The B-21 Bomber and a Semi-Superpower Status for Australia

As I have had occasion to write in the past Australia requires its armed forces to cover a zone of operations extending beyond the territory, waters and airspace of a full continent and its outlying islands to a swath of the Indo-Pacific extending from Malaya to Fiji--a twelfth or so of the world's surface area. The result is that while the country has a relatively small population, and small armed forces, they have often operated equipment associated with big powers--like strategic bombers and aircraft carriers. This has not been as much the case in recent decades as before, with Australia replacing its F-111 strike aircraft with F-18s, and its retiring its last conventional carrier in 1982, but a resurgence in this respect seems evident in the headlines surrounding its recent plans--which include 10,000-ton AEGIS-equipped, Tomahawk-firing warships, nuclear attack submarines, ballistic missile defenses, and perhaps even a squadron of B-21 bombers. These are items one expects to see on a superpower's "shopping list"--but Australia will have them on a much less than superpower-scale, and on the basis of significant foreign support. In all that I find myself thinking of how I characterized Britain in the post-World War II period--as a semi-superpower, equipped with some capabilities no one but the U.S. and Soviet had, and this substantially on the basis of American backing. The Australian defense posture suggested by these reports suggests that the label might be equally appropriate to that country.