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AUKUS
ANDERS CORR is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. He is an expert in political science and government. Anders Corr
New Hypersonic Missile Versus China
Australian, UK, US ally on hypersonic and electronic warfare development
ukus, the defense partnership of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, is expanding from its original focus on nuclear submarine propulsion technology to cooperation on hypersonic and electronic warfare capabilities.
The trilateral cooperation also will improve counter-hypersonics, information sharing, and defense innovation.
According to British officials cited in The Times of London, “hiding key targets” and “laser weapons that could disrupt a missile’s flight path” could be developed as anti-hypersonic weapons.
AUKUS released a statement and fact sheet on April 5, stressing that its defense cooperation will strengthen the world’s nuclear and other weapons nonproliferation agreements.
The “nuclear” in AUKUS is for submarine propulsion, not weapons.
AUKUS’s defense cooperation now will include the following: undersea drones planned for 2023; quantum technologies for “positioning, navigation, and timing”; artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy that improve “the speed and precision of decision-making processes ... in contested environments”; advanced cyber, “including protecting critical communications and operations systems”; and innovation, including the integration of commercial technologies for military use.
On nuclear submarines, AUKUS seeks to transfer the technology and knowledge necessary for Australia to maintain and build these vehicles indefinitely through advanced science and technology education. This will prepare an Australian workforce with nuclear science and engineering skills “to build, operate, and sustain a conventionally-armed nuclear-powered submarine capability.”
Australia will add an eastern submarine base and nuclear submarine construction yard in South Australia to complement its already-existing western submarine base.
Australians are already getting hands-on planning, training, and access to nuclear submarine technology, including a Land-class submarine tender visit to Brisbane and Sydney: the USS Frank Cable, designed to support Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack submarines with weapons, repairs, and provisioning.
AUKUS’s joint steering group teams are traveling to Australia to assist with planning for the submarines. They are base-lining Australia’s “nuclear stewardship, infrastructure, workforce, and industrial capabilities and requirements.”
While AUKUS was initially conceived to deter China’s increasing belligerence in Asia, the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes it essential for the defense of Europe, too. The United Kingdom is leading Europe in providing weapons to the Ukrainian military, for example, and so must improve its defenses against Russia’s hypersonic missiles.
For Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the deepening AUKUS coordination raised questions from the press about whether Australia would join in a fight against China if Beijing decided to invade Taiwan.
Russia and China are currently ahead in developing hypersonic missiles, with China testing hundreds of such missiles since 2014, and Russia testing that started in 2018. Russia was the first to deploy hypersonics in combat, against Ukraine.
China recently conducted a successful test of a hypersonic missile that flew 25,000 miles to circumnavigate the globe and fired a projectile from the missile once it arrived over the South China Sea. This seemingly insuperable technical feat surprised Pentagon officials who thought it wasn’t yet possible.
The three most recent U.S. flight tests of hypersonic missiles have all failed.
Unfortunately, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are punching above their countries’ weight because they can ignore voter preferences for social spending and coerce businesses and government agencies to steal and provide dual-use technology to their defense industries. Their leadership thrives on an aggressively militaristic approach to politics that, while alien to democracies, is nevertheless ascribed by their propaganda departments to all three AUKUS allies.
Other countries, seeing the strength, cohesion, and technological benefits of AUKUS, will surely seek to join. Loyal countries solidly in support of democratic values, such as Japan, should be allowed to do so.
The latest AUKUS statement holds hope for such expansion, noting, “As we mature trilateral lines of effort within these and other critical defense and security capabilities, we will seek to engage allies and close partners as appropriate.”
Through strengthening AUKUS and other democratic defense alliances, perhaps to include an Asian version of the NATO alliance, Russia and China can be contained, or better yet, rolled back from their territorial conquests in Ukraine, Georgia, and the South China Sea.
