Defense in Depths

Navigating Australia's risky dependence on maritime trade

Artist rendering of possible design for SSN-AUKUS submarines

Aidan Morrison, director of energy research at The Centre for Independent Studies, takes us to the depths of Australia’s security predicament as a country dependent on liquid hydrocarbon imports near Maritime Southeast Asia. We discuss military strategy, the use of nuclear and diesel-electric submarines, and the continent’s precarious dependence on maritime trade and military alliances.

Watch now on Youtube, Apple, and Spotify.

We talk about

• Australia's historical military alliances and strategic dependencies

• Australia’s abundance of most bulky resources except for oil

• The AUKUS submarine deal and its strategic implications

• Electric grid vulnerabilities

• Alternative approaches to Australian defense strategy

Some takeaways

• If Australia remains highly dependent on liquid hydrocarbon imports, frequent deliveries via large tanker ships make for easy targets in the case of potential regional conflict. Traditional naval escort strategies may be obsolete against modern weapons systems.

• Australia’s location relative to Asia, combined with its strategic needs, call for new approaches to the use of submarine technology. The AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, a good long term play, is a “silly” non-solution to urgent problems, according to Morrison.

• To Morrison, investing in redundant infrastructure (runways, hangars, fuel storage) may be more valuable for infrastructure resilience than ordering new, expensive military hardware.

• Concentrated power generation systems in southern Australia may be more resilient than distributed renewable systems.

Watch Aidan’s video on diesel vs. nuclear submarines, mentioned at 43:50:

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction

• 03:33 Australia's military history and strategy

• 11:32 Australia natural resource weakness: oil

• 19:35 Australia's energy situation in a hot war

• 23:30 Defending martime hydrocarbon imports

• 34:07 AUKUS submarine strategy

• 44:00 Political consensus for AUKUS

• 50:55 Facing geostrategic challenges

• 1:04:53 Liquid hydrocarbon strategy

• 1:11:03 Power grid vulnerabilities

• 1:23:40 Closing thoughts

Keywords

Australian defense strategy, AUKUS submarines, energy security, naval warfare, military procurement, fuel reserves, power grid vulnerability, strategic infrastructure, brown coal conversion, maritime trade routes, Chinese trade dependence, military modernization, defense infrastructure