Now is not the time to abandon our greatest advantage — our long-standing trusted partnerships with militarily advanced allies. Better to exploit this benefit with even greater urgency.

There is much ado about the announcement that Australia will be buying three refurbished Block IV Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from America rather than two plus a new version.

The announcement is being used as a reason to question the whole AUKUS agreement, and more broadly, the reliability of America under the presidency of Donald Trump.

The sense of outrage and calls to ditch AUKUS don’t really make sense. The rationale behind AUKUS remains as it was. Australia still gets the undersea capability that it wants and needs. And AUKUS is not just about submarines but other weapons that will be critical to help deter a war against China.

Let’s get to the submarine announcement. In any meaningful sense, the change is minimal. The Block IV remains the most modern and capable US nuclear-powered attack submarine in service and retains a significant technological edge in stealth, endurance, propulsion, sensor and processing capacity over Chinese rivals.

That edge still gives Beijing pause as it calculates whether it can prevail in a conflict over Taiwan. I doubt the People’s Liberation Army is breathing any sigh of relief simply because none of our submarines will be brand new.

Now consider what AUKUS is about. It is an agreement for the United States, United Kingdom and Australia to integrate our military and technological industrial bases to produce and deploy advanced weapons and to do so at scale. Submarines and naval facilities in Western Australia will progress this objective.

Tragically, there are live case studies in the transformation of warfare taking place now. China is studying them closely. We need to as well.

But remember the much less talked about second pillar of AUKUS. This is where Australia’s role is currently underdone but needs to be ramped up significantly and quickly. To deter, we need more than a collective undersea capability and advantage over China. It is also about asymmetric capability, that as part of a multinational coalition, we can impose unacceptable costs on China’s far larger and growing naval fleet in the waters off Taiwan and the South China Sea.

This is not mere speculation. Tragically, there are live case studies in the transformation of warfare taking place now. China is studying them closely. We need to as well. I refer to the battlefields in Ukraine, Israel and Iran. These are demonstrating lessons on how the use of advanced technologies could give China’s navy an edge in the Indo-Pacific. This is why we ignore AUKUS Pillar II at our peril.

Three elements of the transformation in warfare stand out.

First is the impact of versatile unmanned and AI-powered autonomous systems. In Ukraine, small, inexpensive drones are being used to destroy soldiers, expensive armoured vehicles, air defence and electronic warfare systems with a high degree of precision.

Flooding the battlefield with loitering and reconnaissance drones has made the battlefield far more transparent, increasing lethality at low cost. Unmanned ground vehicles have become weapons platforms used in combined-arms attacks to clear enemy positions, but also lay and clear mines, and to resupply and evacuate soldiers. More expensive long-range drones are successfully targeting Russia’s oil infrastructure deep within the latter’s territory.

And then there Ukraine’s remarkable feat in defeating and driving away the conventionally superior Russian Black Fleet using unmanned aerial and surface vehicles armed with missiles, after its own small fleet was destroyed in the early stages of the war.

Second, is the importance of multilayered air and missile defence. Wars in the Middle East have featured large-scale barrages with inexpensive long-range one-way attack drones, designed to deplete a defender’s expensive missile interceptors and overwhelm their air defences. This has highlighted the need to include counter-drone capabilities — including interceptor drones and electronic warfare capabilities — which are rapidly developing on the battlefield.

Last and related to this is the need for Western nations to urgently increase their industrial capacity to sustain protracted war. This goes beyond exquisite platforms such as naval vessels and F-35s. Just as important is the mass production of drones, but also high-end and expensive surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles which have been expended at high rates in current wars. The lack of magazine depth in the US and NATO sends precisely the wrong deterrent signal to our adversaries.

Australia is currently woefully unprepared for the kinds of high-intensity conflict that we are increasingly likely to face in the Indo-Pacific. Both AUKUS pillars I and II are key to enabling Australia to work with key allies to build asymmetric capabilities to meet the transformation in warfare before our eyes. Now is not the time to abandon our greatest advantage — our long-standing trusted partnerships with militarily advanced allies. Better to exploit this advantage with even greater urgency.

The National Defence Strategy absorbs some lessons of warfare as it is changing but has not committed to developing what we need fast enough. The question is whether adversaries are learning and adapting faster than Australia and its allies.