Expanding alliance: ANZUS cooperation and Asia–Pacific security

Is an alliance conceived as a bulwark against a resurgence of Japanese militarism and which cut its military and intelligence teeth in the Cold War is still relevant to today’s strategic concerns? Overview The alliance between Australia and the US, underpinned by the formal ANZUS Treaty of 1951, continues to be a central part of Australian defence and security thinking and an instrument of American policy in the Asia–Pacific. How is it that an alliance conceived as a bulwark against a resurgence of Japanese militarism and which cut its military and intelligence teeth in the Cold War is still relevant to today’s strategic concerns? The answer is partly—and importantly—that the core values of the ANZUS members are strongly aligned, and successive Australian governments and American presidential administrations have seen great value in working with like-minded partners to ensure Asia–Pacific security. Far from becoming a historical curiosity, today it’s not just relevant, but of greater importance than has been the case in the past few decades. To explore new ideas on how to strengthen the US–Australia alliance, ASPI conducted a high-level strategic dialogue in Honolulu in July this year. Discussions canvassed the future strategic environment; the forthcoming Australian Defence White Paper; budget, sovereignty and expectation risks; and cooperation in the maritime, land, air, cyber, space and intelligence domains. A key purpose of the Honolulu dialogue was to help ASPI develop policy recommendations on the alliance relationship for government. This report is the product of those discussions

Modelling ultraviolet threats

Electro-optically (EO) guided surface to air missiles (SAM) have developed to use Ultraviolet (UV) wavebands supplementary to the more common Infrared (IR) wavebands. Missiles such as the US Stinger have been around for some time but are not considered a proliferation risk. The Chinese FN-16 and Russian SA-29 (Verba) are considered a much higher proliferation risk. As a result, models of the missile seekers must be developed to understand the characteristics of the seeker and the potential performance enhancement that are included. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the steps that have been taken to characterise and model these missiles. It begins by outlining some of the characteristics of the threats, the key elements of a UV scene, the potential choice of waveband for a detector, the initial modelling work to represent the UV detector of the missile and presents initial results. The modelling shows that the UV detection range of a typical aircraft is dependent on both the size of the aircraft and its reflectivity. However, the strength of this correlation is less than expected. As a result, further work is required to model more seeker types and to investigate what is causing the weak correlations found in these initial investigations. In addition, there needs to be further study of the sensitivities of the model to other variables, such as the modelled detectivity of the detector and the signal to noise ratio assumed. Overall, the outcome of this work will be to provide specifications for aircraft size and reflectivity that limit the effectiveness of the UV channels

Full spectrum defence: re-thinking the fundamentals of Australian defence strategy

This report argues that successive Australian governments have failed to define an effective national defence strategy. Executive summary Australia’s inability to clearly and succinctly define its defence strategy is a perennial failing that will have serious policy and operational consequences if not addressed. Australia’s recent defence white papers are part of the problem: they lack coherence, their messaging is poor, and many of their underlying assumptions and planning practices are questionable. The forthcoming defence white paper provides the first real opportunity for the Abbott government to carry out a much-needed reset of Australia’s defence and military strategies. In place of a maritime strategy, Australia needs to adopt a “full spectrum” approach to defence that can provide protection against military threats from outer space and cyber space, as well as the conventional domains of land, sea and air. Full spectrum defence must be underpinned by deeper and broader regional defence partnerships and by a risk assessment process that encourages critical thinking about strategy and the future capabilities of the Australian Defence Force

Considering a war with Iran

The paper is a strategic studies analyis of the war-fronts, weapon systems and political-military tactics of a U.S.-Iranian war, including the U.S. use of nuclear weapons

Warfighting for cyber deterrence: a strategic and moral imperative

Theories of cyber deterrence are developing rapidly. However, the literature is missing an important ingredient—warfighting for deterrence. This controversial idea, most commonly associated with nuclear strategy during the later stages of the Cold War, affords a number of advantages. It provides enhanced credibility for deterrence, offers means to deal with deterrence failure (including intrawar deterrence and damage limitation), improves compliance with the requirements of just war and ultimately ensures that strategy continues to function in the post-deterrence environment. This paper assesses whether a warfighting for deterrence approach is suitable for the cyber domain. In doing so, it challenges the notion that warfighting concepts are unsuitable for operations in cyberspace. To do this, the work constructs a conceptual framework that is then applied to cyber deterrence. It is found that all of the advantages of taking a warfighting stance apply to cyber operations. The paper concludes by constructing a warfighting model for cyber deterrence. This model includes passive and active defences and cross-domain offensive capabilities. The central message of the paper is that a theory of victory (strategy) must guide the development of cyber deterrence

Missile Longitudinal Dynamics Control Design Using Pole Placement and LQR Methods

In high-maneuvering missile systems, with severe restrictions on actuator energy requirements, it is desirable to achieve the required performance with least actuation effort. Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) has been in literature for long and has proven it’s mettle as an optimal controller in many benign aerospace applications and industrial applications where the response times of the plant, in most cases, are seen to be greater than 10 seconds. It can be observed in the literature that LQR control methodology has not been explored enough in the tactical missile applications where requirement of very fast airframe response times are desired, typically of the order of milliseconds. In the present research, the applicability of LQR method for one such agile missile control has been critically explored. In the present research work, longitudinal dynamic model of an agile missile flying at high angle of attack regime has been established and an optimal LQR control solution has been proposed to bring out the required performance demanding least control actuator energy. A novel scheme has been presented to further optimise the control effort, which is essential in this class of missile systems with space and energy constraints, by iteratively computing optimal magnitude state weighing matrix Q and control cost matrix R. Pole placement design techniques, though extensively used in aerospace industry because of ease of implementation and proven results, do not address optimality of the system performance. Hence, a comparative study has been carried out to verify the results of LQR against pole placement technique based controller. The efficacy of LQR based controller over pole placement design techniques is successfully established with minimum control energy requirement in this paper. Futuristic high maneuvering, agile missile control design with severe space and energy constraints stand to benefit incorporating the controller design scheme proposed in this paper.&nbsp

Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program and Implications for US National Security.

This article analyzes Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and the characteristics of the environment in which the program is nested. These characteristics include Pakistan’s history of internal and external instability; nuclear saber rattling during crises; support for Islamic terrorism in order to advance state goals; indigenous production of many elements of its nuclear forces; possession of delivery and command and control systems with destabilizing characteristics; and finally, nuclear doctrine that appears to advocate first use of nuclear weapons. The article argues that the characteristics of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program generate threats to US national security interests. The article examines six interrelated and synergistic challenges for US national security: first, Pakistan is engaged in an arms race in Southwest Asia that has negative implications for Pakistan’s stability; second, the threat of nuclear proliferation from Pakistan continues; third, Pakistan’s arsenal characteristics make accidental and/or unauthorized nuclear war more likely; fourth, there is an ongoing possibility of war with India; fifth, Islamist influence is spreading through key sectors of Pakistani society; and finally, there is an increasing danger of state failure in Pakistan

Manufacturing partners: Japan-South Korea security cooperation and Australia's potential role

This paper identifies how Australia fits into Japan–South Korea cooperation, the merits and pitfalls of trilateral security cooperation, and whether it’s in Australia’s interests to pursue such an initiative. Summary In Asia, Australia has no closer strategic and ideological partners than Japan and South Korea. Our similar strategic outlooks, economic ties, alliances with the US and liberal democratic values make us highly compatible partners. But while Australia’s bilateral relations are trending upwards, the Japan–ROK relationship has been spiralling downwards. Problems in Japan–ROK relations are nothing new, but since two bilateral military accords fell through in mid-2012 the relationship has deteriorated to its lowest point in decades. It’s becoming apparent that the two countries could benefit from outside intervention to facilitate deeper cooperation. Australia is emerging as a potentially effective facilitator of Japan–ROK security cooperation. Australia could ‘manufacture’ a closer security partnership between the two and achieve multiple strategic objectives through trilateral security cooperation. This paper identifies how Australia fits into Japan–ROK cooperation, the merits and pitfalls of trilateral security cooperation, and whether it’s in Australia’s interests to pursue such an initiative. It draws on over thirty interviews with Japanese, South Korean and Australian specialists, media coverage, alliance theory, and academic analysis to provide recommendations to the government on how Australia can take a more proactive role in developing relations with and between Tokyo and Seoul and tackling regional security challenges