Since World War II, there has not been a time Australia, the Indo-Pacific, and the free world has been at more risk than we are now as China is engaged in the most significant and most rapid expansion of military power in “peacetime” history, with the world’s largest navy, army, and a formidable missile and air force.
Understandably the focus on the AUKUS partnership has been all about Australia acquiring a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. However, this is but just one aspect of the collaboration and certainly not a capability that will be operational any time soon.
The immediate benefit AUKUS provides comes from collaborative military technology development across cyber domains, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and undersea warfare capabilities.
Instead of firing down to the ground, this is lightning that travels upwards to the upper atmosphere.
Sprites are almost impossible to detect and could be very damaging to satellites, missiles, aircraft, communications, or anything travelling via the upper atmosphere, including SpaceX or other spacecraft.
The Australian industry will share and collaborate with both the UK and the U.S. (and possibly other allies) on this and many more technologies, which is essential given that China has made significant, long-term investments in weapons designed to jam or destroy satellites as they seek to narrow the gap in space technology with western nations.
This means that the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation of 31 satellites is at significant risk, with military planners broadly agreeing that GPS will be one of the first targets in any conflict.
GPS (and similar positioning systems) enables positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) accurately, determining a location and orientation, current and desired position, and accurate and precise time.
It has become an integral part of everyday life and business. To name just a few, it is relied upon by our pilots, farmers, delivery drivers, financial institutions, fishermen, emergency services, and of course, militaries.
If the GPS system is destroyed or disabled, both civilian and military activities will be severely disrupted.
Close is developing precision measurement of gravity, gravity gradients, and magnetic scalar gradients with ultra-cold atoms for quantum augmented inertial navigation.
The aim is to provide our militaries, industry, and civilian societies with technologies that can provide effective PNT capability in GPS-denied environments. This could mean navigation (and targeting) for high dynamic platforms like missiles, ships, vehicles, or soldiers.
It will also be something that Australia could share with the UK and U.S., which would assist our civilian economies to continue to operate with the least amount of disruption and enable national efforts to fight and win any conflict.
So working in partnership with U.S. and UK defence innovation communities will definitely enable greater outcomes for our countries collaboratively than what is possible separately.
Further, the access to data sets and research from different expertise across various disciplines will provide our three nations defence capability industry with the jump-start it needs to overcome the usual slow and tiring process, that is, if the United States can overcome its mandated bureaucratic protections.
ITAR essentially regulates the information and material pertaining to defence and military-related technologies, allowing them only to be shared with U.S. citizens unless authorization from the Department of State is received or a special exemption is used.
If permission is not received then, individuals and organizations can face heavy fines if they share or provide access to ITAR-protected defence articles, services or technical data.
So, while there has been no lack of American interest, and indeed direct project sponsorship with Australian defence innovation unless ITAR is changed, the true collaboration will continue to be slow and overly bureaucratic.