Page 44 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2020

44 SPACE OVERVIEW
APRIL 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
TRANSFORMING AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE IN THE DANGEROUS 2020s
With greater investment in manned-unmanned teaming, will come a need for developing sovereign space capabilities to manage these systems, enhance ADF C4ISR resiliency, and burden share in orbit with the US and other key partners.
DR MALCOLM DAVIS | CANBERRA
ABOVE: ADF personnel were on hand during OP Bushfore Assist to protect ground satcom assets.
ITS been a little over four years since the release of the 2016 Defence White Paper (DWP-16), and its accom- panying Integrated Investment Program (IIP). Those documents were supposed to provide clear guidance on Australia’s defence policy and military strategy through
10 years to 2026. The planned force structure that was an- nounced, itself based on the earlier 2009 and 2013 White papers, emphasized naval recapitalization, with significant investments in naval assets.
Yet four years later in 2020 there is a new strategic de- fence review brought about by government recognition that the strategic environment has deteriorated more rapidly than anticipated by the writers of the 2016 documents. This new strategic review confronts a more dangerous and un- predictable strategic outlook for Australia in coming years and in doing so, needs to challenge orthodoxy on military strategy, force structure and defence spending, rather than deliver a re-iteration of 2016, with some cosmetic tweaks.
A key concern must be the impact of an assertive China. The rise of China suggests a new Melian Dialogue emerg- ing for the 21st Century, with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechie declaring at the 2010 ASEAN Regional Fo- rum, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.” The implication being that China as a big country does what they will, whilst the small states will suffer what they must.
In traditional military terms, the 2019 Chinese Defence White Paper stated that China aims to ‘basically complete the moderni- sation of national defence and the military by 2035.’ That mod- ernisation emphasizes rapid growth of advanced anti-access and area denial (A2AD) capability and investment in power projec- tion for expeditionary operations, as well as advanced ‘C4ISR’, counter-space, cyber and electronic-network warfare capability.
For Australia we now face the prospect of a major power adversary that is introducing long-range military capability in a manner that is highly challenging to the strategic sta- tus quo and to Australia’s future security. As Professor Paul Dibb stated in 2019:
“We are now in a period of unpredictable strategic tran- sition in which the comfortable assumptions of the past are over. Australia’s strategic outlook has continued to de- teriorate and, for the first time since WWII, we face an
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