ASPI piece by Michael Pezzulo paints a glowing picture of the robust defence capability that Australia would be enjoying today and in the near future if only we had followed the vision he laid down in the 2009 Defence White Paper under the visionary leadership of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Pezzulo posits Rudd's removal from office as the key juncture: "The plan got off to a promising start in 2009 and 2010 but was effectively dismantled after Rudd’s removal from office in June 2010. Funding was cut. This stalled the momentum that should have be[en] built over the decade 2010 to 2020."
A larger ADF would have been available today, with the following force being realised fully during the 2029–34 cycle. The RAN would have had a battle fleet of at least 12 submarines (a mix of Collins and Super Collins boats), with a pathway to acquiring Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines; six destroyers; 14 frigates; 20 corvettes; six missile arsenal ships, each with 100 vertical launch cells; and two light aircraft carriers (repurposed LHD assault ships) able to carry F-35B fighters, helicopters and autonomous aircraft and other uncrewed vehicles.
The Australian Army would have been a three-division force, with the 1st Division optimised for littoral, amphibious and missile warfare, the 2nd Division for continental defence, and the 3rd Division for training and reinforcement. This would have required 18 battalion groups, as compared with the 10 battalion groups in Force 2030 (paragraph 9.30).
The Royal Australian Air Force would have been building to 100 F-35A Lightning fighters 24 F/A-18F Super Hornet fighters, 12 EA-18G Growler electromagnetic attack aircraft, 10 B-1B Lancer bombers (with B-21 Raiders in prospect), 20 P-8A Poseidon maritime patrollers, 10 MQ-4C Triton uncrewed surveillance aircraft, 10 E-7A Wedgetail air-surveillance aircraft and 10 A330 MRTT tankers (called KC-30As locally).
The fundamental problem with this paean to Kevin Rudd ("no Australian prime minister since Alfred Deakin had so keenly appreciated the critical importance of sea power") is that is all well and good to write of significant expansions in force structure, but it is another thing altogether to actually fund those plans and bring them to fruition in the context of competing demands on the budget and political imperatives re: taxation and deficits. Indeed, we can observe this gap between ambition and reality emerge in Rudd's own term of office (Dec 2007-June 2010):
The Air Warfare Destroyer program that ultimately delivered three
Hobart-class destroyers to RAN service was
mostly a product of decisions made under previous Coalition governments led by John Howard, with the major shipbuilding contracts signed in October 2007, a few months before Rudd took office. Yet that contract contained a formal option to order a fourth Air Warfare Destroyer, due to expire in October 2008. The Rudd government allowed that formal option to expire, and the subsequent Defence White Paper released in May 2009 committed only to "continue to assess the capability need for a fourth AWD in the future against further changes in the strategic assessment" (p. 71). Rudd was subsequently in office for a further 13 months after this document was released and no fourth destroyer was ordered then or since.
Rudd's tenure in office was cut short by the internal spill against him, but not
that short: he was Prime Minister for 2.5 years. If the Coalition can commit Australia to a further two dozen F-35s
while in opposition, the Rudd government could sure as shit have committed to a fourth AWD if it were ever minded to do so. When confronted by the realities of day-to-day governance, having to reconcile competing demands on the budget, the Rudd government balked at taking even that first and smallest step towards realising the expanded force structure that Pezzullo envisions by ordering a fourth AWD. The proposition that all would've been well if only subsequent governments had followed the path that Rudd and Pezzullo laid down for them is therefore highly suspect.
