The chief of the army has urged soldiers to adapt to “the rapidly changing character of war” amid a growing political dispute over the Albanese government’s major defence overhaul.
In a video message to reassure soldiers, Lt Gen Simon Stuart acknowledged they could face “some challenges” in modernising but said he was confident the army was up to the task.
One of the most contentious decisions within the army is the cut to plans for new infantry fighting vehicles to replace Australia’s Vietnam war-era armoured personnel carriers.
Instead of buying up to 450 vehicles at a cost of up to $27bn, the government will acquire just 129.
The defence strategic review, released on Monday, called for a shift in priorities and warned that the Australian defence force was structured for “a bygone era”.
The shadow defence minister, Andrew Hastie, said the army would be “diminished by the review and that’s a great tragedy because we need a strong army”.
“Without infantry fighting vehicles we go back to a light infantry army, which is where we went after Vietnam during the 1980s,” Hastie told Sky News on Monday.
“And when it came time for Timor and Iraq and Afghanistan, we had a lot of hard lessons to learn and by cutting this program potentially we lose a lot of that institutional knowledge which has been built up over the last 10 to 15 years overseas.”
But the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, played down that criticism on Tuesday, saying the government wanted to “reshape the army” to have a greater ability to project power.
Marles said he wanted to acknowledge Hastie’s service as “a very brave soldier in his time in the defence force”. Marles also referenced Anzac Day, saying he was “obviously mindful of the day and the dignity of the day so I’m keen not to get into a contest”.
“What we announced yesterday involved not just providing the army with longer range strike capability missiles, but also a greater capability to operate in a littoral environment – that is around coasts – which means we are trying to reimagine an army which is more mobile and can project,” Marles told 2GB.
The projects to be accelerated include a land-based anti-ship missile system and new landing craft for the army. The government has said that the Australian army will have the ability to strike targets more than 500km away, up from the current maximum range of 40km.
Stuart, who was appointed chief of the army last year, used his video message to explain that there were “changes in what our government expects of its army and what the integrated force and our allies and partners need of us”.
“There will be a significantly smaller but no less capable combined arms fighting system,” he said.
“Our formations will become more specialised and we will increase the use of robotics and autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and quantum technology.
“There will also be changes to the scale and scope of our capabilities, the sequence and pace of delivery, how we’re organised, how we train and the resources that will be available to us.
“Things will be different and along with the opportunities there will be some challenges.”
Stuart said he was “genuinely humbled to lead our army during this inflection point in our history”.
“There is some more work to be done to confirm the detail of how we will re-posture and restructure our army and I intend to share that with you by the end of August.”
In a bid to maintain morale, Stuart added: “I couldn’t be more proud of you and I couldn’t be more proud of our army.
“I’m relying on you to make the very best use of the people, machines, time and money with which we are trusted.”
The review, by the former defence force chief Angus Houston and former Labor defence minister Stephen Smith, warned that the security environment was now “radically different” from the period at the end of the cold war.
It did not label China a direct military threat to Australia, but said its assertion of sovereignty over the contested South China Sea “threatens the global rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific in a way that adversely impacts Australia’s national interests”.
The Chinese foreign ministry responded cautiously on Monday evening, saying countries should not “hype up the so-called China threat narrative”.
