By David Beaumont

Current approaches to Australian National Defence and defence industry start from a familiar premise. Military capability is no longer generated by the uniformed force alone, and ‘whole-of-nation support is key to Defence preparedness in a crisis or conflict’.[1] Australia’ 2026 National Defence Strategy places a whole-of-nation conception of defence at the centre of strategic policy, while the current defence industry agenda seeks to accelerate capability delivery, strengthen sovereign industrial capacity and ultimately make the sovereign defence industrial base more responsive to strategic risk.

Yet the distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘military’ when it comes to logistics has always been precarious.[2] Australia has experimented with various civil-military support concepts since the formation of modern Defence in the 1970’s, usually to offset a logistics capability gap within the Australian Defence Force (ADF). To a certain extent, the whole-of-nation support currently intended in strategic policy suggests as much through painting a picture of the broad support requirements that may be necessary to prepare crisis or conflict. However, and keeping in mind the strategic context in which contemporary policy sits, there is another angle to the logistics dimension of war that must be considered.

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. That was not just a point about supply-line interdiction, vulnerable ports, or the risks facing militaries moving through dangerous geography. Nor was it an overstatement of the saccharine notion of ‘contested logistics’ that is proliferating in military conceptual circles (as if militaries have not had to support their forces under fire in the past). Instead, it was a broader argument that the spaces through which goods, energy, data and materiel circulate are no longer passive settings for strategy, but being areas of contest in their own right, are becoming fundamental determinants of strategy – if not the purpose for a strategy entirely.

Charles Thorpe in 1921’s Pure logistics reminded us that logistics is the stage for strategy, but I’d add that, right now, Western militaries are adjusting to a new playhouse.[3] These militaries are now confronted with the problem that defence access to industry capacity is no longer as certain as it may have been in the past, as limits to industry capacity to the heightening of preparedness levels are being expose. In Assured industrial access in a new strategic epoch I suggested that the problem had widened further, however. The question was no longer simply whether supply could be protected through contested logistics spaces, but whether the industrial capacity needed to prepare, sustain and regenerate force could actually be made available when required.

I have often written that strategy is conditioned by – if not already an appendix to – the logistics system that translates economic strength into military capability. Strategic logistics, to use a military term, is the component of this system concerned with how the military harnesses the economic and societal strengths of a nation for defence. This matters to military preparedness prior to a conflict, and the sustainment of combat operations during a conflict. If industrial power exists as latent national strength, it is assured industry capacity through logistics that realises that strength as military capability. Combat forces are only the visible expression of a much wider set of arrangements that manifest military capability – sustainable in operations – from the raw economic resources that a nation has access to, and the industrial and logistics capacity that enable their creation. Assuring industrial support must, as a consequence, be at the forefront of our minds when thinking about what a military might look like, and how it might perform.

Most Western militaries are considering different ways to adapt to the strategic milieu through logistics transformation. Commentators have been quick to seize on the gap between military ambition and actual capability, as minds attune to the logistics problems of a strategically competitive era. For example, Patrick Kelleher, in his 2025 article Readiness and the logistics deterrent effect, exemplifies this discussion by arguing an case for US defence reform which confronts ‘logistics debt’ (underinvestment) and ‘embracing endurance as deterrence’. Through inventory visibility, forward force posture, ‘supply chain depth and resilience’, and new approaches to people and policy, a military  is enabled to ‘fight and win’. A deterrence outcome is a worthy objective for logistics reform notwithstanding that all of Kelleher’s recommendations are equally applicable to defence preparedness, resilience, and good business in general. But it’s not enough for logistics systems, spaces and assured industry capability to be focussed on deterrence and preparedness objectives alone. Instead, access to assured industry through logistics should also be considered a component of what makes a nation strategically competitive and concepts for its employment be developed accordingly.

Assured industry access becomes a strategic advantage in competition through effectively designed policy, organisation, plans, stockholding arrangements (whether they be national civil or military), industrial engagement, transportation, information flow, authority and a many other factors. When those arrangements are cohered into a strategic approach, military power can be generated and sustained with flexibility. Policy makers both near and far from Australia do realise that a new approach to industry is needed, as can be seen in the European Union’s 2004 declaration that defence readiness required ‘investing massively’ to enable the ‘defence industrial sector to evolve’ through political, industrial and budgetary ambition and enabled by collaboration. Yet policy is one thing, and practice is another. If such approaches do falter in their ambitions, the strategic choice available to nations narrows and industrial strength – whatever the investment – remains unrealised. In competitive terms, that means states do not gain advantage merely by possessing resources. They gain advantage by being better able than others to organise the processes that turn resources into military effect.

This means that the ability of a nation and its military to access assured industry capacity through logistics could very well be revealed as the strategic differentiator between success and failure in strategic competition. ‘Competition’ is a term that speaks to many things. One on hand, it speaks to adversaries seeking to control the means by which economic power becomes military capability and is distributed as logistics. On the other hand, competition also speaks to allies seeking access to globalised industry that is proving to be of insufficient capacity to meet concurrent needs, as nations seek the ability to preserve their own capacity to sustain force while constraining that of others. Defence industry, logistics infrastructure and national support arrangements are therefore not simply enabling conditions for war; they are arenas in which strategic competition is already occurring. They are things being weaponised, wielded to coerce and control others. In this respect, the competition for industry capacity logistics is not only a precondition for military success. It is now being recognised as one of the objects around which contemporary defence policy, industrial strategy and preparedness increasingly sit.

Once viewed this way, it becomes easier to see that the strategic competition we see right now is occurring through the contest for logistics. States know that they not need to destroy an opponent’s entire industrial base to gain advantage. They only need to impose enough friction on the processes that connect industry to military need, or target ‘feeder’ commodities, capabilities or components of logistics systems usually designed for commercial efficiency. Delays in freight, interruptions to fuel, loss of repair capacity, higher insurance costs, cyber disruption, constrained infrastructure access, labour shortages, or the diversion of scarce inputs have indisputably strategic consequences. The Director General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess, recently spoke about the increasing levels of cyber sabotage and foreign intelligence activity targeting critical infrastructure and defence industry, ‘to cripple it at a time of their choosing’. Such actions do not simply interrupt supply for the sake of testing national resilience; they influence defence preparedness systems, logistics networks and mechanisms to mobilise national capacity. In this environment, the competition to sustain one’s own logistics processes while disrupting those of others becomes not only a deterrent to future aggression, but a means of strategic manoeuvre.

Few regions possess strategic dynamics exempt from increased competition over the sources of industrial or logistics capacity. In Australia’s own region, contemporary logistics-space issues have long been seen clearly because the region’s commercial infrastructure is increasingly inseparable from defence advantage. Strategic competition has long been visible in the militarisation and coercive use of the South China Sea, the pressure placed on the Taiwan Strait, the importance of the Malacca Strait and other maritime chokepoints, and the contest for access to transportation and associated infrastructure across Southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific. Dual-use approaches to civil and military industry capacity underpins industry growth in many Asian countries, and the largest especially. Ports, airfields, fuel systems, repair facilities, undersea cables, industrial zones, shipping lanes and digital logistics platforms now shape mobilisation options, and whether forces can be positioned, sustained and regenerated in crisis or war. It is unsurprising that, in one example, the US Army sees presence and posture as vital way to overcome the challenges associated with contested logistics in an ‘Indo-Pacific’, as the ability to access industry capacity over huge distances is becoming especially problematic.

As I’ve said before, logistics spaces cannot be understood as neutral commercial backdrops or marketplaces. They are contested operating environments in which states seek to secure priority access, deny or complicate an adversary’s movement, influence host-nation choices, protect fuel and munitions flows, and preserve the industrial and repair capacity needed for sustained operations. They are regions of intense geoeconomic activity. In this sense, and for Australia specifically, competition over Asia’s logistics space is not peripheral to defence strategy; it is one of the practical ways in which strategic competition is being waged before, during and potentially instead of open conflict.

So what does this all mean for planners and policy-makers? Firstly, those responsible for designing and preparing the combat forces of the future should continue to evolve how they think about preparedness, logistics and national support, and plans and concepts. New conceptual approaches can’t only be a reconciliation of the physical requirements needed to build military capability to an imagined scenario irrespective of however accurate that scenario might be. Instead, capabilities should be developed mindful of the processes needed to access support capacity – such as assured industry capacity.  A simple model of logistics preparedness is useful here; preparedness told through the way by which logistics is readied through quality policy and guidance, organisation, plans and planning, the right combination of capabilities and capacities, and realistic testing and assessment.[4] Competition in logistics is not merely about who has the larger industrial base, access to stocks and critical materiel, or unique economic advantages. Competition in logistics depends upon choices, behaviours, processes and other factors that create access to resources, new strategic opportunities, and give a force its potential to fight.

For Australia, this should be an abstract or theoretical point. Australia’s geography has afforded it strategic depth and space to act, but this same geography creates vulnerabilities. Distance can provide protection, but this same distance produces long and exposed lines of communication and a deep dependence upon maritime, industrial and commercial systems – much of which is beyond immediate national control. Contemporary policy language concerning self-reliance, supply chain resilience, fuel security, national infrastructure, sovereign industrial capability and preparedness reflects an awareness of this reality. Yet the deeper issue is not simply whether Australia can build greater capacity its sovereign defence industrial base. It is whether Australia can compete effectively for industry access in such an environment and organise the logistics processes necessary to realise industrial power in a contested environment. That includes not only what is usually called defence industry, but the wider national support base: transport, engineering, energy, software, communications, construction, warehousing, health support, ports, freight systems, shipping and skilled labour.

This is where the logic of National Defence becomes especially important. National Defence must ultimately concern itself with how the nation mobilises and directs its economic and societal strengths for military purposes. In older Australian Defence Force language, this was the essence of the national support approach. In contemporary terms, it is the practical question of whether the nation can produce, prioritise, repair, distribute and sustain the means of military power while under strategic pressure. This is not only an industry issue, nor solely a preparedness one. It is a logistics issue in the deepest sense because it concerns the processes by which national power is converted into preparedness, and preparedness into military effect.

That has larger implications than are recognised at a first glance. A credible approach to national support, logistics and assured industry capacity must do more than acknowledge that infrastructure, industry and civil capability matter. It should explain how priorities are set, how scarce resources are allocated, how information is shared, how authority is exercised, how commercial support is claimed, how logistics space is protected, and how the nation transitions from peacetime assumptions to crisis and war. It should deal with how a nation assures its access to the precious industry capacity that surviving in a future conflict will depend. Without this process logic, industrial capability might exist, but industry capacity will remain unrealised or difficult to obtain. A nation may possess resources, productive capacity and technical skill, but it will lack a reliable means of converting them into sustained military power at the moment they are most needed. Not only might this mean that a nation might be logistically outcompeted and lack assured access to industry, it may also result in being strategically outclassed, in the myriad of strategic contests for supply that are now emerging.

I mentioned in my last article that we have probably been discussing supply chains, defence industry, preparedness and contested logistics as though they are separate subjects when they are, in fact, aspects of the same strategic problem. It’s a big problem that spans nations, throughout the entire national support base, and among organisations; it is understandable why it is difficult to cohere the work that occurs across this system let alone develop concepts that help nations to compete for access to industry and logistics capacity. Yet it is important that this system is treated as a unitary whole, with policy, conceptual and planning treatments developed that are fit for the contemporary task. Access to industry and control over logistics processes will not be enabling conditions for military success, but the means through which strategic competition is being waged. The nation that can better secure industrial access, better organise logistics, better adapt under pressure, and better impose friction upon the logistics systems of others will gain decisive strategic advantages. In that sense, competition for, and in, logistics will not merely support success in war. It is increasingly becoming one of the ways in which nations will either ensure their place in the world, or seek to reshape it into something strategically different.

War is not simply fought by the forces a nation has already raised and equipped. It is fought with, across and by logistics systems that determine the form and factor of strategy operations well before the fighting begins. It is fought through the systems that must continue to generate, prepare, operate, regenerate and sustain those forces over time. It is fought at the national economic level, and the most successful nations will have ways to unlock economic potential into assured industrial capacity for their defence force as part of their strategic tools to win in competition. For Australia, that should leave little doubt about the scale of the task ahead. Its strategic approach will depend not only on what the nation can acquire, but on whether it can make its industrial power usable through robust logistics processes, credible national support arrangements, and a preparedness system that recognises that strategic competition is increasingly occurring through the contest for industry access and the struggle over logistics itself.

---

[1] Department of Defence, National Defence Strategy 2026, https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/2026-national-defence-strategy-2026-integrated-investment-program%5Baccessed 22 June 26], p 23

[2] Cowen, D., The deadly life of logistics, University of Minnesota Press, USA, 2014,  4

[3] Thorpe, C., Pure Logistics, US Naval War College, US, 1921

[4] See Beaumont, D.J., Logistics, national support and the failure to prepare, Australian National University, https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/4a0cae1a-f410-4576-ac2d-8f7bff044ceb/content [accessed 23 Jun 26]