Australian activist Zack Schofield recounts the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla, seized on the high seas roughly 600 nautical miles from Israel while attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. He describes detention aboard a prison ship, allegations of violence by Israeli forces, and the broader legal and political implications of the operation. The account raises serious questions about maritime law, the treatment of civilians, and Australia’s ongoing support for Israel, as pressure builds on the government to respond.
While the report was broadly supportive of AUKUS, it also “laid bare the scale of the endeavour that will be required to deliver it”.
As part of the deal, the United Kingdom and Australia are working together to design and build a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarine, known as SSN-AUKUS, scheduled to enter service in the late 2030s and the early 2040s.
“For the UK, delivering SSN-AUKUS will be a lengthy and complex undertaking requiring a sustained financial commitment from government across several electoral cycles,” the report noted.
“It is deeply concerning that there are signs that the investment pipeline that underpins that commitment has already faltered.”
The report urged the UK government to devote more money to the partnership.
“Shortfalls or delays in funding risk a failure to deliver SSN-AUKUS on time, with potentially severe consequences for UK and wider Euro-Atlantic security, and our standing with our trilateral partners,” it read.
While the White House has reiterated its commitment to the partnership, and Australia has already given the United States $US500 million ($798 million) to try to reinvigorate the country’s shipbuilding industry, critics contend the AUKUS deal’s fine print means nothing is guaranteed.
Australia is expected to invest a total of $US3 billion in US submarine manufacturing capabilities as part of the deal.
It has been estimated AUKUS could cost Australia about $368 billion by the mid-2050s.
“For Australia, AUKUS is an unprecedented undertaking to be delivered to ambitious timescales,” the House of Commons report noted.
“The UK will need to work closely with Australia at both industry and government level to share expertise and support Australia in meeting its own milestones.”
Trump ‘an unreliable ally’, submission says
US President Donald Trump has expressed his support for the trilateral pact, but the House of Commons inquiry received submissions saying the president’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and other geopolitical factors “had undermined the case for AUKUS and its chances of successful delivery”.
The Australian Peace and Security Forum — a not-for-profit that has been calling for a public inquiry into AUKUS to be held in Australia — gave a written submission to the inquiry in which it contended the US under Mr Trump was “an unreliable ally”.
The group also claimed that “geopolitical circumstances have changed for both the UK and Australia since AUKUS was conceived in 2021”.
“Strategic priorities for both countries do not align,” the submission read, adding “the UK should not proceed with AUKUS if it cannot guarantee delivery of its commitments on time and on budget”.
But the inquiry also heard from the UK’s minister for defence readiness, Luke Pollard, who said the changing geopolitical context and increasing threats meant “the importance of making sure that AUKUS delivers is even more prominent than it was when the original initiative was launched all those years ago”.
The House of Commons report highlighted difficulties in staff movement between the AUKUS partner countries due to the security clearances required to work in the defence sector.
A consultancy company involved in AUKUS told the inquiry that moving employees between its UK and Australian businesses was a “time-consuming and administratively burdensome” process.
While AUKUS enjoys significant support from both major political parties in Australia, the deal has also attracted criticism, notably from former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating.
Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough and chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee, told the ABC the inquiry was designed to review the UK government’s progress with regard to AUKUS.
“Many of us had concerns that things were perhaps not progressing at the pace they should be, but we wanted to gain expert advice as well as evidence,” he said.
Mr Dhesi said as part of the inquiry, representatives of the defence committee visited locations in the UK, US and Australia.
“Our key recommendation is that the UK government needs to do much more and it needs to do it faster in order to reap the full benefits of this once-in-a-generation, long-term strategic partnership with Australia and the US,” he said.
We keep forking out money for submarines I’m definitely not going to live to see, and I don’t know if young people will live to see them ever arrive,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘It is doubling down on something that was a bad idea to start with.
If and when submarines ever did arrive, they would be undoubtedly redundant, overtaken by cheap and cheerful anti-submarine drone technology.
‘If we build this base, it will undoubtedly be a prime nuclear target, because who wouldn’t want to take out a couple of nuclear-armed submarines from America.’
The contract, worth $276million ($US197million), will be covered by the Labor government’s first down payment of $4.2billion ($US3billion), the ABC reports.
The US Navy has set targets to almost double construction to 2.33 boats per year to build up its fleet, the ABC reports.
But, during a series of congressional hearings this week, data revealed the pace of production has dropped to 1.1 boats per year due to construction delays.
An Australian Submarine Agency spokesperson told the Daily Mail they welcomed the announcement of the new contract.
‘(It) strengthens the United States’ ability to deliver Foreign Military Sales commitments to partners, including Australia,’ they said.
‘This represents further momentum and commitment by AUKUS partners to deliver on the Optimal Pathway.’
Professor Beeson has made no secret of his concerns about the trilateral deal between Australia, the US and the United Kingdom.
‘I think it’s possibly the worst investment Australia’s ever made in anything, but particularly in defence material,’ he said.
‘It is doubling down on something that was a bad idea to start with
However, the alliance relies on the US building enough defence vessels itself before some are sent to Australia.
International politics expert and AUKUS critic, Professor Mark Beeson, said the contract epitomised Australia’s dependence on American productivity.
‘We keep forking out money for submarines I’m definitely not going to live to see, and I don’t know if young people will live to see them ever arrive,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘It’s because, famously, the Americans can’t build as many as they would like, or consider they need. There’s going to be no spare capacity for these submarines.’
‘The only way to get a more credible-looking outcome for AUKUS is by continuing to supply the Americans and eventually the British with lots of loot to rebuild shipyards and increase the production line for these submarines.
‘If and when submarines ever did arrive, they would be undoubtedly redundant, overtaken by cheap and cheerful anti-submarine drone technology.
‘If we build this base, it will undoubtedly be a prime nuclear target, because who wouldn’t want to take out a couple of nuclear-armed submarines from America.’
The Australian-funded contract has been awarded to US Navy contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat, which will see construction take place on American soil at a Connecticut shipyard.
As such it is between the US Government and industry to support Foreign Military Sales requirements and activities.
While that policy includes AUKUS, Australia is not party to the contract itself and this investment does not relate to Australia’s contribution to the construction of the US Submarine Industrial Base.
The announcement comes just hours after opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie said Australia incurred ‘strategic trade-offs’ in doubling down on its alliance with Washington.
‘We forgot the hard lessons of war, and outsourced our security to the United States,’ he said at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne on Thursday.
‘It has cost us sovereign capabilities like a robust defence industry, and our strategic freedom of action in ways that we are now discovering.’
A former special forces officer, Hastie pointed to the fuel crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict and Australia’s de-industrialisation as examples of the nation betting too much on the dominance of the US.
COMMENT. Andrew Hastie conveniently forgetting that it was his own party, theLiberal-National Coalition, that signed up tp AUKUS in the first placde
He warned that, if the security alliance with the US was to endure for another 75 years, Australia needed to urgently invest in its industrial base and defence force.
‘We must grow our industrial might and hard power,’ he said.
Australia defence spending priorities reveal trade-offs between military budgets and essential public services.
Introduction
Australia defence spending priorities are increasingly raising concerns about whether public money is being directed toward national wellbeing or long-term military commitments. While governments argue that rising defence budgets are essential for security, many Australians are questioning why essential services face funding pressure while defence spending appears to expand with limited restraint.
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Australia growing military commitments through AUKUS are locking in long-term spending decisions that extend decades into the future. These agreements align Australia closely with the strategic interests of allies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom.
2. Consequences: Expanding costs with limited scrutiny
Defence spending is projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars over coming decades, including submarine programs and advanced weapons systems.
AUKUS alone is estimated at around $368 billion over decades.
External evidence from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that global military expenditure continues to rise, reflecting a broader trend toward increased defence investment.
For many Australians, this contrasts sharply with repeated claims that public services must run within tight financial limits.
The Impact – What Australians Are Experiencing
3. Everyday effects on cost of living and services
Australians are dealing with rising housing costs, pressure on healthcare, and job insecurity.
Public systems that directly affect daily life are under strain, often described as requiring reform, efficiency measures, or budget restraint.
4. Who benefits from Australia defence spending priorities
Large defence contractors and multinational corporations’ benefit from long-term public money commitments tied to military procurement.
These arrangements can generate significant profits, while the broader population sees fewer direct benefits in everyday life.
5. NDIS cuts and tightening eligibility criteria
The National Disability Insurance Scheme is increasingly being reshaped through funding constraints and stricter eligibility rules.
Recent changes include:
Tighter access criteria for new applicants.
More frequent reassessments for existing participants.
Reduced or capped funding in some plans.
Increased administrative requirements and documentation.
For many Australians already on the NDIS, this has created a system where they must continually prove their eligibility, navigating complex processes just to keep essential support.
This highlights a clear contrast. Programs that directly support vulnerable Australians are being tightened, while large-scale defence commitments continue with far fewer visible constraints.
This kind of analysis is rarely covered in mainstream media.
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While essential services tighten, spending elsewhere continues to expand.
The Solution – What Must Be Done
6. Monetary sovereignty and national priorities
Australia has full monetary sovereignty, meaning it can fund public priorities without being financially constrained in the way households are.
Modern Monetary Theory explains that governments can allocate public money toward areas that deliver the greatest social benefit, provided real resources are available.
This raises a fundamental question: why are some areas prioritised over others?
Australia defence spending priorities reveal a deeper issue about how national decisions are made. When large-scale commitments continue in one area while essential services face tightening conditions, it raises legitimate questions about whether current priorities reflect the needs of the Australian people.
Australia defence spending is projected to exceed 2.3% of GDP in coming years.
The US needs to significantly lift the pace of production of nuclear-powered submarines in order to sell several of the boats to Australia under the AUKUS agreement.
But more than two years after the US Congress authorised the Pentagon to award a major submarine-building contract, it remains unsigned.
New research for Congress says the submarines’ construction timelines are also getting longer, and the boats are now being delivered four years after the dates that were originally scheduled.
The US Navy’s submarine-building program — which Australia is relying on for its naval fleet — risks another slowdown due to delays awarding a critical construction contract.
Meanwhile, new research says construction timelines for the nuclear-powered submarines keep blowing out, and they are now being built four years behind schedule.
The contract and construction delays are both affecting the production of Virginia-class submarines, which Australia intends to buy from the US under the AUKUS security pact.
Australia expects to receive at least three of the submarines in the 2030s.
But the sales will only go ahead if the US can build enough of the boats for its own fleet. That requires a significant improvement in the pace of production, the US Navy admits.
“Clearly, there are entities or bureaucrats in the [Trump] administration that are not all in on this goal,” congressman Joe Courtney, who founded the bipartisan AUKUS Working Group, said.
“The Virginia-class … multi-year contracts continue to be delayed, despite all consensus that procurement stability will strengthen investment in facilities and workforce.”
Congress gave the Pentagon authorisation to award the contract in December, 2023 — meaning it has remained unsigned for about 28 months.
The previous comparable contract was awarded within 20 months, Mr Courtney told the ABC.
‘Particularly worrisome’ construction blow-outs
Separate to the contract issue, new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) research adds to existing doubts about the navy’s prospects of picking up the pace of construction.
The US’s military industrial base has been struggling with production that has lagged behind targets for years.
But CBO naval analyst Eric Labs, in written testimony for Congress, said the problem appeared to be worsening.
“What makes the delays … particularly worrisome is that they are long-established shipbuilding programs that previously delivered ships in much shorter timelines,” he wrote.
Military submarines that took 5–6 years to build in the early 2000s were now taking an average of 9–10 years.
“In addition, the delays increased slightly from 2025 to 2026, despite substantial investments to reduce them.”
Some of those investments have more recently come from the Australian government, which is contributing more than $4 billion to help the US fast-track the submarines’ construction.
Mr Labs’s research says building extra submarines for the AUKUS deal will add “another challenge to an already stressed production line”.
Pentagon ‘aware of the urgency’ to award contract…………………………………….
Congress warned of ‘potential for further deterioration’ in build rate
Marles identified China as the primary threat to peace. He spoke of the need to project Australian military force “anywhere on the planet” to police global trade.
But China has no history of being an aggressor against Australia. It has never threatened Australia. It has never invaded Australian territory. It has never attacked Australian forces.
The only “threat” is that China might replace the United States as a trading partner by offering quality products at better prices and better trading conditions. This is not a military threat. It is an economic threat – to the profits of the defence contractors, to the hegemony of the United States, to the permanent war economy.
Former prime minister Paul Keating, no stranger to plain speaking, previously accused Marles of a “careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence.”
Keating said:“A moment when an Australian Labor government intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US and, by implication, Australia, for military engagement against the Chinese state in response to a threat China is alleged to be making.”
“China has not threatened Australia militarily, nor indeed has it threatened the United States. And it has no intention of so threatening.”
On April 16, 2026, Defence Minister Richard Marles stood before the National Press Club and announced the biggest military spending spree in Australian history. An extra $14 billion over four years. An additional $53 billion over the next decade. Defence spending to rise to 3% of GDP by 2033.
“Australia faces its most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II,” Marles declared. “International norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continue to erode.”
On the same day, the Prime Minister was flying to Brunei to beg for fertiliser and diesel.
The juxtaposition is obscene. While Marles was marketing the apocalypse, Anthony Albanese was scrambling to secure the basic necessities of Australian life – fuel for trucks, fertiliser for crops, the stuff that keeps the country running
The 100 million litres of diesel from Brunei and South Korea is not a solution. It is a distraction. The government is hoping that Australians will see the headline, breathe a sigh of relief, and stop asking the hard questions.
But the questions remain. And they are damning.
The Severity of the Crisis
The situation is far worse than the government has admitted.
As of April 11, 2026, Australia had 31 days’ worth of diesel, 28 days of jet fuel, and 38 days’ of petrol. These figures are dangerously close to the point where the government would be forced to implement nationwide fuel rationing.
In early April, Energy Minister Chris Bowen disclosed that 144 service stations across the country had completely run out of fuel, with a further 283 stations reporting no diesel supplies. The shortages have been most acute in rural and regional areas – precisely where farmers and truck drivers need fuel the most.
The Geelong refinery fire has compounded the problem. Viva Energy’s refinery is one of only two remaining refineries in Australia. The blaze shut down production at the worst possible moment.
As one Taiwanese media outlet starkly put it, Australia is living a “real-life Mad Max” scenario. The comparison is not hyperbolic. The film franchise depicted a world brought to its knees by fuel scarcity. Australia is now staring into that abyss.
The Root Cause: Structural Failure, Not Bad Luck
This crisis is not a bolt from the blue. It is the predictable consequence of decades of policy neglect.
Australia now imports over 90% of its refined fuel needs. In 2000, the country was almost entirely self-sufficient in petroleum products, meeting nearly 98% of its own demand. That figure has collapsed to just 5.6% for crude oil production.
The Just-in-Time model that has governed Australia’s fuel supply for decades is a house of cards. It prioritises efficiency and low costs over resilience and security. The Asian refineries that supply Australia are themselves dependent on crude oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed since late February.
The government has known about this vulnerability for years. In 2010, the NRMA warned that Australia was becoming dangerously dependent on fuel imports from “some of the most politically unstable corners of the globe.” Those warnings were ignored.
The same pattern applies to fertiliser. Australia imports 65% of its urea – the key ingredient in crop fertiliser – from the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz closure has sent prices skyrocketing by 60%. Urea now costs more than $1,550 per tonne, up from $700 before the war.
Farmers are now on “boat watch”, anxiously tracking ships that may not arrive in time for winter planting. “Nothing grows without fertiliser and water,” said canegrower Dean Cayley. He is not exaggerating. Without urea, crop yields can drop by 40%.
The crisis is not a natural disaster. It is a policy choice.
The 100 Million Litre Announcement: Too Little, Too Late
The shipment secured by Prime Minister Albanese from Brunei and South Korea totals approximately 100 million litres.
Opposition sources have been quick to point out that this volume represents little more than a single day’s supply. Australia consumes roughly 90 million litres of fuel daily. The announcement is not a solution. It is a photo opportunity.
The government has also signed “no surprises” energy agreements with Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. These agreements are not legally binding supply guarantees. They are diplomatic assurances that Australia will be given advance notice if any of these nations consider restricting fuel exports.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia was frank about the limitations of the arrangement. “The world looks very different to when you were here last year,” he said. “Global energy markets are under serious stress.” He did not promise that Malaysia would continue supplying Australia indefinitely. He promised that the two nations would talk.
Meanwhile, Australia has no national strategic fuel reserve. The International Energy Agency recommends that member countries hold reserves equivalent to 90 days of net imports. Australia holds approximately 30 days.
The Hidden Story: The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme
The most egregious aspect of this crisis is the one the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored.
Australia’s largest mining companies – BHP, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Fortescue, and Yancoal – continue to receive billions of dollars in fuel tax credits while ordinary Australians struggle to fill their tanks.
The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme is Australia’s largest taxpayer-funded fossil fuel subsidy, costing the budget $11 billion annually. In the 2025 financial year alone, the five largest mining companies were collectively refunded $1.94 billion:
BHP: $622 million
Rio Tinto: $423 million
Glencore: $349 million
Fortescue: $290 million
South32: $140 million
Climate Energy Finance has calculated that 18 of the largest diesel consumers in Australia received $3.36 billion in fuel tax credits in the 2025 financial year alone.
The scheme refunds the full customs duty – currently 51.6 cents per litre – paid on imported diesel used off-road in industry. It is a direct transfer of wealth from Australian taxpayers to some of the largest corporations on the planet.
The government is simultaneously pleading with Australians to conserve fuel, subsidising the import of diesel from Asia, and handing billions of dollars to mining companies to continue burning the stuff.
Climate Energy Finance founder Tim Buckley has called for urgent reform, warning that without change, Australia will hand back almost $84 billion in fuel tax credits to major miners by 2030.
The silence from the government is deafening.
The Opportunity Cost: Defence vs. Everything Else
While Marles was marketing the apocalypse, the opportunity cost to Australia became staggering.
The government has announced an extra $14 billion in defence spending over the next four years, with a further $53 billion over the next decade. Total defence spending over the next decade will top out at $887 billion.
Meanwhile, the government has committed a paltry $386 million to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for 2026–2030. Gavi has helped vaccinate more than 1.1 billion children globally, saving more than 18.8 million lives. It is one of the most cost‑effective health interventions in history.
The government has provided just $5 million to the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE).
The message is unmistakable: the government is prepared for war. It is not prepared for the next pandemic.
The Manufactured Threat
Marles identified China as the primary threat to peace. He spoke of the need to project Australian military force “anywhere on the planet” to police global trade.
But China has no history of being an aggressor against Australia. It has never threatened Australia. It has never invaded Australian territory. It has never attacked Australian forces.
The only “threat” is that China might replace the United States as a trading partner by offering quality products at better prices and better trading conditions. This is not a military threat. It is an economic threat – to the profits of the defence contractors, to the hegemony of the United States, to the permanent war economy.
Former prime minister Paul Keating, no stranger to plain speaking, previously accused Marles of a “careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence.” Keating said:
“A moment when an Australian Labor government intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US and, by implication, Australia, for military engagement against the Chinese state in response to a threat China is alleged to be making.”
Keating noted the obvious:
“China has not threatened Australia militarily, nor indeed has it threatened the United States. And it has no intention of so threatening.”
The Revolving Door
The frequency with which political advisers revolve from the Albanese government into the private sector is striking. In March 2026, Defence Minister Richard Marles’s former policy adviser, Kieran Ingrey, left his position and immediately landed at the lobby shop GRACosway.
This is not an isolated incident. It is the revolving door – the mechanism by which public servants and political advisers convert their access into private-sector profit. The same mechanism that has been documented in the United States.
The Australian Financial Review notes that the practice “is starting to give the impression they’re using parliament as a halfway house.” The impression is correct. The halfway house is not a failure. It is a feature.
Ingrey’s new employer, GRACosway, is a lobbying and strategic communications firm. It represents corporate clients. It does not represent the Australian people. The revolving door ensures that the interests of the defence contractors are well represented – not only in the minister’s office, but in the minister’s mind.
The Silence of the Mainstream Media
The mainstream media has been complicit in downplaying the severity of the crisis. The government’s “no surprises” agreements have been reported as diplomatic victories. The 100 million litre purchase has been framed as a success. The underlying structural vulnerabilities have been glossed over.
The fuel tax credit scheme has received almost no coverage. The billions of dollars flowing to mining companies have been ignored. The fact that Australia has no strategic fuel reserve has been mentioned in passing, then forgotten.
The media is not neutral. It is captured.
A Final Word
Richard Marles did not deliver a defence strategy. He delivered a sales pitch.
The target is China. The enemy is abstract. The threat is manufactured.
The real purpose is the wealth transfer. The real beneficiaries are the defence contractors. The real losers are the Australian people, who will pay for this escalation with their taxes, their security, and their future.
The tickets to the Apocalypse Circus keep hitting the marketplace. The government is selling them. The media is promoting them. The opposition is cheering them on.
And the fuel crisis is not a natural disaster. It is a policy choice.
Defence is no longer a defensive trade, and nowhere is the question of who’s buying, who’s building, and who is being left behind more apparent than in Australia, writes Professor Vince Hooper.
Markets, missiles and the end of the peace dividend — and what it means for Australia
A South Korean missile-maker most Western investors could not have located on a map two years ago has just hit an all-time high. LIG Nex1, a precision-guided munitions and electronic warfare specialist headquartered in Yongin, has nearly quadrupled from its January 2025 base, touching 899,000 won on 6 March 2026 — days after American and Israeli aircraft struck Iranian nuclear and missile facilities.
The Korean defence sector as a whole has returned roughly 137 per cent over the past year. These are not the numbers of a sleepy industrial cyclical. They are the numbers of an asset class being repriced in real time.
Defence is no longer a defensive trade. It is the trade. And nowhere is the question of who is buying, who is building, and who is being left in the queue more pointed than in Australia.
Canberra in the queue
For Australia, the arsenal trade is not an abstract market story. It is a mirror.
AUKUS is now a procurement queue rather than a strategy and the cost of waiting for Virginia-class submarines while the Indo-Pacific darkens is becoming uncomfortable to discuss in polite company.
Canberra is, in effect, paying premium prices for late delivery, while Korean and Japanese yards offer shorter timelines at lower cost.
The strain is visible in real time. As the Sydney Morning Heraldreported last week, Canberra’s first crisis call during the Middle East escalation went to Beijing rather than Washington — a reflex inversion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago and that tells you more about the perceived reliability of the American guarantee than any AUKUS communiqué.
The ASX has noticed even if the cabinet has not: DroneShield, Electro Optic Systems, Codan and Austal have all attracted the kind of investor attention that only arrives when a market decides a sector’s tail risks have permanently thickened.
From cost centre to industrial darling
The Ukraine War did the structural work. It converted defence from a politically awkward line item into the most fashionable corner of industrial policy and it taught Western treasuries an uncomfortable lesson about how thin their magazines actually were. Three years of artillery duels in the Donbas drained stockpiles NATO had quietly assumed would last a generation.
The Middle East conflict is the second shock. Patriot interceptors, Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) reloads, Iron Dome Tamirs, SM-3s, 155mm shells, loitering munitions — each salvo over the Gulf is, in accounting terms, a revenue recognition event somewhere in Arizona, Alabama, Haifa or Daejeon. Governments that spent the 2010s running down inventories on the assumption of a benign world are now writing cheques to rebuild them, and they are writing those cheques into the same handful of balance sheets.
Who, specifically, is making money
Four tiers are visible.
First, the American primes — Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, L3Harris. They capture the replenishment contracts, the integration work, and the multi-year framework agreements that Congress now waves through with rare bipartisan enthusiasm. Their backlogs are at record highs and, after two decades of monopsony complaints, their pricing power has quietly inverted.
Second, the European awakening — Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Saab AB, Thales. Germany’s Zeitenwende turned out to be real, and Rheinmetall in particular has become the continent’s de facto shell foundry, trading less like an industrial stock and more like a leveraged proxy on NATO’s Article 5 itself.
Third, and most interesting from where Australia sits, the Asian arsenals — Hanwha Aerospace, Korea Aerospace Industries, Hanwha Systems and the LIG Nex1 of the opening paragraph, alongside Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki in Japan. South Korea has done what Europe spent 30 years failing to do: build a deep, exportable, price-competitive defence industrial base with delivery times measured in months rather than decades.
Warsaw noticed first. Riyadh, Canberra and Cairo are noticing now. Israel’s own Elbit, Rafael and IAI sit alongside them as the technological pace-setters, particularly in air defence and electronic warfare, where the Iran exchange has been a brutal but effective live-fire showcase.
Fourth, the invisible compounders — the propellant chemists, the rare-earth magnet refiners, the speciality steel mills, the gallium nitride foundries, the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) cleared software shops, the maritime insurers writing war-risk cover on Hormuz transits at multiples of last year’s premium. This is where the quiet fortunes are being made. Lynas Rare Earths, sitting on one of the few non-Chinese heavy rare earth supply chains in existence, belongs in this tier, whether the market has fully priced it in or not.
The Gulf parallel
For the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the calculation is different and more cynical than Australia’s, but the underlying logic is the same. Every Gulf capital is simultaneously a customer, a forward operating base, and a potential target. Sovereign wealth is rotating accordingly — not away from defence, but into it. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is building domestic primes such as the Synchronised Accessible Media Exchange (SAMI) — wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund and openly targeting a place in the global top 25 defence companies by 2030.
The export of security capacity has become a new instrument of influence and the capital flows track the doctrine more faithfully than any white paper. Australia, with its Henderson precinct ambitions and its Hanwha partnership, is on a milder version of the same curve.
The uncomfortable coda
None of this is a celebration. A rising LIG Nex1 share price is, in the end, a market-implied judgement that more young people in more places will be killed by better-engineered weapons. The honest analyst names that trade-off rather than hiding behind the chart.
But the honest analyst also tells the truth about incentives. The Ukraine War did not enrich defence contractors by accident and the Iran strikes will not either. Governments that spent a generation treating deterrence as a sunk cost are now paying the bill they should have been paying all along and the firms holding the order books are, predictably, getting rich.
CNN reported over the weekend that U.S. intelligence believes China is preparing to deliver shoulder-fired air defence missiles (MANPADS) to Iran during the current ceasefire — a claim Beijing has formally denied. If the reporting holds, that single fact reframes the arsenal trade as an explicit great-power contest rather than a Western replenishment cycle — and it makes every defence ministry from Canberra to Riyadh recalculate how long it can afford to wait in the AUKUS queue.
For Australia, the question is sharper than for most. Canberra can keep waiting for Virginia-class boats and hoping the phone in Washington still gets answered, or it can do what Warsaw and Riyadh have already done — back the arsenals that can actually deliver, and accept that strategic autonomy in 2026 looks less like an alliance white paper and more like a procurement contract with Daejeon, Tokyo, Henderson or Geelong.
The post-Cold War peace dividend has been spent. What replaces it is already listed, already trading and already on the front page. The only open question is whether Australia is reading the same page as the rest of the market.
Professor Vince Hooper is a proud Australian-British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.
The Federal Government has awarded $78 million in grants to Australian companies that make parts for F-35 fighter jets used by the IDF in the Gaza genocide. Stephanie Tran investigates.
An investigation by MWM has found the federal government has awarded more than $78m in taxpayer-funded grants to Australian companies participating in the global F-35 fighter jet program, with the majority of these grants awarded during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The same parts are now likely deployed in the US and Israeli illegal bombing campaign in Iran.
Of that total, $48.5m has been awarded since October 7, 2023.
The funding forms part of a suite of industry support programs designed to help Australian companies secure work on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program, a US-led global supply chain for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jet.
The F-35 has been widely deployed by Israel in its genocide in Gaza, and assaults on Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere.
The analysis reveals that a relatively small number of firms have received a significant share of the funding, with grants targeted at expanding Australia’s role in the maintenance and sustainment of the F-35 fleet.
The largest recipient was Rosebank Engineering (formerly RUAG Australia), which received $30.2m across multiple grants. This included $16.3m awarded in April 2025 to establish an Asia-Pacific depot to repair F-35 power and thermal management systems, and a further $9.1m to develop a regional repair capability for landing gear.
Rosebank Engineering “provides over 150 components for the Landing Gear and Weapons Bay Systems” on the F-35 fighter jet.
The second-largest recipient was Northrop Grumman Australia, which received $13.4m in June 2024 to support the activation of a depot for the maintenance and overhaul of F-35 components for the Asia-Pacific region, with potential to service European assignments.
Other major recipients include Moog Australia, Quickstep Technologies and Ferra Engineering, alongside a network of specialist manufacturers.
In total, more than 75 Australian companies are now involved in the F-35 program, collectively securing contracts worth more than $5 billion.
The full list of grants can be accessed in the document below. [on original]
How the grant programs work
The grants have been delivered through three key programs administered by the Department of Defence.
To be eligible for a grant, companies must have a contract with the United States Government for “maintenance and repair activities for existing components used in the Joint Strike Fighter Program”.
Applicants are required to produce a congressional letter from the US Department of Defense confirming their F-35 part number assignment and/or repair technology group as part of their application.
Initially launched with $4m in funding in 2020, the program was expanded to $60m in 2021 and extended to 2028. To date, $49.5m in JSF Sustainment Grants have been awarded.
An earlier initiative, the New Air Combat Capability Industry Support Program, ran from 2010 to June 2021 and distributed $21.9m to help Australian firms integrate into the F-35 supply chain under Defence’s AIR6000 project.
According to the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), the project aimed to ensure Australia’s air combat capability remained “lethal, survivable, deployable and available throughout its Life of Type”.
Greens Defence and Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said the grants demonstrated misplaced government priorities.
“When you see tens of millions of dollars in Australian public grants given, not to community groups or social programs but to global weapons manufacturers like Northrop Grumman, you see the priorities of Labor and the other war parties,”
“They always have money for weapons and war.”
“The F35 fighter jet is a major weapon in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its illegal war in Iran and its illegal occupation in Southern Lebanon. It’s obscene that it’s being propped up by public gifts from the Australian government.”
Grants crucial to Australia’s F-35 program role
The ANAO has attributed the success of Australian firms in securing F-35 contracts to these government grants.
“Allocating financial resources and implementing the grant programs … enabled Australian industry to bid for and win work,” the ANAO found in its latest report on major defence projects.
“Without the establishment of an industry support program, Australian industry may not have been competitive enough to win contracts.”
According to the ANAO report, Australia has spent $12.6B on the F-35 program, with most expenditure flowing to contracts with the US government.
Australian companies have secured more than $5B in contracts linked to the F-35 program, with more than 75 firms involved in manufacturing components or providing sustainment services.
Because the F-35 program operates as a globalised supply chain, components manufactured or serviced in Australia are incorporated across the entire fleet.
This means parts produced locally are used in aircraft operated by multiple countries, including Israel.
Hiding it
In late 2023, the Department of Defence quietly removed details of Australian suppliers in the F-35 program from its website including a 2018 report published by the Department
Last year, an investigation by Declassified Australia revealed that F-35 components produced in Australia had been shipped directly to Israel on commercial passenger flights, despite repeated government assertions that Australia was not supplying weapons to Israel.
In a follow-up investigation, the outlet reported that many of the parts stored in Australia for the country’s own F-35 fleet are in fact owned and controlled by the United States, with logistics managed by the program’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin.
This arrangement means Australia does not ultimately control how those parts are allocated. The US can direct that components held in Australia be reassigned and shipped overseas, even where those parts are needed for Australia’s own defence capability.
Violation of international law
A UN report has described the F-35 program as “key” to Israel’s military operations in Gaza, with the aircraft
“heavily used in the genocidal destruction of Gaza.”
The report warned that states supplying components may be engaged in indirect transfers of weapons used in violations of international law.
Shoebridge said the grants reinforced the need for Australia to impose a total arms embargo on Israel, “Given what we know about the crimes committed by the IDF using the F-35, it’s hard to see these as anything other than genocide grants,” he said.
“This data gives fresh impetus to our calls, supported by millions of Australians, to put a total arms embargo on Israel, which includes all weapons and weapons parts.”
MWM sent questions to the Department of Defence, Richard Marles (Minister for Defence) and Pat Conroy (Minister for Defence Industry) regarding whether it was appropriate to continue the F-35 grant program in light of the genocide and the due diligence the government has taken to ensure that the program is in compliance with international law.
Stephanie is a journalist with a background in both law and journalism. She has worked at The Guardian and as a paralegal, where she assisted Crikey’s defence team in the high-profile defamation case brought by Lachlan Murdoch. Her reporting has been recognised nationally, earning her the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award.
Dr Andrew Klein is right. The War They Sold Us, The Price We Pay, Australia has quietly signed up to another illegal war on Iran and, with customary discretion, sent the invoice straight to its own citizens. We are already paying. At the bowser. At the checkout. At the chemist. The meter is running long before the government has bothered to explain why it switched it on. Even if it could.
This is how modern war arrives. Not with declarations, not with debate, but with a price rise and a press conference. The explosions come later. The explanation, if it comes at all, arrives last and reads like a pamphlet for a product nobody ordered.
We also pay in subtler currency. In the steady domestication of war as background noise. In the way catastrophe is repackaged as content, mined for its dopamine yield, a bridge collapsing in slow motion, an oil rig burning through the night, a grainy clip of impact replayed until it acquires the sheen of inevitability. War as spectacle. War as story. War as something other people do, until it turns up in your petrol bill.
The Australian War Memorial, now politely underwritten by arms manufacturers, completes the lesson. BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Thales. The merchants of death have not so much crashed the party as taken out a sponsorship package.
Remembrance, but make it corporate. Lest we forget, brought to you by the people who ensure there is always something to remember.
Meanwhile in Washington, Donald Trump and sneaky-Pete Hegseth compete to see who can sound most upbeat about lethality, like teenagers comparing horsepower. Bombing a country “into the Stone Ages” an unconscious but not entirely gratuitous reminder of the carpet-bombing of North VietNam is delivered as a punchline, a distraction from the latest domestic scandal, a line designed to travel. It is not strategy. It is not policy. It is performance. Yet Canberra treats it as if it were scripture.
We are told this is about deterrence. About stability. About preventing proliferation. We are always told this. Deterrence has become the diplomatic equivalent of “because I said so”. But deterrence without legal authority is simply pre-emptive war in a better suit. The United Nations Charter permits force in self-defence against an imminent threat, or with Security Council approval. Neither condition has been satisfied. To support such a war without asking that question is not prudence. It is obedience.
Yet our complicity did not begin with the first missile. It was preloaded. The decision was not just rushed; it was rehearsed, the latest turn in a relationship already militarised, already embedded, already incapable of saying no. An unlovely history hums beneath it. Our sycophancy is bipartisan. It has led us here before. It will lead us here again.
Australia’s “great and powerful friendship” now looks less like an alliance and more like a folie à deux, a shared delusion in which one partner sets the fires and the other holds the hose, congratulating itself on its sense of responsibility.
There was no pause for law. No insistence on evidence. Within hours of the first strikes, Prime Minister Albanese offered support. Foreign Minister Penny Wong declined even the courtesy of scrutiny, leaving it to the United States and Israel to explain the legal basis for their own actions. This is not diplomacy. It is ventriloquism with better tailoring.
The government that speaks endlessly of integrity treats the endorsement of war as if it were a diary entry. The legality is not tested. It is outsourced. The rules-based order is invoked like a hymn sung loudly enough to drown out the sound of the rules themselves being broken.
Complicity, But With Good Manners
If a war begins without clear legal authority and proceeds to strike civilian infrastructure, then support for that war is not neutral. It is participatory. International humanitarian law does not cease to exist because it is inconvenient to allies. Those who assist in serious violations may themselves bear responsibility. This is not radical. It is basic.
And assistance is precisely what is occurring. Intelligence sharing. Joint facilities. Interoperability so seamless it dissolves the distinction between ally and actor. When targeting data flows through shared systems, when surveillance feeds are integrated into operational decisions, Australia is not a bystander. It is part of the firing chain.
Pine Gap and the Useful Fiction of Distance
Pine Gap is often described as a listening post, which is a little like describing a power station as a light bulb. It is infrastructure. It is integration. It is the physical expression of a relationship in which distance is rhetorical and involvement is structural.
For decades, analysts from Dr Helen Caldicott to Des Ball and Richard Tanter have explained its role. Recent reporting has filled in the details. Satellite arrays. Signals intelligence. Real-time targeting capability. A system that does not observe war so much as enable it. We are helping Tomahawk missiles find their way into a children’s playground, a hospital or an ambulance depot.
Which makes Canberra’s occasional requests for “clarification” from Washington read like theatre reviews of a play in which it is already on stage. The explanation is not forthcoming because it is unnecessary. It is already baked into the system. Into the agreements. Into the quiet understanding that some questions are not asked because everyone knows the answer.
Australia keeps its eyes politely lowered, its bases open, its systems engaged, and calls this prudence. It is, in fact, participation with plausible deniability.
The Habit of Following
This is not new. It is ritual. VietNam, Iraq. Afghanistan. The same sequence, repeated with minor variations. Alignment first. Scrutiny later. Regret, if it arrives at all, delivered long after the damage is done and the architects have retired to write their memoirs.
We have perfected the art of joining wars we do not need to fight, for reasons that dissolve under inspection, in pursuit of credibility that never quite materialises. We call it loyalty. Others might call it habit.
We follow. We facilitate. We absorb the consequences. Then we explain, with great seriousness, that the decision was made elsewhere.
AUKUS and the Theology of Dependence
AUKUS is sold as strategy. It often reads as faith. A $368 billion act of belief in a future fleet of already obsolete submarines, we will struggle to crew, maintain or deploy, tied to a strategic doctrine we do not control, in conflicts we do not choose.
The Indo-Pacific framing flatters Australia with the illusion of centrality. In practice, it locks us into dependency. If the United States is stretched across multiple theatres, its commitments multiplying faster than its capacity, what exactly are we aligning ourselves with? Strength? Or strain?
A navy we cannot fully sustain, guarding sea lanes we cannot guarantee, in wars we do not declare. That is not sovereignty. It is folly, an epic and darkly comic absurdity that could be an epilogue to Waiting For Godot, 2.0.
The Bill Arrives Early
The economic consequences do not wait for the shooting to stop. Fuel reserves fall below recommended levels. Prices climb. Supply chains tighten. Farmers hesitate. Pharmacists ration. The abstractions of strategy resolve into the concrete arithmetic of shortage.
Thirty-nine days of petrol. Then what.
The government responds with monitoring, reviews, taskforces. The familiar liturgy of control. But the decisions that matter have already been taken elsewhere, in rooms to which Australia is invited only after the fact, if at all.
Meanwhile, the social cost accumulates. External conflict refracted through domestic politics. Suspicion, division, the quiet narrowing of who belongs. War does not stay offshore. It arrives in language, in policy, in the spaces where cohesion is invoked and quietly undermined.
The Question We Avoid
Was it worth it? The question is asked as if the answer might still be in doubt. The more difficult question is why it was done at all. Why a government would endorse a war without clear legal foundation, led by an administration defined by volatility, run by grifters and billionaire bros with consequences already measurable at home?
Why it was done without consent? Why the lessons of previous wars remain politely unlearned? Why the reflex to align survives every failure that should have extinguished it?
The “grifters and billionaire bros” are the Pozzos of the world – men who own the rope, drive the slave, and check their watch every five minutes to see if they are still important. They don’t do it for a “clear legal foundation”; they do it because the exercise of power is the only thing that convinces them they exist.
As Lucky might conclude, it was done for the sake of the “quaquaquaqua” – the noise we make to drown out the fact that the road is empty and Godot is never coming.
If those questions cannot be answered, then the answer is already in front of us. Alliance over autonomy. Secrecy over scrutiny. Habit over judgement. Inertia rules, OK?
We have chosen the alliance. We have accepted the war. We will inherit the consequences. The bill is already in the mail – our boots are well and truly on, and under, the ground.
Footnote: North Vietnam was subjected to some of the heaviest bombing in military history, with over 1 million tons of bombs and missiles dropped by the U.S. during campaigns like Operation Rolling Thunder. From 1965 to 1968, roughly 32 tons of bombs fell every hour, significantly exceeding the total ordnance used in the Pacific theatre of WWII
You probably charge your phone daily, while your car needs gas or a battery top-up every few days. But you don’t have to take the device or vehicle apart when you connect it to power or fill up the tank. Refueling a nuclear submarine, on the other hand, is a complicated process that takes years, just like refueling a nuclear aircraft carrier………………………
The ERO process is slow because it’s designed that way for safety reasons. The nuclear submarine has to be brought into a facility that’s capable of handling nuclear material throughout the replacement process, to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the repairs and the sailors who will crew the ship once the refueling process is done. The nuclear core remains radioactive during refueling, so radiation must be contained and the nuclear waste must be stored securely.
The submarine is brought to a dry dock for the ERO process, where engineers go through a rigorous procedure to defuel the ship and refuel it. The reactors are shut down and cooled before removing the old reactor core and installing its replacement. The actual removal of the spent core involves cutting through the submarine’s hull with hand tools, as the reactors aren’t easily accessible. These operations are performed under strict ventilation and filtration protocols to prevent radiation contamination. The old core is transported off-site for secure storage, as the nuclear material remains active. The new core is installed, and then the reactor is reassembled and the submarine is resealed. These procedures require precision and numerous inspections, as there’s no room for error. The structural integrity of the hull is key for allowing the submarine to operate at depth.
……………………………………… How much does refueling a submarine cost?
Like nuclear aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered surface ships undergo extensive RCOH processes — and they’re not cheap or quick. For example, it cost $2.8 billion to refuel and retrofit the USS George Washington aircraft carrier, and the process took even longer than anticipated. In May 2023, the U.S. Navy announced that the George Washington completed its RCOH process after 69 months
UniSuper members have started a mass divestment campaign against the fund, citing investments in weapons companies and organisations complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide and occupation. Stephanie Tran reports.
UniSuper, which manages approximately $166B on behalf of more than 680,000 members, is the industry superfund for employees in Australia’s higher education and research sector. The ‘Divest from Death‘ campaign is run by a group campaigning against UniSuper’s unwillingness to divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies involved in genocide, war crimes, occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
As of June 2025, the fund holds over $771m worth of investments in companies named in databases compiled by the UN Human Rights Office and the American Friends Service Committee, which track businesses complicit in the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and the genocide in Gaza.
Analysis of portfolio data shows that UniSuper has significantly expanded these investments in recent years. Its shareholding in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, has more than tripled over the past two years, based on the number of shares held.
The fund also has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in companies involved in weapons production, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and maintains smaller holdings in Israeli financial institutions linked to settlement activity.
A report by the Australia Institute previously identified UniSuper as one of only four major superannuation funds not to exclude controversial weapons, including nuclear weapons, from its investment screens.
Palestine Land Day
March 30th has been marked Palestine Land Day since the 1976 killing of six Palestinian citizens by Israeli police during protests against the expropriation of thousands of dunams of land in the Galilee.
Alison Gibberd, an organiser of the campaign, said members had raised concerns with the fund over several years, including through petitions, direct correspondence and questions at annual meetings.
“UniSuper has increased its investments in weapons and companies involved in the occupation of the West Bank in the past two years.”
“A large number of members are not happy with these investments – many hundreds of members have petitioned them and written to them in the past few years, and the union has passed pro-BDS motions, driven by members, nationally as well as locally,” Gibberd said.
“Despite this, there does not appear to have been a change in UniSuper’s policy and they state that they are not an ‘activist’ fund. This refusal to act is why members have left in the past for more ethical funds and why a group will leave on 30 March.”
Tamara Kayali Browne, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University and Palestinian activist, said the divestment action had been “driven by university staff who will not tolerate their money being invested in genocide”.
“Many of us refuse to have our money invested in companies that are fuelling, or complicit in, the Gaza genocide,” she said. “Since UniSuper has refused to divest from these companies, we are left with little choice but to leave and put our money in more ethical superannuation funds.”
She said the campaign was intended to send a broader message to the superannuation sector.
“A retirement built on blood money cannot possibly be enjoyed,” Browne said. “Even if those who work at UniSuper are not bothered by the fact that they are investing in a genocide, many people are and are happy to put their money elsewhere.”
UniSuper response
In response to questions posed at its annual members’ meeting last year, UniSuper said it held “small investment holdings” in companies identified in the UN database of companies involved in illegal settlements, including Elbit Systems and “a small number of Israeli banks”. The fund said it had no holdings in Israeli government bonds.
“UniSuper is satisfied that our investment holdings are in accordance with law and with the investment strategies and objectives of our investment options,” the fund stated.
“If their investments are indeed small, then it should not be much trouble to divest from them. And it is not as though a little bit of genocide is okay,” Browne said.
UniSuper was contacted for comment. A spokesperson for UniSuper provided the following response:
“Our role as a superfund is to manage the life savings of our members and to act in their best financial interests. We take a risk-based approach to identify and integrate material ESG factors into our investment decisions across our portfolios.
“As at 31 December 2025, UniSuper had small investment holdings relative to the size of our Fund in companies domiciled in Israel (according to our third-party data provider). We offer a wide range of investment options, giving members the flexibility to select options that align with their personal circumstances and preferences including options that don’t hold these investments.
“Members write to us about a number of investment-related issues. We aim to provide timely information to allow our members to make an informed investment choice. Members can access our holdings on our website as well as our How we invest your money document for information about what our options invest in.”
USS Charlotte was at periscope depth, but the periscope was down, reducing the chance of it, or the wake it creates, being seen by the enemy. It was a tense moment.
“Safe/Fire key to Fire”, ordered the captain.
The officer manning the fire control console repeated the order, “Safe/Fire key to Fire” and then advised the captain, “Safe/Fire key is to Fire”.
“Fire 4 tube at Target 1”, the captain stated in a raised and clear voice.
The officer repeated the order and hit the ‘Fire’ button. A low-level thud was both felt and heard throughout the submarine as the pressurise discharge system pushed the Mk 48 Torpedo from the tube. “Weapon running” the officer called.
As the weapon ran towards the Iranian frigate the submarine carried out a further visual set-up through the periscope to update the weapon. The updated targeting solution was transmitted down the very long and thin guidance wire connecting the torpedo to the submarine.
The update was also loaded into the second torpedo’s guidance system. “Fire 1 tube at Target 1”.
The first torpedo did not do its job. The second exploded directly under the target, lifting the hull out of the water and sending a violent shock wave through it. The structural damage was completed as the hull dropped back into the water.
The first the Iranian captain of the frigate would have known about the US submarine would have been when he felt the explosion underfoot.
Queuing
USS Charlote did not just stumble across the INS Dena. Rather, days before, it had been queued to the target by folks back in the US tracking where every surface ship in the world is located.
The submarine travelled at high speed, around 30 knots (55 km/h), for days getting from its routine Indian Ocean patrol area to the waters south of Sri Lanka. That’s one of the key advantages of a nuclear-powered submarine. They can travel long distances fast.
As it arrived in the area the submarine’s crew would have detected (found it) and tracked the contact (worked out its range, course and speed), and then classified (identified) it using a combination of acoustic and electronic emissions, and finally confirmed it was the INS Dena visually through the periscope.
“Then ‘bang’.”
AUKUS implications
The Iran War has shown that submarines are 21st century war fighting assets with ever relevant capabilities; they can collect intelligence, conduct reconnaissance, launch land attack missiles, covertly land special forces, covertly lay mines, and sink submarines and surface ships.
But the events from 28 February onwards have shown us other things.
AUKUS has been described by many as a program that facilitates close alliance and force integration with the United States.
As Donald Trump broke its written Free Trade Agreement commitments to Australia on ‘Liberation Day”, those in the Canberra bubble were blind to that breach’s relevance to the ANZUS treaty and AUKUS agreement. Surely the US’s defence treaty with Australia would be treated differently.
As the US initiated an AUKUS review, that was to see AUKUS sceptic Elbridge Colby recommend stopping the program until Trump realised the financial benefit in continuing with it and overrode Colby, those in the Canberra bubble breathed a collective sigh of relief and chose not to think it too much.
Ruptured
As Trump, to use the words of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, ‘ruptured’ the international rules-based order – carrying out a military operation in Venezuela, threatening Panama, bringing NATO to the brink by threatening to invade Greenland, attacking Iran and now threatening Cuba – those in the Canberra bubble didn’t seem to recognise the US Administration’s departure from Australian values; or perhaps likely they did but decided not to respond to it.
Only over the past month Prime Minister Albanese has responded properly to the ‘rupture’, not blindly committing Australian forces to follow the US into war, as has so often been the case (as a downpayment for US support for Australia if it needed it).
Albanese has despatched a RAAF early warning aircraft to support the air defence of the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, but we haven’t joined a US-led effort as has been the case in the past.
Sovereign thought
Albanese has it right. The US did not seek to build international support, and/or UN approval, for a strike on Iran. Instead it chose to plan in secret in cahoots with Israel and then launch a surprise attack to kill Iran’s leadership while negotiations with Iran were supposed to be ongoing.
Only when the going got tough did Washington call on allies for assistance, and under the circumstances where they rightly refused.
“Trump’s Iran War has caused harm to Australia.”
The impact of Trump’s war is causing economic harm right across the globe.
The war has also brought home Australia’s vulnerabilities. For decades distance has kept us relatively isolated from conflict, but this conflict directly affected us as world fuel supplies are disrupted and prices have sky rocketed. And the full extent of this new energy shock still lies ahead.
“Perhaps it’s the shock that we needed to have”
a chance to reflect on our need to take a more independent pathway in a world in which many past assumptions are being overturned.
US submarine shortages
Australia has long relied on the naval might of what Prime Minister Robert Menzies liked to call our “great and powerful friends” – first the British Empire and the Royal Navy; then Pax Americana upheld by the United States Navy. Now times are changing,
“and they are changing rapidly.”
The US Navy has gone from a Cold War era 1000-ship navy to a 600-ship navy during the Reagan era, to a current fleet of just 300 ships. China now has the world’s largest navy, 350 to 370 vessels, and Chinese shipyards are turning out warships much more rapidly than their counterparts in the US.
The US Navy still has a qualitative edge, but the US Navy is not what it was, and its well understood that quantity has a quality all of its own.
The US has been aiming to increase its number to 381 combat ships. 66 is the desired number for nuclear attack submarines – they have only 49 at the present moment.
Since 2011 the USN has purchased 2 submarines a year (this last year it was only one – because deliveries are so far behind).
The actual Virginia-class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built.
They can’t build enough boats to meet their own needs,
“let alone ours.”
A school of thought in the US had been that submarines transferred to the Royal Australian Navy would be available for US in time of conflict, but the Iran War has speared that assumption.
And Trump noticed this week, first expressing disappointment at the UK’s refusal to become directly involved in the Iran War and then turning his thoughts to Australia, saying “Australia too, Australia was not great. I was a little surprised by Australia”.
Trump is well known to hold a grudge. The one thing that will keep him supportive of AUKUS will be the money flowing from the Australian taxpayers to US shipyards, with no contract in place for delivery and no claw back option for the Australian contribution is the US does not deliver. That’s the sort of deal that Trump likes.
UK submarine shortages
And the United Kingdom are in a worse position than the US. The Royal Navy has one nuclear attack submarine available for operations – a fact made obvious to Australians when that sole submarine cut short a visit to Western Australia to head towards the Iran conflict zone.
Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, in an event at the Canberra Press Club, organised by Malcolm Turnbull, said it all, warning the UK had “dropped below the minimal sustainable force” for submarines and the country would be late in delivering its first SSN-AUKUS boat, a design which Australia is also hoping to start building in Adelaide in the 2030s.
“It is queued up behind the final two (Astute-class boats) and four critically important ballistic missile submarines, the Dreadnoughts, that are being built in the shipyard.”
“You cannot get the first SSN-AUKUS out until the fourth ballistic missile submarine is clear of the yard. That is the UK’s national priority.”
Defence incompetence
Listen to this story
12 min
The US war on Iran has exposed Australia’s incompetent defence and procurement. Rex Patrick reports implications for AUKUS submarine program.
A tense moment
USS Charlotte was at periscope depth, but the periscope was down, reducing the chance of it, or the wake it creates, being seen by the enemy. It was a tense moment.
“Safe/Fire key to Fire”, ordered the captain.
The officer manning the fire control console repeated the order, “Safe/Fire key to Fire” and then advised the captain, “Safe/Fire key is to Fire”.
“Fire 4 tube at Target 1”, the captain stated in a raised and clear voice.
The officer repeated the order and hit the ‘Fire’ button. A low-level thud was both felt and heard throughout the submarine as the pressurise discharge system pushed the Mk 48 Torpedo from the tube. “Weapon running” the officer called.
As the weapon ran towards the Iranian frigate the submarine carried out a further visual set-up through the periscope to update the weapon. The updated targeting solution was transmitted down the very long and thin guidance wire connecting the torpedo to the submarine.
The update was also loaded into the second torpedo’s guidance system. “Fire 1 tube at Target 1”.
The first torpedo did not do its job. The second exploded directly under the target, lifting the hull out of the water and sending a violent shock wave through it. The structural damage was completed as the hull dropped back into the water.
The first the Iranian captain of the frigate would have known about the US submarine would have been when he felt the explosion underfoot.
Sinking of INS Dena (Source: US Department of War)
Queuing
USS Charlote did not just stumble across the INS Dena. Rather, days before, it had been queued to the target by folks back in the US tracking where every surface ship in the world is located.
The submarine travelled at high speed, around 30 knots (55 km/h), for days getting from its routine Indian Ocean patrol area to the waters south of Sri Lanka. That’s one of the key advantages of a nuclear-powered submarine. They can travel long distances fast.
As it arrived in the area the submarine’s crew would have detected (found it) and tracked the contact (worked out its range, course and speed), and then classified (identified) it using a combination of acoustic and electronic emissions, and finally confirmed it was the INS Dena visually through the periscope.
Then ‘bang’.
AUKUS implications
The Iran War has shown that submarines are 21st century war fighting assets with ever relevant capabilities; they can collect intelligence, conduct reconnaissance, launch land attack missiles, covertly land special forces, covertly lay mines, and sink submarines and surface ships.
But the events from 28 February onwards have shown us other things.
AUKUS has been described by many as a program that facilitates close alliance and force integration with the United States.
As Donald Trump broke its written Free Trade Agreement commitments to Australia on ‘Liberation Day”, those in the Canberra bubble were blind to that breach’s relevance to the ANZUS treaty and AUKUS agreement. Surely the US’s defence treaty with Australia would be treated differently.
As the US initiated an AUKUS review, that was to see AUKUS sceptic Elbridge Colby recommend stopping the program until Trump realised the financial benefit in continuing with it and overrode Colby, those in the Canberra bubble breathed a collective sigh of relief and chose not to think it too much.
Ruptured
As Trump, to use the words of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, ‘ruptured’ the international rules-based order – carrying out a military operation in Venezuela, threatening Panama, bringing NATO to the brink by threatening to invade Greenland, attacking Iran and now threatening Cuba – those in the Canberra bubble didn’t seem to recognise the US Administration’s departure from Australian values; or perhaps likely they did but decided not to respond to it.
Only over the past month Prime Minister Albanese has responded properly to the ‘rupture’, not blindly committing Australian forces to follow the US into war, as has so often been the case (as a downpayment for US support for Australia if it needed it).
Albanese has despatched a RAAF early warning aircraft to support the air defence of the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, but we haven’t joined a US-led effort as has been the case in the past.
Sovereign thought
Albanese has it right. The US did not seek to build international support, and/or UN approval, for a strike on Iran. Instead it chose to plan in secret in cahoots with Israel and then launch a surprise attack to kill Iran’s leadership while negotiations with Iran were supposed to be ongoing.
Only when the going got tough did Washington call on allies for assistance, and under the circumstances where they rightly refused.
Trump’s Iran War has caused harm to Australia.
The impact of Trump’s war is causing economic harm right across the globe.
The war has also brought home Australia’s vulnerabilities. For decades distance has kept us relatively isolated from conflict, but this conflict directly affected us as world fuel supplies are disrupted and prices have sky rocketed. And the full extent of this new energy shock still lies ahead.
Perhaps it’s the shock that we needed to have ;
a chance to reflect on our need to take a more independent pathway in a world in which many past assumptions are being overturned.
Australia has long relied on the naval might of what Prime Minister Robert Menzies liked to call our “great and powerful friends” – first the British Empire and the Royal Navy; then Pax Americana upheld by the United States Navy. Now times are changing,
and they are changing rapidly.
The US Navy has gone from a Cold War era 1000-ship navy to a 600-ship navy during the Reagan era, to a current fleet of just 300 ships. China now has the world’s largest navy, 350 to 370 vessels, and Chinese shipyards are turning out warships much more rapidly than their counterparts in the US.
The US Navy still has a qualitative edge, but the US Navy is not what it was, and its well understood that quantity has a quality all of its own.
The US has been aiming to increase its number to 381 combat ships. 66 is the desired number for nuclear attack submarines – they have only 49 at the present moment.
Since 2011 the USN has purchased 2 submarines a year (this last year it was only one – because deliveries are so far behind).
The actual Virginia-class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built.
US Naval Shipbuilding Plan (Source: Congressional Budget Office).
They can’t build enough boats to meet their own needs,
let alone ours.
A school of thought in the US had been that submarines transferred to the Royal Australian Navy would be available for US in time of conflict, but the Iran War has speared that assumption.
And Trump noticed this week, first expressing disappointment at the UK’s refusal to become directly involved in the Iran War and then turning his thoughts to Australia, saying “Australia too, Australia was not great. I was a little surprised by Australia”.
Trump is well known to hold a grudge. The one thing that will keep him supportive of AUKUS will be the money flowing from the Australian taxpayers to US shipyards, with no contract in place for delivery and no claw back option for the Australian contribution is the US does not deliver. That’s the sort of deal that Trump likes.
And the United Kingdom are in a worse position than the US. The Royal Navy has one nuclear attack submarine available for operations – a fact made obvious to Australians when that sole submarine cut short a visit to Western Australia to head towards the Iran conflict zone.
Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, in an event at the Canberra Press Club, organised by Malcolm Turnbull, said it all, warning the UK had “dropped below the minimal sustainable force” for submarines and the country would be late in delivering its first SSN-AUKUS boat, a design which Australia is also hoping to start building in Adelaide in the 2030s.
“It is queued up behind the final two (Astute-class boats) and four critically important ballistic missile submarines, the Dreadnoughts, that are being built in the shipyard.”
“You cannot get the first SSN-AUKUS out until the fourth ballistic missile submarine is clear of the yard. That is the UK’s national priority.”
Defence incompetence
At the same conference, our Defence Department’s incompetence was on full display.
A Defence representative laid it out., After decades of submarine procurement failures (including the spending of $4B on French submarines we never got), it’s still “full speed ahead” in the best spirit of Captain Smith on the bridge of the Titanic.
In response to a question from Turnbull as to “what’s the plan B if we end up with no new subs” from the United States, Deputy secretary for strategy and policy, Hugh Jeffrey, answered, “You know, it’s not my job as a public servant, to talk about Plan Bs that’s the prerogative of government”.
He went on to lecture AUKUS sceptics,” If you really want to be in a position where we have no submarines then ‘turn back’. I do think, speaking as an apolitical public servant, we need to get out of this relentless politicisation of defence capabilities.”
AUKUS end
He surely did not realise what he said. He warns we’ll “be left with no submarines if the project is dumped”. The problem is that we’ll also be left with no submarines if AUKUS isn’t dumped. And we will have paid a lot for those no submarines.
After a failure on fuel security, with a failure on procuring submarines, and with the rules-based order ruptured by the very country we’re relying in respect of the program, maybe Albanese will finally cut this foolish program and move towards a more realistic, self-reliant and sustainable strategic policy.
If we don’t, we may well find our sovereignty to be hollow and that others will decide our nation’s future.
The dreams of the U.S. President, that it would all be over in days – that the Iranian people would rise against their tyrannical regime – is now a nightmare that Trump has visited upon the world.
The global economy is on the brink of disaster as oil dries up. America and Israel have further isolated themselves from world public opinion and, apart from an ever- shrinking clique of semi-vassal states like Australia, Trump appears to be alone and increasingly dangerous.
The war offers a great many lessons, but while life and history can be great teachers, there seem to be precious few pupils ready to learn those lessons. This applies equally to apologists for U.S. power, to governments of all stripes and to many of those who inhabit the Left and lay claim to Marxist credentials.
The war was never about “liberating” the Iranian people from the right-wing theocracy. It was about securing a compliant regime that would ensure the flow of oil and to make sure that the USA, as a fading imperial power, maintained global hegemony — both politically and economically.
The slogan that accompanied the wars of aggression against Iraq, that tore Libya apart and which laid waste to so much of the Middle East was simply, No Blood for Oil! The years have slipped by, and yet the same foul motivation for despoiling the globe and destroying a people remains.
Our mainstream media know this to be true, even as the “story” turns its focus to the retaliation by Iran and to the oil pressure that the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz entails. The same media focuses on potential oil shortages, and rightly so, but seems less keen to link that invasion to the fact that people are paying stupid prices for petrol and diesel.
Fewer voices can be heard that would remind the people of how the war started and who is responsible. That has become largely the responsibility of the Left — the Marxists, the campaigners against war and imperialism.
This is as it should be, but something is very wrong. Marxism is quite clear that economics is the defining factor and that politics works with and responds to economic demands. The war, then, can only be understood from an economic perspective. But is it being understood in this way? Sadly, no.
Some see it as a political gamble by a beleaguered and dangerously unhinged U.S. President. Some portray it as a means, by Israel, of destroying any potential risk to its domination of the region. Some come a step closer by recognising the strategic desire to weaken China, as it is a principal customer for Iranian oil.
Any and all of these considerations are enough to allow blame to be sheeted home to the USA and Israel, but there is a deeper, more worrying aspect to this. The United States has been and remains the single biggest military force and greatest economic power that the world has seen. It is, as the Marxist Left will say, an imperialist power. It is also a declining power.
For decades, its main preoccupation has been how to hold back the rising tide of its one great rival. China’s rise, accompanied by a global capitalist economy that has run out of ideas and resilience, ensures that wars are either finishing, beginning, or in the planning stage. A failing economic structure is driving the world to the point of no return. The war against Iran is one battle in this endless spiral into decay. The USA, as the central power in the capitalist global economy, is more than willing to destroy entire nations in its quest to keep the sinking ship afloat.
No crime is too much. The U.S. bombing the girls’ school in Iran, the Israeli destruction of oil facilities on the edge of Tehran that have led to acid rain and an unimaginable civilian health disaster, sicken all reasonable people. But those who plan such actions are not among the reasonable.
These acts need to be condemned. Governments need to show at least a modicum of decency. Our Prime Minister needs to stop slinking in the shadows and act. He needs to denounce such actions. He needs to find the courage to say “No!” and to work to secure the natural resources needed to keep Australia functioning. This is unlikely. Our political structures are such that we remain totally subservient to the demands and interests of the USA..
Those whose anger compels them to take to the streets deserve better than the Babel that has become the protest movement. The most recent action in Melbourne, which was dominated by ever more shrill denunciations of Israel, while mention of the USA and its causal responsibility for the war was at best an afterthought. Protest has merit, it is necessary and has purpose. It also needs focus, if it is to have either merit or purpose.
Protest is also about winning the hearts and minds of people. Sound and fury might be a therapy for some, but numbers count and numbers must grow, people must be educated, encouraged to talk to others, to build a movement that can go beyond noise.
Part of that building process must include the raising of collective consciousness. It must be able to show and convince people that this or that crime of the USA, of Israel, of imperialism, is not isolated, or in any way an aberrant thing, but is a symptom of a deeper, structural crisis. It is not enough for the ideologues to make demands that cannot be achieved. The protest movement, the anti-war movement, should aim at providing a vehicle, a voice for those who want something better than news screens full of war stories and a Federal Government pathetically marching to the fifes and drums of a fading U.S. empire.
European Union leaders have been prepared to stand back a little; to say that the war is not their war. It is hard to imagine an Australian government being daring enough to question anything that comes from Washington. As the sun sinks on U.S. hegemony, Australia seems ready to go down with the American ship.
After all, this is a man with the capacity to blunder into World War 3 without having any idea what he’s doing.
The complete absence of any plan or exit strategy in the escalating conflict with Iran demonstrates that even the most apocalyptic of unforeseen consequences cannot be ruled out
Trump’s Iran war raises fears of global conflict — while allies stay silent and diplomacy collapses, writes Mark Beeson.
U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is the most dangerous man in the world. Why are we supporting him?
Many people were concerned about what a second Trump presidency might look like, but it’s uncontroversial to claim that it’s much worse than even the gloomiest pessimists feared.
It has been plain for a long time that Trump has little regard for the truth and is determined to silence independent media. But the one thing his supporters and the world in general might have hoped for was that he wouldn’t have gone back on his promise to not start unnecessary, ill-conceived wars, especially in the Middle East.
And yet, not only has Trump launched an illegal war with Iran, which has already resulted in the deaths of thousands, including innocent schoolgirls, but he is also displaying a psychopathic delight in using America’s overwhelming military might ‘just for fun’.
Given that the assault on Iran is being conducted with – or even on behalf of – Israel there is a breathtaking irony in the fact that Trump is displaying the same sort of indifference to human suffering that allowed individual Nazis to take part in the ‘final solution’ and the murder of six million Jews.
It is, of course, entirely possible that Trump doesn’t really know what’s going on given his increasingly obvious cognitive decline, but he has never exhibited much human empathy and is a compulsive liar and confabulator. These qualities arguably made him unfit to be a property developer, much less the most powerful man on Earth.
Given his famously child-like need for attention and adulation, which his courtiers and cronies are only too willing to provide, there is absolutely no chance of him changing. On the contrary, his belief that God is proud of him ought to alarm ought to alarm friend and foe alike.
After all, this is a man with the capacity to blunder into World War 3 without having any idea what he’s doing. The complete absence of any plan or exit strategy in the escalating conflict with Iran demonstrates that even the most apocalyptic of unforeseen consequences cannot be ruled out.
While an international economic crisis may not be the worst thing that could happen, for those of us fortunate enough to live in peaceful Australia it really ought to demonstrate that Trump is a threat to supposed friends and allies, as well as the innocent Iranians he promised to help.
If nothing else, Trump’s behaviour should make the danger and folly of relying on someone quite so delusional and self-obsessed clear to even our most unthinking policymakers. Trump will be satisfied with nothing less than the complete support and cooperation of allies, no matter how misguided or inhuman his policies may be.
Given the decades of uncritical fealty Australia’s leaders have displayed to the United States, it is no surprise that there has generally been an uncomfortable silence about ‘our’ response to the latest American-led fiasco.
‘We (sic) support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.’
It’s worth remembering that Iran was attacked while trying to negotiate a new agreement to replace the one Trump tore up, a tactic that may have allowed the U.S. to decapitate Iran’s leadership but won’t making resolving the conflict any easier. Truth, diplomacy and trustworthiness are clearly for losers. Might clearly does make right in Trump-world. This reality may help to explain why the Albanese government is keeping its collective head down.
Other leaders have not been quite so supine and gutless, however. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after fruitless attempts at ingratiating himself with Trump, unambiguously stated that the “government will not participate in this war”. Moreover, Merz pointed out that Trump’s war had nothing to do with NATO, which was a defensive alliance, not one designed for wars of aggression.
Trump responded in his usual fashion with threats and bluster, suggesting a failure to support his ill-conceived war would be ‘very bad’ for NATO. Although we have learned not expect truth or consistency when dealing with Trump, suggesting that the foundation of the Western alliance may be in jeopardy is hardly a minor threat. Trump’s great friend Vladimir Putin must be delighted.
If our leaders are too unimaginative and cowardly to speak up in defence of international law, or to criticise unilateralism and the intensification of great power politics, civil society must do what it can. The absence of the sort of activism and protests that characterised opposition to the equally ill-conceived and pointless Vietnam War is disappointing and revealing, however. Perhaps it takes 500 actual combat deaths and the prospect of being called-up to bring home the reality of war to Australians.
Or perhaps rising interest rates, the cost of filling up a monstrous SUV, or re-routing your European holiday might do the trick. Either way, it’s reassuring to know that President Trump thinks the war with Iran is going so well that he gives if 15 out of 10. Nothing for our leaders to worry about after all.
It seems incongruous that with a fleet of nine nuclear powered submarines the United Kingdom has only one operational vessel from the fleet which has been sent to Garden Island in Western Australia instead of using it for protective deployment around the British Isles
That submarine being HMS Anson still requires some minor maintenance work for its continued operations which is being undertaken at Garden Island
It appears that the real reason for Anson being sent to Australia is for the United Kingdom to demonstrate some capacity in being able to be an active participant in the AUKUS agreement but this may be a rather hopeless exercise in view of the strained relationship with the United States over the Iran war
The lack of naval capacity of the United Kingdom is best demonstrated by the fact that the destroyer HMS Dragon proposed to be send to Cyprus for protection of its naval 1 of 2 base on the island cannot be put to sea due to the incapacity of undertaking the necessary dockyard work for it seagoing status
All of this should be borne in mind when planning for the future development of the AUKUS proposals
It is therefore beyond the wildest dreams to contemplate
the design and subsequent construction of the SSN- AUKUS submarine
How will the Australian government react to this situation when AUKUS is a major part of its defence strategy?
Antinuclear 