The Australian Defence Force once planned for the defence of Australia on the basis that a major threat would come from a hostile regional nation lodging small bands of combatants onto the mainland.
But in a significant rethink of Australia’s strategic circumstances and outlook now under way, the new Defence Strategic Review (DSR) sees the ADF delivering “impactful projection” of power to an adversary well beyond the mainland.
Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles told the Submarine Institute of Australia conference in Canberra he had received the first interim advice from former Defence Minister Stephen Smith and former defence chief Sir Angus Houston on the DSR.
He said that was on track to be released in first quarter 2023, the same time the government will release its assessment on how it plans to proceed on acquisition of nuclear submarines.
Marles said both pieces of work would underpin defence thinking and policy for decades.
He said Australia’s previous strategic guidance, going back to the 1987 Defence Whiter Paper, envisaged defence of the mainland with a 10 years’ warning of hostile intentions.
“Increasingly we are going to need to think about our defence forces in terms of being able to provide the country with impactful projection, meaning an ability to hold an adversary at risk much further from our shores across the full spectrum of proportionate response,” he said.
“That is actually a different mindset to what we have probably had before.”
Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Mark Hammond told the conference Australia derived its economic and security wellbeing from the sea and the sea lines of communication were the lifeblood of the nation.
“Nuclear submarines do offer an impactful power projection,” he said. “They not only mitigate threats to our supply chain, threats to the lifeblood of the Australian continent. They can also represent risk to any potential adversary’s supply chain.
“Nuclear powered submarines represent a truly unique lethal power project capability that forms that that question mark in the mind of any potential adversary.”
Vice Admiral Hammond said some commentators suggested technological advances meant the oceans of the future would become transparent to modern sensors, negating the stealth advantage of submarines.
If that proposition was to hold true, he said, why would we buy another ship or aircraft as both their domains were transparent and always had been.
VADM Hammond said the stealth capabilities of submarines had continued to improve.
“I have complete confidence that the strategic relevance of submarines and their relative advantage against competing technologies will be sustained for decades,” he said.