The Australian Defence Force is on the brink of a transformative shift in its airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities with the imminent introduction into service of the MQ-4C Triton, an unarmed, high-altitude and long-endurance uncrewed aerial system (UAS).

Use of the Triton will bring far more capability than is generally appreciated, even by close observers of defence policy.

The advanced aircraft, developed by US Navy and Northrop Grumman and based on the company’s RQ-4 Global Hawk, is a testament to the power of modern technology and its potential to revolutionise maritime surveillance operations. It goes a long way, sees far and stays on station a long time; it also networks to tell the rest of the force what it finds.

The Triton’s journey to Australia began in 1999, under Joint Project 2062, with the ADF experimenting with the earliest versions of the Global Hawk. The Triton’s capabilities include an ability to reach altitudes of 15 kilometres (50,000ft), stay aloft for 24 hours, provide real-time data and intelligence and sweep the ocean surface within 250 nautical miles (about 450km) of the aircraft. As a result, one Triton on one flight can surveil more than one million square nautical miles (3.4 million square kilometres)—an area larger than Western Australia.

One task, for example, could be prolonged monitoring of an archipelagic choke point to impose deterrence-by-detection mission.

These characteristics set it apart from any other aircraft on the market and meet the requirements set forth in the Defence Strategic Review for a high level of situational awareness in the Indo-Pacific. The value of the Triton’s capabilities are obvious when one considers the size of Australia’s vast maritime domain, which spans three oceans.

The Australian government has said it will buy four Tritons. In Australia’s primary area of military interest, the US Navy will fly its Tritons from Guam and California, while the US Air Force, Republic of Korea Air Force and Japanese Air Self-Defense Force operate the RQ-4 Global Hawk.

The Triton’s ability to respond quickly to events and maintain itself on station for long periods makes it superior to the new wave of systems that are small, smart and many. But such systems can complement Tritons, improving the capabilities of both simultaneously.

The Triton also enables new approaches to teaming with other systems. The aircraft allows for space-based ISR, including small satellites, to join and then leave the team as they pass through the area of interest on their low-earth orbits.

In peacetime, the Triton’s capabilities can be leveraged for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. For instance, in the event of a tsunami like the 2004 Boxing Day disaster, a Triton could map the coastal destruction zones of large areas of affected countries in a single sortie, providing vital data for emergency response efforts.

The Triton’s remote operation means aircrew won’t need to deploy with their aircraft, providing home location stability for those choosing a career in Triton operations. Moreover, the highly automated operator interface opens the door to Reserve aircrew, mobility-restricted personnel and even pregnant aircrew, who can operate the system right up to their maternity leave.

Beyond its immediate role, the Triton also serves as a catalyst for the ADF’s broader capabilities in ISR and electromagnetic warfare (ISREW). It is the first platform to send high-bandwidth data across all security domains, up through the satellites and down directly to land and maritime component commanders. Bringing that capability and others, the program is one of a suite of projects creating a framework for follow-on systems. An overlap with other intelligence, communications and networking projects is setting the stage for a more capable, integrated and interoperable ADF.

Tritons will complement the ADF’s crewed P-8A Poseidon’s as a family of systems, undertaking enhanced ISREW tasks. This approach leverages the strengths of both crewed and uncrewed systems, providing a more robust and versatile ISREW capability.

The Triton’s introduction also paves the way for the integration of more advanced uncrewed aircraft by setting a certification precedent. This forward-thinking approach positions the ADF as a leader in military technology, ensuring it can remain at the forefront of military innovation.

The Triton provides benefits to the Australian economy and create jobs at RAAF Bases Tindal and Edinburgh in support of Defence’s industry goals. The cooperative program with the US Navy and the collaboration with Northrop Grumman strengthens Australia’s strategic alliances, enhancing its position on the global stage.

Keirin Joyce is a senior defence analyst at ASPI.

Firsts published in ASPI Strategist on 3 October 2024.

Featured image: Arrival of Royal Australian Air Force MQ-4C Triton Remotely Piloted Aircraft System at RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory. June 16, 2024. Credit: ADF

If one is trying to navigate the complexities of what the current Australian government is really trying to do and find a way to assess the ADF effects which result from such an effort, I would argue that one would focus on the ability to deliver strike across the areas of strategic and tactical interest to Australia and its core allies.

It is about effects and real delivery of an impact, not simply a focus on future platforms which are not going to be here any time soon.

So how to navigate through the blizzard of reports, statements and assertions by the government?

Let me start by simply citing the government’s recent release indeed on their approach to strike.

According to a government press release:

Long-range strike capabilities and advanced targeting systems will receive $28 billion to $35 billion in the coming decade under the 2024 Integrated Investment Program.

The largest portion, $12 billion to $15 billion, will go to bolstering Navy’s sea-based strike capability, including the acquisition of Tomahawk cruise missiles.

These will arm Hobart-class destroyers, Hunter-class frigates and, potentially, Virginia-class submarines, allowing them to hold targets at risk at longer ranges. 

The funding covers Evolved Sea Sparrow Block II, SM-2 and SM-6 missiles to intercept airborne threats, along with continued integration of the Naval Strike Missile for use against heavily protected targets.

RAAF’s air-launched strike capability also received investment for the F/A-18F Super Hornet, P-8A Poseidon and F-35A Lightning II to be equipped with more advanced weapons.

Funding for development of hypersonic missiles could give Super Hornets the ability to attack targets at longer ranges.

Army’s acquisition of land-based long-range fires are also covered in the investment program.

This includes accelerated and expanded acquisition of 42 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems for Army’s first long-range fires regiment.

These will fire the Precision Strike Missile that can engage potential adversaries more than 500km away. 

Funding also covers Army’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System munitions, along with new radars to extend sensor and command and control networks.

But how to assess how these various programs will integrate across a kill web to deliver the kind of effects which will be credible to an adversary?

It is a question of how targeting is done, who the data for targeting can be passed to and the range of the weapon carried on a fixed or moving platform and location and with what effects when considered across the allied strike enterprise.

None of this is resolved only by funding considerations, and, for example, their needs to be a realistic public discussion of how new SSNs actually fit into the strike enterprise, for otherwise their is simply cacophony not coherence in the strike enterprise.

And any use of TLAMs by Australia in the context of a Pacific conflict where three adversarial nuclear powers are operating needs to be credibly sorted out if one is framing deterrence by denial as the core focus of Australian defence.

Malcolm Davis of ASPI raised some helpful insights in to how to interpret the government and its framing of the strike enterprise.

In his April 24, 2024 piece on “impactful projection constrained,” he highlighted the following:

Strike capability featured in the 2024 update of Australia’s Integrated Investment Plan (IIP), the equipment spending program that accompanied the National Defence Strategy (NDS) published on 17 April. But the strike capability acquisitions were all re-announcements—or, to take a positive view, confirmations. 

They included acquisition by the navy of more than 200 Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles, to be deployed on Hobart-class destroyers, Virginia-class submarines and maybe Hunter-class frigates. Integration of the Naval Strike Missile on surface combatants was in there, too. 

The army’s long-range fires mission, highlighted in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR), is centered on acquisition of 47 HIMARS launcher vehicles that can fire various long-range guided munitions, including PRsM ballistic missiles, at land and maritime targets. PRsMs have a range of 500km but could eventually reach beyond 1000km. If forward host nation support is available in a crisis, then the littoral capability for the army will be crucial in supporting deterrence by denial with these land-based long-range fires—but we cannot assume availability of such support. With that uncertainty in mind, establishing agreements to ensure forward host nation support for the army should be a high priority for defence diplomacy, as noted in the NDS, in coming years. 

Air force capabilities include a previously announced acquisition of AGM-158C LRASM anti-ship missiles to be carried on F/A-18Fs, P-8As and eventually F-35As, as well as AGM-158B JASSM-ER air-to-ground missiles. Another item is integration of the Kongsberg Joint Strike Missile on the F-35A. E/A-18G Growlers will get 63 AGM-88E AARGM-ER missiles for attacking radars. 

What is not really clear is how this fits into a strategic mosaic whereby a kill web enabled force can deliver sustained strike to provide for integrated operations in Australia’s primary area of strategic interest which in my view is out to their first island chain.

This is important not just for the ADF and Australia but to credibly provide any ability to provide a sanctuary for allied forces to be able to leverage Australia’s evolving support structure.

Davis went on in his article to argue for a focus on longer range strike going forward. He argued: “Impactful projection as part of deterrence by denial is the right choice—but we need to reach farther to deter more effectively. A failure to extend our reach could see deterrence by denial fall short in a real crisis.”

But what remains a challenge is to build a force that would be meaningful for longer range strike which can work with allies whose interests both coincide and differ from Australia’s. What would South Korea, Japan, the United States and Australia agree on in terms of coordinated strike in a confrontation with China with North Korea and Russia almost certainly involved?

Featured Photo credited to the Australian Department of Defence and this is their caption to the photo (contained within the press release issued above):

Hobart-class destroyer HMAS Hobart fires an SM-2 standard missile. The Integrated Investment Program will direct funding to missiles that allow ships to hold targets at risk at longer ranges. Photo: Leading Seaman Thomas Sawtell

The release of the 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) in April revealed a dividing line within Australia’s strategic and defence community. The line is between Defence and the ADF, which have a new way of thinking about strategy, and those who remain attached to an old way of thinking from the early post–Cold War years.

Good strategy has shifted away from trying to align ends and means; now it’s about problem solving.

At the heart of everything the NDS does is the need to solve a small number of specific problems. Those problems, identified through the net assessment process recommended by the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR), define what the ADF is supposed to do, what equipment it should have and how it should be organised. They’re the basis on which we should judge whether and when it’s fit for purpose.

Since the early 2000s, Australian strategy has tried to grapple with a strategic environment that first slowly, then rapidly, went badly astray. Major documents in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2013, 2016 and 2020 all tried to describe what was going on and to identify Australian principles and interests. Where possible, they also listed the kinds of equipment the ADF sought and the budget it would be provided.

Although the approach focusing on ends, ways and means reflected thinking about ‘good strategy’ by many in the US and Britain and by leading scholars around the world, its results were often anything but. As Lawrence Freedman observes in The New Makers of Modern Strategy, strategy in the post-Cold War era became a sort of higher calling,producing endless aspirational statements of goals, principles and values. However, it was rarely clear how the opening essays about the world directly led to the specific dollars quoted or capability acquired.

During the Post-Cold War era governments wanted options, using the ADF as a tool to tackle everything from rebuilding stability and state capacity in the Pacific to counterterrorism operations in the Middle East, chasing illegal fishers in the Antarctic and mopping up after floods in Queensland. National commentary likewise often resembled a form of retail therapy, urging the ADF to buy whatever was new and popular. Ukraine is using FPV drones? We must have more of that. Israel used the F-35 effectively? Let’s insist on another squadron.

The 2023 DSR called time on these poorly structured ways of thinking.

A better approach, which harks back to Cold War strategists such as George Kennan and Andrew Marshall, is beginning to replace the old one in Australian defence processes. We don’t need our strategic documents to tell us that we want peace and prosperity. We don’t need them to motivate us to work with allies or to defend democracy. We need strategy because the world confronts us with serious, complex problems, and strategy is one of the best tools we have for solving those problems.

Where the old way of thinking about strategy tried to be comprehensive and declaratory, the new approach is specific and pragmatic. It realises that we can’t solve all of the world’s problems, but that some problems are more important than others. Some problems, when properly addressed, allow us to make progress elsewhere. And through that steady process—fixing, hardening, reaffirming and aligning—we can directly improve our security and wellbeing.

The government demanded meaningful solutions from the ADF for the handful of problems at the core of the 2024 NDS. The specific list is very tightly classified, although we can probably guess some of the government’s concerns. The ADF is tasked with becoming a focused force designed in its policy frameworks and equipment acquisitions to directly solve these problems. Doing so will help us to manage the threat of China’s aggression, respond to potential crises in our region and mitigate some of the costs of a regional conflict.

‘Strategy as problem solving’ shifts the emphasis from declaring our principles to diagnosing our problems. The key work of Australian strategists in the years to come will be twofold: to identify which problems are most important, based on their significance, the likelihood of harm and how we might resolve them; and to interrogate their dynamics, understanding why they’re so hard and where leverage points may be found to seek better patterns of order.

The post-Cold War era view that strategy was about asserting principles and applyingresources was never very effective and has badly failed us in today’s era of great-power competition and disruption. Through the 2023 DSR and the 2024 NDS, Australia has begun to shift to a better way of thinking about strategy. Only by recognising strategy as problem solving can the full strengths and challenges of Australia’s new approach to security be properly understood.

Andrew Carr is a senior lecturer in the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

Image of defence policy documents: ASPI.

Itt was published by ASPI on May 1, 2024.