By David Beaumont

On 17 April 2024, Defence’s Integrated Investment Plan was published as a companion to Australia’s National Defence Strategy.[1] This Plan provisions $11-$15 billion dollars in ‘additional logistics centres and capacity’ amid other investments that contribute to Defence’s ability to respond to contingencies, crisis and conflict.[2]

This is the largest, single-hit, planned investment in Defence’s logistics capability and capacity since the Second World War.

To place this figure in perspective, the last major investment in Defence logistics capabilities and capacity came with the $600 million Defence Logistics Transformation Program. This Program was a component of the Strategic Reform Program initiated with the 2009 Defence White Paper. Before this time, the situation was grim. In fact, Defence’s logistics capability was in a long-term ‘secular’ decline which followed four decades of sales of infrastructure, commercialisation and outsourcing, and successive force structure programs and plans which harvested the ‘tail’ to, it was thought, the ‘teeth’. To paraphrase a senior logistician of the late 1980’s defence infrastructure rationalisation, Defence had gone great lengths to ‘sell the farm’.

History cruelly reminds military planners, governments and nations that such opinions tend to ‘leave emperors without their clothes’. The media, think-tanks and all sorts of commentators have followed Ukraine’s experience of invasion to find another prompt that something should be done. There are, of course, many other examples where assumptions had led to risks being accepted in advance of war, and preparedness failures occurred as a result.

As the memory of wars and military operations recedes, the importance logistics capability tends to partner in its passing. Promises to invest in logistics capability give way to other priorities that capture our attention or focus on the believed-to-be main players in the show. This happened in Australia after its 1999-2000 Operation Warden experience, where Defence logistics capacity was at its absolute limits. Small, albeit continuous, deployments in the Middle-east were easily sustained and, because they were, investments in Defence logistics were not. Programs to support logistics in littoral environments were cut, promised workforce investments were transferred out of logistics establishments to combat units, and expeditionary logistics capabilities to support remote operations fell by the wayside.

The 2023 Defence Strategic Review can therefore be truly seen as a point of inflection when it comes to the way logistics has been considered. I wrote at the time:

              ‘There is an important emphasis on the ADF’s logistics capabilities, functions and concepts in National Defence – more than usual when compared to other Government policy documents of recent years. Moreover, the traditional focus on logistics through the lens of capability acquisition and sustainment has – perhaps – transitioned a more helpful narrative concerning the role of logistics and national-level preparedness. However, and because the overall conversation about logistics is so muted, with so little written, and it being a topic people tend to think is quite technical and conceptually uninfluential, it’s easy for those conversing about National Defence to fail to engage with the logistics implications of the paper.’

While much must occur over the coming years to realise improvements in Defence logistics capability and capacity, it’s quite clear that attitudes have changed and that a concerted effort is likely to be made to address noteworthy capability gaps.

Defence logisticians must see this as an opportunity to address issues that many have known about but have been unable to respond to. It is a time for collaboration as a Defence logistics community, one with a new sense of agency in what could become a historic period of investment. Ideas based upon satisficing rather than satisfying real needs can transition such that Defence can be better prepared for whatever the Australian nation faces. In all of this, it will be important to remember that while it may not be necessary to meet all requirements now, it is critically important that Defence’s logistics capability can be ready when it is needed.

              In the article mentioned above, I concluded with:

‘As we conceptualise how Defence works to better prepare itself for the threats considered in National Defence, it is worth remembering the idea of logistics preparedness. Anything that is developed must be done so with the appropriate plans and policies in mind, the organisation structured appropriately and resourced needed, with logistics capabilities well resourced and integrated, and with a regime of exercising and assessments conducted to ensure that the ADF is responsive, and its operations are sustainable. This must be achieved while Defence reforms in the wake of National Defence, and in a state of heightened preparedness. There is nothing in National Defence that will be easy to implement, or in its implementation be free of angst.’

$11-$15 billion dollars is a tremendous investment in logistics preparedness let alone capability, and a clearer picture of where this money will be spent has yet to be given. The National Defence Strategy provides many inferences, especially around the idea of force posture. Nonetheless, and in due course, Defence will have to work with its partners in Government, industry and the community writ large to ensure the opportunity is not squandered. The problems to be confronted may be large, so large that it may be difficult to identify where to begin.

A conversation about logistics must flourish, as there is no better issue around which civil-military partnerships can manifest. Logistics outcomes are, in the end, the ‘economic in the military’ and dependent upon the national support available at a time of need. There has been a conspicuous hole in the commentary in the two weeks since the National Defence Strategy was launched, one that a diverse range of stakeholders including think-tanks, academia, industry commentators and others should work to fill. Their views will offer important alternatives to thinking about what Defence logistics will need to provide within national responses to crises in the years ahead.   

As Carmelia Scott-Skillern and Peter Singer recently wrote on War on the Rocks, ‘[t]he landscape of war and geopolitics evolves relentlessly, demanding the adaptation of strategy, doctrine, structures, and equipment. It also demands the adaptation of the thing that makes all that possible: logistics.’ This adaptation must be far-reaching, consequential and taken to its fullest completion else ‘national defence’ will be difficult to achieve.

---

[1] The 2024 National Defence Strategy and the 2024 Integrated Investment Program can be found here: 2024 National Defence Strategy and 2024 Integrated Investment Program | About | Defence

[2] IIP, p 74