China is targeting Australia’s “number one vulnerability” and shows no signs of stopping, a former senior navy officer has suggested.
Jennifer Parker, who served for more than 20 years with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), said China is wasting no time projecting its new-found naval power in the Asia-Pacific – and is taunting Australia in the process.
“They’re assessed to have over 370 battle force ships, 70 to 80 submarines, both nuclear propelled, nuclear armed and conventional. And that’s before you start thinking about their capability in terms of their rocket force,” she told news.com.au.
Ms Parker said the 10 service combatant ships Australia has isn’t enough to protect its own sea lanes – and that’s even when working with allies and partners.
“We have old submarines, but even in the bits we don’t talk about, for example, we have very limited ability to detect mines,” she said.
The gut-wrenching comparisons don’t end there. The Renhai destroyer which circumnavigated Australia last year comes armed with 112 vertical missile launch cells. Australian destroyers have only 48.
Add to that Canberra’s reliance on an ageing fleet of Collins class submarines to see it through to the 2030s and alarm bells start ringing. Much of this is due to a lack of investment in Australia’s defence industry.
“We have the other gaps in capability, our ability to survey the seabed, for example, to understand whether there are sensors there. So all of that, plus if we think about the other domains, is as a result of a lack of investment over 30 years, but also current pressures in the defence budget,” she told news.com.au
“We are currently spending about 2.1 per cent of our GDP, gross domestic product, on defence. Now, historically during the Cold War, we averaged about 2.7 per cent. And back in the 1950s, which is really the strategic situation we’re comparing ourselves to, it was above 3 per cent. And because of that lack of investment now we have a lot of capability gaps.”
‘Economic coercion’
Ms Parker suggests the lack of investment has left Australia in a precarious security situation.
China’s circumnavigation exercise, coupled with live-firing drills 12km from Aussie waters, and the discovery of an undersea unmanned drone near Lombok, Indonesia, were all signs of Beijing projecting power in the region.
“Australia is not on its way anywhere unless you’re going to visit some penguins in Antarctica. So when you see Chinese naval task groups operating increasingly in the vicinity of Australia, it’s not like they are transiting somewhere for a port visit or an exercise,” she said.
“This is about demonstrating capability to Australia and also demonstrating Australia’s vulnerabilities, which are maritime.”
She said this was the first time since 1945 Australia faced such a serious regional threat.
“The first time, of course, was the Japanese navy, but really they only exercised that partly during 1941 and 1942. China’s navy in comparison to the Japanese navy is streets ahead in terms of relative capability.”
She said China – or any adversary – could blockade Australian sea lines and ports or quarantine those of major trading partners, cutting off access to vital goods. And it’s not just firepower that Beijing is investing in.
They’re spending big on underwater kit like seabed sensors that can detect and track submarines. According to independent underwater warfare expert H.I. Sutton, the deep sea drone which surfaced in Indonesia in April can collect and transmit vital information in waters 4km deep.
The newfangled piece of tech is moored by an anchor on the sea floor, floats between 80 and 300 metres below the surface and can stay out at sea for up to 12 months. It communicates by releasing a buoy which floats to the surface and enables real-time data transfers from underwater instruments to satellites.
“[The discovery] suggests that China may have a network of these sensors providing real-time information on underwater conditions in the strategic waterways which would aid their submarine operations,” the naval analyst wrote.
Chinese underwater gliders have also been found lurking in vital trading sea lines off Indonesia. These devices are unpowered and move by inflating and deflating a balloon-like device filled with pressurised oil which, with the aid of wings, helps it glide along the water as it buoys in and out, according to H.I Sutton.
Ms Parker said it’s hard to know just how advanced these devices are, but said they are part of a web of detection sensors in the South China Sea and surrounding waters.
“We do know that other countries do have voids and arrays under the ocean that allow them to detect submarines,” she said, adding the US used them extensively to track Russian subs during the Cold War.
“In terms of comparing the two, that’s hard to say, but what we do know from a lot of the military journals in China [is Beijing] has been focused on talking about how they bridge this undersea gap.
“Their capabilities more broadly are probably quite extensive, particularly within the first island chain” of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia, she said.
‘Wake up’
The breakneck speed of China’s military development has caught Australia off side. A strategic defence update from 2020 found the country had lost its “strategic warning time” – the time afforded to any military to prepare for conflict.
“Under the previous planning, you used to say that you had 10 years of strategic warning time. So you get 10 years indication the region was changing and you start to change the capabilities you’re investing in. Since 2020, we said that’s gone,” Ms Parker said.
She said the current defence spending of 2.1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) doesn’t match the strategic threats facing Australia and reserved extra blame for the “negligence” of governments during the 2010s for failing to boost funding.
She said the Department of Defence did not receive any significant boost in funding until 2024.
“I think that in the 1990s it was understandable that governments really did believe in a different world. One where you were more focused on peacekeeping operations rather than high-end warfare,” she said.
“I think from the 2000s, there has been a conversation around the peaceful rise of China and I think Australia really wanted to believe that. By the time we get to 2012, we see China’s island building in the South China Sea. By 2015, those islands were turned into military bases with missiles and radars and deep ports and bombers based there.
“By that point, we realised the concept of the peaceful rise of China was not necessarily an accurate assessment.”
Ms Parker suggested this was a wake-up call for all Australians.
“I think sometimes because of the fact that we are a very blessed country, our society doesn’t quite switch on to how the world is changing around us.”
