The world is a more dangerous place than it was two years ago. The priorities outlined in Australia’s new National Defence Strategy (NDS) and its accompanying spending plan, the Integrated Investment Program (IIP), reflect this.
The 2026 NDS, released on 16 April, focuses on greater self-reliance to improve Australia’s ability to deter adversaries and support regional partners, as well as building on the strategy of denial first introduced in the 2024 NDS. To support this, the IIP outlines A$425 billion in Defence spending over the next 10 years. The program prioritises undersea warfare and maritime capabilities, long-range strike, air and missile defence, autonomous and uncrewed systems, and counter-uncrewed air systems.
In this selection of Strategist articles published since the documents were issued, ASPI’s experts discuss the government’s new strategy and what it will for Australian defence.
Australia’s alliance with the United States will be key to developing self-reliance, write Mike Hughes and Justin Bassi.
The NDS itself outlines the importance of the US alliance, saying that ‘Australia’s Alliance with the United States remains fundamental to our national security and the [Australian Defence Force’s] capacity to generate, sustain and project credible military capability.’ In doing so, it rejects the increasingly popular argument that we should cut ourselves off from the US in the face of uncertainty.
Self-reliance doesn’t mean total independence. Instead, it will require Australia to improve its own defence capability while also strengthening our relationship with our most important security partner.
National interest requires Australia to hold two truths concurrently: that it must sustain the US alliance and American-led partnerships such as AUKUS as the central pillar of regional deterrence; and that it must strengthen its own capabilities and deepen partnerships with other democracies, such as Japan, South Korea, India and the European Union.
Building on this, Richard Gray says greater self-reliance will actually make us a better security partner to the US and others.
He emphasises that self-reliance is not the same as self-sufficiency. The latter, he says, ‘would be unachievable even if it were attempted’ due to the level of spending required to reach full autonomy. Instead, Australia should aim to shoulder greater responsibility for its own defence while accepting that the US provides certain capabilities that we cannot easily replace. By improving self-reliance, Australia will also be able to contribute more to regional defence.
While there is no precise formula for determining the degree of Australian strategic self-reliance, there is undoubtedly a sweet spot: providing for your own security as much as possible while also making yourself more useful as a security partner. The 2026 NDS and IIP recognise this, extending the momentum from their 2024 predecessors and laying out a plan to try to reach this goal.
In a shift from the 2024 NDS, the 2026 document aligns with US strategy by elevating the concept of balance of power, writes Courtney Stewart.
While the previous strategy focused far more heavily on the rules-based order, the new NDS recognises that ‘rules alone cannot shape China’s behaviour as regional power dynamics shift.’ To tip the balance of power away from China and other adversaries, Australia will need to improve its own capability, deepen partnerships with regional powers and support the US’s Indo-Pacific presence.
This is competition – a persistent and long-term struggle between nations pursing incompatible interests without necessarily engaging in conflict. Tilting the balance requires sustained effort to shape where and how that competition plays out, in areas that favour US and allied interests or undermine an adversary’s ability to coerce in pursuit of its own interests.
The NDS’s focus on self-reliance is echoed in the IIP, writes Malcolm Davis. The spending outlined in the plan will be the difference between strategy and actual capability.
The 2026 IIP devotes significant funding to ‘uncrewed air and underwater systems, strike weapons, and defence against air and missile attack’ to improve self-reliance, help support regional partners and strengthen Australia’s strategy of denial. While these spending priorities are promising, the capabilities outlined will need to be developed quickly, and doing so end up costing us more than anticipated.
In short, the 2026 IIP indicates that some very good decisions have been made. But given the rapid deterioration of Australia’s strategic outlook and the growing risk of war, time is not our friend. Capability development proposed in this year’s IIP must occur quickly – well before the decade is out. And more money than planned may be needed soon to ensure that the capability is delivered in time.
While Australia’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) program is another priority, the NDS gave little detail on practical steps forward, writes Madi Jones.
Australia’s GWEO program has come a long way in recent years, forming an important part of Australia’s deterrent capability and self-reliance. The IIP allocates greater funding to GWEO, with a particular focus on ‘testing and maintenance facilities and priority component manufacturing.’ But the lack of clear detail on the program means that many questions remain unanswered. At this stage, it’s unclear where the increased spending on GWEO will come from, and we also don’t know exactly what it will go towards. A new GWEO plan, scheduled for release later this year, will hopefully shed some light on the program’s future.
In two years, GWEO has matured from initiation to delivery. But the NDS and IIP leave us with enduring questions about how much it’s delivering – how many weapons and how much self-reliance – and at what pace. An updated GWEO plan due this year should provide at least partial answers.
Anyone looking closely at spending outlined in the NDS and IIP will meet a challenge. As Linus Cohen explains, documents show ‘three different ways of counting it.’
These three metrics include ‘Defence portfolio’s appropriation from government; the appropriation from government plus Defence’s own-source revenue; and, newly introduced, Defence’s interpretation of the NATO measure of defence spending.’ Each metric produces a very different total, and while there are reasons for using them, those reasons may not be immediately obvious. The government’s new spending target of 3 percent by 2033–34 uses the NATO measure, though ‘the precise way in which Defence has interpreted NATO’s measure is unclear.’
While the least clear in composition, the NATO measure is currently the figure with the greatest political importance. The White House continues to exhibit a strong interest in seeing US allies increase their defence spending. The target set by NATO – 3.5 percent of GDP on defence spending by 2035 – uses NATO’s bespoke metric. It’s only fair that, if America’s NATO allies are being held to an arbitrary standard, its non-NATO allies should be held to the same arbitrary standard. Whether Australia can meet it is another question. Achieving 3.0 percent by 2033 is still quite a march from achieving 3.5 percent by 2035.
Colin Karotam writes that the government’s two-year NDS cycle makes Australia’s defence policy more effective, as ‘a good process for strategy development goes a long way to producing good strategy.’
Prior to the current system, the government adjusted strategies through irregular Defence White Papers, with the periods between papers ranging from three years to 11 years. Gaps of this length are untenable in today’s rapidly evolving strategic environment, and would cause Defence to ‘lose pace’. At the same time, gaps shorter than two years would mean that developers and industry would struggle to keep up. The current two-year cycle finds a balance, allowing for regular reassessment and making it far easier for strategists to build on preceding documents.
The rigour and regularity the government has applied to producing an NDS and IIP on a two-yearly cycle is providing a thread of logic between the ends, ways and means of national defence. The process allows for regular re-scans of our strategic environment and the incorporation of new technology and contemporary lessons from current battlefields. This current two-year process appears to have hit a sweet spot.