Australia’s strategy of denial requires the Australian Defence Force to have the means to reduce an adversary’s confidence that force or coercion against this country can achieve its political and strategic objectives. However, the ADF’s ability to realistically achieve that objective is under increasing challenge by China’s continued, rapid and non-transparent military modernisation.
The Chinese armed forces now have the means to threaten Australian territory, deployed ADF units and critical national infrastructure through long-range strike, space, cyber and expanded power-projection capabilities. They can project naval and air power into Australia’s approaches and threaten the critical maritime trade routes and undersea infrastructure on which Australia’s security and prosperity depend. The growing reality that many of the capabilities being acquired by China could be employed beyond the effective reach of an ADF operating from northern Australia is of key importance for Australia’s approach to denial.
In an ASPI report published today, Projecting power forward: Strengthening Australia’s strategy of denial, I propose an operational concept of ‘forward defence in depth’. This concept involves investment and credibility in capability, across all five operational domains (land, sea, air, cyber and space), in partnership with the US and other allies and partners.
Through this concept, Australia can implement a more geographically ambitious, responsive and sustainable approach to a strategy of denial as stated in the 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS). The NDS explores the ADF’s approach to undertaking a strategy of denial as ensuring the ‘ADF’s credibility, capability, capacity and resolve to hold a potential adversary’s forces at risk and degrade their willingness and confidence to employ force or military coercion against us’.
Consistent with that strategy, the objective of forward defence in depth is to enhance the ADF’s ability to increase uncertainty in the mind of the adversary about whether aggression or coercion will succeed.
Forward defence in depth isn’t a return to the historical posture of ‘forward defence’ of the 1950s and 1960s, in which the ADF was forward deployed on an indefinite basis in foreign states. Nor does it advocate deterrence by punishment or a resort to pre-emption. It describes the capacity to deploy and sustain forces at the distances required to prevent an adversary from achieving its objectives. The central argument of this report is that Australia’s strategy of denial should become more geographically ambitious, operationally responsive and sustainable if it’s to remain credible. That’s done by detecting, deterring and, where authorised, responding to threats further from Australia, denying the adversary the operational initiative and reducing its confidence that coercion or aggression would succeed.
To succeed, the ADF needs to project power forward, well beyond the constraints of traditional approaches, such as the one set out in the ‘Defence of Australia’ white paper published in 1987. While the 2024 and 2026 NDS have oriented Australian defence policy away from a narrow Defence of Australia mindset, the pace of Chinese military development is such that the 2028 NDS will need to adopt a more ambitious approach towards ‘impactful projection’ for the ADF.
For forward defence in depth to be operationally effective, Australia’s capability development needs to include persistent sensing and targeting; survivable and sustained forward presence and responsiveness to emerging threats. It also needs to include resilient command and control sustained from forward locations – and also from northern Australia through resilient infrastructure and combat sustainment.
That capability investment needs to be deployed through all five operational domains, integrating crewed and uncrewed systems and supporting long-range joint effects and resilient logistics.
Forward defence in depth also requires that Australia work with allies and partners to share the regional defence burden. While the alliance with the US remains our most important, forward defence in depth also requires Australia to elevate relations with Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Those relationships are the ones that will help to facilitate the ability of the ADF to undertake forward operations through ensuring access, transit, logistical support, information sharing and greater interoperability. While Australia must prioritise its national security, the optimal outcome is to use these defence diplomacy arrangements to maintain and increase trust across the region in Australia’s contribution to its partners’ security.
In the ASPI report, I argue that Australia’s strategy of denial requires the ADF to project power rapidly, at greater range and, if necessary, sustain a forward presence alongside allies and regional partners. The unstable and insecure state of the world, with wars in Europe and the Middle East and tension in the Indo-Pacific, should be enough cause for such an approach; but the principal justification for adoption is China’s rapid military modernisation. Australia’s defence and foreign ministers have confirmed that this modernisation lacks any form of transparency that might provide Australia and our region with a sense of assurance. It has given China the capability to threaten Australian territory and vital maritime trade routes, as well as undersea infrastructure, from beyond the effective reach of ADF units.
This needs to be recognised as a strategic vulnerability that can be mitigated only by changes in defence policy, military strategy and communications.
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