The nature of warfare is dynamic. It endlessly renews itself to overcome the challenges presented by different terrains, enemies, situations, ideologies and technologies.
Let’s focus on just one of these key areas: technological change. Put simply, the rate of technological change in the 21st century has created dozens of new axes of warfare, many of which are insurmountable by conventional fighting forces.
Barring the cyber and information spheres, there few examples of where technology counts more than in the air. Nowadays, air-fighting is on the brink of a once in a lifetime strategic and technological transformation due to the symbiosis of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles, including suicide craft.
In a conventional sense, this was arguably observed for the first time during the recent Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, in which Armenia’s conventional fighting forces were challenged – and considerably overwhelmed – by the technologically superior Azeris.
Indeed, Armenia’s expensive conventional weaponry was simply unable to compete on a different military axis, and was thus beaten by cheaper and more replaceable Azeri UAVs. The lesson is simple: no matter how robust one’s conventional army may be, the rate of technological change ensures that units, hardware and strategies are being superseded at an increasing rate – and that it is imperative for modern militaries to diversify their portfolio of resources. So how can Australia learn from this case study?
Firstly, let’s compare the ADF to the military of one of our closest neighbours to provide some perspective. While Australia counts some 80,000 active and reserve defence force personnel, Indonesia (for the sake of comparison) has 400,000 active military personnel bolstered by 400,000 reservists. Meanwhile, Australia’s arsenal of 59 tanks pale in the face of Indonesia’s 300-500 (numbers vary due to source).
Unfortunately for Australia, we are not only numerically disadvantaged, but also technologically. Indonesia acquired their first armed UAVs in 2019, and President Joko Widodo has already expressed his desire to expedite the domestic production of long-range military drones to 2022. While our wheels are in motion, we lag behind our competitors.