Blog Post #3: Eight Points of Australian Defence Planning

Against the backdrop of the past year’s Australian defence debate, particularly observing the media and academic commentary related to the Defence Strategic Review (DSR), I decided to develop some basic defence planning principles. Much of what is said in newspapers and by think tanks is often not based on actual practical military experience, rather it is based on academic arguments or policy shibboleths which show a very poor understanding of military history, strategy, and tactics.

Many of my below principles will draw on World War Two examples. World War Two – which ended 78 years ago – was the last major theatre war in the Indo-Pacific between great powers. In the words of Mark Twain, ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’ Understanding history is therefore important, as is understanding geography (as Arthur Tange once noted).

While I could have written about 20 principles, I decided to focus on the ones that are not often focussed on – or are sometimes erroneously focused on too much.

My eight principles are:

1. Prioritise effectiveness over efficiency. For many years in defence planning, efficiency was king. Smaller bases were closed, units were collocated, and ‘super-bases’ were built. This was all designed to save operating money. This might be good for efficiency, but for an enemy thinking of ways to defeat us, we have simply created fewer and larger targets which are hence easier to strike and neutralise. This centralisation must stop, and Australia needs to decentralise its military capabilities to make them more survivable and resilient in the face of adversary strikes. We therefore really need to think about how we look to adversary targeteers as a normal part of our planning, and make it hard for them, not easy.

2. Dispersal and redundancy increase survivability. The dispersal of capabilities, in an era of precision strike where precision weapons often have a probability of hit greater than 90 per cent, is one of the few ways left to increase the survivability of your own forces – along with mobility. You can harden – but it’s expensive and often doesn’t work unless you have buried the thing you want to protect first and then hardened it. Camouflage is also desirable, but in an era of ubiquitous space-based earth observation, cyber warfare, and the social media-induced poor operational security, it is almost impossible to achieve. While mobility is often key to survival, many important targets are simply impossible to move (think airfields and ports), so they need to be dispersed or have increased internal and external redundancy to survive. By way of a simple example, if you have 10 aircraft in 10 shelters on an airfield, the enemy needs to use 10 weapons – which might require 4 aircraft to carry said weapons to destroy the 10 aircraft. If you dispersed the 10 aircraft across 30 shelters (so a ratio of one aircraft to three shelters) then to be sure of achieving the same objective, the enemy would have to target all 30 shelters – thus requiring 30 weapons and 12 aircraft. In terms of weapons usage and military practicability, this is now a very different cost benefit analysis. The enemy might still do it – but it is no longer a simple choice to make. If you have 100 aircraft in 300 shelters over five plus air bases around the country – the enemy’s cost benefit analysis will almost certainly have a very different outcome as the numbers are now very large. For Australia, this strategy requires plenty of steel, concrete, and open space – and would be much cheaper than the high value assets being protected. This would likely be more of a deterrent to enemy action than long range missiles as we are likely to never have enough missiles to truly deter a large enemy (as their mass and defences would likely soak them up) – but many target options here might simply be beyond their capacity to service if they are busy on many fronts. You’ve heard of a porcupine or echidna strategy because of their spikes? I’d dub this one a wombat strategy – lots of holes in the warren as options, and with a backside that is very resilient to attack!

3. Two is one, and one is none. There is a saying in the military that one is none, and two is one. The logic is that if you only have one of something then when it breaks – or when the enemy breaks it – you don’t have a capability anymore, so it’s none. At the micro level it’s often applied to things like batteries or weapons. At the macro level though, this saying can be extended to whole capabilities or mission sets. For example, to achieve a degree of strategic deterrence you need two things: a demonstrated capability that can reach out and affect the enemy; and the demonstrated (that is, proven) will to use it if required. To have an assured demonstrated capability, multiple deterrent options are required. So, in short, it isn’t about just having a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines or ASD’s REDSPICE – it’s also about having other similar levels of capabilities in other operating domains (air, land, and space) to achieve the desired degree of assured response. Having one or two capabilities in one or two domains is not an assured response.

4. It’s not just about the North. We live in 2023, not 1941. The threat is real, and it is now 360 degrees, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. The modern threat consists of cyber and space-based threats, land-based intermediate range ballistic missiles, long range bombers with cruise missiles, ship- and submarine-based cruise and ballistic missiles, and aircraft carrier-based strike aircraft. Pundits talk about the vulnerability of the North. It’s true, the North is vulnerable. But the reality is, most of Australia’s high value targets are in the Southeast because this is where most of the population, bases, industry, and command and control are located – just like they were in World War Two. If an enemy destroyed targets in the NT, QLD or WA, it would be serious – but targets being attacked in the ACT, NSW, SA, or Victoria (and they can) are on a different level in terms of national significance and could be war-losing. Imagine the loss of Australia’s key command and control capabilities in Canberra and Sydney.

5. Time and distance. Australians tend to have a very good understanding of just how big Australia is, and we are proud to be the world’s sixth largest country. But surprisingly, Australians have very little understanding of just how big the Indo-Pacific is – we don’t often think about the size of oceans or archipelagos, for example. We follow the Ukraine war – see its gory business on TV or social media – but would be surprised to know that the Ukraine is quite a bit smaller than New South Wales – approx. 600,000km2 vice approximately 800,000km2. When overlaid on the Indo-Pacific, the Ukraine fits easily into the island of New Guinea (including both the Indonesian and PNG sides) – 785,000km2. Almost six Ukraines fit in the South China Sea (3.5 million km2). It’s not just about size, but also about distance. Darwin is closer to the Spratley Islands than Guam is (3,100km vice 3,300km). In short, the Indo-Pacific is huge – so range, sustainment and basing are of greater significance than nearly all other potential theatres of war. As a follow on to this, the professional understanding of this strategic geography is low, as few people, even professionals, know the names and importance of the islands, cities, seas, and straits that will be the key terrain of any future war in the Indo-Pacific.

6. Use it or lose it? There is probably no greater fallacious saying common in defence planning circles, that as we haven’t deployed tanks since the Vietnam War, then they are not worth having. If this silly statement was given any validity by government decisionmakers then we wouldn’t have submarines either – as we only used them in combat in 1914 (AE1) and 1915 (AE2) – but no serious defence thinker would ever argue that. We haven’t deployed artillery since the Vietnam War either – or bombers for that matter. Not every war or operation is the same and demands everything be deployed or used as if all things were equal. Fighters were deployed for the war in Iraq in 2003 – but they were last used in combat before that in 1953. Indeed, the non-deployment of an equipment item or unit type often says more about political decision making and risk calculus than it does its military value. Additionally, Australia’s military experience is made up of a relatively small number of snap shots in time – so the ADF’s historical use, or lack thereof, of some bit of kit is hardly a fool proof capability planning tool. Fundamentally, as General Tommy Franks said, ‘the enemy gets a vote’, and this will be a bigger driver as to what equipment is used in war than peacetime theory. You almost never get the war you planned for.

7. A Battle of Midway moment. There are many pundits who assess that any war between China and the United States will be fought only in the air and on the sea; a maritime fight. Every single human being that lives in the Indo-Pacific lives on the land; whether we like it or not, the Australian Defence Force will always be required to fight on land, as well as in other domains, simultaneously. During World War Two, several things drove the land combat that was prolific in the Pacific Theatre; resources were mostly land-based, and air and naval bases were land-based. Indeed, the island-hopping amphibious campaigns were designed around acquiring air bases for two reasons – to launch attacks on the Japanese home islands, and to support the next amphibious landing from which to use as a springboard for the next operation. The same went for port facilities where battle damage could be replaced and vessels re-armed for the next operations. Land combat is inevitable, and the Army will need to overmatch the adversary to fight and win joint land combat; it tried and failed to win in 1941/42 because it couldn’t overmatch, and it started to succeed from August 1942 onwards because it could. Overmatch requires the ability for fires and manoeuvre to work together – which means tanks, infantry fighting vehicles artillery and rockets. And to the often made point that tanks and jungles do not work well together – tell that to the many Southeast Asian armies which operate main battle tank fleets. What would they know?

8. A Tokyo Bay moment. Any war between China and the United States is very unlikely to end in the unconditional surrender of one of the parties, unlike the Allied victory over the Axis powers in 1945. Both are simply too big to (completely) fail. If we end up in a major war between these two nations – it’s more likely to end up in a draw after intense combat where no one side can achieve decisive victory without the nuclear option being played out. This would likely mean that the area of the Pacific Ocean between the second and third island chains may well end up like a World War One No man’s Land between China and the United States, with Australia directly to its south! This situation could go on for years – remember the two world wars of the Twentieth Century went for four and six years respectively – and both ended in the unconditional surrender of one of the warring sides. World War Two ended when the one side that had nuclear weapons used them and now that both sides have them, stalemate is more likely than not.