RAA Liaison Letter 2024 - 2025 Edition

RAA Liaison Letter – 2024 / 2025 Edition 88 air support will be uncertain, and the demand for the Army’s limited indirect fire support will likely escalate. Compounding this limitation, it is likely that materiel support from Australia’s allies would be slow to arrive should conflict occur concurrently in the Indo-Pacific region. This reality was borne out during World War II, when Australia struggled to receive required armaments due to the higher priority placed by its allies on the demands of the European theatre of operations. 7 Although the Ukraine conflict has revived Western arms production, the expansion of the West’s military industrial output will still take several years to reach the volumes necessary to sustain LSCO. 8 Therefore, the stark disparity between the Army’s current on-hand artillery and that which it has historically fielded during conflict represents a deficiency that will restrict Australia’s capacity to conduct contemporary LSCO. To bridge this gap, the Army should seek to develop options for fire support augmentation that are feasible in the light of ongoing recruitment, retention, industrial and fiscal challenges. Loitering Autonomous Weapons To upscale its firepower quickly and efficiently, the Australian Army has the option to acquire lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs), commonly known as drones. The combination of expendability, affordability and availability of LAWs makes them a viable option to address deficiencies in the Army’s artillery delivery systems and ammunition. For one thing, LAWs can be fielded rapidly and inexpensively, making them suitable for high battlefield attrition. For example, since 2022 the Australian company SYPAQ has been supplying Ukraine with 100 Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System drones per month, at a cost of US$3,500 per aircraft. 9 Another Australian Company, DefendTex, produces the D40 ‘low cost’ loitering munition, which has a range of 20 kilometres and carries a 40 mm grenade warhead with enough yield to render a howitzer inoperable with a direct hit. 10 The low cost of drones can be contrasted with the relatively high price of artillery ammunition. Specifically, the Army’s Project LAND 17 Phase 1C.2 contract acquired a mere 2,504 rounds for US$148 million. 11 The average is approximately US$3,000 per round, which is roughly equivalent to the cost of one loitering drone. Further, to obtain near-precision accuracy, each artillery round requires a precision guidance kit that costs around US$20,000. While LAWs like the D40 carry a smaller explosive payload than artillery shells, their point target accuracy is far higher than the unguided effects achievable by conventional artillery munitions. Additionally, for heavily defended targets, LAWs can conduct saturation attacks where several drones simultaneously strike a target to overwhelm its defences, as demonstrated by Iran’s drone strikes against Saudi Arabia’s Patriot-defended Abqaiq oil refinery in 2019. 12 Given the many advantages of LAWs, their integration into the Australian Army should focus on two key areas: firstly as a platoon-level fires supplement, and secondly to support deep shaping fires. To address the first usage, LAWs could provide manoeuvre forces with an additional precision fires asset that is low cost and readily available. Loitering munitions have the potential to address Army’s inability to conduct deep fires using its own artillery. For example, the D40 loitering drone could be carried by infantry and armoured personnel to strike targets that would normally only be within range of mortars or howitzers. This capability would reduce the demand for artillery and mortar fire, thereby improving artillery survivability and decreasing ammunition consumption. The United States Marine Corp’s current experimentation with Switchblade loitering munitions at the platoon level speaks to the potential of this technology. 13 Furthermore, should the Australian Army be committed to amphibious combat in the future, it will likely face significant logistical challenges in deploying heavy fire support assets like tanks and howitzers. To address this challenge, the integration of loitering munitions within manoeuvre teams would provide an immediate fire support option when howitzers, tanks and mortars are unavailable. Loitering munitions have the potential to address Army’s inability to conduct deep fires using its own artillery. The term deep fires refers to effects delivered 30 kilometres beyond the forward line of own troops. Due its limitations in howitzer range, the Army has not typically trained for deep shaping operations using its own artillery. Instead it has relied on the Royal Australian Air Force and the Royal Australian Navy.