Australia will boost its defence forces by some 30 per cent by 2040, Scott Morrison said on Thursday, describing it as the country’s largest military build-up in peacetime.
The force would grow by 18,500 personnel to 80,000 over the 18-year period, at a cost of some A$38 billion (£21.1 billion), the prime minister said at an army barracks in Brisbane.
Mr Morrison, who is expected to call a general election in May, told a news conference it was the “biggest increase in the size of our defence forces in peacetime in Australian history”.
He said the military build-up was a recognition by his government of the “threats and the environment that we face as a country, as a liberal democracy in the Indo-Pacific”.
The Australian leader said some of the new troops would support a future nuclear-powered submarine fleet, promised under a new Australia-Britain-US defence alliance, Aukus.
Australia says it plans to arm the submarines with conventional weapons but has yet to decide on the details of the programme, including whether to opt for a fleet based on US or British nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Forged at a time of growing Chinese influence in the Pacific region, the Aukus alliance would make Australia the only non-nuclear power with nuclear-powered submarines, capable of travelling long distances without surfacing.
