How resilient is Australia should disaster or war disrupt our sea lanes? A war game has revealed the challenge we could face ⬇️
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is reporting on Exercise Catalyst, a scenario based war game the National Oil Supplies Emergency Committee conducted in 2019. Even with subsequent action taken to build fuel reserves, Australia still remains vulnerable in this area:
“Australia is almost entirely reliant on imported diesel to transport food and medicine around the country but, should there be a market failure, the federal government’s Australian Petroleum Statistics state it has just 22 days’ worth in reserve.”
Riding through a disaster or short conflict by drawing down reserves is one thing, but a larger conflict in the Indo Pacific won’t be resolved in months. Large scale combat operations run for years as we are seeing in Ukraine right now. This report also highlights the importance of conducting war games that involve more than just military personnel and select government officials.
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) highlighted this same problem in the United States:
“There is no rigorous, open-source analysis of the operational dynamics and outcomes of an invasion despite its critical nature. Previous unclassified analyses either focus on one aspect of an invasion, are not rigorously structured, or do not focus on military operations. Classified wargames are not transparent to the public. Without a suitable analysis, public debate will remain unanchored.”
The war game Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) ran focused on a Taiwan invasion scenario and the analysis revealed substantial deficiencies in the US Defence Industrial base.
It’d be great to see Australian Strategic Policy Institute or another think tank commissioned to run a similar unclassified war game or scenario planning activity – there is so much to be gained. Defence and Government don’t know what they don’t know about Industry. How can we bring the public along with inevitable increases in spending on Defence, National Security and Resilience with appropriate transparency?