
An Australian soldier guards the area during a joint street patrol with Iraqi security forces in the Iraqi southern city of Samawa 22 June 2006. AFP
Australia will boost its defence forces by some 30 per cent by 2040, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on March 10, describing it as the country’s largest military build-up in peacetime.
The force would grow by 18,500 personnel to 80,000 over the 18-year period, at a cost of some A$38 billion (US$27 billion), the premier said at an army barracks in Brisbane.
Morrison, who is expected to call a general election in May, told a news conference that the military build-up was a recognition by his government of the “threats and the environment that we face as a country, as a liberal democracy in the Indo-Pacific”.
The Australian leader said some of the new troops would support a future nuclear-powered submarine fleet, promised under a new Australia-Britain-US defence alliance, AUKUS.
Australia says it plans to arm the submarines with conventional weapons but has yet to decide on the details of the programme, including whether to opt for a fleet based on US or British nuclear-powered attack submarines.
The AUKUS alliance would make Australia the only non-nuclear weapons power with nuclear-powered submarines, capable of travelling long distances without surfacing.
Defence minister Peter Dutton said the build-up of forces, to be focused on uniformed troops, would provide a credible deterrent from expansionist military threats.
Beyond submarines, the new forces would be deployed in areas including space, cyber operations, naval assets, and land and sea-based autonomous vehicles, he said.