News Analysis: Rumoured delay in Australia's Defence White Paper welcome for significant defence force restructure

Defence analysts have heralded a rumoured further delay in the release of Australia's Defence White Paper, originally slated for the end of 2015, which sets out the guidelines for Australia's future capability.

Australia's forces however are undergoing a force structure review that is seeing a wholesale replacement of the Navy's fleet, key acquisitions for its Air Force and significant investment in the Army's future capabilities.

The restructure is forming part of the Defence White Paper that was to be released before the end of 2015 following a number of delays.

"Several people have indicated to me that we're now looking at 2016," Jai Galliot, defence analyst from the University of New South Wales told Xinhua on Tuesday.

Under the paper's development, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was rumoured to have made changes to the document to suit his personal political interests rather than the needs of the ADF, whose budget currently stands at 31.9 billion Australian dollars (22.48 billion U.S. dollars) for the 2015-16 fiscal year.

Galliot welcomed the news which now potentially allows a more reasoned approach in assessing the ADF's future needs after it was assumed current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would read over the document and release it after some "tweaks" for his personal touch.

"Especially when you're talking about billion dollar acquisitions," Galliot said.

"The life span of the things we're looking at acquiring are 20-25 years... they're not decisions that can be made lightly to suit someone's political interests."

Turnbull replaced Abbott to become the Australian prime minister in September.

In terms of equipment and capability over the foreseeable future, Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) told Xinhua the nation's Air Force has the most set plans over the next 10 to 15 years as most of the key acquisitions have been made.

"That's a mixture of European and American equipment for the most part," Jennings said.

Current publicly known acquisitions include the 72 of the F-35A Lightning II, replacing the aging F/A-18 Hornets currently used in joint U.S. operations in Iraq and Syria, as well as well as 47 single helicopter type Multi-Role Helicopter (MHR90) for use across all ADF branches.

Jennings, a former deputy secretary for strategy in Australia's Department of Defence, said the acquisitions for Australia's army are less concrete, giving more scope for change, as they don't have the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment in single platforms.

"The defence joke is that the Army equips the man versus the Navy and Air Force man the equipment. There's a sort of an essential truth to that," Jennings said.

Australian officials are undergoing a 19 billion Australian dollar (13.39 billion U.S. dollar) program to replace the Army's vehicles, including armoured movers and soft skin, or logistics, transports.

Galliot said Australia's army is already leading the other branches in their modernization program and forward thinking with plans for automation and robotization.

"The question for Army [though] is how do they... become more deployable, network linked and integrated... into the existing maritime strategy," Galliot said.

Previous defence white papers have been preparing Australia's forces for more high intensity and conventional conflicts with a larger expeditionary force capability, seeing the largest investment and "muscle movements" in Australia's Navy as it undergoes a wholesale fleet replacement.

This includes potentially 12 new submarines currently under a tender process; new air-warfare destroyers to replace the ANZAC class frigates, two new landing dock helicopter amphibious assault ships and the replacement of smaller vessels that aid in patrolling Australia's maritime boundaries.

"Decisions government makes in the next three years or so will basically completely redesign the Navy," Jennings said.

Australia's submarine development has been a highly political process, played out extensively in the local media after Abbott originally announced Japan was to build the nation's replacement to the locally built Collins class sub.

"Well its all politics in the sense that all governments make these decisions and that doesn't mean they're bad decisions," Jennings said.

"They have to take account industry issues like buying offshore vs onshore which is one of the big debates around the submarines and the frigates."

The backlash by both elected officials, the public, critical political polling and manoeuvring in the defence industrial state of South Australia saw Abbott backtrack and announce a competitive tender.

Japanese, German and French submarine builders are in the process of submitting their tenders, and it is believed all three have agreed to a local build or a combination of offshore and local construction.

Jennings said Australia will be able to make a success of all three bids, which have been submitted by the countries with the best capacity to build conventional powered submarines, as long as they are assessed against the country's operational and strategic needs.

"The Americans are out of it because they only produce nuclear submarines these days so we couldn't go to them," Jennings said, noting Australia's opposition to nuclear power.

However Galliot said Australia shouldn't be investing too heavily in terms of big purchase assets and "crippling ourselves so that we then have no resources left to prepare for the future."

Instead Galliot suggests Australia should purchase gap-filling systems while investing heavily in the unmanned technology space.

"We need to be looking at technologies that we might call optionally manned, where [they] can be operated in a limited manned capacity or we can have soldiers provide oversight," Galliot said, noting the United States --Australia's closest military ally -- is currently 15 to 30 years ahead in technological terms.

Australia will also need familiarity with the engineering and technical systems from the design countries.

"It is genuinely fascinating stuff when you start to dig in to the complexities of how you buy these things," Jennings said. Endit