Australia losing its military advantage: defence expert
By Kathryn Roberts
New direction: Andrew Davies says Australia needs to spend more on submarines and anti-submarine warfare.
A conference in Canberra has been told Australia's military advantage in the Asia Pacific is coming to an end and the country needs to rethink its military structure.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute conference has heard from its director of operations and capability, Dr Andrew Davies, who says countries in Asia are acquiring more high end military equipment as their economies grow.
"Australia has over the last few decades had an economic advantage over the nations of Asia which we have used to build up a military advantage as well," he said.
"But with the economic growth we've been seeing in Asia, that means that countries are simultaneously both richer and internally more stable ... which means that they've turned their attention to buying high end military equipment which they haven't in the past because they've been more concerned with internal stability forces.
"So what that means from Australia's point of view is that the days where we've had a very clear advantage in terms of the equipment we have are coming to an end."
Submarine spending
Dr Davies says as a result, defence spending needs to be redirected.
He says if Australia is to maintain its advantage, it needs to focus more effort and expenditure on submarines rather than surface ships.
"The Australian Defence Force we have today looks remarkably like the Australian Defence Force that the Menzies Government put in place back in the 1960s in terms of the number of aircraft, ships and submarines," he said.
"I think we need to think very hard about those relativities and move towards an ADF that's structured to maintain its relative advantage in the region."
Dr Davies says there will be 40 new submarines in the region in the next decade as Asian countries move to acquire more equipment.
"One of the things that Australia has a glaring deficiency in is our ability to conduct anti-submarine warfare," he said.
"So as well as concentrating more on Australian submarines we need to do more to be able to counter other people's submarines."
Military structure
Dr Davies says although Australia's military structure was well suited to deal with Asia in the past, it is not well-equipped to deal with Asia in the future.
He says the structure of the Army needs to change.
"The Army tends to send Special forces - SAS and Commando units - to Coalition operations and I think we need to formally recognise that that's the most valuable thing the Army can contribute to alliance operations," he said.
"But we also need light weight army forces for stabilisation and peace-keeping operations in the South Pacific and local countries.
"So I think the Army could usefully move towards a two level structure."
While there are no impending threats to Australia, Dr Davies says if relations sour Australia will be in a more vulnerable position and reliant on its alliance with the United States.
However he says data show South East Asian nations are scaling back their defence spending as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product.
"Now the conventional wisdom is that, that tells you something about how they see their threat situation and so the picture's actually a pretty comfortable one - the nations of South East Asia are quite comfortable with the status quo," he said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/03/2293354.htm
