Defending Australia in the digital age: toward full spectrum defence

Abstract

Australian defence strategy is disjointed and incomplete. Some would say that it is non-existent. Either way, this paper argues that Australia’s underwhelming approach to defence is the product of a crippling geographically focused strategic dichotomy, with the armed forces historically having been structured to venture afar as a small part of a large coalition force or, alternatively, to combat small regional threats across land, sea, and air. However, it is argued that Australia can no longer afford to drift between these two settings and must take measures to define a holistic “full spectrum defence” strategy and develop capability to fight effectively and independently across all domains of the twenty-first century-battlespace: land, sea, air, space, and the cyber realm.

Keywords:

• Drones
• cyber
• Australia
• strategy
• spectrum

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Defence [grant number RG133846].

Notes on contributor

Jai Galliott is a research fellow in Indo-Pacific Defence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He served briefly in the Royal Australian Navy and is now concerned with defence strategy, future warfare and the ethics of emerging technologies. He has advised a number of government and non-government organisations on matters pertaining to future warfare, most recently the Australian Department of Defence and the United Nations. His recent books include: Military Robots: Mapping the Moral Landscape (2015); Super Soldiers: The Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (2015); Commercial Space Exploration: The Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (2015); and Ethics and the Future of Spying: Technology, National Security and Intelligence Collection (2016).