In any case, it seems that the hawks have won, and particularly the naval hawks. Australia is to build a new generation of submarines when the Collins-class is retired, to have 12 members instead of 6. The surface navy has done well too, with the air warfare destroyers to go ahead, and the option for a fourth still under consideration, the Anzac -class frigates to be replaced, as well as additional ships for sealift capability. The mess surrounding naval helicopters will get cleaned up with a purchase of a pile of brand new ones.

The question that arose with the retirement of the F-111 – would Australia retain an equivalent ability to blow things up far beyond its borders – has been resolved with the decision to equip both the surface navy and the submarines, when they are built, with cruise missiles. While the specific type isn’t mentioned, it’ll likely be whatever iteration of the Tomahawk missile the USA is willing to sell us. While this probably won’t get nearly as much attention in the popular media, it’s probably a far bigger deal to our neighbours in terms of our offensive capabilities.

Plans for the air force don’t seem to have changed much, with the squadron of Super Hornets to be joined by a bunch of Joint Strike Fighters to replace the “classic” 1980s Hornets; ultimately, the Super Hornets are planned to be replaced with another squadron of JSF’s, keeping the total complement of fighters at 100. Upgrades to air-to-air weaponry will proceed as normal. The Orion maritime surveillance aircraft will be replaced, and augmented with an unmanned high-altitude surveillance plane – maybe we will buy the Global Hawk after all. Finally, the ancient Caribou tactical airlifter will be replaced as well.

The army is to remain the size it currently is. Aside from an upgrade in helicopter capability, perhaps the most significant upgrade is to the Army’s vehicles. Thank you, Iraq and Afghanistan; now pretty much every vehicle the army operates will have to be an armoured vehicle.

There’s also a lot of blather in the white paper about cyberwarfare. Colour me skeptical; by far the most vulnerable systems are going to be civilian ones, and buggerizing around with civilian infrastructure tends to violate the Geneva conventions if you’re a nation state and care about such things. By contrast, the decision to buy our own spy satellite (a radar-based one, not an optical one) gets a mere paragraph – kind of short shrift for something that strikes me as a pretty big deal.

As has been widely reported, none of this will come cheap, with the Rudd government guaranteeing Defence 3% real funding increases for the next decade.

The justification for all this, you ask? Well, in a nutshell, it comes down to “Trust us”. There is chapter upon chapter on the international situation which Australia finds itself in, most of which could have been written by a half-decent honours student in international relations with access to Google. Then there’s the force structure. How do these two things relate together? That’s not to be revealed in a public document, even the vaguest terms. As such, it’s impossible to have a sensible debate about whether their force structure is appropriate given their assumptions.

I still don’t reckon that’s good enough, given the gargantuan spend being proposed.

Elsewhere: Bomber Beazley likes it. Ben Eltham argues that the strategy ignores the real national security threats facing us – climate change and peak oil.

In very broad strokes, White believes the rise of China radically changes Australia’s strategic environment – whatever China’s goals, no longer will the USA have unchallenged military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region, and this changes Australia’s defence priorities. Throw in a strongly growing India and Indonesia, and the neighbourhood is looking rather more crowded than it did through the last 30 years or so. In such a light, the force structure Australia has pursued, with an expensive (but, White argues, pretty strategically insignificant) capability for high-intensity amphibious warfare, spends a lot of money for not much purpose. White argues for a larger, but much lighter army equipped primarily to operate in regional stabilization operations, a navy whose high-end warfighting capabilities are almost entirely submarine-based and whose residual surface ships are for supporting the previously mentioned regional stabilization operations (and notably which doesn’t include air warfare destroyers, who White believes are sitting ducks for missiles), and a larger air force. None of this comes cheap, at around 2.5% of GDP compared to around 2% now.

Personally, White’s take at least has some internal coherence, even if you don’t accept all the premises behind it. Definitely worth a read.

The ABC report suggests something along the lines of the Collins-class: a European-designed, conventionally powered hull, with American combat systems. Perhaps the greatest step change in technology from the Collins will be an air-independent propulsion system to allow them much greater underwater range. A key question left unanswered in the ABC news article is the proposed armament – will these new boats be equipped with long-range cruise missiles in addition to the current torpedoes and anti-ship missiles?

In any case, if the report is accurate, it’s an interesting indication of where the government’s defence priorities lie. You don’t use submarines for disaster relief, conducting stabilization operations on impoverished island states, stopping illegal fisherfolk, or joining Coalitions of the gullible Willing. With a very few exceptions (mainly involving intelligence gathering of various sorts) these boats are designed for one purpose – conventional war against well-equipped navies. So, yes, we’re in the planning stages to spend an enormous money for that contingency, or at least to deter anyone from thinking about doing so in Australia’s vicinity. The context here is, of course, the general increase in submarine purchases around the region. India is currently building new submarines, and purchasing three Russian nuclear-powered subs. China is, similarly, expanding the size and capabilities of its fleet. Most pertinently, Indonesia is also buying subs. Whether this justifies Australia radically expanding its own submarine fleet is, of course, a pertinent question.

Aside from the justification of such a garantuan spend, there’s another important question. Given that Australia is struggling to crew the submarines we currently have, how in the hell are we going to find suitably qualified people to sail a fleet twice the size?

For instance, the Defence White Paper, originally to report last year, is now scheduled to be released around April. If I recall correctly, there’s also a major health funding review due out soon. And the second-biggest of them all, the Henry taxation review, will roll on through 2009 (the biggest, in my view, was the CPRS). On top of that, the government will presumably respond to things like the Bradley higher education review, which reported recently.

I’d like to check with LP readers – what other major bits of policy (aside from the obvious major set-piece, the Budget) are coming over the next few months? And what kind of things might we expect in them? What should we be keeping an eye out for?