In 2024, the National Defence Strategy made deterrence Australia’s “primary strategic defence objective”.

With writing now underway for the 2026 National Defence Strategy, can Australia actually deter threats to the nation?

Traditionally, our defence strategy only asked that our military capabilities “command respect”. In today’s world, however, Australia needs a far more active military posture to defend itself.

To effectively deter an adversary, Australia needs the equipment, signals and processes to convince a potentially hostile nation to reconsider the cost of militarily threatening us.

A deterrence strategy promises to reduce the likelihood of conflict. It reduces the opportunities for an adversary to score “cheap” wins by communicating how we could “deny” their main goal and potentially “punish” them for their aggression.

It forces an adversary to make a choice: back down or risk failing at your objective and starting a more significant confrontation.

While we don’t know exactly how a future adversary might react, Australia must do more to make our intent clear on how we would respond to a provocation.

We are part of an international team researching the ways to do this. This is what we think is needed in the next National Defence Strategy.

Creating a credible deterrence posture is not easy. The 2024 defence strategy lists a wide variety of actions that could change an adversary’s........

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