More Ambition, Same Architecture: Australia's 2026 National Defence Strategy
What Australia's 2026 National Defence Strategy Gets Right — and What It Leaves Undone
The concept of deterioration is no longer adequate to describe Australia’s strategic environment. The global rules-based order – which has underpinned Australia’s security and prosperity – is in transition. The end state is difficult to predict. While there will be elements of continuity, the coming decade will likely be defined more by fracture, rivalry and disorder. 2026 Australian National Defence Strategy.
Today, Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles released the 2026 version of Australia’s National Defence Strategy (NDS). In a speech given at the National Press Club in Canberra, Marles was critical of previous governments and took a combative stance on the contributions of think tanks and defence commentators.
In launching the new strategy, Marles outlined an approach that retained the overall trajectory of the 2024 National Defence Strategy, reinforced Australia’s alliance with America, and committed to expanded growth in defence spending.
This article contains an initial assessment of the new Australian National Defence Strategy. Overall, the focus and trajectory of Australia’s defence strategy remains consistent with the 2024 version. But there are some notable issues and missed opportunities that are worthy of highlighting.
Four Shifts in the New Strategy
First, I want to cover the key changes from the 2024 strategy to the one just announced. There are four key changes worth exploring. Each on its own could be a separate article.
Change I: Strategic Framing. Described Australia’s most challenging environment since WWII; strategic circumstances were ‘deteriorating’; a ten-year warning window no longer existed. The rules-based order was under pressure but still largely intact. The 2026 National Defence Strategy states that ‘deterioration’ no longer adequately describes conditions. The international system is in ‘transition’ with the end state “difficult to predict.” Thresholds against the use of force are being eroded. Australia will face force projection risks “not seen since WWII.”
Change II: Strategic Reliance as an Objective. Self-reliance was referenced in context of building capability and reducing vulnerability to coercion but was not named as a discrete strategic objective. The U.S. Alliance remained the primary security guarantee without qualification. In the 2026 National Defence Strategy, self-reliance is now formally defined and elevated as a core strategic objective. The 2026 NDS also acknowledges the U.S. increasingly expects allies to do more and directs Defence to “work towards greater independent capacity to generate and employ military power.”
Change III: Funding. The 2024 strategy committed an additional $5.7 billion over four years (to 2027-28) and $50.3 billion over a decade (to 2033-34). Total decade funding was $765 billion in the 2024 document with the defence budget projected to reach $100.4 billion by 2033-34. The 2026 NDS adds $14 billion over four years and $53 billion over a decade. Combined with 2024 NDS, total additional investment is $30 billion over four years and $117 billion over the decade to 2035-36. The investment in capability over the decade grows to ~$425 billion. Defence spending is projected to reach approximately 3.0% of GDP by 2033-34. The key question is whether this is enough to deter or deal with threats in the environment described in Change I.
Change IV: Evolving National Defence Definition. In 2024, national defence comprised integrated statecraft, national resilience, industry resilience, supply chain resilience, innovation/S&T, a workforce/skills base, and the National Intelligence Community. Fuel security was not a highlighted domain. Economic security was implicit rather than explicit. In the new strategy, the concept of National Defence is expanded to include explicit new priority areas: economic security, national civil preparedness, and a dedicated focus on fuel resilience (backed by $4.8 billion investment and a new National Fuel Council). As such, the new 2026 National Defence Strategy shifts more towards a true ‘defence’ strategy rather than just a ‘military’ strategy that was described in the 2024 version. This is good. But these are also topics that should be in a National Security Strategy - if Australia had one!
Other Issues, Challenges and Missed Opportunities
Spending. There is an uptick in spending. This is a positive. There is a description of how Australia will get 3% of GDP on defence in the future - beyond 2030. The reality is that because we are well short of this now, trying to fund both AUKUS and the ADF at the same time with current spending is challenging (nice word for not possible), and conventional military capabilities are degrading - and not modernising fast enough.
Learning from Other People’s War. Arguably the Australian Dept of Defence has been the slowest of all western military institutions to learn the lessons from Ukraine and it received minimal mentions in the 2024 edition of the NDS. That has changed with a couple of dozen mentions in the new document and in the Minister’s speech. However, the only real (superficial) insights that the NDS provides are that Ukraine shows asymmetry in war is good, that magazine depth matters and that interaction with industry is crucial. All true. But nothing about how to truly mobilise national warfighting capacity in the event of war.
Mobilisation. Notwithstanding the positive language around readiness and resilience, as well as self-reliance, this could have all been brought together with a discussion on mobilisation planning, and how a mobilisation plan aids in deterring adversaries. This is a real missed opportunity. This would have been an opportunity to draw all these threads together, and include mobilisation as a seventh “capability effect” in the 2026 National Defence Strategy.
Artificial Intelligence (AI). The 2026 National Defence Strategy mentions AI a few times and there is a section on it buried in Chapter 9. But plans for speeding up operational tempo and improving strategic decision making in the ADF are pretty light on. My observations of U.S., Ukrainian and Israeli approaches would indicate that the 2026 National Defence Strategy contains nothing that would get the ADF close to their capabilities any time soon. And in AI, days matter. If Defence in Australia is years behind, which is possible, it will be a massive challenge for Australia’s defence department to catch up with allies.
Cognitive Warfare. One of the most important lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East has been the growth in AI-enabled cognitive warfare. Cognitive warfare was recently defined by military strategist Frank Hoffman as “the application of information and cognitive sciences to enhance or degrade the decision-making process and resulting behaviour of political and military leaders, and civilian society, in order to obtain a positional advantage in the information environment and designated political objectives.” By this definition, strategic communications, which is the 2026 National Defence Strategy’s only nod towards this domain, addresses only the margins of the challenge. This is a missed opportunity to explore and invest in a critical military and national capability.
People. As the strategy states, “People are Defence’s most important capability.” Defence has made some headway in recruiting in recent years, and strengths are heading in the right direction. What is not heading in the right direction is the increasingly bloated numbers of senior military and civilian personnel in the Department.
Recent Portfolio Budget Statements (see the pages from the publicly released Defence Budget Statements in 2015, 2020 and 2025) tell a tale of massive growth in senior officers while growth in enlisted personnel is much, much smaller.Military star ranks have increased by 33% in the last decade, and military senior officers have increased by 32% over the same time. However, enlisted personnel ranks have decreased by 1%. It is hard to square these numbers with a more effective, faster moving and more innovative military institution when there is such a large – and increasing – managerial overhead in the Australian Defence Force
People and Advanced Technology. In Chapter 5 of the 2026 National Defence Strategy, AI is grouped with autonomous systems as a category of emerging technology that demands new workforce attributes, particularly specifically flexible thinking, resilience and a willingness to innovate. This is a relatively brief mention but signals that the ADF people development must account for AI literacy and adaptability as core competencies for the future ADF. This is a positive thing. But more needs to be done in the evolution of training and education where military personnel are no longer machine users and drivers - they are full partners with some of these technologies and that demands different training, education and leader development approaches.
Air, missile and drone defence. The 2026 National Defence Strategy makes a positive contribution to the development of enhanced air, missile and drone defence for military bases, deployed forces and, hopefully, critical civil infrastructure. This was a lesson from Ukraine that was obvious over 3 years ago and neglected in the 2024 NDS. So, growth here, including a high priority placed on a medium range air and missile defence system is good. But is there enough funding to provide the coverage required? And, given that every major nation on earth is engaged in a build-up of similar systems, will Australia be close enough to the front of the line to procure these systems from America or Europe before 2030?
Defence Industry. There are positive signals for Australian defence industry including the emphasis on self-reliance and the quoting of the Ukrainian example of BRAVE1 as an interlocutor between the military and industry. Let’s see how this actually plays out, but I am hopeful we will be building (as well as designing and
adapting) more defence technologies here in Australia.
The ANZUS Alliance. The minister strenuously defended the U.S. alliance during his speech at the National Press Club. Full disclosure: I am also a strong supporter of the alliance, and it is in Australia’s interest to sustain it and contribute more to it. And while Australia has avoided much of the harsh language directed at America’s NATO allies, that does not mean we can free-ride on the alliance. The nature of our alliance is evolving and we must evolve too.
Adaptive Stance. It is no secret, at least outside of Australia, that the technology of war, and the accompanying changes in military structures, strategy, tactics and training, are moving very quickly. Ukraine and the wars in the Middle East have demonstrated a pace of learning and adaptation – on all sides. The 2026 National Defence Strategy treats pace as a first-order strategic problem. It is viewed as an existential challenge to how the Department of Defence operates, acquires, trains, reforms and governs itself. References to pace, speed, adaptation and related concepts appear over 200 times in the document. Responses in the NDS to this challenge include:
Risk tolerance. Chapter 11 addresses this directly and in frank terms. Defence leaders are told to have “a positive disposition to risk” and told that “a higher risk tolerance remains critical to enable timely decision-making, ensure speed to acquisition and deliver Australia’s defence strategy.”
Asymmetry. Chapter 9 argues that Australia must “seek military advantage in innovative ways” and that asymmetric options — particularly from Ukraine’s experience — “can preserve conventional military capabilities and contribute an element of operational surprise.”
Quicker capability. The minimum viable capability model (Chapter 8) is directly responsive to the pace of change problem. And the establishment of the Defence Delivery Agency (commencing July 2027), led by a National Armaments Director reporting directly to Ministers, is partly framed as a response to the pace problem. Chapter 8 notes that “urgent reform is required to effectively deliver increasingly complex defence capabilities.”
Supply Assurance. A key theme in the pace response is that Australia cannot rely on access to external supply chains during a conflict. The document acknowledges in Chapter 1 that global defence industry is already struggling to meet demand, and that “off-the-shelf procurement no longer offers a guarantee of speed to capability.” The response is a consistent push toward sovereign industrial capability.
The 2026 National Defence Strategy is the document that is most conscious of Australia’s defence strategy temporal challenges to date. It moves to treat speed as a first-order strategic and organisational challenge. The document’s ambition in this regard makes sense. Whether Defence’s institutional culture, acquisition processes and sovereign industrial base can be transformed at the speed – and capacity - the strategic environment demands remains an unanswered question.
Defence Culture. Finally, the defence minister today dismissed the contributions of think tanks, retired officers, and former public servants as worthless. Whatever one thinks of individual contributors, this reflects a broader cultural issue: Australian defence policy is developed within a narrow Canberra circle that has insufficient external scrutiny. No other Western capital has a similar relationship (or lack of a relationship) with its defence ecosystem as the Canberra bubble. Better leadership from the Minister is required here.
Overall Assessment
Like all government strategies, the new 2026 National Defence Strategy has some good, and some bad, elements. It exploits some opportunities while missing others.
The 2026 National Defence Strategy builds on, rather than replaces, the strategic framework established in 2024. The core architecture of National Defence, the Strategy of Denial, the integrated focused force, and the US Alliance as the foundational partnership remain intact. However, the 2026 NDS intensifies ambition in multiple domains, driven by the assessment that Australia’s security environment has not just deteriorated but has entered a fundamentally new and more dangerous era.
For defence planners and industry partners, the key implications are increases in investment across capability, the new (already announced) capability delivery architecture (the Defence Delivery Agency), an expanded sovereign industrial base policy, and a broader conception of National Defence that now includes national civil preparedness, fuel security, and economic security as explicit domains.
I will conclude with some words I wrote for the Lowy Institute about the new defence strategy today:
Ultimately, the real test of any defence strategy is whether it prepares Australia to deter conflict, and if deterrence fails, to defeat threats to the nation. The 2026 NDS provides only a partial answer to that question.
Read the new 2026 Australian National Defence Strategy and its accompanying Integrated Investment Program, at this link.
Thanks for the picture of a Ghost Shark; a creative blend of technology and deep sea intelligence gathering.
Thanks for the analysis Mick. As usual, you have walked me back from the edge of despair in how we are handling Defence. Nonetheless, is the strategic framing really all that different? We have been saying for at least 5 years that the 10 year window is collapsing. No matter how many times we say it without acting on it substantially, it just sounds more and more ridiculous.
I also wonder if 'strategic reliance' is starting to also sound like we need to rethink the horse we are riding: I think we were intensely lucky and right to easily slot into the American sphere of influence from the British sphere after WW2. But now I do wonder if we were just lucky in backing the morally right horse then and that now we need to think a little more deeply and prepare for the worst.
The seemingly bright spot of funding feels like a con. I just don't think that the government is being honest or really proactive here. It is increasingly a shell game that the politicians and bureaucrats use to LOOK like they are doing something, without actually doing it. ASPI has some great analysis on this governmental 'scam'.
I am heartened to see a broader definition of Defence though. This is good to see, and as Defence has previously stated, this is now a whole of nation effort. I hope it is not a ploy to just make it look like they are spending more money by lumping in lots of other items. I am not certain that the defence planners are thinking more than one derivative down. I used to be confident they were but now I am unsure.
NOW, Senior Officer Bloat is an issue and part of the culture and intransigence problem. As an aside, I do wonder if there were an analysis of the past correlation (probably not causation) of senior rank bloat to commencement of hostilities, if we would find that we are getting close to that inception point. My instinct says we are not far off.