The unreliability of the US as an ally continues to be demonstrated with President Donald Trump publicly reinforcing his wish to turn Canada into the 51st State – but you won’t hear that from any Australian politicians because they are too weak to speak out in defence of a Five Eyes ally. We quote at length from Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen, who says the US is no longer a reliable ally but instead is behaving like a “rent seeker.” He warns that a political earthquake has happened and that a tsunami is coming, and we must be prepared. This message has been heard in Europe and throughout the Indo-Pacific, just not by Australia.
Some words about Canada purchasing Australia’s JORN system – possibly as part of a move to decouple from the US. Regarding AUKUS Pillar one, we have some new jargon from Defence Minister Richard Marles: it’s apparently a “treaty level agreement” – except there’s no such thing. Either you have a treaty, or you do not. Clearly, there is no AUKUS treaty – just empty words and promises from an ally who demonstrably can no longer be trusted.
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Thanks for the podcast.
I listened to a podcast interview with Justin Bronk at the RUSI this week. He made the following points regarding the capability of the UK’s defence forces:
1. The hollowing out of the UK’s defence capability is directly attributable to: the exhaustion of defence personnel associated with the deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq; the reshaping of force structure to support sustained, joint deployment alongside the US in degraded theatres, rather than strategic conflict; the degradation of the social licence for investment in defence as a result of the publics understandable cynicism deriving from Afghanistan and Iraq. I suggest that all of these arguments are relevant to Australia.
2. The prioritisation of a dual carrier fleet for the RN reflected the encouragement of US neoconservative fever dreams of rolling deployment to the Asia-Pacific. This distortion has left the UK with a hopelessly misaligned strategic capability that is sucking the life out of the RAF and the RN and leaving the UK hopelessly unprepared to sustain anti-air access defence in the event of a strategic conflict in a European theatre. I suggest that AUKUS is Australia’s equivalent decision.
Singapore, Canada and the continent of Europe understand what is happening with the US’s new trade and strategic intent. Today, Minister Marles has decided to double down on AUKUS by upping existing budget allocations to the expansion of Fleet Base West to accommodate US subs. If he is the Don Quixote of ALP Ministers of Defence, then ‘impactful projection’ is his lance, and ANZUS must be Rocinante – the awkward, skinny and past-his-prime steed, unfit for the task at hand.
Further to the Budget bringing forward $1 billion in defence spending, much of it to ensure completion of HMAS Stirling, the Henderson Defence Precinct for the establishment of the Submarine Rotational Force West, what do we make of the $200 million purchase of MK-48 torpedoes from Lockheed Martin. These are torpedoes which we helped finance, design, build and test.
As of March 2025, the per-unit cost of the latest MK-48 Mod 7 torpedo is approximately $4.2 million USD, according to the U.S. Navy’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request. This figure aligns with other recent estimates, which place the cost between $4.2 million and $5 million USD per unit. While the exact number of torpedoes purchased by Australia wasn’t specified in the announcement by Pat Conroy, the per-unit cost suggests the purchase includes approximately 25 to 30 torpedoes.
How many do we have already, and how many can be placed on our Collins class subs when they are actually at sea and operational?
Why didn’t Conroy say, as did a thinktank spokesperson on the US Breaking Defence website, that “Essentially you can take an RAN torpedo that has been maintained and stored at HMAS Stirling and load it into a US Navy submarine. More Mk-48 torpedoes in Australia’s inventory means we can provide them to USN submarines that are part of Submarine Rotation Force-West .”
Are we purchasing the MK-48s for our own purposes, or in order to subsidise more of the US Navy’s capacity including storage for the US at our own expense?
Is this a sign that the bureaucrats and head honchos are putting elements of Plan B in place?
I can’t answer the question of whether the torpedoes are for our use or the USN’s, but a Collins class can carry around 20 of them.
The budget had been and gone and as usual nothing for Defence, in real terms, except moving some money forward to throw at projects not bearing fruit till the mid 30s at least. We need to start decoupling from the U.S. as soon as practicable. It won’t be an easy task but the longer we wait the harder it will be. The U.S. cannot be trusted to be a reliable ally, whether from inability or disinterest. A good start would be forming a plan B to AUKUS and please don’t mention B1 or B21 Bombers, the U.S. isn’t going to supply them if they think the Cash cow AUKuS will dry up. The French, Koreans or Japanese would all be open to discussing options I’m sure.
I completely agree.
In a recent podcast, Rowan Moffitt makes the point that, whilst capability acquisition is expensive and fraught with risk, he can’t see how the ADF is going to come close to being able to develop and sustain a workforce with the diversity of highly specialised technical skills at the requisite scale necessary to support the future force plans.
I gather much of Moffitt’s argument can be summarised as the KSSS (Keep Sustainability Simple, Stupid) principle in capability planning. Abandoning SAAB 9LV for the future frigate, the F35 program and the potential of operating three classes of submarines concurrently seems to be the opposite of this principle.
On the issue of the Mk 48 torpedos, at best we will have one functioning Collins by 2026. So the new buy will obviously be for USN use.
Fair comment.
In my opinion it is pretty obvious that the US wants to eventually remove itself from the world stage.
Everything is pointing that way. Their defence policies, tarrifs, their desire to acquire what they consider strategically important territories such as Greenland, Panama and of course Canada points to a country that ultimately wants to isolate itself from the rest of the world.
I don’t believe this just a Trump thing. The realisation that they are moving into a multi-polar world means that maintaining their military dominance is simply no longer financially viable.
Australia should have realised this as soon as we saw the rise of China. We should have been cultivating military relationships with other regional powers decades ago.
As for the US supplying Australia with SSNs, I actually think we may end up with them, but not for the reasons some people might think. The USN won’t need its massive fleet of SSNs if it is just reduced to defending its own seaboards.
Australia will have many hard decisions to make over the coming decades. I would even say looking at eventually acquiring our own nuclear deterrant isn’t off the table.
Interesting thought that the USN might have surplus SSNs because their own demand plummets. It’s certainly possible.