-cardpuffery, it's just the same old four-card trick"
Interestingarticle cut and pasted from The Australian today 17/4/24.
Defencestrategy: Behind the flash-card puffery, it’s just the same old four-card trick
Defence Minister Richard Marles in Canberra on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
· 9:23PM APRIL 17, 2024
Defence Minister Richard Marles is alike an ageing carnival magician: he keeps performing the same four-card trick,hoping his audience never gets wise to the old-fashioned and obvious trickery.
Marles delivered a sombre speech to the National Press Club, and released a mostly indecipherable version of Defence’s IntegratedInvestment Plan and the new National DefenceStrategy.
Like a bad episode of comedy series Utopia,he “bigs up” a headline figure by going many, many years into a hypotheticalfuture. The headline is a $330bn capital expenditure program for defence overthe next decade. It includes, according to Marles, some $53bn to $63bn in newmoney over the next decade.
Soundsimpressive? It’s meant to. But look a little closer at the figures. Theincrease over the next four years, the budget forward estimates, is just$5.7bn. So 90 per cent of the alleged increase in defence spending occurs afterthe forward estimates, almost all of it in the latter part of the decadeahead. That means the government will start to increase defence expendituremeaningfully in its third and fourth terms, if by some miracle it gets a thirdor fourth term.
Marles himself told us that ourstrategic circumstances, which the government had already declared the worstsince World War II, had deteriorated further in the past 12 months. Theresponse to that is to increase defence expenditure in the next four years byabout 2.4 per cent a year.
Key points
FUNDINGALLOCATIONS
- $330bn defence investment program that will lift spending to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2034
- Additional $50bn over the next decade and $5.7bn over the forward estimates to modernise the ADF with new missiles, drones, ships and aerial defence systems
- $22.5bn of “reprioritisation” over the next four years and $72.8bn over a decade, representing cuts to existing Defence programs to fund new capabilities
WHAT THE FORCES GET OVER THE NEXTDECADE
- $63bn-$76bn for undersea warfare including nuclear submarines and underwater drones
- $51bn-$69bn for new surface ships
- $16bn-$21bn for guided weapons
- $14bn -$18bn for missile defence
- $36bn-$44bn to transform the army into an amphibious force modelled on the US Marines
- $28bn-$33bn for the air force
- $14bn-$18bn to enhance northern defence bases in Darwin, far north Queensland, Tindal and the Cocos Islands
TECHNOLOGY UPGRADES
- $15bn-$20bn to build cyber capability
- $3.6bn-$3.8bn to establish the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator, which will ensure Australia remains at the forefront of advancements in military technologies
- $200m for cutting-edge, asymmetric robotic and autonomous systems, including an unscrewed surface vessel and the ‘Ghost Shark’ large underwater vehicle
CUTS / SAVINGS
- $3bn from delaying consideration of a fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters
- $1.5bn from not going ahead with new EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft
- $3bn from not going ahead with new heavy lift air capability
- $3bn from delaying new JASSM-ER missiles for RAAF
- $4.1bn from the cancellation of two large support vessels for the navy
- $1.4bn from cancellation of planned Defence facility upgrades in Canberra, with the savings to go to operational bases in Australia’s north
- $2bn from delaying army combat equipment upgrades
- $2bn from cancellation of second regiment of self-propelled howitzers (already announced)
- $2bn from cancellation of SkyGuardian armed drone (Coalition decision)
WHAT IS BEING CUT
- Two large support vessels for the navy, generating $120bn in savings over a decade and $4.1bn over the next four years $1.4bn will be cut from planned Defence facility upgrades in Canberra, with the savings to go to operational bases in Australia’s north
DEFENCE WORKFORCE
- Recruitment drive to include targeting the approximately 600,000 New Zealanders living in Australia
Marles’sdefence policy is riddled with contradictions and illogicality. He says we nolonger have a 10-year warning period. Our circumstances have become urgentlyworse. Yet he’s not going to do anything that delivers significant resultswithin 10 years. He even claims, bizarrely, that those arguing for actionwithin the next 10 years are unrealistically pushing for Australia to matchChina, or more ludicrously, the US, in the range of our military capability.
READ MORE: China’s aggressive behaviour underpins beefed-up stance It will take too long, but we’re on right course Extra defence spend won’t blow up budget Pezzullo’s verdict: Nation ‘dropped the ball on subs’ Foreigners may plug personnel gap Regional focus will alarm allies
Talk about creating a rhetorical ***. I’ve never seen anyone make such a ridiculous argument. Marles claims, inthe weirdest logic chopping I’ve ever seen, that he is faced with a choice oftrying to become as big in defence as China straight away, or puttingeverything off so that nothing of consequence is delivered in the next decade,but then we begin to sing.
So having claimed the government isacting with new urgency to pursue profound transformation, Defence is actuallyplanning the same slow, tortuous, 100 years of solitude, decades-plus systemsof acquisition that it’s always done.
On the evidence of these statements,Marles has failed to create a culture of speed in defence. Ukraine, Russia,Israel, Iran and the Houthi rebels can acquire lethal capabilities in a fewyears; for us, it’s decades at best. Ukraine will this year produce 1000different types of drones. We possess no armed drone of any kind.
A lot of the documents are intentionallydifficult to interpret. The government is rightly spending big sums of money onan unmanned aircraft, the Ghost Bat, and a couple of big unmanned underwatervessels. They’re developmental programs but promising and worthy of investment.These are not what is normally meant by drones, but the whole world understandsthat we live in the age of drones and missiles.
DEFENCE MINISTERRICHARD MARLES ON …
THEREGION
‘Our national security actually lies in the heart of our region. Becausethe defence of Australia does not mean much without the collective security ofthe region in which we live’
‘The government seeks to invest in a sustainable strategic balance inthe Indo-Pacific. A balance where no state is militarily predominant, and inwhich no state judges that the benefit of conflict might outweigh the risks’
AUSTRALIA’S ROLE IN A CONFLICT
‘We'll never be a peer to the United States and China. That's not whatwe're trying to do’
CHINA’S MILITARY BUILD-UP ANDDIPLOMATIC PUSH
‘The effects of this military build-up are occurring closer to Australiathan previously, including a competition for security partnerships in Australia’simmediate region. This intensifying competition is creating an environmentwhere the risk of miscalculation is more ominous and the consequences moresevere’
THE LONG WAIT FOR NEW CAPABILITIES
‘The best time to have acted on all this is 10 or 20 years ago, and thesecond best time is now. That's the reality of what we face’
THE NEED TO INCREASE DEFENCECAPABILITY
‘We need to make sure we have transformational capability in place so wecan resist coercion and maintain our way of life’
DEFENCE WORKFORCE
‘(A workforce plan) will look at how theADF can recruit from a wider pool of people. This means ensuring that Defencereflects the full diversity of Australia such that it is drawing on the talentsof the entirety of Australian society. ‘But like the defence forces of ourfriends and allies, we also need to look at ways in which we can recruit fromamong certain non-Australian citizens to serve in the ADF’
Here’swhat Marles had to say about drones: “We have all seen the prevalence of dronesin combat, including Ukraine and the Red Sea. So we are increasing funding fordrone and counter-drone capabilities. To make this happen, we are providing anadditional $300m over the next four years and $1.1bn over the decade”.
A billion dollars over 10 years? That’sour drone effort? By golly, our enemies will tremble at that.
Defence has got this all wrong. We’remeant to produce drones, not become drones. And for all the talk of missiles,most of the missile upgrades in these statements are in tiny numbers and announcedmany, many times previously. The government talks repeatedly about the programto manufacture missiles in Australia but the only missile we are actuallycommitted to producing here is a relatively short-range army land attackartillery rocket. Of all the missiles in the world, this is the least relevantto our maritime circumstances.
Thegovernment has it seems definitively cut the fourth squadron of Joint StrikeFighters we were always going to acquire. These are modern defence platformsthat actually exist and work, which can be fitted with long-range missiles. Thedecision not to acquire them is a decision not to spend money in the onlyperiod meaningful for a government, the forward estimates.
This monumental con job is an attempt toconstruct an excuse for doing nothing now, by promising to do something in 10years. It’s irresponsible, and it doesn’t remotely meet our strategic needs.
GREG SHERIDAN
FOREIGN EDITOR
Greg Sheridan isThe Australian's foreign editor. His most recent book, Christians, the urgentcase for Jesus in our world, became a best seller weeks after publication. Itmakes the case for the historical reliabi... Read more
