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‘Admiral Hollywood’ and Australia’s giant military shakeup · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Forget petrol.
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  Speaker 1: Milk, cheese, butter and yoghurt are about to become much
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  Speaker 1: more expensive, according to the dairy industry, which says farmers
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: may need to cull their herds because of high fuel
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  Speaker 1: and fertiliser costs and are already pushing prices up. A
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  Speaker 1: grim outlook from the International Monetary Fund, which says the
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  Speaker 1: war in Iran could push the world close to recession.
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  Speaker 1: It's also flagging a likely downgrade to Australia's economic output
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  Speaker 1: over the next couple of years. Those stories are live
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  Speaker 1: now at theaustralian.com.au. They call him Hollywood. The straight-talking new
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  Speaker 1: boss of Australia's Defence Forces got his start scrubbing decks
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  Speaker 1: as a junior sailor in the Royal Australian Navy. But
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  Speaker 1: Mark Hammond has a huge challenge ahead, getting Australia's military
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  Speaker 1: ready for the new age of asymmetrical warfare focused on drones.
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  Speaker 1: Can we get there? Our foreign affairs and defence correspondent,
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  Speaker 1: Ben Packham, is here in just a moment. Ben Packham
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  Speaker 1: is the Australian's foreign affairs and defence correspondent. And this
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  Speaker 1: week he's reporting on what might just seem at the
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  Speaker 1: top like a shuffle of names, but for people in
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  Speaker 1: the know is a seismic change. For the first time,
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  Speaker 1: we have a chief of the defence force who's worked
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  Speaker 1: his way up from scrubbing decks in the Navy, a submariner,
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  Speaker 1: Mark Hammond, who's now the big boss. Ben, tell me
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  Speaker 1: about Mark Hammond and why is it significant that he's
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  Speaker 1: come up from those very lowly ranks of being an
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  Speaker 1: able seaman?
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  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. It's quite an achievement, obviously.
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  Speaker 3: 40-year career in the Navy, started out as a sailor,
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  Speaker 3: doing all the things that you would do, scrubbing decks
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  Speaker 3: and so forth on surface ships. Then he went into submarines,
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  Speaker 3: he's commanded submarines. And yeah, that rise from an enlisted
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  Speaker 3: sailor to a now the Chief of the Defence Force,
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  Speaker 3: it's quite remarkable. And, you know, I think it gives
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  Speaker 3: him perhaps some additional sort of insights into, you know,
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  Speaker 3: what life is like in those lower ranks. And people
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  Speaker 3: certainly say that it's helped him, you know, relate to
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  Speaker 3: people across the ADF. The Prime Minister says the AUKUS
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  Speaker 3: submarine pact marks a new dawn for Australia and one
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  Speaker 3: that will create tens of thousands of jobs.
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  Speaker 4: This is a massive moment for Australia. Sharing this technology
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  Speaker 4: is an amazing thing from the US. It's a sign
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  Speaker 4: that it has enormous faith in Australia but it will
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  Speaker 4: send ripples throughout the region and of course no more
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  Speaker 4: so than across the bow of the Chinese Navy.
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  Speaker 1: We seem to be entering the age of the submarine
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  Speaker 1: in the Australian Defence Force. That's certainly the spearhead of
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  Speaker 1: our defence suite, or it's going to be with the
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  Speaker 1: arrival of the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines. What shape do you
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  Speaker 1: think he'll bring to that fleet in the Navy and
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  Speaker 1: the Defence Force as a whole?
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  Speaker 3: Well, look, we very much are focusing on the nuclear-powered submarines.
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  Speaker 3: Two classes of nuclear submarines are in our future, we hope.
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  Speaker 3: That's certainly what the planners say. But look, he has
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  Speaker 3: lived and breathed.
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  Speaker 2: Submarines for a long time. So he's very, very aware of.
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  Speaker 3: The challenges and the training and all of the kind
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  Speaker 3: of requirements that go into building and maintaining a submarine force.
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  Speaker 5: There's an acceleration context to everything that we're doing, to
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  Speaker 5: optimising the availability of the fleet, the lethality of the
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  Speaker 5: fleet in being, to accelerating delivery of the future fleet.
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  Speaker 5: All of that is only achievable with professional, committed, resilient
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  Speaker 5: sailors and officers.
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  Speaker 3: The training that is involved in becoming a submariner and
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  Speaker 3: particularly a submarine officer is just incredibly demanding. And obviously
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  Speaker 3: living on a submarine is not the most pleasant experience.
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  Speaker 3: I don't think for, you know, it wouldn't be for
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  Speaker 3: most normal Australians. So, you know, he has, he certainly
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  Speaker 3: has insights and, that he will bring to the role.
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  Speaker 3: And obviously these are shared across much of the bureaucracy
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  Speaker 3: as a whole, but particularly when you talk about the
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  Speaker 3: challenges of pulling off this.
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  Speaker 2: $ 368 billion plan.
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  Speaker 3: But I think as a submariner, he's really just got
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  Speaker 3: that little bit extra understanding.
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  Speaker 1: You've reported that he had a nickname for a while
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  Speaker 1: in Canberra, Hollywood Hammond.
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  Speaker 2: Why was that?
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  Speaker 3: It has been a nickname that he has had in
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  Speaker 3: the halls of Parliament House, emerged from the ministerial wing.
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  Speaker 3: So the background to it is that he, during the
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  Speaker 3: caretaker period, gave an interview with 960 Minutes, which it
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  Speaker 3: didn't air until after the election, the 2025 election, and
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  Speaker 3: sort of caught people unaware because during caretaker period, the
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  Speaker 3: military pretty much runs itself. It doesn't have to clear
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  Speaker 3: anything with the government, and he just went on 60
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  Speaker 3: Minutes talking about basically it was an episode about China's
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  Speaker 3: rise in the Indo-Pacific and he gave some relatively frank
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  Speaker 3: views about China's preparations for conflict.
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  Speaker 5: Governments don't invest billions of dollars into military capabilities for
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  Speaker 5: no reason at all and the same is true of us.
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  Speaker 5: My job as the Chief of the Navy is to
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  Speaker 5: not rely upon a strategy of hope. My job is
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  Speaker 5: to be a pessimist and to try and see the
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  Speaker 5: world for what it is, not what I would wish
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  Speaker 5: it to be. So my reflex to that responsibility is
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  Speaker 5: to assume that things will get worse, not better. I'm
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  Speaker 5: all in on diplomacy.
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  Speaker 2: I'm all in on deterrence.
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  Speaker 5: But I have to be all in on the facts
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  Speaker 5: of our nation. And that begins with an assumption that
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  Speaker 5: despite everybody's best efforts, we find ourselves in a conflict.
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  Speaker 5: And there are a thousand ways to start a conflict.
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  Speaker 5: There's only two ways that it ends. And they are,
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  Speaker 5: in my view, you lose the national willpower to continue
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  Speaker 5: the fight or you lose the economic ability to continue
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  Speaker 5: the fight.
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  Speaker 2: Now, did he say anything controversial? Not at all. But
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  Speaker 2: this government and, you know.
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  Speaker 3: Its predecessors are quite strict on letting senior members of
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  Speaker 3: the military speak publicly. And, you know, there's a general
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  Speaker 3: level of kind of secrecy and paranoia in the government
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  Speaker 3: about all of this stuff. And so, you know, I
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  Speaker 3: think they were just trying to send him a message
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  Speaker 3: to stick in what they saw his lane to be
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  Speaker 3: and keep his head down.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think he heeded that advice?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, look, you know, he's like most of the brass is,
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  Speaker 3: you know, he's pretty unavailable publicly.
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  Speaker 2: And so to that extent, I think, yeah, I think
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  Speaker 2: he has.
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  Speaker 1: You've revealed in The Australian that we're about to see
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  Speaker 1: a big shake up in the way the government spends
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  Speaker 1: on defence and really a new understanding of what warfare
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  Speaker 1: looks like now. I think that's been something that people
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  Speaker 1: have been wondering as they've watched the wars unfold in
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  Speaker 1: places like Ukraine and the Middle East. where it's all
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  Speaker 1: about the drone these days. You and foreign editor Greg
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  Speaker 1: Sheridan have been noting in your stories over the years
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  Speaker 1: that Australia's drone capabilities are criticised by experts as not
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  Speaker 1: being strong enough. What do you think is going to change?
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  Speaker 3: Well, look, it's very interesting that in some of the
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  Speaker 3: material that's coming out from the government before Richard Miles
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  Speaker 3: releases the National Defence Agency strategy, the updated version of
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  Speaker 3: that on Thursday and Defence's new 10-year investment program, that
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  Speaker 3: the government has all of a sudden recognised that the
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  Speaker 3: nature of warfare is really changing and that in Richard
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  Speaker 3: Marle's words, he says, oh, we really do have to
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  Speaker 3: learn from the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran.
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  Speaker 6: Drones and autonomous platforms are an increasing part of conflict.
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  Speaker 6: Last year, we announced our expenditure on Ghost Shark, for example,
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  Speaker 6: and we're working on Ghost Bat. So both of those
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  Speaker 6: are autonomous systems at the larger end. And in the
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  Speaker 6: defensive measures that our platforms have, we are very mindful
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  Speaker 6: of drones being an increasing threat.
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  Speaker 3: And that's fabulous. But, you know, the Ukraine war's been
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  Speaker 3: going for four years. So, you know, better late than never,
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  Speaker 3: I guess. But, you know, the defence bureaucracy is, you know,
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  Speaker 3: like the proverbial ocean liner. It's very, very hard to
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  Speaker 3: turn around. And so the government doesn't really go sort
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  Speaker 3: of chopping and changing what it's asking defence to do
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  Speaker 3: because heads would explode in the Russell offices in Canberra.
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  Speaker 3: So what it does is, you know, there's strategies and,
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  Speaker 3: you know, lots of thinking and, you know, but finally
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  Speaker 3: we are at the point where it seems the government
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  Speaker 3: is ready to start really speeding up some of its
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  Speaker 3: purchases of offensive unmanned capabilities, drones. and it seems some
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  Speaker 3: counter drone systems. The devil will be in the detail here.
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  Speaker 3: The timing of these procurements, you know, typically defence works
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  Speaker 3: on a 10-year horizon for getting new capabilities into service.
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  Speaker 3: We just don't have that sort of time. And the
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  Speaker 3: problem is compounded by the fact that so much of
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  Speaker 3: the defence budget is going on the Orca submarine program
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  Speaker 3: and preparations for that. But the short answer, I guess,
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  Speaker 3: is there's a lot of big capabilities underway and we're
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  Speaker 3: what a lot of the analysts say, and the budget
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  Speaker 3: really does bear out, is that this has started to
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  Speaker 3: hollow out the defence force in many ways. And there's
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  Speaker 3: this recognition that even though we are doing these things,
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  Speaker 3: the ADF may have to fight tonight, as the saying goes.
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  Speaker 3: And people who've been watching these conflicts and scratching their heads,
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  Speaker 3: waiting and wondering when the ADF is going to sort
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  Speaker 3: of fast track some of this.
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  Speaker 2: Capability are should be pretty happy.
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  Speaker 3: There's a caveat though, obviously, the defense spends a billion
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  Speaker 3: dollars a week of taxpayers' money, more than that actually,
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  Speaker 3: a little bit more. And the promise to increase funding
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  Speaker 3: over a decade for drones and counter drone systems is
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  Speaker 3: in the order of $ 2.
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  Speaker 2: To $ 5 billion.
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  Speaker 3: So when you consider it in the context of the
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  Speaker 3: wider budget, it is a bit of a drop in
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  Speaker 3: the ocean. Still, I think we need to wait and
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  Speaker 3: see what the actual plans are. And if they are
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  Speaker 3: really taking this seriously, then that's a good thing.
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  Speaker 1: It seems to a lay observer like me as though
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  Speaker 1: in both those conflicts, we're seeing... massively asymmetrical warfare, you know,
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  Speaker 1: really old fashioned kind of hugely powerful military being stymied
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  Speaker 1: and in some cases partly defeated by a fast moving,
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  Speaker 1: nimble opponent who is buying commercial drones and repurposing them
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  Speaker 1: for military purposes and is able, for example, in Ukraine
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  Speaker 1: to mean that Russian soldiers can't sleep at night because
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  Speaker 1: they never know when a drone attack is going to happen.
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  Speaker 1: Where would Australia be in that new kind of warfare?
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  Speaker 1: Are we the nimble Ukraine or are we the stodgy
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  Speaker 1: old Russia?
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  Speaker 3: We are prepared for the last war. We're not prepared
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  Speaker 3: for the future war. So this whole idea of asymmetry,
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  Speaker 3: you know, we're really getting a stark real-time view of
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  Speaker 3: what that actually means. And so as we've seen in
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  Speaker 3: Iran particularly, but it's also, you know, applicable to Ukraine,
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  Speaker 3: drones can kill people. for a relatively low cost. You know,
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  Speaker 3: you're talking a couple of thousand bucks for some of
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  Speaker 3: these smaller drones used in Ukraine to maybe, you know, 20,
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  Speaker 3: 30,000 for some of those Iranian designed Shahid drones. But
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  Speaker 3: the US and its Gulf allies in that Iran conflict
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  Speaker 3: they're shooting down those drones with missile interceptors that are
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  Speaker 3: worth north of a million dollars each. And the economics
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  Speaker 3: of this is just diabolical for the US and its partners. And,
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  Speaker 3: you know, it would be for us too if we
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  Speaker 3: had supplies of those missile interceptors, which we're not really
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  Speaker 3: even in that space yet. So asymmetry, it's the name
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  Speaker 3: of the game now. And an adversary could be, you know,
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  Speaker 3: some tin pot, terrorist group like the Houthis, as we've seen,
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  Speaker 3: you know, they have some reasonable drone capabilities that can
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  Speaker 3: really cause a lot of difficulty for Western militaries, even
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  Speaker 3: the mightiest of Western militaries, the United States.
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  Speaker 2: So the U.S.
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  Speaker 3: Is sort of rushing out some of these counter drone capabilities.
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  Speaker 3: that are, you know, much more lower cost. And Ukraine's
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  Speaker 3: really led the way in those, you know, they're hitting
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  Speaker 3: drones with other drones.
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  Speaker 2: They're called drone interceptors. There's a couple of different models
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  Speaker 2: of those.
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  Speaker 3: I'm told that Australia is also going to go down
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  Speaker 3: this path and an interceptor drone is, I believe, certainly
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  Speaker 3: going to be funded.
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  Speaker 2: But again, you know, when and how many of them and,
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  Speaker 2: you know, over what timeline, we shall see.
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  Speaker 1: I'm getting a flashback to, I think, probably the last
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  Speaker 1: Defence White Paper that we talked about, Ben, and the
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  Speaker 1: phrase then was forward projection, that Australia is all about,
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  Speaker 1: you know, reaching way beyond our borders.
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  Speaker 2: Impactful projection it was. It was just a terrible, terrible term.
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  Speaker 3: I think that was a Richard Marles specialty.
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  Speaker 7: To resist the coercion that would come from the disruption
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  Speaker 7: of our sea lines of communication, we must be able
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  Speaker 7: to project. And to defend Australia's interests in the geography-less
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  Speaker 7: domain of cyber, we must be able to project. Impactful projections.
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  Speaker 7: through the full spectrum of proportionate response is our task.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to say. And, you know, for me,
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  Speaker 1: that seemed to be about being able to get a
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  Speaker 1: stealth weapon like a submarine a long way away from
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  Speaker 1: where we physically are to park in someone else's waters
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  Speaker 1: and be lurking there ready to strike at any moment.
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  Speaker 2: Is that still the idea?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, look, I mean, impactful projection is... is as
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  Speaker 3: important as ever. And look, there's two big capabilities that, well,
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  Speaker 3: two or three missiles, long range missiles. We need drones
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  Speaker 3: of many different shapes and forms, and we need systems
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  Speaker 3: to counter both of those. And we are really, you know,
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  Speaker 3: we're not too bad on the missile front, but on
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  Speaker 3: the others, we are really coming from behind and they've
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  Speaker 3: got to be priorities.
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  Speaker 1: Ben Packham, thank you very much. And I'll look forward
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  Speaker 1: to the full report on Thursday.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks, Clay.
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  Speaker 1: Ben Packham is The Australian's Foreign Affairs and Defence Correspondent.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: He'll be first with the scoops and the best analysis
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  Speaker 1: of Defence's next moves at theaustralian.com.au.