Page 52 - Australian Defence Mag March 2020

DEFENCE
52 BORDER PROTECTION OVERVIEW
MARCH 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
This task force reports directly to the Chief of Joint Opera- tions and through to the Chief of Defence Force. He has a separate and aligned ADF operational chain of command to the Chief of Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Greg Bil- ton at HQJOC in Bungendore. The role also gives him com- mand and control relationships with the force assigned ABF aircraft (Dash-8s under Project Sentinel as contracted to Cobham), ships (the Austal built and supported Cape class patrol boats alongside ADF assets of the Armidale class with Austal as the OEM and Thales Australia as sustainment lead), intelligence and specialised personnel as well.
It is important to note that MBC is not a coastguard but a lead maritime security agency and there are many advan- tages to that, according to RADM Goddard.
“We do coastguard activities,” RADM Goddard explained. “For example, we could have a piracy incident in our mari- time jurisdiction five days sail from Australia but we have obligations to respond to it. However, we are a civil maritime security agency, which means that I do not have a direct re- sponsibility for raise, train and sustain in a Defence context. I can request assets from the ABF and ADF when required based on the threat. And since I’ve been in command since January 2019, there’s never been a time or incident when I have not been assigned the assets that I have needed to pros- ecute a civil maritime threat.”
On any given day there are a number of ships and aircraft are assigned to MBC as a standard assignment based on stand- ing surveillance and response corridors in Australia’s maritime domain. Then there is additional ADF and ABF assets as re- quired based on threats.
“On any given day, our Australian Maritime Identifica- tion System (AMIS) would probably have up to 70,000 tracks we are watching,” RADM Goddard said to ADM. “Now most of those tracks are providing voluntary infor- mation. Most ships now have what’s called an AIS, so it’s just like IFF for an aircraft, so they’re voluntarily giving
information. Probably 95 per cent of those tracks are vol- untary information sharers. So the five per cent that are not we’re assessing closely and filtering down; we probably have about 400 to 500 maritime tracks at any given time that we’re very focused on and perhaps 30 which are critical tracks of interest that we are watching all the time because they may present a threat to Australia’s borders or they may present a threat to our international obligations.”
INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
“MBC is one of four operational commands within the ABF focused on identifying and responding to threats to the bor- ders, that we look at collectively as a border continuum,” RADM Goddard explained. “The Australian Border Force Commissioner, with the Department of Home Affairs, needs to consider the full border continuum. So threats to Austra- lia, their origins, countries of origin, the exit points such as ports, airports, land on foreign soil. Then the next part of the maritime continuum is the maritime component. The next part is Australia’s land boundary and then the next part of the border continuum is the entry points of Australia – ports, airports, etc. MBC is very much focused on that maritime component; we want to keep threats to Australia as far from Australia as practical. We do that by working very closely with regional partners and, in particular, our close regional partners such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines.”
By working with those countries, at a professional and personal level, whether it be capacity building, joint pa- trols, or information sharing, Australia effectively polices its sovereign borders and maritime resource areas through a range of strategies including information operations.
BELOW: The Austal built Cape class has been an important capability for border protection.