Major General Adam Findlay says Australia is expecting Beijing to fight a certain way in a future conflict, but this may not even happen.
BRISBANE, Australia—The planned development of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) will leave it unable to cope with the unpredictable nature of conflict, warns former Major General Adam Findlay.
The government said it would increase defence spending by an additional $50 billion (US$33.28 billion) over ten years, on top of the $270 billion (US$179 billion) already dedicated to the ADF under the Morrison government in 2020.
The new investment continues the ongoing development of Australia’s “porcupine” strategy, and includes the acquisition of long-range weapons and drones.
This “strategy of denial” revolves around the idea of retaliation, so that if a country were to launch an attack on Australia, the ADF could, in turn, respond quickly and aggressively to cause severe damage to that country. Taiwan has adopted a similar precaution against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The move is connected to one of the broad themes of the 2024 Defence Strategy: the transition from a “broad-based force”—a military able to respond to a range of situations worldwide—to a “focused force” built to deal with threats in the immediate region, namely the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
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Gaps in Defence Strategy: Former Major General
The now-retired Mr. Findlay, a professor at Griffith University in regional security, said the Defence Strategy was undermined by a lack of funding, and most of the extra money promised by the government would only be available beyond 2028-29.
“The problem is there’s no new money coming in, and you’ve got a whole new orientation for your defence force. What gives? What do we give up?” he told a luncheon hosted by the Australian Institute of Progress on June 18.
Modern militaries should be capable across what’s known as the five “domains”—land, sea, air, with cyber and space being the most recent additions.
Yet according to the major general, the current Defence Strategy has “given up on land combat capability.”
“Having spent 20 years of my life [in the military], engaging in land combat is not a discretionary thing,” he said.
“You engage in land combat when you actually want to defeat somebody. When Australian soldiers stand there on the ground with the enemy defeated, that’s when they’re defeated.”
The professor pointed to the cancellation of the “Protected Mobile Fires” acquisition and the reduction in Infantry Fighting Vehicles from 450 to 129 (Land 400 Phase 3).
“We have taken the fifth pillar away because the government has agreed to the scenarios that we will fight,” Mr. Findlay said. “What happens if China chooses not to fight the way?”
He said historically, the Cold War was not fought in Europe, but via proxy conflicts in Africa, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Malaya.
Mr. Findlay mentioned that similar trends were playing out today in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, tensions around Taiwan and the South China Sea, as well as “grey zone” tactics like cyber attacks, and democratic destabilisation in the Pacific Islands.
He alluded to the oft-quoted refrain: “The only certainty in war is that nothing is certain,” and that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
“Military structures have traditionally been built to accept this reality that you can’t know the [nature of] the next war, and you must have sufficient broad capabilities to be able to rapidly take the first strategic shock, re-orient, and respond.”
