The circle of people who know the ability of Australia to defend itself is small.
You can count on two hands the number of people the Australian government has trusted in recent times to tell them where the holes in that defence lie.
Paul Dibb is one of those people.
Now an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, Paul Dibb is a former director of the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the former deputy secretary for strategy and intelligence in the Department of Defence.
When the Defence Minister launched a landmark defence review to determine what gaps remain in the nation's defences this week, he invoked Professor Dibb's work for the Hawke government 30 years ago.
"It was the strategic basis for the 1987 Defence White Paper and every white paper since," Defence Minister Richard Marles said.
"It established a strategic setting for this country for 35 years."
The 1987 Defence White Paper
"The holes in our [defence] force structure were gigantic," Professor Dibb told 7.30, referring to his historic defence force review three decades ago.
"Basically, nothing had changed since the Vietnam War and before that, the confrontation with Indonesia.
"It was still a force that successive governments had structured on the basis, not of the defence of Australia, but as expeditionary forces, in far distant military conflicts, primarily to contain communism."
Back then, he says he butted heads with various elements of the Navy, Air Force and especially the Army, which he said didn't want to move "away from their nice comfortable barracks in the south and east" to the north of the country where any invasion would take place.
"Because the most likely threat to Australia would come from, or through, the archipelago to our north, not from the penguins in Antarctica or the Kiwis in New Zealand," he said.
30 years later, the 'warning time' is over
This week's announcement of another landmark defence review comes just two years after a strategic update in 2020 by the previous Coalition government, which also had a defence white paper in 2016.
So what's changed?
"In four years flat, they went from being confident in 10 years or more [of] warning time of a major threat … [to] recognition that warning time was over and finished," Professor Dibb said.
"We now face the probability of high-intensity conflict in our own immediate strategic environment.
"Let's be very frank, it's code-name for a certain country to our distant north."
The government was prepared to name China as it began its sabre-rattling over Taiwan.
The question remains how committed is Australia to Taiwan's defence.
"I've been there four times in the last eight years – it's a vibrant democracy with 24 million people on an island — that should strike a bell — 24 million on a small island half the size of Tasmania," he said.
"If we should refuse to join the United States, that would frankly mean the end of the ANZUS Alliance.
"China is an aggressive, autocratic communist power. According to Xi Jinping, the time is now on the side of the People's Republic of China to revenge the century of humiliation in the 19th century, and to take over as the leading power in our region from the United States."
What could act as a deterrence against China?
More missiles. More Americans. Fewer troop carriers for the Army.
"We must be able to very rapidly acquire huge numbers of long-range strike missiles," Professor Dibb said.
"By long-range I don't mean just a couple of hundred kilometres, I mean thousands of kilometres, certainly at least 2,000."
Long-range missiles could "rapidly give us much more advanced capabilities" to deter any advance from the north, Professor Dibb said.
There are already discussions taking place about Australia building its own missile factories to reduce the problems of logistic supply from the US and Europe.
But money is critical and the defence budget is already burdened by future submarines and other major spending, which Professor Dibb believes can be redirected.
"The reduction of some parts of the defence capability plan, for example, the $49 billion that Defence wants, the Army wants, to spend on what I would call the armoured personnel carriers or combat vehicles."
If Australia can't afford to buy everything it needs in time to cover the expected capability gaps in the nation's defence, it's no surprise the government will turn to America – potentially for an even greater rotation of marines or high-level weapons like B2 stealth bombers.
Advice for new reviewers
Professor Dibb has some sound advice for the pair recruited by the government to do its latest review — former defence chief Sir Angus Houston and former minister for defence and foreign affairs Stephen Smith.
"The way it should be done is you have an independent set of intelligence reviews and advice. Those intelligence reviews and advice go through to the strategic policy advisors," he said.
"From that, they develop a series of credible threats, including high-intensity conflict, and they model them, and war game what sorts of capabilities that would demand.
"Only then do you determine, what's your force structure priorities? And only then, once you've done that, you come to the money.
"Now, no government has ever done that. So maybe this new review may be the first to do that."
