July 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Rod McGuirk
The Associated PressStaff
CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA -- Australia's prime minister on Wednesday announced 270 billion Australian dollars (US$190 billion) in additional defence spending over the next decade, which will include long-range missiles and other capabilities to hold enemies further from its shores.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that the post-pandemic world will become more dangerous and announced a renewed focus on Australia's immediate region, although its military would be open to joining U.S.-led coalitions as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq in campaigns that were in the Australian national interest.
Australia had not seen such economic and strategic uncertainty in the region since the Second World War for reasons including tensions between the United States and China, he said.
"This simple truth is this: Even as we stare down the COVID pandemic at home, we need to also prepare for a post-COVID world that is poorer, that is more dangerous and that is more disorderly," Morrison said.
Tensions over territorial claims were rising between India and China and in the South China Sea, Morrison said.
"The risk of miscalculation and even conflict is heightened," Morrison said. "Regional military modernization is at an unprecedented rate."
"Relations between China and the United States are fractious at best as they compete for political, economic and technological supremacy," he added.
Rory Medcalf, head of the Australian National University's National Security College, said the announcement showed Australia was "getting serious about deterrence and the prospect of armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific region."
"It was only a matter of time before the Australian government made a choice about the kind of defence force that we're going to have in the 21st century with the rapid deterioration in the strategic environment in recent years," Medcalf said.
"The government has accepted that the Australian military needs to be able to attempt to deter armed conflict through its capabilities and to be able to fight in our region if we have to," he added.
Australia will invest in more lethal and long-range capabilities that will hold enemies further from its shores, including longer-range strike weapons and offensive cyber capabilities.
To increase maritime strike capability, Australia will buy the AGM-158C anti-ship missile from the U.S. Navy at an estimated cost of AU$800 million, the government said.
The new missile is a significant upgrade from Australia's current AGM-84 air-launched Harpoon anti-ship missile, which was introduced in the early 1980s. It has a range of 124 kilometres (77 miles), while the missile being purchased can exceed 370 kilometres (230 miles).
The new missile will initially be used on the F/A-18F Super Hornet jet fighters but can be used by other defence aircraft. Training on the weapon system would begin next year, the government said.
Australia will also invest in advanced naval strike capabilities, including long-range anti-ship and land strike weapons, and will buy long-range rocket artillery and missile systems to give the army an operational strike capability.
It also plans to develop and test high-speed, long-range strike weapons, including hypersonic weapons.
The announcement comes as Australia's relationship with China, its most important trading partner, is under extraordinary strain over Australian calls for an independent investigation of the pandemic.
The United States, Australia's most important security partner since the Second World War, remains "the foundation of our defence policy," Morrison said.
"Of course we can't match all the capabilities in our region," Morrison said. "That is why we need to ensure that our deterrence capabilities play to our strengths."
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/australia-plans-us-190-billion-defence-boost-over-decade-1.5006902
May 6, 2022 | International, Aerospace
Invité de BFM Business, le directeur général d'Airbus a assuré que l'Europe avait besoin de développer son avion de combat "pour être compétitive sur le long terme".
June 13, 2023 | International, Other Defence
A British-led defence alliance of several European countries will strengthen its sharing of tactical intelligence, the group, known as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), said on Tuesday.
March 12, 2019 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson Update: This story has been updated to reflect Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley's correct title. WASHINGTON — The Army is preparing to make what it deems as necessary, and major, organizational changes to its force structure within the next five years, according to the Futures and Concepts Center director. “There is going to be a fundamental change in the organizational structure to fight the way we are describing,” Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley told an audience at the Center for a New American Security in Washington on March 4. “The Army has relied on counterinsurgency operations over the past 15 years that depended greatly on the Brigade Combat Team. But now, with a new focus on large-scale ground combat operations anticipated in the future operating environment, “that will require echelons above brigade, all of which will solve unique and distinct problems that a given BCT can't solve by itself,” Wesley said. A new organizational structure is necessary, according to Wesley, to align better with the service's new warfighting doctrine under development — Multidomain Operations or MDO. The Army rolled out the first iteration of its new doctrine over a year ago and debuted a revised version — MDO 1.5 — shortly after the Association of the U.S. Army's annual convention in Washington last fall. The new doctrine addresses how the service plans to operate in the future against adversaries that have learned to engage in provocative behavior in a gray zone that doesn't quite classify as conflict, and who have gone to school on U.S. capabilities, developing equipment and operating concepts that threaten the U.S.'s long-standing capability overmatch. The Army is now focused on ensuring that its capabilities match its new doctrine, standing up a new four-star command in Austin, Texas — Army Futures Command — to accomplish such a goal and syncing its other major commands together to focus on six top modernization priorities. Wesley noted that the organizational realignment needed would “probably be even a bigger problem than the materiel requirements" to create a force designed for multidomain operations. “You will see us seek to build out echelons above brigade — the Division, the Corps, even potentially a field Army — to get into theater that can manage these theater problems that otherwise wouldn't be achieved,” he added. The Army will likely have to make trades across the active and reserve forces, Wesley said, “so we have the ability to have a force posture that can rapidly transition if necessary.” But with all of these other dramatic changes, it's inevitable that the force structure change with it, according to Wesley, and that is going to have to happen sooner rather than later, he stressed. The Army has to “dive in” and start putting plans in place in the next five-year budgeting cycle “because if you want to achieve what the secretary and the chief has said, to be an MDO capable force by 2028, you have to start doing some of these organizational changes early,” Wesley told a group of reporters following the event at CNAS. And organizational changes need to align with the service's plans to field first units with newly modernized equipment and in some cases, units are slated to receive this equipment in very short order, according to Wesley. “You need some place for that stuff to land,” he said. “When you talk about long-range precision fires, for example, having an appropriate theater fires command. When you talk about air-and-missile defense and first unit equipped, what kind of force structure do we have to enable that? And it can't just be at the brigade level ... It has to transcend echelons.” Wesley said while he couldn't discuss specifics yet, he believed evidence of major organizational changes will likely be seen toward the end of the next five-year budget period. The three-star also said he believed the Army would need to increase the level of units stationed abroad. “The National Defense Strategy talks about the contact and blunt forces,” Wesley said. “Contact are those that are in theater all the time — either rotational or permanent — and blunt [forces] are those that can rapidly move into theater as necessary.” Getting the right mix between contact and blunt forces will be necessary, Wesley said. "You have to have contact forces. What we are working on is how to optimize what that balance is. You have to have headquarters and fires commands and that can be a deterrent effect immediately.” Over the next few years, the Army plans to war-game the right mix, but “regardless, I think you are going to find that at some point there will have to be a debate on the degree to which we have forward presence, potentially increased, in the future,” Wesley said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/03/06/major-army-force-structure-changes-afoot/