal University, at its new campus on Russky Island, where the new, open, and international Vladivostok, is being built since the preparations for the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit in 2012.
The North-Korea’s “dear leader” (or dictator) had also arrived on his armoured train in Hanoi, Vietnam, for his meeting with Donald Trump in late February this year, travelling over 2,800 miles.
This month’s trip from Pyongyang to Vladivostok was not that long: the distance between the two cities is less than 450 miles. Most of the Korean railways were built during the Japanese occupation, which ended in 1945. The Russian Empire finished the Trans-Siberian Express before the Bolshevik Revolution broke out in the West of Russia.
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Vladivostok, which stands for “The Ruler of The East” in Russian, was no more open during Soviet times than North-Korea is nowadays. Conquered from the Chinese in the late XIX century, the hilly city by the Sea of Japan still is Russia’s most important Eastern military port. Under Soviet rule the city was even closed for USSR citizens: the home of the Soviet Pacific Fleet only welcomed officials and their families.
Today, the city has more than 550,000 inhabitants, and welcomes people from all over the world (with a large majority of South-Korean and Chinese tourists). A statue of Lenin still stands near the seashore in Vladivostok, surrounded by shopping centers with shiny billboards written both in Russian, in Korean and in Chinese.
The city’s strategical position is today even more relevant, and Putin knows it better than anyone. Although more than 5,500 miles (and seven time zones) between Moscow and Vladivostok still presents the Russians with the problem maintaining their influence in the region.
The city of Vladivostok was erected in the very fissure between West and East.
The Soviet epoch buildings contrast with new business towers and high-end residential buildings, and the enclosed city of the last century now thrives on business with its Asian neighbors. The Russky Bridge, the longest of its kind in the world, and all the new facilities built in the Russky Island for the APEC, underscore the attention and care of Moscow to the region.
In Vladivostok, some cars drive on the left side of the road, like the Japanese, others drive on the right, like the Korean, European and Russians. Students often choose Chinese or Korean as their second language.
The majority of the locals might have been to Beijing or Seoul, but have never crossed the Urals West. The only neighbor they obviously don’t interact much with is the North-Korean people. Besides that, most of them share Russian traditions, and are proud of being Far Eastern Russians.
The tensions involving North-Korea missile tests predate Kim Jong-un’s regime: both Kim Il-Sung, his grandfather, and Kim Jong-il, his father, tested together 31 missiles since 1984. In the last eight years, however, Kim Jong-un tested 80 missiles, and fired some of them onto the Sea of Japan.
North Korea’s army is disproportionally large for such a poor and small country (yet, it does not compare to the American and Russian armies). Pyongyang’s regime stoked these tensions with their neighbors South Korea and Japan, and by threatening the West (most notably the United States).
In Hanoi, two months ago, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump seemed to have ended their honeymoon.
No relevant agreements were made, and it seems Kim is back at playing with his rockets.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian influence over North-Korea decreased significantly.
Putin is now entering into this dispute with both feet.
North-Korea depends hugely on their giant neighbor China, both politically and economically.
This ever-growing Chinese influence must worry both Putin and Trump.
This Thursday another chapter of this “nuclear tension” will unfold, and while the West worries about Kim’s weapons, he is meeting in two months the two largest nuclear powers in the world, and if Kim Jong-un is unpredictable, so too are Trump and Putin.
Lucas Bertolo is the Brazilian assistant to Professor Kenneth Maxwell.
These photos were shot by him during his visit to Vladivostok last May.
After the recent Williams Foundation Seminar which focused on the evolution of Australian defense capabilities and policies, I had a chance to discuss the changing context for Australian policy and the challenge of reshaping the Australian policy approach with Brendan Sargeant.
Sargeant is currently Honorary Professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, at the Australian National University and has had a long period of service to the Australian Department of Defence, most recently serving as Associate Secretary in the Department.
The key challenge to shape and execute a nation’s defense policy is to understand the priorities, to shape capabilities which can meet those priorities, as well as understanding the limits facing a nation in terms of its resources and its capabilities. It is is also crucial to shape effective approaches to managing that policy in times of crisis, which is a combination of capabilities as well as having skillful leadership.
For Australia, this means refocusing its policies upon the challenges in its region, which is one with global reach.
We started by discussing the changing strategic context. With the rise of the 21stCentury authoritarian powers, and the various dynamics of change in Europe, and in the United States, obviously Australia’s policy approach over the past two decades was no longer valid.
Australia has focused its efforts to contributing the United States leadership in providing for enforcement of a rules-based order, and doing so with enhanced capabilities, but within the context of enforcing an order, not shaping it.
Indeed, the 2016 Defence White Paper underscores throughout the need to enforce the rules-based order. But the 21stcentury authoritarians have no intention of operating within those constraints and are seeking to reshape global order to their advantage.
As Sargeant put it: “The world we have assumed is not necessarily going to be the world of the future. So how is Australia going to live in that world and play its role?”
He noted that the Chinese were seeking to reshape the global order. “The Chinese strategy is clear – guarantee access to resources, create buffers, break alliances and not be constrained by any rules-based order that they do not consider congruent with their perception of their interests.”
He argued that we are facing a fluid period of global change.
“We will see lots of experiments, and see lots of ideas and you’ll see states trying out different political and architectural formations to meet their interests.
“We’re in a world with we don’t know what the future strategic order is going to look like, or how it’s going to be managed. The global order is clearly in play.”
There are cross cutting forces at play.
“Globalization has unleased one set of forces; the rise of nationalism another set of forces; and the rise of the illiberal powers yet a different set of force. Nations are trying to work out how best to protect their interests and with whom to work to do so.”
This has a significant impact on the inherited alliances. There is the habitual cooperation which has underlaid the Western Alliances and that cooperation is continuing but in the context of significant redefinition of what alliances are going to look like going forward,
“Great powers like the United States are more interested in totalizing alliance arrangements than their alliance partners are likely to accept. Australians like other regional allies of the United States will seek working arrangements with a variety of regional partners to provide for our interests and work through different sorts of working arrangements to deal with our strategic challenges.”
The shift is clearly from followership to engagement in working relationships where leadership is shouldered or shared differently from the great power followership role which Australia has followed first with Britain and then with the United States.
Working relationships with regional or global partners around specific issues and challenges are becoming “the real alliances. They are being built in response to specific crisis or specific problems.”
For Australia, the challenge will be how to deal with global and regional crisis management. For defense, this means shaping capability which can be leveraged in a crisis and effectively used by political leadership effectively to meet the national interest.
This means taking a hard look at the kind of defense force which Australia has and is developing and determining which tools are available to decision makers.
It also means building a more durable and sustainable force through a crisis period.
“The ability to deploy force creates more decision space in a crisis. But you need to do that over time. That requires a robust logistical and industrial base that can give you more confidence that you can scale up during a crisis.”
“From a policy perspective, you want to give yourself more strategic options by giving yourself more time. Which means that you will need to have a more sustainable force during a crisis.”
And the crisis management challenge requires thinking through partnerships and working relationships with allies.
“When do you exercise leadership? When do you exercise followership?”
An example of how force packaging might be reworked in terms of partnerships in the region could be the working relationship between Australia and Indonesia.
“We ought to be able to put together an integrated task force with Indonesia to manage a regional crisis from the low end to the high end. And a task force where either Australia or Indonesia could take the lead.”
In short, for Sargeant, “We need to think differently about our position in this part of the world and how that may drive our thinking about the capability which we need to have and to develop going forward.”
The featured graphic shows the Chinese island building strategy in the South China Sea.
The U.S. Congress has a welcome opportunity to end U.S. dependence on Russian rocket engines for its national security satellites. However, Congress needs to proceed with the existing agreed timetable to avoid unnecessary deals that risk U.S. national security.
Members recognize that the United States can leverage the strengths of the U.S. private sector to promote the commercial development of space launch systems for national security as well as civilian missions.
Congressional legislation mandates ending launching of U.S. national security satellites on rockets employing Russia’s RD-180 enginefor propulsion in less than three years from now.
To maintain a broad competitive industrial base for space launch vehicles, the Air Force has provided targeted funding to several firms developing launch system prototypes. These Launch Service Agreements (LSA),represent Other Transaction Authority (cost-sharing) grants the Air Force makes to various firms.
They help defray their financial expense in making the changes necessary to certify that their commercial rockets can fulfill the unique requirements for launching national security payloads, such as military satellites.
This process supports an accelerated timeline, while maintaining fair and open competition, to end U.S. dependence on RD-180 engines by the congressionally mandated date of December 31, 2022.
The planned launches of the existing ULA Atlas 5 rocket will soon exhaust thedwindling number of these enginesunder U.S. possession in any case.
In 2016, the Defense Department awarded initial contractsto SpaceX, Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJRD), Orbital ATK, and United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of the Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corporations that previously provided Titan and Atlas rockets, to develop U.S.-made rocket engines.
In October 2018, the Pentagon selected three companies–Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems ((formerly Orbital ATK), and ULA—to receive additional funding to research and design space launch vehicles using these U.S.-manufactured propulsion systems.
Northrop Grumman’s OmegA (employing the company’s Castor engines for its first two stages and Aerojet’s RL10 engine for its third stage)
Blue Origin’s New Glenn (with seven reusable BE-4 engines for its first stage, a BE-4U re-ignitable engine for stage two, and BE-3U engines for its third stage); and
ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rockets(with Blue Origin’s BE-4engine for its lower stage and Aerojet’s Rocketdyne engine for the Vulcan’s upper stage).
In Fiscal Year 2020, the military will designate two of them to receive a block of contracts during the five-year LSA Phase 2 period, scheduled to begin in 2022. Formally termed the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Phase 2 Launch Service Procurement(EELV), the two companies will launch up to sixdefense payloads annually, following full-scale flight tests of new space launch vehicles.
The third, non-selected firm, as well as other pioneering private sector space companies like SpaceX, can still submit bids for future U.S. national security payload contracts.
SpaceX is already a certified EELV launch provider and has received several defense contracts for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, equippedwith the company’s U.S.-manufactured Merlin engines.
The Air Force contract given to SpaceX in 2016 also subsidized the creation of its Raptor engine, which will power its future Big Falcon spacecraft and perhaps the Falcon 9.
During a March 27 hearingof the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommitteeon “Military Space Operations, Policy and Programs,” Lieutenant General David D. Thompson, USAF Vice Commander, Air Force Space Command, recommitted the Air Force to work closely with firms not selected for Phase 2 to allow them to compete effectively for future national security launch opportunities.
To sustain America’s assured access to space, the Air Force has committedto “facilitate the development of three domestic launch system prototypes and enable the future competitive selection of two national security space launch service providers for future procurements.”
The Secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson, has calledthe present Launch Service Procurement (LSP) an outstanding example of how we are “fielding tomorrow’s Air Force faster and smarter.”
The LSP goal of reducing dependence on Russian rocket propulsion enjoys widespread support in the U.S. national security community. Yet, Adam Smith, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote to Wilson at the end of March to propose a postponementin the LSA processand to review the program’s selection process. This intervention represents a counterproductive, potentially damaging policy proscription.
Any further delay in issuing LSP Request for Proposals would result in a critical misstep given the urgent need to revitalize the U.S. national security space launch fleet by developing several capable rocket manufacturers.
The Pentagon and Congress should proceed as scheduled to issue the RFPs for these next-generation systems in accordance with the meticulously agreed procedure, while also reaffirming and clarifying how non-Phase 2 selectees will continue to enjoy opportunities to contribute to critical U.S. national security space missions.
The featured photo shows the aft of a ULA Atlas V rocket and the dual-nozzle RD-180 engine. Photo Credit: United Launch Alliance
We published a composite of our recent articles on European issues.
Murielle Delaporte provide an exclusive interview with the SACT Commander, and an overview on how the European Union is beginning to address the challenge of dealing with direct Chinese investments in Europe.
Pierre Tran dealt with the impact of the German embargo on European Arms Collaboration as well as the reach out by the French to operate in the Australian context, one where the challenge is co-development, not simply managing the rebuild of an existing French asset. He also continued his look at the French approach to FCAS.
Laird looked at the issues of nuclear deterrence and the challenges of dealing with the security challenges posed by 21st century authoritarian powers. He also review two recent books on the dynamics of change in Europe as well.
The articles by Murielle Delaporte, Pierre Tran and Robbin Laird cover the following issues:
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) shaped a joint force which was able to self-deploy to the Middle East. With the RAAF’s new force package of advanced tanker, the C-17 and Wedgetail, the ADF experienced a joint capability which it had not had before, one which was featured in Middle East operations.
This self-deployment capability was sustained in part by the presence of allied and commercial logistics structures in the region to which it deployed.
But for a regional crisis, facing an adversary with tools to disrupt the base, IT systems, and parts supply chain, how will logistics be sustained through the duration of a crisis?
In Thomas Kane’s well-known study of military logistics, the author coined the phrase, “logistical capabilities are the arbiter of opportunity.” Armies which have secured reliable resources of supply have a great advantage in determining the time and manner in which engagements take place. Often, they can fight in ways their opponents cannot.
One of the key speakers at the Williams Foundation Seminar on April 11, 2019, was Lt. Col. Beaumont. Beaumont is an army logistician but one with a focus on joint logistics support.
According to Beaumont: “Logistics will give us options and the flexibility to respond in a crisis as well as defining key constraints on freedom of action.”
In a capitalist society, of course, much that feeds a logistics machine in times of crisis or war is outside of the control of the military and is really about the capability to mobilize resources from the private sector in a timely and effective manner.
In effect, logistics is about taking resources out of the economy and making them available for the battlefield.
According to Beaumont, the main focus of logistics in the recent past has been tactical, but as we face a peer-to-peer environment it is important to take a more strategic perspective.
But the shift facing the militaries of the liberal democracies, can be described as a strategic shift from operating on the basis of “assumption logistics” ordered and delivered by a global just in time supply chain to shaping and operating from an “assured logistics reservoir or flow” in a crisis.
Beaumont highlighted that one cannot assume even if one is operating within a coalition that the coalition partners will be able to sustain you in a crisis.
“A key factor is what the level of mobilization has been achieved before a crisis to sustain a force. There is a long lead time to turn on the spigots from industry, and that is not just in Australia.”
He argued as well that different types of systems being operated across a coalition makes the common sustainment challenges that much more difficult.
He noted that “even in the Middle East, each of the nations that operated there, by and large, provided for their own logistical support and used their own national supply lines.
“And with such an approach, the lift assets in a crisis will be rapidly overwhelmed by demand.
“We saw that in 2003, as we all head to the Gulf, and we effectively dried up lift and tanker forces available for movement of forces.”
He underscored the importance from both a national and coalition perspective of Australia enhancing its sovereign capabilities and options with regard to supplies and logistical support.
“With a sovereign approach, you can become a contributor rather than primarily focusing on how to draw upon a global supply network which will be significantly constrained in a crisis in any case.”
What follows is Lt. Col. Beaumont’s presentation at the Williams Foundation Seminar
Discussions about self-reliance, like many other conversations among defence planners, rarely begin with a conversation on supply and support.
Many of these conversations can end with it.
The ability of a military to conduct operations independent of another’s aid is intrinsically linked to the capacity to move, supply and support that force.
Lt. Col. Beaumont at the Williams Foundation Seminar, April 11, 2109
These three factors can be a powerful influence on strategy and strategic policy formulation as they can set significant limits in what the ADF can practically achieve independent of others nor not.
Alternatively, and far less desirably, these three factors can be overlooked and the time at which those limits are confirmed will be when the ADF – if not Australia – can least afford it.
If we are to make a reasonable attempt at confirming how the ADF might sustain self-reliance, let alone consider a scenario where it will face a significant threat in ‘high-intensity’ conflict, a good portion of the discussion will have to be centred on the dry, seemingly bureaucratic and technically dense topic of sustaining military forces.
Today I will talk on how we might sustain self-reliance.
More importantly, I would like to challenge some of the assumptions we make about logistics and discuss some of the problems we are reluctant to truly address.
As a logistician looking outward into a world where strategic competition is particularly evident, I get nervous. As a research student studying the ADF’s approach to its logistics readiness prior to operations, I get nervous. Perhaps, after this presentation, you might feel a little nervous too!
The topic of logistics might seem to be matter for military commanders, being typically defined as the ‘art and science of maintaining and moving forces’ or variations thereof. As nice as that may sound to the military-minded,
I’d like to offer a paraphrased definition coined from Logistics in the national defense, one of a few books on logistics and strategy:
Logistics is a system of activities, capabilities and processes that connect the national economy to the battlefield; the outcome of this process is the establishment of a ‘well’ from which the force draws its combat potential or actual firepower.
Logistics is the connective tissue between the military and the national economy, and is a ‘verb’ as much as it is a ‘noun’. The military can influence economics through logistics demand and requirements, just as the economy shapes capability development and provides the resources that are shaped through the logistics process into combat potential or actual firepower.
A true assessment of self-reliance therefore relies upon our ability to bind ‘the economic’ and ‘the military’ into the same argument.
I proffer that the current debate on the logistics aspects to Australian military self-reliance are hidden in the natural link between it and national defence economics, and are currently coached in monumental terms and framed by enormous problems. National fuel supplies, prioritised sovereign defence industries and national manufacturing capacity, economic resilience in an era of globalisation.
These contemporary, popularised, topics certainly give us pause. They are major national security concerns that are bound to influence our role in the world in a period of major power strategic competition. They have been seemingly unresolvable problems to Australian governments and strategists for decades, beyond the period in which self-reliance was ensconced in the strategic doctrine of the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, and to the interwar period where lessons from the First World War reminded them to be prepared for national mobilisation.
They are truly national issues, and will never be solved by Defence, or any other arm of Government, independently.
Nonetheless, niggling doubts and prudence lead us to consider self-reliance yet again.
We are questioning, here, what Australian can reasonably do with its military forces irrespective of whether we are in a coalition or not.
Australia’s military history makes these concerns completely justifiable. Twenty years ago this year we assumed the mantle of coalition leadership in an intervention in East Timor, and operation which exposed the limits of the ADF of the time. We thought we could do it, but – as Cosgrove put it – it was a ‘close run thing.’
But as the Second World War proved, even in a coalition conflict there will be times the ADF will need to ‘go it alone’ and sustain itself as our allies resources are drawn elsewhere.
Who’s to say these scenarios will be unique?
The ADF, its partners in academic, industry and government, are at a point where the discussion has to get to the specifics of the problem.
We have to question ourselves as to how our impressive new capabilities, from the RAAF’s F-35 to the Army’s Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle, can endure on the battlefield of the future when our friends are far away.
The answer can’t afford to be as simplistic as ‘thirty days of supply’ or ‘purchase from the global market.’ We have to delve into the resilience of the national support base, globalised logistics arrangements and our relationships with coalition partners.
I hope that today’s presentation gives you an insight as to where we might want to look, and perhaps suggest at assumptions we may wish to challenge as a nation and military.
Why Logistics Matters Now
Before we go on, I’m going to step back and offer my thoughts as to why logistics matters right now.
With increasing agreement that Australia is party to increased strategic competition, interest in how we might sustain self-reliance is also gaining interest. The line between peace and war has always been blurred, and now Western militaries are starting to act.
In the recently released Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff argue that the ‘binary conception’ of peace and war is now obsolete, and a ‘competition continuum’ now applies.
The Australian Army would agree if ‘Accelerated Warfare’, an exploratory concept which considers a devolving strategic situation, is any indication. Now these same Western militaries recognise they must act in times other than in armed conflict, offsetting the strengths of other nations or groups who have a very different interpretation of what defines war.
We are witnessing, in this strategic competition, actions of a logistics tone.
The logistics systems which sustain nations and their military forces have always had a ‘deadly life’.
The architecture of global supply chains, siphoning national wealth through geographic areas of immense strategic interest to nations and others, are natural points of strategic interest. ‘Logistics cities’, major trade hubs and economic routes attract the interest of Governments and have become of immense strategic relevance.
All arms of Government can be seen in action, using diplomatic, informational, military and economic means to shape how both commercial and military logistics might be applied to their favour.
Supply chain security continues to occupy our minds as we intermingle our desire for national prosperity through global trade with our desire to prevent the loss of native capacity to build military capability, mobilise and sustain operations.
In this environment it will take little effort for nations to exert influence, or strangle the capacity of a nation to respond to threats militarily.
War won’t always begin when the first shots are fired.
Freedom of action and the ability to respond is clearly being tested.
A recent report by the US Defense Science Bureau written for senior leadership highlights the impacts of strategic competition on the US military’s capacity to protect its strategic interests independently. It examined the threat to US interests from Russia and China as they applied to its capacity to project power.
As these reports tend to go, its conclusions weren’t pretty.
Firstly, it recommended conducting realistic wargames and exercises to reflect threats and the capability of the ‘logistics enterprise’ to respond.
Secondly, it advocated to ‘protect, modernise and leverage’ the mobility ‘triad’ of ‘surface, air and prepositioning’.
Thirdly, it articulated the need to protect logistics data from espionage and manipulation, especially information that was held by national commercial partners.
Finally, it recommended that the US must increase its funding to logistics programs to make anticipated future joint operating concepts viable. Those are significant capability concerns that are equally applicable to the ADF.
They are concerns we could invest our way out of, subject to the scale of our military, and would go a long way to assuring logistics support to our own operations.
Force posture or capability development are important in strategic competition, but the way in which nations mobilise logistics support is equally important. Those nations that aspire to self-reliance naturally invest in policies, plans and national defence industries. Clearly, the degree to which the logistics system continually takes resources from the economy to create military capability varies with political desire and in a way, hopefully, that is commensurate to the threat. In peace this system is generally stable and allow for predictable results.
When uncertainty becomes prevalent, or a crisis begins, this logistics system must be altered to direct economic and logistics resources to where they are most required.
Creating surety in logistics is incredibly important.
And so, in recent years, we’ve seen Australian defence industry policy renewed alongside strategic policy, we’ve seen the Services develop close and valuable ties with industry partners, and we’ve seen a commitment to sovereign defence industries. Only time will tell whether Australia has invested enough attention to mobilisation to prepare the nation for a time of significant crisis. I suspect we haven’t considered it enough.
We might be beginning a conversation on the military link to industry, but it’s pretty clear that other nations are in an advanced state.
For example, Western Governments – especially the US – are highly concerned with the emerging Chinese policy of ‘civil-military fusion’. This approach is seeing tighter integration between industry and the PLA, thereby improving the seeping of ‘dual-use’ technologies into military practice.
With industry is moving to the centre of geopolitics, we’re starting to see whole-of-nation efforts shaping how militaries are formed and act operationally.
That this Chinese political philosophy makes the US nervous shows how significant economics and logistics are in strategic competition.
Managed properly, the logistics process can translate what industry provides into tactical combat potential and reflects a national capacity to compete, deter, and to demonstrate an ability to militarily respond.
Therefore, the presence of robust industry policy, the organisation of strategic logistics capability to leverage these arrangements, the appointment of commanders to oversee sustainment and the presence of mobilisation plans and doctrine, are good indicators of future military success.
These are not areas we typically look at when we consider how belligerents may compete, but they can be discriminating factors in any strategic competition.
Other examples of logistics influences on strategic competition are before us if we choose to look. One nation might overcome force projection challenges by building an island where there was none before, while another will procure air mobility platforms or ships for afloat support.
Others will examine force posture from first principles, while another will establish arrangements and agreements that might support a friendly force based in a partner nation at short notice.
Militaries might be restructured so that the acquisition and sustainment of capability improves preparedness, or eventual operational performance, more effectively. Just as there will be an unending competition in the development offensive and defensive capabilities between nations, so too will there be unending shifts in the way military forces will offset one another through logistic means.
At the height of non-armed competition, these changes in logistics systems will manifest in mobilisation.
Logistics has long been regarded as a crucial component of military capability, and the supply and support given to armed forces a major constituent of operational success. Logistics constraints and strengths can shape strategy, determine the form and means of operations, and if given nothing more than a passing glance by military commanders and civilian planners, will prevent combat forces from ever achieving their full potential in the air, and on the sea and land.
As we seek to answer the question, ‘what can we achieve on our own?’, a really difficult question to answer, solutions to our logistics problems and concerns must be front and centre. A suborned view of logistics in this discussion about self-reliance is way out of step with the strategic reality facing the ADF.
Logistics in the ADF – How Might We make Ourselves More Self-reliant?
How does the ADF employ its strategic logistics capability to create a strategic advantage, and to improve its ability to operate without the intervention of coalition partners?
Firstly, we must recognise that it is one thing to have the weapons of war on hand; if those capabilities are to have any use whatsoever, they must be complemented by the logistics resources necessary that they be used at their desired potential.
An investment in logistics is an investment in combat power. At a simplistic level many of our weapons, ammunition and components are acquired from other nations, or as we see with major capital programs, produced with others. Without these supplies, the technology at the ADF’s disposal is fundamentally worthless.
We complement our forces – in all domains – with discrete logistics capabilities on offer from partners that we cannot generate independently. Even in those times where the mantle of coalition leadership has fallen upon the ADF’s shoulders, as we saw with regional peacemaking and keeping operations of the last twenty years, the ADF has been supported from other quarters.
Secondly, the ADF’s engagement with industry must reflect the needs of higher states of readiness and surety of support.
It is incredibly difficult to determine how self-reliant the ADF might be when the present practice of global production and supply masks supply chain risks, and while Australia lacks the levers or market power to directly intervene in global production. Reliability is in question; this is not a fault of industry, but a consequence of the complex, decentralised, industry environment that works well in peacetime.
The ADF must emphasis reliability in its logistics – to deliver ‘assured logistics’ – for wont of a better term. It must also encourage industry to be ready to match short-notice, strategic, responses. It may be that in a time of crisis traditional boundaries such as intellectual property rights will need to be challenged, industry capacity seconded to defence interests, and projects redirected in new directions at very short notice.
At the very least ADF and industry should discuss how industry ‘scales’ in parallel with any expansion of the fielded force.
Thirdly, the ADF should leverage existing command arrangements to better coordinate logistics across the organisation.
It’s impossible to talk about coordinating Defence logistics activities without commenting on the nature of strategic logistics control in the Defence organisation.
Because logistics problems are naturally large, the ways in which concerns on self-reliance will be addressed will invariably be pan-organisational in nature. Commander Joint Logistics Command might be the CDF’s ‘strategic J4’ or key logistics commander, but he or she partners with the Capability, Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Estate and Infrastructure Group, the Services and others within what’s called the ‘Defence Logistics Enterprise’.
Each organisation naturally has a different perspective as to what ‘self-reliance’ means, and there is always a risk that Defence will have difficulty identifying where its logistics risks and opportunities truly lie in this context. Quite clearly the analysis of what the ADF’s ‘logistics limits’ are, and what national resources might be needed, requires a coherent effort with solutions achieved through mutually supporting activities conducted across the organisation.
This may mean we reinvigorate the idea of ‘national support’as a collective process in which industry and the military can work together to support operations; where national industry support to military operations is included at a conceptual level.
Fourthly, the ADF must look to address noteworthy operational capability gaps.
The strategic level challenges to self-reliance might fundamentally shape whether the ADF will perform in the way intended.
What about the condition of the forces in the operational area?
The most significant operational-level challenge to self-reliance, I argue, is with respect to strategic mobility. The ADF regularly seeks operational-level support in terms of intelligence and a wide range of capabilities that a military of our size simply could not realistically produce.
Perhaps there will be a time in which very long-distance fires will overcome the geography between us and an adversary, but until they do to a level that satisfies the desired military outcome strategic mobility capabilities will be continue to be critical to anything the ADF does.
Our strategic mobility will be critical to achieving a persistent response (whether that be on land or at sea) to an offshore threat.
Most of our partners declare their own paucity in strategic mobility capacity which suggests that even if our future conflicts are shared, we might still need to invest heavily in order to meet our own requirements.
On top of the mobility capabilities themselves, the aircraft and the ships and the contracted support we can muster from the nation, we cannot forget the ‘small’ enablers that support a deployed force.
In our recent campaigns in the Middle-east, we have been heavily dependent upon our coalition partners for the subsistence of our forces.
There is a real risk that our operational habits may have created false expectations of the logistics risk resident within the ADF, especially when it comes to conducting operations without coalition support.
As the Services look to their future force structure, it will serve them well to scrutinise not only those capabilities essential for basic standards of life, but the wide spread of logistics capabilities which are essential complements to their major platforms.
These include over-the-shore logistics capabilities for amphibious operations, expeditionary base capabilities as well those elements of the force that receive, integrate and onforward soldiers, sailors and airmen and women into the operational area.
With the newly formed Joint Capabilities Group, the ADF has a significant opportunity to comprehensively address these operational challenges to self-reliance.
Logistics and a Way Forward
You don’t have to deeply analyse defence logistics to understand that self-reliance is underpinned by the ADF’s – if not the nations – capacity to sustain and support its operations. The comments here are certainly not revelatory, nor are the allusions to the limits of ADF’s capability particularly surprising.
For the ADF to be effective in high-intensity conflict there is still a way to go yet, irrespective of whether it goes to way within a coalition or not.
There is every chance that even if the ADF does deploy as part of a coalition, it will still be necessary for it to have a capacity to support itself.
It is understandably important that we have a conversation about the limits to self-reliance in the current time of peace and think deeply about establishing the policy infrastructure and organisational arrangements that will enable us to make good judgements on what the ADF can or can’t do alone. Without doing so we risk logistics capability being revealed as a constraint on ADF operations, not a source of opportunity and the well from which the joint force draws its strength to fight.
If we are all serious about self-reliance, we must be serious and frank about the logistics limits of the armed forces, and the industry capacity of the nation. I’ve made some suggestions in this brief talk.
However, let’s continue the discussion by challenging some of the assumptions that we hold about logistics; that a coalition will underwrite our logistics operations, that the global market – designed for commerce not war – can offer us the surety of support we require, that we will have access to strategic mobility forces that even our allies believe they are insufficient in.
No matter what type of war, there will be some things we must re-learn to do on our own. I am sure we can all here challenge ourselves and our beliefs – whether we are confident in these beliefs in the first place.
If we do not, it is inevitable that we will compromise the plans and policies we create, if not the logistics process more broadly.
Moreover, any neglect prevents us from minimising the ADF’s possible weakness with sources of strength or comparative advantage.
Present day convenience will likely cost the future ADF dearly. In fact, we may find that it is better that Australia has an ADF that can sustain, and therefore operate, some capabilities incredibly well at short notice rather than aspiring to a military that spreads its logistics resources across areas where the prospects of success are much lower.
Whatever we do choose to do, it will be important to bring defence industry alongside the ADF as the partnership between the two truly determines what is practical in any war, and not just one in which ‘self-reliance’ is on the cards.
Norway has accelerated plans to scale up its national security infrastructure against threats emanating from the cyber domain.
In late January 2019, the Norwegian government released two documents highlighting its approach.
“This strategy is intended to address the challenges that will inevitably arise in conjunction with the rapid and far-reaching digitalisation of Norwegian society.”
Norway is one of the leading digital nations in the world. As politicians, we have a responsibility to ensure that we make the most of the resources invested in our society. We are encouragingboth the public and the private sector to participate in digital innovation, to improve efficiency,increase competitiveness and create new jobs.
The digitalisation of Norwegian society also represents a challenge. Digital infrastructure and systems are becoming increasingly complex, comprehensive and integrated. Dependencies and vulnerabilities are progressively emerging across areas of responsibility, sectors and nations, and it is generally expected that digital services should be accessible anywhere and all times. Successful digitalisation also includes making sure that the solutions provided appropriately accommodate demands for the security and privacy of the individual, and thateveryone can be confident that the digital services will function as they should.
The first national Norwegian cyber security strategy was introduced in 2003, making Norway one of the first countries in the world to have a national strategy in this particular area. In step with developments in the threat landscape, the national strategy was revised in 2007 and 2012.
The Committee on Digital Vulnerabilities in Society published its report on digital vulnerabilityin Norwegian society in 2015. As a part of the follow-up on the report, the first white paper to the Norwegian Parliament that focused exclusively on cyber security was prepared in 2017.The paper was entitled “Cyber security – a joint responsibility” – and with good reason, given that we all share an interest in, and a responsibility for, securing our digital assets. What was once atopic of interest to a select few has now become an issue that affects each and every one of us.
The present strategy is Norway’s fourth cyber security strategy, and is intended to addressthe challenges that will inevitably arise in conjunction with the rapid and far-reachingdigitalisation of Norwegian society. The developments in relation to previous nationalstrategies are based on the need to reinforce public-private, civilian-military and internationalcooperations. The primary target groups for the strategy are authorities and companies
in both public and private sectors, including the municipalities. Moreover, the strategy is to lay the foundations for ensuring private individuals have the necessary knowledge and understanding of risks in order to use technology in a safe and secure manner.
In preparing the strategy, we placed particular emphasis on applying an open and inclusiveprocess so as to involve stakeholders from the public and private sector alike. A strategyconference involving more than 300 delegates, written input and high participation in a range of workshops clearly indicates there is great interest in identifying shared solutions. I extendmy gratitude to everyone who has made a contribution during the strategy process.
The time has now come to make a start on the most important work – the follow-up. I hopethat you will take ownership of the new national cyber security strategy, put it on the agenda and help ensure its implementation. By responding to cyber security challenges appropriately,we can make the very most of the digitalisation of society and benefit from new opportunitiesfor us as individuals, as companies and as a society.
The second report identifies various measures being considered by the Norwegian government to implement the strategy.
The Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security (JD) and the Norwegian Ministry of Defence (FD) have overall responsibility for following up on the strategy. Each ministry must ensure that the strategy’s priorities and the list of measures are followed up in their own sector. In this regard, ministries must work closely with government agencies and sector stakeholders so that planned cyber security measures are coordinated with other ministries as necessary.
Each ministry should actively involve affected stakeholders in the private sector in the preparation of measures. Ministries must establish whether measures initiated in their own sector sufficiently contribute to achieving the goals from the strategy.
In connection with follow-up by the ministries, it is expected that the importance of cyber security is communicated to the government agencies. It would be beneficial to make this an integral part of the governing of subordinate agencies.
This list of measures is published separately and is to be revised as necessary. It is presumed that measures which affect the business community will be implemented in close collaboration with the business community’s own bodies. It is presumed that measures which affect consumers will be implemented in collaboration with consumer organisations. Prior to implementing new measures, an evaluation of how the measure in question will affect privacy should always be conducted and, if necessary, privacy protection authorities should be involved in the planning and implementation.
To track the status in following up the strategy’s priorities, JD and FD will monitor the development in the area of cyber security by requesting status updates from ministries concerning their work to follow up on the strategy. Status reports will be collected approximately two years after the launch of the strategy.
Follow-up on the strategy will also be carried out by the use of an interministerial group, and through a public-private partnership forum. These groups will, for example, track development regarding security challenges and trends, and continuously determine whether this triggers a need to revise (fully or in part) the contents of the national strategy and, correspondingly, the list of measures.
The photo shows the new Norwegian government as of January 2019.
Never before has Norway had a government with more ministers (22) or more parties (four) involved. Prime Minister Erna Solberg has, however made some clearly strategic moves in forming the country’s first non-socialist majority government since 1985, with an eye to winning re-election once again in 2021.
Solberg also clearly hopes to put months of political turmoil and even non-socialist challenges to her power behind her. Her Conservative Party-led coalition survived as a minority government since she first won the prime minister’s seat in 2013, and then won re-election with the Progress Party in 2017, but without the support agreement they’d had with the Christian Democrats and the Liberal parties.
The Liberals ended up joining her in government last January, but Solberg’s then-three-party coalition still held only a minority of seats in Parliament. Now her expanded coalition includes the Christian Democrats as well, and a majority of seats based on results of the last election. As long as all four parties hold together, they’re assured of getting the legislation they want through Parliament.
They face a tough and resurgent opposition, however, with the Labour, Socialist Left and Center parties now doing well in public opinion polls. Solberg’s choices in forming her new expanded coalition, however, seem specifically aimed at tackling their strongest criticism and opposition.
For one thing, two of the Progress Party’s most outspoken and controversial ministers are now gone: Per Sandberg lost his cabinet postover his highly questionable summer holiday in Iran and careless use of his mobile phone in both Iran and China. Sylvi Listhaug, who succeeded Sandberg as deputy leader of the Progress Party, played a key role in negotiating the Solberg govenment’s new platform but did not, perhaps pointedly, make a comeback as a minister. She had to resign as justice minister last spring after offending far too many in a highly disputable Facebook post.
That made it much more palatable for the Christian Democrats, by an albeit slim majority, to agree to join Solberg’s government despite campaign promises that they would never share government power with the Progress Party. With most of Progress’ toughest right-wingers (by Norwegian standards) out of the government, the Christian Democrats saw some potential.
Of all the challenges faced by Solberg in Parliament recently, her government’s alleged failure to follow up on anti-terror- and security improvements posed the biggest threat. She survived a potential no-confidence vote last fall, and has now tackled the security and preparedness issue by creating a ministerial post to specifically address it. The new post of “Public Security Minister,” moreover, was handed to Ingvil Smines Tybring-Gjedde of the Progress Party, a former state secretary in Solberg’s office and wife of one of Progress’ most outspoken and critical Members of Parliament, Christian Tybring-Gjedde.
Tybring-Gjedde’s appointment was the biggest surprise on Tuesday, when Solberg presented her new 22-member government after an extraordinary Council of State with King Harald at the Royal Palace. The appointment may dampen her husband’s regular criticism of the government in which his own party serves, while also helping Solberg actually achieve the security improvements needed before the next election. The Tybring-Gjeddes’ daughter Mathilde, meanwhile, is currently serving as a Member of Parliament for Solberg’s Conservative Party, not her parents’ Progress Party.
Solberg also needed to make sure that her newest partner in government, the Christian Democrats, got some cabinet posts in areas most important to it. She replaced the Progress Party’s Bård Hoksrud as agriculture minister with Olaug Bollestad, acting leader of the Christian Democrats who long have championed farmers and rural interests. That poses a direct challenge to the opposition Center Party, since the Christian Democrats often side with Center on maintaining protectionist policies, farm subsidies and taxpayer funding for outlying district development in general.
Bollestad is expected to carry out the same sorts of policies Center would, perhaps leaving Center with fewer things to compain about. Norway’s largest farm lobby, Norges Bondelaget, was quick to issue a statement on Tuesday claiming that it expects “good cooperation” with Bollestad as the new minister in charge of agriculture and food production. Progress Party leader Siv Jensen, who remains in her position as finance minister, claimed she was “very satisfied” after her more market-liberal party held control of the agriculture ministry since 2013, and claimed it was not a loss to now hand it over to the Christian Democrats.
While Solberg’s expanded government has more ministers than ever before, the actual number of ministries stayed at 15, with six of them now containing two ministers. Solberg fended off criticism that instead of slimming down state government, she had expanded it, stressing that there are no more ministries than before.
She also shifted around some of her own Conservative ministers, moving the up-and-coming Nicolai Astrup from the foreign ministry as minister in charge of foreign aid and development, to a new post as a minister in the ministry for local governments in charge of digitalization. He’ll be succeeded by former Bergen city politician Dag Inge Ulstein of the Christian Democrats, not least since foreign aid is another key issue for the Christian Democrats.
Solberg also felt compelled to replace Linda Hofstad Helleland as minister in charge of family and children’s issues, in order to appease the Christian Democrats and give that responsibility to their deputy leader Kjell Ingolf Ropstad. He led the revolt against former Christian Democrats’ leader Knut Arild Hareide’s desire to support the left-center side of Norwegian politics instead of the conservative side.
Ropstad, however, won’t need to march in Norway’s annual gay pride parades, with Solberg transferring equality issues over the Ministry of Culture, under the leadership of the Liberals’ Trine Skei Grande. The Liberals’ otherwise will maintain control over ministries important to them, including culture, equality, the environment and climate and higher education.
Solberg’s new government also sets a new record as being led by four women – herself, Progress Party leader Jensen, Liberal Party leader Grande and the Christian Democrats’ acting leader Bollestad. That’s always important in Norway, which has promoted gender equality for decades.
Solberg’s Conservatives retain control of the most, and arguably the most important, ministries, including the Office of the Prime Minister, the foreign, defense, health, education, labour, local governments, trade and, now, digitalization ministries. The Progress Party will politially control seven ministries, including finance, oil and energy, fisheries, justice and immigration, transport, elder care and public health and, now, public security. The Liberals and Christian Democrats will have political control over three ministries each: Culture, environment and higher education for the Liberals, and agriculture, family and foreign aid for the Christian Democrats.
“The goal is to create a sustainable society,” Solberg said at her expanded government’s press conference Tuesday afternoon. She thanked the two ministers who needed to leave her government (Helleland and Hoksrud) to make room for the Christian Democrats, and welcomed her new ministers.
“We have some intense weeks behind us,” Solberg admitted, in referring to the drama and conflicts that surrounded government negotiations. Now, she said, she thinks Norway “will become an even better country.” The opposition is already gearing up for more battles, however, with some commentators saying they’re now likely to zero in on the controversial change in abortion law (initiated by the Christian Democrats) and the Solberg government’s reluctance to force more emissions cuts and seemingly leave Norway’s oil industry able to keep drilling and producing.
The Norwegians are pursuing enhanced satellite coverage for Arctic defense and security.
In a press release issued last year on March 23, 2018, the requirement was identified.
Today, broadband coverage in the High North is poor and unstable. The Government now wants Norwegian satellites to make broadband communications available in the Arctic.
“Fast, stable internet is important to anyone operating in the High North, whether in shipping, defence, fisheries or research,” says Minister of Trade and Industry Torbjørn Røe Isaksen (Conservative Party).
Space Norway AS has been working to establish satellite-based broadband communications capacity in the High North since 2015. Space Norway’s project is based on a system of two satellites providing coverage 24 hours a day in the area north of 65 degrees N latitude. The expected lifespan of the satellites is 15 years. If all goes according to plan, the satellites will be launched in 2022.
For negotiations to proceed with customers, suppliers and banks, the company needs a promise that the Norwegian state will contribute, in its capacity as owner, about NOK 1 billion in equity capital if the company manages to negotiate good agreements.
The Government is therefore proposing a conditional pledge to Space Norway AS of about NOK 1 billion in equity capital to realise this project. This means the state will contribute equity if Space Norway lands agreements ensuring, among other things, the project’s commercial profitability. In addition, the customers must bear market risk by securing project income across the lifespan of the satellites.
“Space Norway AS’s project represents an exciting opportunity to meet society’s needs for broadband communications at low cost to the state. A solid communications system will also facilitate increased value creation in the High North,” says Røe Isaksen.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Søreide (Conservative Party) added: “The High North is Norway’s most important strategic area of responsibility. It is quite natural that we take a leading role in establishing better communications in the region.”
Poor coverage in the High North makes it harder for the authorities to carry out security and emergency services such as search and rescue at sea, oil spill protection and crisis management. Not least, the Armed Forces requires stable and secure communications for operations in Norwegian waters.
“Space Norway’s project is important to the Norwegian Armed Forces, and can also serve the needs of our allies,” says Minister of Defence Frank Bakke-Jensen (Conservative Party).
Progress was highlighted at the recent Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs.
In an article by Caleb Henry published on April 10, 2019 by Space News, Space Norway highlighted that it was in the final stages of procuring the satellite capacity it sought.
Stig Nilsson, a colonel in the Norwegian Ministry of Defence’s Department for Defence Policy and Long Term Planning, said the satellite system, known as the Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM), should be under construction by June, following a downselect among competing manufacturers.
“Our requirement has always been clear that we need to have satcom in the north,” Nilsson said during a panel at the 35th Space Symposium here. “It’s just a manner of finding the right way to achieve it. We think this is the quickest and most realistic way of doing it.”
Nilsson said the Norwegian MoD concluded that a pure military satellite would be too expensive an undertaking for the country, whose population numbers about 5.3 million in an area slightly larger than New Mexico. To keep costs low, the ASBM constellation will carry military payloads for the U.S. Defense Department and the Norwegian MoD, and commercial capacity for Space Norway, he said.
In an interview, Nilsson said those three partners are finalizing the cost sharing structure so the program can proceed.
“When we see the bill for what the project will cost, not just for investment but for the 15-year lifespan, then we at least have established the principles of how we are going to share the cost,” he said.
Space Norway is leading satellite procurement talks with manufacturers, Nilsson said. The competition initially included European and American manufacturers, but has narrowed to two U.S. vendors, he said.
Nilsson said the goal is to have both satellites in orbit and operational by the second half of 2023.
