By David Beaumont.

In The fight to supply, I argued that one of the most important shifts in the changing character of war could be found in the growing contestation of logistics space. This was not only a statement about military interdiction, or about striking an adversaries logistics infrastructure, or even about how a military sustains itself through dangerous geography. Instead, it was a statement – a somewhat self-evident one – that we must also ask whether the industrial capability that produces, repairs, replenishes and distributes that sustainment will be available when and where it is ultimately required. The problem has widened from movement to access, and from vulnerability in transit, to vulnerability in production. In strategic terms, the issue is not simply how to protect supply, but how to assure access to the industry capability without which military force cannot be prepared, employed or sustained.

This is not a minor shift in emphasis. It is a larger change in how we should think about the relationship between war, national power and the global economy. For much of the post-Cold War period, Western militaries could assume that industrial capability would be available when needed, and that the commercial systems linking states to global supply would continue to function with sufficient reliability to support military requirements. The focus of strategy therefore sat elsewhere, fuelled by military thinking fixated on winning economically manageable, strategically small-scale, military campaigns rather than the protracted wars that commentators have suddenly ‘found’ again. Logistics was important, but it was not usually treated as a principal determinant of strategic freedom or, as Thomas Kane, puts it, the arbiter of opportunity.[1] Logistics was treated, instead, as a technical matter that was occasionally conjured up in discussions about preparedness or capability acquisition to make a clever point. In Australia, it wasn’t really until the 2023 Defence Strategic Review that logistics issues were directly related to the preparedness of the Australian Defence Force in a way that brought sufficient investment attention.

It is safe to say that the minds directed to determining how military power will be best employed in the future, are now facing a paradox. On one hand they are living in a time where it is easy to be seduced by the potential of advanced technology, but on the other, the implementation of such technology is increasingly impacted by productive capacity and distribution systems beyond their control. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, combined with wider economic shocks and disruptions to global commerce, have shown that the systems through which production, energy, data and distribution circulate are no longer stable, nor are they a background problem that can be brushed over when idling through the context sections of policy statements or military plans. These systems – so important to sustaining military forces – are increasingly exposed to coercion, interruption, interference and direct attack. For any military strategy to be rational in this day and age, it must contend with the very real threats affecting the sustainability of military forces.

In my previous article, I contended that the idea of ‘logistics space’ serves us well in framing how logistics impacts strategy, if not war in general. These spaces are not merely routes or hubs in the narrow transportation sense but geopolitical nexus through which logistics flows circulate. They are the maritime corridors, ports, freight systems, rail lines, digital networks, fuel infrastructure, maintenance facilities and industrial zones through which economic and military life connects. They are the geographies that enable the circulation of goods, services and materiel, and they are therefore central to the ability of states to generate and sustain force. When such spaces are contested, the problem is not limited to what happens to the soldier in the foxhole. The effects also travel backwards through to industry itself, creating a negative feedback loop that prevents forces from receiving the resources they need. Inputs fail to arrive, costs rise, risk calculations change, power becomes uncertain, labour becomes harder to mobilise, insurance becomes more expensive, and the ability to manufacture or repair is degraded well before a finished product joins a supply chain.

Seen in this light, the relationship between logistics and industry appears rather different from the way it is often described. In the past, Western nations have traditionally treated production (capability acquisition) and logistics as distinct activities. Yet recent conflict suggests that this distinction has become misleading. Industrial capability does not sit outside logistics space, waiting to be tapped when needed. It is embedded within it, depends upon the logistics flows around it, and is only realised when resourced through it. Production depends on energy sources, raw materials, skilled labour, digital systems, transport links, other infrastructure and financial arrangements that are all situated within wider economic and logistical networks. The same could be said of repair and reconstitution. If those networks are constrained or threatened, then the industrial system connected to them does not remain intact. It begins to experience the same pressure as the supply routes themselves. The geography of distribution and movement and the geography of production are thus converging into one strategic problem.

This helps explain why the language of supply-chain security, though useful, is no longer entirely sufficient. Supply-chain security metrics might alert us to the vulnerability of logistics flows, but they are not the only factor influencing whether states can reliably claim industrial capability when those flows are under pressure. A nation may participate deeply in the global economy, possess extensive commercial relationships defined by iron-clad agreements, and still discover that very little of the industrial base it depends upon is truly available to it in a crisis. Its partners may preference their own needs, rather than directing their industry capability to the customer with the most urgent strategic requirement. Components may be available somewhere in the world, but not in ways that align with the equipment the military believes it needs. The strategic question is therefore not simply whether supply chains are secure, but whether access to industry capability is assured when disruption, scarcity and coercion create forces in logistics spaces that prevent industry capability and capacity being realised.

Ukraine has shown this with clarity. The war there has not only been a struggle over territory, firepower and operational adaptation, but a sustained contest over whether a national logistics system can continue to generate and regenerate military capability while under pressure. Power grids, transport systems, industrial sites and repair hubs have all been drawn into the conflict because they underpin the connection between the national economy and the battlefield. At the same time, Ukraine’s adaptation has suggested that resilience lies not only in output, but in the capacity to disperse production, improvise new industrial forms and create alternative ways of connecting capability to the fight. In the Middle East, and as the International Monetary Fund shows, the coercive use of maritime disruption and threats to commercial shipping has shown how logistics space can be contested without requiring total military closure. Freight costs rise, insurance premiums surge, transit times expand and commercial calculation changes. Strategic outcomes are delivered through economic pressure as much as military strikes. In both cases, logistics space is not merely the setting within which war occurs; it is part of the mechanism by which access to industry capability is either constrained or sustained.

For Australia, this carries significant implications. Geography has always given Australia strategic advantages, but it has also meant that Australian military outcomes are increasingly subject to to contestation in logistics spaces. Distance can provide depth, but it also creates long and exposed lines of communication that are easily interdicted. In a period where the thresholds for coercion are lower, and strategic competition is becoming pronounced, we cannot assume that logistics space will be neutral and work for our favour. The 2026 National Defence Strategy makes this plain enough in its emphasis on greater self-reliance, stronger industrial resilience, fuel security, national logistics infrastructure and the need for more diverse international industrial partnerships. Recent policy language around national support points in the same direction. The message is that preparedness depends not only upon force structure and acquisition, but upon whether the nation can access industry, infrastructure, workforce and materiel under increasingly adverse conditions during conflicts that are likely to be protracted.

It is important, however, not to misunderstand what assured access means. It does not mean self-sufficiency in every domain, for every potential circumstances. Australian strategic policy since the 1980’s has made it clear that this would be neither realistic nor strategically wise for Australia. Assured access is about the fuelling a force with logistics resources from any source to create strategic opportunities, reduce risks or preserve freedom of action. Assured access is defined by control rather than completeness; it is a matter where logistics space is understood, risks managed, and logistics flows controlled. It is the ability to retain access to the industrial functions most necessary for preparing, sustaining and regenerating military capability, even when the wider environment is under stress. Naturally, some of those functions must be either sovereign or nationally assured. Others can be diversified internationally, depending on the level of risk a national is willing to accept. But they might also depend on access arrangements with partners, provided those arrangements are credible and can be relied upon. The point is not to abolish interdependence, but to prevent interdependence ultimately becoming strategic insolvency in a crisis.

This becomes clearer when one looks beyond the narrow boundaries of what is usually called defence industry. The industrial foundations of military effectiveness are much broader than weapons manufacture, guided weapons enterprises or shipbuilding, important though these are. Construction, transport, engineering, health services, software, warehousing, communications, energy supply and many other sectors all contribute to Defence capability once a nation begins preparing for prolonged crisis or conflict. Their outputs may not be coded as military in peacetime, but they are entirely vital to sustaining military action. A country may possess a capable sovereign defence industrial base in a narrow sense and still find that its broader industrial ecosystem remains too brittle, too centralised or too commercially unclaimable to support military need under pressure. Assured access must therefore be framed against the width of the national economy, not simply against the visible edges of defence production.

The same can be said of repair, maintenance and reconstitution, which deserve more attention than they often receive. In any protracted conflict the ability to restore damaged systems to service will likely matter as much as the ability to procure new ones. Industry capability builds new machines or products, but it also creates the capacity to repair, modify, replace components, keep platforms viable and return capability to use at the tempo required during operations. The ability to deal with battle-damaged equipment creates imperatives for logistics spaces, and most certainly the economic conditions and risk calculations that affect supply-chains. Spare parts, technical specialists, diagnostic systems, power, digital connectivity and transport links are all required if repair is to occur at scale and at speed. A nation that can purchase advanced systems but cannot sustain access to the industrial means of repair will find its force structure steadily hollowing under attrition.

All of this leads to an uncomfortable conclusion about the role of markets. In peacetime, market availability can create the impression of strategic availability. Goods appear commercially available, contractors appear accessible and services appear plentiful. Yet crisis changes the meaning of availability. Commercial actors can be expected to respond to price, risk, regulation and contractual obligation, not necessarily to national strategic pressures, ‘requirements’ or ‘demand signals’. Under conditions of scarcity or disruption, resources may be pulled towards other uses, reserved for other customers or made inaccessible by political decisions beyond the control the military. This is one reason why the question of assured access cannot be left for industry to solve in isolation. Instead, commercial relationships might be defined by arrangements that give government and Defence the ability to prioritise or redirect industrial output when strategic circumstances demand it. Otherwise the apparent abundance a military might enjoy during peacetime may prove to be an illusion with fateful strategic consequences.

None of this suggests that resilience is function of stockpiling more or by trying to control every national support variable in advance. The industrial lesson emerging from recent wars is not merely that militaries require more resources to add to stockholders or reserves, though many plainly do. It is that the nations that these militaries serve need systems capable of adapting to disruption. Capacity to scale, pivot, disperse, substitute, improvise and recover within logistics spaces matters at least as much as peacetime efficiency. An industrial base optimised narrowly for cost may perform well in stable conditions and fail under stress. An industrial system capable of adaptation may look less efficient in peacetime, but it will generate strategic value when logistics spaces are contested. This is especially relevant to an age in which supply disruption, cyberattack, strategic coercion and infrastructure vulnerability are likely to be normal features of crisis rather than exceptional events.

The strategic burden, then, is to think of logistics space not as a set of background routes, but as the wider environment through which access to industry capability is organised, contested and potentially denied. This means the old habit of relegating logistics to the status of a supporting function is becoming increasingly untenable. It also means that industry policy, infrastructure resilience, labour capacity, commercial arrangements and strategic planning cannot be treated as separate conversations. They are different facets of the broader challenge for supplying war. What is at issue is whether a nation can assure to itself the means of sustaining military power in a world where the spaces connecting economy to force are no longer secure, and where industrial access can be interrupted well before capability reaches the battlefield.

If The fight to supply argued that logistics space was the epochal battleground, then the next conclusion is unavoidable. The contest is expanding from the movement of supply to the question of whether the industrial means of supply are viable, or obtainable, at all. Assured access to industry capability, in this case, is therefore not a secondary concern. It is becoming one of the principal strategic conditions upon which operations depend, and a preeminent problem for defence planners who are coming to the realisation than logistics, and logistics spaces, matter more than ever. The nation that cannot secure logistics spaces will find that assured industry capability is an impossibility, and that its strategic choices are narrowed well before any decisive encounter occurs. It will discover that strategy is not only strangled by the inability to move what it has, but by the inability to access, regenerate and sustain what it needs in the first place.

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[1] Kane, T.M., Military logistics and strategic performance, Routledge, Great Britain, 2001, p 8