The tabletop exercise, titled "Defending Australia in a Post-Dominance World," is being conducted in Canberra at the government's Joint Experimentation and Wargaming Laboratory. Bryan Clark, director of the Centre for Defence Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, told The Age that half of the participants came from the ADF, while US and Japanese military personnel made up a quarter, and the rest were civilian experts.
"We're paying for it, we're sponsoring it, they're participating," Clark said. "We give them the entire ADF to play with," as well as the US nuclear-powered submarines due to rotate through Submarine Rotational Force (West) near Perth from next year. He added that if Australia comes under attack, these submarines would be pressed into service to defend Australia.
"What we want to see is how do the teams use these submarines along with the rest of the resource, and what's the most valuable mission they could be doing," Clark said.
Clark expressed concern that the Australian government had not convinced the public of the utility of AUKUS and the nuclear-powered submarines, which Australia is due to acquire three of from the US starting in 2032, before building a new AUKUS-class submarine with the UK. "I feel like the ADF, the Australian government, hasn't made the case for how they would use them and why it's important to buy them," he said.
Jennifer Parker, an adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia and a defence and security expert, noted that the ADF always conducts war games. "They would be regularly war-gaming the most dangerous scenario for our region ... this would likely include the prospect of regional conflict," she said. Parker said her impression was that ADF senior leadership was deeply concerned about the prospect of a major conflict in the coming years, and that there was a deep disconnect between thinking in the ADF and public understanding of the risk.
A Department of Defence spokesperson confirmed that a small cohort of ADF personnel were taking part in the exercise, saying "Defence routinely engages in simulated tabletop exercises, aiming to enhance operational understanding and capabilities with our partners."
The war games come a year after US President Donald Trump affirmed that AUKUS was "full steam ahead" during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's official visit to the White House.