Australian Defence Department, Burdeshaw Associations in the US, and millions of dollars worth of confidential business

Tucked away in an unassuming suburban business park in Fairfax, Virginia, not far from Washington DC, is the single-storey office of Burdeshaw Associates, a company that has done millions of dollars worth of confidential business with the Australian Defence Department over the past 10 years.

Located alongside neighbours that include an escape room and a karate studio, it’s a surprisingly low-key location for a firm that describes itself as “the premier aerospace and defense boutique consulting firm” offering the services of “over 700+ [sic] retired generals, [and] admirals”.

For years the company has acted as a conduit for highly paid advice to the Australian government from a raft of retired senior US navy and defence personnel who charge thousands of dollars a day. And there are likely to be further rich pickings ahead, as the AUKUS pact moves the Royal Australian Navy towards a nuclear-powered submarine fleet (albeit at a grindingly slow pace) and government dollars start to flow from upskilling a workforce, and building the infrastructure, to enter the nuclear domain.

The depth and duration of Burdeshaw’s relationship with Canberra’s defence establishment is striking.

Records on the federal government’s Austender site reveal that the Australian Defence Department has struck contracts worth at least $11.7 million with Burdeshaw over the past decade for “strategic planning consultation services”.

A further $1.5 million deal was signed between the company and the Prime Minister’s Department in 2021 for advice to then prime minister Scott Morrison. That’s $13.2 million flowing through Burdeshaw’s books courtesy of the Australian taxpayer over the past decade, including its most recent three-year contract with Defence, valued at $1.2 million, and dated February this year.

However, a request to the Defence Department to provide a comprehensive list of the names and roles of personnel hired under the Burdeshaw contracts has been stymied, with Defence citing “security and commercial-in-confidence reasons”.

Burdeshaw and its principal, lawyer Alex Heidt, have also failed to respond to numerous attempts by this masthead to elicit further information.

A visit revealed that Burdeshaw shares its premises with Heidt’s law firm. A large painting of the late general William M. Hartzog, a former chief executive of the company, adorns the wall, and a stack of Heidt’s awards from Lawyers of Distinction are assembled on a desk by the front door. An employee, Tyler Heidt (Alex Heidt’s son), wanted to know if this masthead had security clearance, and when told no, said the dealings with Defence were confidential.

Even on the limited information publicly available, Burdeshaw’s record shows the deep involvement by senior retired US Navy personnel in confidential deliberations about the capabilities of the Royal Australian Navy, particularly as Australia pivoted towards the AUKUS submarine deal under Morrison.

As investigative journalist Andrew Fowler noted in his book Nuked, by the time Morrison had junked the deal to buy conventional French submarines and replaced it in September 2021 with the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pact with America and Britain, “US senior military officials were liberally sprinkled across the highest levels of the administration”.

By late 2022 – the last time Defence made figures readily available to a federal parliamentary committee – no less than eight retired senior US Navy officers were providing well-paid advice to the Australian Defence Department, among them, an admiral, a vice admiral, a rear admiral, a commander and four captains. All were either advising on “naval shipbuilding” or on managing the transition of the RAN submarine fleet to a nuclear-powered future.

It is unclear how many were on contracts negotiated through Burdeshaw. (At least two senior retired US Navy figures appear to have struck their own deals with the Australian Defence Department under separate consultancy companies they set up.)

Defence also refused to provide updated figures on how many foreign nationals are working on AUKUS-related programs. In response to questions, a spokesperson said the department needed “the support and expertise of the US and the UK to deliver AUKUS” and that “all personnel regardless of nationality, are subject to appropriate security clearance requirements and operate under strict contractual obligations”.

Burdeshaw first came to public notice in 2022, when The Washington Post published an investigation revealing more than half a dozen former US Navy and civilian navy leaders were playing advisory roles at senior levels of the Australian defence hierarchy in the lead-up to AUKUS.

The Post named six former navy admirals and Dr Donald C. Winter, a onetime US Navy secretary to George W. Bush. Winter had been a key member of the Australian government’s high-level Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board as far back as 2016, before being handpicked by Morrison to help drive AUKUS forward in September 2021.

Documents unearthed by the Post show Winter’s services were being provided via Burdeshaw in late 2021 for $US6000 ($9318) a day, plus expenses.

In 2022, specialist industry publication Australian Defence Magazine highlighted the “significant American influence in Australia’s defence capability decision-making”.

It noted the Defence Department’s submarine advisory committee included two senior US shipbuilding industry figures: Jim Hughes and retired US admiral Kirkland Donald.

Hughes was a former vice president of submarines at US shipbuilder Newport News Shipbuilding (which makes Virginia-class submarines of the type Australia is now seeking to acquire from the US before it gears up to make its own).

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Donald sat on Australia’s top-level submarine advisory committee from 2017, while he was also on the board of and subsequently chairing US nuclear submarine builder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), which owns Newport News. He eventually stepped down from the Australian advisory committee in April 2022, citing a potential conflict of interest. This masthead is not suggesting there was a conflict of interest.

Defence officials later insisted he’d declared his HII role and “in his capacity as a member of the submarine advisory committee he did not provide advice on nuclear-powered submarines”.

In 2018-19, former US Navy rear admiral Stephen E. Johnson was appointed a deputy secretary inside the Australian Department of Defence, one of the most senior positions in the nation’s security hierarchy.

Former US Navy vice admiral William “Willy” Hilarides, a veteran of 35 years in the American service, was also deeply embedded in Australian defence advisory structures for years.

A former head of the US Navy’s ship and sustainment program, Hilarides sat as a key member of the Australian Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board for four years before becoming chair of its successor body, the Naval Shipbuilding Expert Advisory Panel, in 2021.

Figures provided by the Defence Department to a Senate committee in late 2022 put the value of Hilarides’ contracts –  negotiated through Burdeshaw – at $1.9 million. Subsequently, this masthead reported he received $2.4 million for his role on the two advisory panels.

Head of the Defence Department Greg Moriarty told the Senate that Hilarides had played no role in the Morrison government’s decision to scrap the French submarine contract in 2021.

In 2023, the Albanese government handed Hilarides a new role, heading a review to advise on achieving “complementarity” between Australia’s surface navy fleet and the AUKUS submarines.

Labor Defence Minister Richard Marles has defended the extensive use of advice from former top-ranking US Navy officers, telling this masthead in 2023, “where we have sought advice from those former officials in the US Navy, that has been on issues of profound importance for our nation’s future”.

Others have questioned how genuinely objective such advice could have been, even with the best intentions.

Gary Slater, a former American marine turned consultant for local lobbyist ADCG, says “there’s a good and a bad to it: the good is that you’re getting access to global expertise. And the bad is a perception … that you’re paying consultant rates for retired officers to give you advice that is not necessarily in Australia’s best interest”.

Rex Patrick, former South Australian senator and submariner, speculates that it appeared the department had wanted only one perspective. “If you only seek counsel from US admirals, you’ll only get a US answer. The department had the ability to reach out to other very experienced submarine-operating nations to bring different perspectives ‘inside the tent’. They didn’t.”

Defence’s refusal to answer this masthead’s questions about the Burdeshaw contracts stands in marked contrast to some of the detail it provided in past Senate estimates hearings.

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In 2023, Defence Department secretary Moriarty confirmed that contracts for advice by another American, retired US Navy rear admiral Thomas Eccles, then stood at $1.2 million.

In early 2023, in written advice to Greens senator Jordon Steele-John, the department confirmed that the maximum amount payable on contracts relating to just three of the US Navy’s former top brass – Hilarides, Eccles and Kirkland Donald – totalled close to $5.3 million.

The AUKUS pact faces a raft of challenges, not least the review now being undertaken by Pentagon Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby. Finding the workforce to crew, build and maintain nuclear-powered submarines will pose a years-long challenge. However, one pool of labour that won’t run dry any time soon is the pipeline of US and other consultants in waiting as the AUKUS project gathers momentum. Meanwhile, the federal government’s Australian Submarine Agency is criss-crossing the globe at a seemingly frenetic pace. According to figures provided to the senate, between June last year and the end of January this year, its staff clocked up 218 international trips, at a total cost of around $3 million.

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