‘We’re having to reconsider Australia as a homeland from which we will conduct combat operations’, the chief of the defence force, Admiral David Johnston, surprised some listeners by saying at ASPI’s annual defence conference on 4 June. It was a significant comment with implications for the defence of Australia.
Johnston was being conspicuously upfront with the Australian people that the threat of military conflict is moving closer to Australia, both temporally and geographically, than is generally expressed in the public domain. The underlying warning is stark: war isn’t as far off as you might think, and things are changing fast. Such clarity contrasts with mixed messaging at the political level.
This was the first time that Australia’s seniormost military officer had made such a blunt statement about the likelihood of armed conflict occurring in Australia’s neighbourhood. While the 2023 Defence Strategic Review mainstreamed the official view that Australia faces its ‘most complex and dangerous strategic circumstances since the Second World War’, Johnston’s pointed reference to combat operations from the homeland resonated with media and others present. It has already been judged as a significant intervention in Australia’s defence debate, including the need to develop social licence.
His comments were pertinent to ASPI’s conference themes of preparedness and readiness. Johnston’s subsequent reference to ‘our northern infrastructure, our supply chains, how we integrate with industry, states and territories’ implied not simply the possibility of contested defence operations from the homeland but an urgent requirement to strengthen defence of the homeland and to protect critical national infrastructure against potential aggressors with growing capabilities.
And it is reasonable to assume that Johnston was highlighting such vulnerabilities on a national scale, not just in Australia’s north. The presence of a Chinese naval task force off Australia’s eastern and southern seaboards in March and April made clear that all of Australia now lies within China’s military reach.
The Department of Defence tracked and transparently reported the partial circumnavigation of Australia by China’s naval Task Force 107. Less well known is that a second Chinese naval task group was concurrently operating to Australia’s north-west, underlining Beijing’s ability to project power and to apply military pressure in multiple locations near Australia, potentially stretching the Australian Defence Force’s limited surveillance and response capabilities during a crisis or wartime. The positioning of two Chinese task groups in Australia’s environs was unprecedented. Such lawful but unmistakably coercive behaviour challenges the notion that Australia has stabilised relations with China, as the government contends. One commentator has speculated that Task Force 107 was rehearsing seaborne missile attacks on Australian land targets.
Johnston steered clear of associating China with any particular threat to Australia. But it is clear from his reference to ‘combat operations’ that he was thinking in terms of direct military threats, manifesting from within Australia’s immediate region. In addition to expeditionary naval activity, China’s military continues to thicken its presence in the South China Sea, to rehearse for a blockade and amphibious landings in Taiwan’s vicinity and to expand its nuclear arsenal and missile capabilities, including an intercontinental ballistic missile test into the Pacific Ocean in September 2024.
The defence of Australian territory against external attack is not a new or surprising mission for the ADF. In the 1980s, the Australian Army trained to respond to pin-prick military attacks in northern Australia. Indonesia was seen then as the most plausible source for such a limited threat, though its probability was assessed to be low. By contrast, Johnston’s comments allude to a looming strategic threat that could materialise in Australia’s immediate region with only limited warning.
His reference to countering uncrewed systems, on the heels of Ukraine’s offensive drone strikes deep inside Russia, hinted further at Australia’s vulnerability to similar attacks. High-value targets for covertly launched drone-swarm strikes could include sparsely defended military infrastructure, such as the Jindalee over-the-horizon radars that are so important for Australia’s long-range surveillance, as well as civilian infrastructure including oil refineries. Both of Australia’s refineries are near the coast, undefended and therefore vulnerable to drone attacks from passing merchant vessels. This mode of attack would be easier for an adversary to achieve than infiltrating uncrewed weapons close to protected military bases. Halting Australia’s domestic refinery operations could have a devastating strategic impact on Australia’s war-fighting capability and national resilience.
Johnston did not invoke these specific scenarios. But his core message that Australia needs to reconsider homeland defence highlights new possibilities, including the potential for Australia’s civilian infrastructure and population centres to be kinetically targeted during a military conflict. Until now, Australia has hardly considered such vulnerabilities and has failed to allocate resources for their protection beyond cyberattacks. This needs to change rapidly. We need a national conversation about how Australia can mobilise whole-of-society capabilities in and beyond the defence force.
Government ministers are highly circumspect when discussing Australia’s threat environment. Johnston’s calibrated candour was both commendably refreshing and significant, not just for the message but also the messenger: a precision-guided package delivered to the Australian people not from Defence’s political masters, but from the ADF itself.