New air defences should be going north
Australia’s growing investment in integrated air and missile defence presents an opportunity to better protect the military forces and infrastructure that our national security depends on. As Defence acquires new command-and-control systems and medium-range, ground-based air defence systems, decisions about where they are based, how quickly they can respond and how long they can sustain operations will be just as important as the technology itself.
Defence should use these investments to develop a force posture that combines centralised training with distributed operational readiness and sustainment, ensuring that defensive capabilities are available where and when they are needed. This means that, for the most part, the air defences should be going north.
In September, the government committed a further $2.4 billion to Air 6500, a project that will connect Australia’s air and missile defence capabilities through a Joint Air Battle Management System. Defence is also progressing Land 6504, the project to buy medium-range, ground-based air and missile defence systems for the army. Additionally, a proposed $299.1 million infrastructure investment at the Royal Australian Air Force’s Darwin base will support No. 114 Mobile Control and Reporting Unit – the air force’s deployable air surveillance and control unit – and the emerging command-and-control architecture being built under Air 6500.
Together, these investments provide an opportunity to align acquisition, infrastructure and force posture before decisions become difficult and expensive to change.
The geography of Australia’s defence posture complicates that task. RAAF Darwin and RAAF Tindal support Australian and allied air operations, Townsville underpins the army’s combat and aviation capabilities, and HMAS Stirling is central to naval operations and the future AUKUS submarine presence. Although Stirling lies outside northern Australia, these geographically dispersed locations are essential to Australia’s ability to generate and sustain military power. Their different roles, threat environments and supporting infrastructure mean that identical defensive arrangements are unlikely to be appropriate.
Centralisation of forces at a few bases has a strong case. The army’s relocation of the 1st Aviation Regiment from Darwin to Townsville as it transitions to using Boeing AH-46E Apache attack helicopters demonstrates the economic efficiencies available from concentrating personnel, training, maintenance and industry support. Modern, ground-based air defence will similarly require specialist workforces, ammunition support and complex sustainment arrangements.
However, ground-based air defence presents a different operational requirement. An attack helicopter deploys to conduct a mission, while an air defence system may need to be positioned before the forces it protects can operate. Its readiness depends not simply on whether equipment can be transported but on the time required to authorise movement, deploy personnel and equipment, establish communications, integrate with the wider defensive network and sustain operations. Australia’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review abandoned the assumption that Australia would have a decade of warning before a major conflict, making these timelines especially important.
Permanently stationing missile batteries at every major installation is unlikely to be practicable or necessary. The more important task is to determine which military functions need immediate protection, which can accept a deployment delay, how many locations must be defended simultaneously and for how long. These requirements should inform Land 6504’s acquisition scale, force structure, readiness arrangements and eventual basing decisions. A highly mobile system acquired in insufficient numbers will still struggle to meet competing operational demands.
Air 6500 provides an important foundation for this approach by enabling sensors, decision-makers and defensive weapons across different services and locations to operate as an integrated system. Land 6504 will add a medium-range engagement capability, complementing the army’s short-range air defence system, Nasams, which became fully operational in September. However, network integration cannot substitute for the physical availability of defensive weapons, and no single system can address every airborne or missile threat.
Availability of Nasams provides an immediate opportunity to develop and test the operating concepts needed for distributed readiness. Defence should use exercises to measure the time required to authorise, move, establish, integrate and sustain ground-based air defence units across bases and other locations. Those exercises should also test competing demands for defensive coverage, degraded communications and disruption to supporting infrastructure. Although Land 6504 will have different technical and sustainment requirements, the lessons could inform its future operating concepts, deployment arrangements and infrastructure needs.
These requirements extend beyond Defence establishments. In the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia, governments, infrastructure operators and industry have important roles in ensuring access to transport, communications, energy, maintenance facilities and specialist workforces. Early engagement with them would allow Defence to identify where prepared operating locations, supporting infrastructure and contingency arrangements could reduce deployment delays without unnecessarily duplicating resources.
Australia’s investment in integrated air and missile defence offers an opportunity to make force posture an integral part of capability development rather than a subsequent basing decision. Establishing where protection is needed, how quickly it must become effective and how long it must be sustained would allow Defence to align Land 6504’s force structure with Air 6500’s integrating architecture and the infrastructure required to support both. That would give commanders something more valuable than nominal mobility: defensive options they can employ when circumstances demand.
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