Conceptually Adrift in the Littoral

Discussions of strategy too often descend rapidly from framing and defining the ‘ends’ to single-minded discourse on ‘means’. Indeed, the focus is often almost exclusively on ‘means’ … with ‘means’ being synonymous with vehicles and equipment.^[1]

Chief of the Australian Army, 15 May 2024

Introduction

In this article I find a conceptual gap in Defence strategic policy directing the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to conduct littoral manoeuvre in Australia’s northern approaches.^[2] After an earlier career as a combat engineer, I retain a fascination with gaps, physical or metaphorical, and ways of breaching or reducing them. A primary role for the sapper is to enable the force’s mobility so it can manoeuvre for advantage. My aim here is to mobilise thought about this intellectual challenge so that the ADF might develop a position of advantage moving forward. This article identifies an approach to treating the conceptual gap found. A forthcoming Australian Army Research Centre Occasional Paper, In Denial: The ADF and Littoral Manoeuvre, is a companion piece. It frames in detail the issues a littoral warfare manoeuvre concept will need to address, proposing principles to guide such a concept.

The 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) directs the ADF to have the capacity to ‘deter through denial any adversary’s attempt to project power against Australia through our northern approaches’.^[3] A nested direction for the Australian Army is to be ‘optimised for littoral operations in our northern land and maritime spaces and provide a long-range strike capability’.^[4] This is a clear instruction on where the Army is to plan to fight, and what a primary Army task will be.

Thomas Schelling noted in the preface of the 2008 edition of Arms and Influence ‘We have seen that deterrence, even nuclear deterrence, doesn’t always work’.^[5] Notwithstanding Australian policy’s deterrent intent, if deterrence fails then Army’s destiny is to fight as part of an integrated force across the littorals of Australia’s primary area of military interest (PAMI).^[6] Within this plausible sequitur things become interesting.

In 1989, Art Lykke defined military strategy using the formula ‘strategy = ends + ways + means’.^[7] While this approach has attracted criticism for being ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘flawed’, it endures as an introductory code for understanding strategy.^[8] It also provides a framing device for this article to highlight the perceived gap in strategic policy direction.

Extant strategic policy guidance identifies tasks which are effectively the pseudo ‘ends’ sought by policy.^[9] Concurrently, the 2024 Integrated Investment Program (IIP) makes provision for some of the ‘means’ required to achieve a denial effect within the PAMI.^[10] A concern arises, however, from the lack of Defence guidance available concerning the ‘ways’ to employ the means available to meet policy’s ends.

This creates a vacuum between the ‘means’ and the ‘ends’ which have been set for ADF littoral operations in the northern approaches. We know what the ADF is expected to do (the ‘ends’). We also know the capabilities available to meet the mission (the ‘means’).^[11] Absent is a concept describing how the ADF will firstly achieve a ‘strategy of deterrence by denial’, then fight if deterrence fails. Strategy without ‘ways’ is inchoate—in fact, it is not strategy at all.^[12] In Australia’s case it is an aspirational vision statement with a capability shopping list attached. The conceptual task for the ADF (and Defence more broadly) is to move beyond policy platitudes and capability acquisition lists—these alone will neither deter nor deny.

The challenge is to articulate a littoral warfare concept with a theory of victory that meets strategic intent within the means available.^[13] I use the term ‘theory of victory’ in the sense offered by Jakobsen: ‘a persuasive argument that the chosen combination of ways and means is likely to produce the desired ends without excessive costs and risks’.^[14] Failure to address this risks Army, and Defence more broadly, being conceptually adrift in the littorals of Australia’s northern approaches. While the task of developing the required littoral warfare concept is rightfully one for the Vice Chief of Defence Force (VCDF) Group, Army’s advocacy and thought leadership to achieve this ambition will be crucial.^[15]

This article begins by confirming that a ‘ways gap’ exists by reviewing and analysing extant strategic policy direction, and the Australian Army’s response to it. After examining the scant guidance available in relevant Australian Defence concepts, I look at other sources of guidance in the wider Australian literature. This is followed by a brief look at the approach being taken to addressing ‘ways’ by the US, Australia’s principal ally and coalition partner. The decision to focus on the US over other examples is deliberate. The US is Australia’s primary ally and collaborator, with a shared regional focus and levels of interoperability with the ADF that are unmatched by any other partner.^[16] The scene is then set for consideration of some key issues that will need to be addressed by a suitable concept. I conclude the article by proposing a way forward for Defence.

Defining the Gap

Strategic Direction

The gap concerning the ways Australia will conduct littoral warfare begins with the 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS).^[17] At its core, this is a policy document with a policy narrative focusing on ends and means, rather than a strategy with ways underpinned by a theory of victory. In this sense, the NDS continues a long-established Australian practice for Defence white papers (DWPs) and Defence Updates. The NDS serves a useful purpose for government, Defence and the nation in setting the policy parameters for national defence. But, as Colin Gray reminds us, strategy is a practical subject.^[18] The NDS does not adequately explain either the causal logic of how a strategy of ‘deterrence by denial' within Australia’s northern approaches will secure Australia or how this direction will be enacted to secure success. The NDS is captured in what Hew Strachan describes as the muddle between strategy as the use of war for the purposes of policy, and strategy as the use of battle for the purposes of war.^[19] It is through the latter sense of strategy that the conceptual ways for ADF littoral operations are most likely to be found.

The NDS, building upon the DSR, asserts Defence tasking and capability development policy direction. It names five tasks for the ADF:

• Defend Australia and our immediate region.
• Deter through denial any potential adversary’s attempts to project power against Australia through our northern approaches.
• Protect Australia’s economic connection to our region and the world.
• Contribute with our partners to the collective security of the Indo-Pacific.
• Contribute with our partners to the maintenance of the global rules-based order.^[20]

These tasks are sensible, uncontroversial and, to a large degree, expected policy direction. They align with traditional conceptions of protecting Australian national interests which have endured for decades. They are also broad, lacking any specificity as to any method the government may prefer the ADF to adopt in achieving them. This is consistent with every Australian DWP since 1987’s The Defence of Australia, apart from 1994’s Defending Australia, which uniquely detailed nine ‘roles’ the ADF was expected to perform to meet the directed defence posture.^[21]

The NDS goes on to name six ‘key capability effects’ to be kept or developed in support of ADF force structure to achieve the directed tasks:

• Project force.
• Hold a potential adversary’s forces at risk.
• Protect ADF forces and supporting critical infrastructure in Australia.
• Sustain protracted combat operations.
• Maintain persistent situational awareness in our PAMI.
• Achieve decision advantage.^[22]

Like the five ADF tasks previously examined, the six key capability effects are sound, obvious and uncontroversial. They treat or make important inferences for related force design and capability acquisition, and the development of means to meet policy ends. These are built upon and drawn out in the later chapters of the NDS.^[23] While some intuitive inferences may be drawn about how the NDS vision may be met (especially with respect to Chapter 7: ‘International Partnerships’), none are explicit. Specific direction about how the deterrence mission in the PAMI’s littorals will be achieved is absent. For the purposes of the argument here it is useful to examine explanations that occur elsewhere in publicly available Defence guidance. Specifically, it is logical to look to Army for this purpose as, surprisingly given the multi-domain nature of littoral warfare, it is the only service tasked by the NDS with any specific littoral responsibility.^[24]

The Australian Army’s Response to Strategic Direction

The Army’s public response to the NDS, The Australian Army Contribution to the National Defence Strategy 2024, does not illuminate how Army will conduct littoral operations as part of the integrated, focused force.^[25] NDS direction to Army on what it must deliver is distilled by Army as:

The Army is to optimise for littoral manoeuvre with a long-range land and maritime strike capability.^[26] It must be able to:

• Deploy and sustain land forces in Australia’s primary area of military interest.
• Deploy a strike capability with the range to protect Australia’s northern approaches.
• Progressively increase increments of Precision Strike Missiles to extend the range and variety of targets that can be struck with land based long-range fires.
• Increase stockpiles of long-range missiles including through domestic manufacturing.
• Invest in a combined-arms land system that can secure and control strategic land positions and provide protection for the ADF. ^[27]

These are clear tasks, and it does not require any special military or operational insight to understand how their achievement may have utility for littoral operations. But tasks are not ways. Nor does the term ‘littoral manoeuvre’ itself provide the necessary detail as to how the force might achieve its mission.^[28] The tasks simply lack sufficient context to derive feasible, acceptable and suitable operational methods for littoral operations. Similar to the NDS, Army is silent here about ways; nor are they dealt with elsewhere in an otherwise relatively detailed publication. It is therefore left to the imagination how these things come together, and in what manner, combination and sequencing, to meet the ends of policy. In the Army, and the ADF more broadly, imagination is the realm of concepts and their development. It is right therefore to see if they offer any support in addressing our perceived gap.

Australian Defence Concepts

The lead author of the ADF’s capstone concept tells us: ‘A concept assists the ADF to iteratively create, experiment, learn, innovate, prepare, and fight’. ^[29] To help readers better understand the concept, he also provides the Australian Defence Glossary definition of the authorised term ‘joint concept’, which states:

Identifies and frames a joint military problem, its proposed solution, and the characteristics and attributes of capabilities required to implement the proposed solution. Note: joint concepts provide the interpretive layer from strategic guidance to provide amplifying detail on Defence posture.^[30]

The ADF’s capstone doctrine, Australian Military Power, elaborates: ‘Concepts support the continual improvement of doctrine by deliberately testing the boundaries of current military understanding’.^[31] By their nature and design, then, joint concepts are forward leaning. It is clear from this explanation that we should not expect definitive direction on ways from an ADF concept treating the subject of littoral operations. Any definitive direction would only arise after validation of conceptual guidance through processes such as wargaming, experimentation and other forms of analytical evaluation. Nevertheless, the availability of amplifying guidance on the nature of littoral operations, no matter how hypothetical, would be an advance on existing strategic guidance.

Army may well have a classified single-service concept for littoral operations. If so, it is not visible to the writer (and could not be discussed in this article). Yet even if such a concept were to exist, it would have limited utility for the task at hand, as the issue is in no way a single-service problem alone.

A truth that appears from understanding the organisation, force structure, command, control and financing of the ADF is that there is no such thing as an ‘Army’ fight. The same is true of the Navy and Air Force. Each service needs to integrate into the heart of its warfighting tasks the support delivered by the others. Further to the forcing function of the ADF’s design as an integrated force, the realities of contemporary warfare dictate it. The Chief of Army made this exact point at an allied land power conference in 2024: ‘Integration is vital. It means that the ADF must be able to apply military force across all five environments.’^[32] When you consider the complexities arising from generating or treating operational effects across the five recognised domains (land, sea, air, space and cyber) you quickly realise that only joint concepts will suffice.

Disappointingly, a review of the publicly available information on ADF joint concepts does not help anyone seeking a hypothesis of how littoral operations will achieve a strategy of denial. The ADF’s capstone concept, Apex: Integrated Campaigning for Deterrence, covers a scope similar in many respects to the Australian Military Power doctrine.^[33] It also echoes many of the blandishments in the NDS about deterrence, without any adding any useful information about the possible ways to achieve it.

Aspire: The Australian Defence Force’s Theatre Concept seeks to explain how the ADF will mobilise and apply military power in an operational theatre.^[34] Publicly available information tells us Aspire describes how the ADF will achieve missions through the focused and asymmetric application of military power, aiming to impose costs so that adversaries are deterred from, or cease, activities counter to Australia’s interests.^[35] Three principles—focus, asymmetry and cost imposition—offer a logical frame that an operational method might be developed from in a given context, but they still fall short of providing a suitable and feasible way. David Fryer, one of few defence analysts who have examined Aspire in the public domain, offered this criticism:

[T]he principles of ASPIRE, while adversarial focused, remain too generic, providing a wide aperture for interpretation and undermining its direct applicability to shape future force structure or posture effectively. It advocates for the generalities of manoeuvre warfare without acknowledging the known capabilities and advantages of the adversary.^[36]

Fryer’s critique is mildly damning when held against the Defence Glossary’s previously described note about how joint concepts provide ‘the interpretive layer from strategic guidance to provide amplifying detail’.^[37] It is, unfortunately, also consistent with the broader themes regarding ‘ways’ guidance in our review so far. The paucity or absence of such guidance in published Defence policy and conceptual guidance leads to the question of whether it is available elsewhere.

Other Literature and Sources

Unsurprisingly, the Australian Army’s ‘new’ task of littoral operations identified in the DSR and NDS has led to an uptick in interest in and writing about the subject.^[38] In 2023 the Chief of Army History Conference addressed the theme ‘In Brown and Green Waters: Australian Army Operations in the Littoral’, reflecting on Army’s historical experience in littoral and amphibious operations. The Chief of Army said in his opening address to the conference that ‘it is not conceited to claim that littoral operations are in our DNA. Our Army’s meta-narrative—that of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli was born amid a contested amphibious assault’.^[39] All of that is true. Chris Smith reminds us that ‘Many elements of 21^st-century warfare echo those of the 20^th century. The nature of war as a brutal and fundamentally human endeavour has endured’.^[40] The proceedings of the 2023 Chief of Army History Conference equally draw our attention to continuities and discontinuities with respect to littoral operations, a useful but ultimately non-definitive guide to considering the present-day problem.^[41] A point that needs to be made here is that in the proceedings of the 2023 conference, not one speaker draws an inference regarding how past littoral operations can or will inform the contemporary challenge of deterrence by denial assigned to Army’s present and emerging littoral capability.

The contemporary literature is also relatively light on recognising that littoral operations are inextricably tied up in considerations of maritime strategy. This disassociation reflects the presumption in the NDS that littoral operations is an Army task. It does lead to some loss of nuance and understanding about the wider problem set which may otherwise have been achieved through the long-established theoretical lens of maritime strategy. Richard Bushby highlights the enduring importance of amphibious operations within a broader conception of maritime strategy, but he does not go on to draw any substantive inferences for the conduct of contemporary littoral operations.^[42] The Royal Australian Navy Sea Power Centre’s contemporary (and decades long) commitment to advancing thought and debate about maritime strategy for our island continent is valuable for this framing.^[43]

Useful thinking about the relationship between maritime strategy and DSR tasking can be found in the work of Richard Dunley and Ash Zimmerlie. Dunley makes the case that conceptions of maritime strategy remain vital, even in an age of long-range land-based anti-ship missiles and associated sea-denial concepts such as anti-access and area denial (A2AD).^[44] Zimmerlie makes a detailed case that use of Julian Corbett’s thinking would allow Australian Defence planners ‘to treat Australia’s risks, provide meaningful and credible support to its allies, preserve defence sovereignty, and systematically fuse land and sea power to align strategic ends, ways, and means’.^[45] The idea that maritime strategy provides a useful intellectual departure point for thinking about the Australian Army’s role in the defence of Australia is not something which has just arisen since the release of the NDS.

The Defence White Paper 2013 (DWP 2013) stated:

Australia’s geography requires a maritime strategy for deterring and defeating attacks against Australia and contributing to the security of our immediate neighbourhood and the wider region. Our ability to generate a joint force for this strategy critically depends on the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force, supported by the full range of defence capabilities.^[46]

The Australian Army was quickly out of the blocks in response to this direction. In 2014 the Army Research Centre published a discussion paper Army in a Joint Archipelagic Manoeuvre Concept.^[47] The paper addressed the direction in DWP 2013, building upon a foundation laid over a decade before in Army’s manoeuvre operations in the littoral environment (MOLE) concept.^[48] Australia’s strategic circumstances in 2002 were different to those today. MOLE was not about meeting the challenge of deterrence by denial; it was about answering the question about Army’s utility in the strategic context of the time. This is evident in remarks offered by the then Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy: ‘This concept envisages that our land forces will be capable of achieving strategic reach through entry from the air and sea’ and ‘land forces structured for littoral manoeuvre will possess the ingredients for military success across any likely spectrum of future conflict, ranging from terrorism to conventional warfare’.^[49]

Army’s 2014 discussion paper built upon the conceptual space opened up by MOLE but, significantly, introduced A2AD considerations within the region into its threat assessment.^[50] Also worthy of note is the paper’s suggested ways in which joint archipelagic manoeuvre could be conducted.^[51] Two years later, Smith and Palazzo built upon these ideas in Coming to Terms with the Modern Way of War: Precision Missiles and the Land Component of Australia’s Joint Force.^[52]

Within the scope of the literature examined for this article, it is possible to discern emergent glimpses of a ‘way’ or possible green shoots of a ‘method’ of conducting littoral operations. In one of his two posts addressing ‘What Is Littoral Manoeuvre’ published on the Army’s Land Power Forum, Mark Mankowski suggests:

Once in an advantageous position, Army vessels associated with littoral manoeuvre can project Army’s long-range strike platforms to deny key routes within a maritime archipelagic environment or sustain Australia’s forward partnerships to defend our immediate region.^[53]

This scenario clearly envisages the development and use of an Australian A2AD system. Detail about how this happy operational situation might practically arise is absent from Mankowski’s writing, although understandably given the format. Similarly, an observation by the Chief of the Army at the Land Forces Pacific Symposium, while not direct guidance, is illustrative of an emerging Australian A2AD approach with obvious links to some of the ideas in Concept Aspire and Smith and Palazzo’s paper:

By being present and persistent in key terrain, we can place the burden of aggression on our adversaries. In particular the enhancement of anti-access area denial capabilities, especially land-based maritime strike, provides conventional and forces and special forces with lethal asymmetric capabilities.^[54]

A brief look at the how the US, Australia’s primary military ally, is approaching similar issues illuminates some factors in conceptualising how Australia might conduct littoral operations.

US Approaches

Australian thinking, as highlighted by the excerpts from Mankowski and the Chief of Army in the earlier paragraphs, reflects Australia’s preoccupation with A2AD as a primarily defensive measure. Given the US’s geo-strategic circumstances in the Indo-Pacific, the US approach tends to look at the (arguably) more difficult challenge of manoeuvring in the face of an adversary’s anti-access envelope.^[55]

The US’s primary concern is with the prospect of dealing with an A2AD zone that the People’s Republic of China may develop or impose in case of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Such an approach is the other side of the same coin, and bears examination by Australia—particularly given the rise of the circumstances described by Smith and Palazzo.^[56] Understanding the US approach to this issue makes sense considering that, if the ADF is either late or unlucky in seeking to establish its own A2AD system in the northern approaches, it too may have to manoeuvre within an enemy anti-access envelope.

This issue is clearly at the forefront of US minds and has been for over a decade. The then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said in 2012: ‘A2AD strategies are a defining characteristic of today’s operational environment. Confronting this challenge will require more integration—across all domains and at all echelons—than ever before’.^[57] The problems the US expects to face, and the location and context envisaged, are sufficiently analogous to the context(s) implied or foreshadowed in the NDS as to make US conceptual responses useful. A crucial point to keep in mind, however, is that while the problem set, context and operational environment are similar, the resources and scale that the US can bring to bear in any response (either conceptual or actual) are vastly greater than Australia’s sovereign capabilities.

The United States Marine Corps (USMC) has been on the front foot of thinking about littoral warfare. From 1996’s Operational Maneuver from the Sea through to 2021’s A Concept for Stand-in Forces and the Commandant’s Force Design 2030, the USMC is simultaneously making arguments to justify its ongoing role (and budget), and examining ways it can contribute to the US joint force inside the contested spaces of the Indo-Pacific.^[58] It is useful to develop an understanding of some of these ideas. Specifically, the Concept for Stand-in Forces is a good place to begin thinking about littoral operations.

‘Stand-in forces’ (SIF) are defined in the concept as:

small but lethal, low signature, mobile, relatively simple to maintain and sustain forces designed to operate across the competition continuum within a contested area as the leading edge of a maritime defense-in-depth in order to intentionally disrupt the plans of a potential or actual adversary. Depending on the situation, stand-in forces are composed of elements from the Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, special operations forces, interagency, and allies and partners.^[59]

The fact that SIF are joint (and, by implication, integrated), combined, and intended to work within either a weapons engagement zone or an A2AD system, suggests why such a conceptual approach could have utility for the ADF. The Commandant of the Marine Corps says the SIF will ‘conduct sea denial in designated areas’ and will ‘disrupt an adversary’s plans at every point on the competition continuum’.

Building upon the SIF concept, the USMC has developed two more operational support concepts. Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment describes the integrated application capabilities to overcome emerging threats within littoral areas that are ‘rapidly expanding in operational depth, complexity, and lethality’.^[60] The second concept, ‘expeditionary advanced base operations’, detailed in the Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, is summarised as:^[61]

a form of expeditionary warfare that involve the employment of mobile, low signature, persistent, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore within a contested or potentially contested maritime area in order to conduct sea denial, support sea control, or enable fleet sustainment.^[62]

The USMC’s parent service is less preoccupied with the littoral per se but is grappling with the implications of the sophisticated technologies implicit in A2AD on naval and joint force operations in the Indo-Pacific. This has seen intellectual investment by the United States Navy in its ‘distributed lethality’ concept, largely focused on the conduct of naval surface warfare.^[63] The US Army’s ‘multi-domain operations’ concept similarly faces up to the issue of A2AD, unsurprisingly placing the Army and the land domain at the centre of the conceptual solution to the joint force’s perceived problem.^[64] The conceptual concern with the ability to manoeuvre within the Indo-Pacific is wider than the single services.

The US Joint Staff’s interest has long reflected and built upon the single services’ concerns and approaches, reflected in the publication of concepts such as the joint concept for entry operations.^[65] The wider US Department of Defense has also been engaged in relevant thought and research. An example is the work of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on mosaic warfare.^[66]

None of the US examples cited fully address the precise context of Australia’s conduct of littoral operations in the PAMI, but many of the arising issues overlap. However, it is worth noting that their treatment of the ways to approach the issues is more substantive than what we have seen Australian publications to date. For that reason alone, understanding US thought on the issue is useful when thinking about possible Australian approaches. Consideration of the strong alliance relationship between Australia and the US, and the probability that combined operations would be conducted in response to regional conflict, further makes the case to think about how integration and alignment of approaches may be beneficial. Finally, understanding how the US joint force thinks about approaching, working within and destroying an adversary’s A2AD system may usefully inform design and thinking about a method Australia develops to employ in its northern approaches. This is one of several issues germane to the development and consideration of a suitable approach to address the ‘ways gap’.

Issues

The Use of History

We see in the Australian Army’s approach to the challenge of littoral warfare a fondness, bordering on nostalgia and hubris, for the record of past achievement. Military history provides a valuable guide to understanding, but only when context is considered. It cannot and does not provide a blueprint for the future. As David Lowenthal reminds us, the past is a foreign country; it is something we can never fully know or understand.^[67] Many of the ‘lessons’ proffered about the littoral experience in the region during the Second World War do not bear detailed scrutiny given the differences in today’s context. Considerations such as contemporary patterns of regional sovereignty, demography and commerce; the elevated level of military technology deployed in and next to the region; and the vastly different structure and size of the ADF today cannot be simply dismissed. The technological changes provide illustrative example of how varied context may compromise history’s lessons.

During the Pacific war, radar technology was relatively short ranged and unsophisticated. Operations would be planned and conducted across the vastness of the operational area safe in the knowledge that surveillance of manoeuvre needed proximity for effective observation and interdiction. Today, technological developments (including space-based surveillance and Australia’s Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN)) make remaining undetected and unseen a vastly different proposition.^[68] Similarly, the advent of long-range precision strike missile systems has greatly increased the risks associated with being seen. The impact of this on ‘historical lessons’ becomes apparent looking at the Guadalcanal and Milne Bay operations in 1943, and the lessons learned (by both sides) about conducting both manoeuvre and resupply at night.^[69] There would be a far different outcome if this approach were followed today without other protective measures, deception or tactics in place. The matter of the changed geo-political situation within the PAMI since the mid-20th century also gives rise to another issue crucial for the ways in which Australia might conduct littoral operations.

Regional Sovereignty

A common factor in writing about littoral operations and putative A2AD systems within the PAMI is the presumption that there exists a modern-day terra nullius as it relates to regional sovereignty and governance. This presumption is clear in contemporary texts that treat the archipelagic environment to Australia’s north as if it were freely ‘available’ to the ADF, irrespective of the states there.

An example of this thinking is seen in Peter Dean’s acknowledgment of the archipelagic states to Australia’s north.^[70] He asserts ‘Archipelagos have, and will, dominate how Australia thinks about and conducts military operations in its immediate area’.^[71] Yet no inference is drawn or raised about the likelihood that states in the region will have concerns about Australian military operations in or adjacent to their territory. Dean’s example is illustrative, but he is not alone. Others also treat the region as a form of ‘free manoeuvre area’ unencumbered by the need to consider others’ concerns beyond the common (and vague) platitude of ‘working with partners’.^[72]

Nothing could be further from reality. The nations comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum literally fill the space under consideration. These nations are proudly sovereign and are committed to the global rules-based order and the principle of non-intervention. Australia’s close and friendly relationships with these nations means it cannot approach either the preparation for or the conduct of military operations in the PAMI in the manner of the Allies between 1942 and 1945, when either Japanese forces occupied the region or today’s states were subject to Western colonial possession. The development of any way to conduct littoral manoeuvre will require careful thought and treatment about the issue of access, basing and overflight in relation to regional neighbours.

The NDS does explicitly acknowledge the importance of regional engagement.^[73] However, there is quite a gap between the vagaries of engagement and the sort of agreement whereby a war may be fought from, through or across another nation’s sovereign territory. Any workable littoral manoeuvre concept for deterrence by denial within Australia’s northern approaches will have to get the necessary agreement from the region. A wider point also appears—one which is outside the scope of this article to address—about strategic policy’s general approach to issues of regional sovereignty. A clearer exposition in strategic policy documents that accounts for different sovereign approaches and policy positions may heighten understanding of the constraints and limitations inherent in the regional geo-political environment.

The Deterrence Question

Littoral operations are conducted for the purpose of achieving deterrence by denial. Therefore, any manoeuvre concept must address the causal logic of how it contributes to both deterrence and denial. This is a significant challenge. Albert Palazzo, building upon his exploration of the impact of long-range precision fires with Chris Smith, wrote in 2020:

Through Land 8113 the ADF will progressively acquire a land-based long-range strike capability, allowing it to create a killing zone throughout the approaches to its territory. This offers Australia the opportunity to create an independent deterrence capability across all domains.^[74]

Palazzo’s idea of the ability to create a ‘killing zone’ is doubtless correct—at least for as long as the provision of strike munitions can be sustained. The idea that such a capability can ‘create an independent deterrence capability across all domains’ is, however, a contestable one that borders on fanciful. The key issue is the object of this deterrence. It seems doubtful that any determined adversary with the credible capability and military capacity to coerce Australia by challenging our northern approaches would be deterred by such a potentially meagre threat. Ash Zimmerlie further treats this issue:

As a deterrent strategy, high-tech, missile-rich, counter-anti-access concepts act as a ‘big stick’ but have thus far proven ineffective at discouraging small-scale Chinese maritime aggrandisement— what Thomas Schelling called ‘salami slicing’ or ‘tactics of erosion’.^[75]

Given Australia’s relative strategic weight, the credibility of any deterrence effect will really hinge on the credibility of the ADF’s ability to deny rather than its ability to punish (a typical means of creating deterrence effect). Such a denial effect will necessarily need to be manifest across all the domains.

The Multi-domain Issue

Discrete domains do not exist in the continuity of nature. To hunt in the air, on the land, or in the water, an eagle seamlessly integrates domains because its information processing is unified. It has one mind that decides how it functions in three different physical environments, and it intuitively grasps its capabilities and limitations in all of them.^[76]

A challenge that must be met is to work out how the five recognised domains are to be unified and integrated to support manoeuvre in the littoral. While this question exists as a broader general issue for the ADF and its allies, it is particularly germane to developing a littoral concept. This is because the domain environmental operations considerations arising from the littoral inconveniently sit at the centre of any Venn diagram depicting the relationship between the five domains. The trouble with looking at historical examples is that we readily get caught up in focusing on the domains predominant in those conflicts. Technology has changed the environment, creating new and potentially decisive domains for warfare. The modern littoral embraces and subsumes all new technological means across all five domains. Littoral concepts focusing on the intersection of jungle, boats, mud and so-called ‘brown water’ alone have a wrong frame in mind, engendering vulnerability. They will create blind spots an adversary can exploit. Any workable conceptual way to conduct littoral operations in Australia’s northern approaches must, necessarily, fully and explicitly address all five domains.

Australia has long been at the forefront of innovation, adoption and integration of ‘new’ domains, so the challenge of meeting the ‘new’ littoral situation has precedent. The 1^st AIF was an early adopter of air warfare during the First World War. Then less than three years after that war the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was formed, becoming only the second independent air force in the world. In the Second World War a leading innovator in developing cross-domain integration between the air and land was an Australian, Arthur Coningham, raised in New Zealand and serving in the Royal Air Force. His work led to the development of Allied close air support and joint tactical air operations doctrine, and still informs the basis of modern airpower doctrine concerning support to other domains.^[77]

Over the last 50 years, technological advances have significantly increased the reach of each service’s land, sea, air, space and cyberspace capabilities, and largely erased the geographic distinctions that once delineated each service’s operational domain.^[78] The origin of these delineations reflects both historical use and the fact that ‘Humans created domain-centric approaches to warfare to compensate for cognitive and physical limitations, which make it impossible for any individual to be expert at everything’.^[79] While these are enduring truths, Australia and its allies have to ensure they don’t become an enduring limitation on our ability and thinking about warfighting in the 21^st century. A US Air Force colonel highlighted the case for change in the US in 2017: ‘as long as the [US] military approaches the application of military forces from the fractured perspective of discrete domains, then true integration will be stunted’.

The littoral environment is perhaps a unique opportunity to have a ‘testbed’ for ADF domain integration. Advantage will accrue in Australia’s northern approaches to those who can successfully and seamlessly orchestrate warfighting across and through all the domains. This means the ADF cannot continue to engage with cross-domain issues from within what Neller and Richardson labelled ‘segregated specialisations’.^[80] This is not a new idea in 2025, but the realisation of domain integration and orchestration within the littoral environment must be treated as a priority capability development task.

Logistics and Sustainment

Another key question that needs an answer is how to achieve logistic sustainment of the integrated force in the PAMI littoral in an era of persistent surveillance and precision long-range strike. While this is a serious enough challenge, an even more pertinent question is where the necessary platforms will come from. By the end of the Second World War, Australia had a sizeable military force. The Royal Australian Navy had over 300 vessels and the RAAF was the world’s fourth-largest air force, comprising over 50 squadrons with at least 3,000 operational combat aircraft. Furthermore, on occasion, Australian forces could draw upon a large pool of Allied support. The utility of such capability is illustrated in the amphibious assault on Balikpapan on 1 July 1945. The 2^nd AIF’s 7^th Division, and many corps troops, were safely put ashore via an Allied fleet of over 150 ships, supported by Allied sea- and land-based aircraft.^[81]

The logistic and shipping requirement to support the NDS-directed ‘single armoured combined-arms brigade, able to meet the most demanding land challenges in our region’ will likely be less than that required at Balikpapan. Yet there are remarkably fewer resources available now or envisaged for the future. The IIP does not make provision for the two multi-role sea-lift and replenishment vessels previously planned to replace HMAS Choules that were detailed in Defence’s 2020 Force Structure Plan.^[82] When launching the IIP on 17 April 2024 the Minister for Defence said:

Defence had planned to acquire two large support vessels to increase the capacity of our Navy’s sea lift and refuelling support. The focus on improving our maritime lethality means these support vessels are no longer a priority. This action will generate savings of $120 million over the next four years and $4.1 billion over the decade.^[83]

Oddly, this decision suggests that maritime lethality can be improved without more logistic support. In reality, it creates a deficiency gap between achieving the stipulated tasks of the integrated force and the planned IIP capability acquisitions. The IIP is also silent regarding other capabilities essential to future warfare within the littorals of the PAMI. This is problematic because, as noted by Jennifer Parker:

The ability to prevail in such a conflict depends not just on major warships and submarines but also on the enabling capabilities that underpin maritime operations: replenishment, hydrography, mine warfare and other niche but vital domains.^[85]

In the absence of suitable or sufficient means, the force will have to default to innovating new concepts (ways) to compensate and address these challenges.

Another challenge to conceptual innovation involves the link between logistics sustainment and the broader issue of operating against adversary A2AD. This issue is captured by Chris Smith:

Rather than dismiss or ignore the problem of transportation, critics and advocates should turn their attention to resolving how to manoeuvre naval and land forces and all their supplies and other logistical needs across no-man’s-lands encompassing both sea and land. It is an all-domain problem and solving it would go a long way towards building confidence that the ADF and potential partners can manoeuvre in the Indo-Pacific at all.^[86]

Addressing Adversary A2AD

A universal truth is that A2AD, and any strategy to employ an A2AD system, is a two-way street. Hoffman sums this up for us:

Competitive strategies seek to frame the contest to our advantage rather than play by someone else’s rules. To craft a strategy that is competitive recognizes that it must operate in an adversarial setting and reflect the reality that strategy and war are reciprocal, as well as involve an interactive series of action, response, and counteraction.^[87]

If the ADF (and its partners and allies) think they can create an A2AD effect, then they must also fully expect that any adversary worthy of deterring and denying may, and will, do the same.

John Nash notes a specific concern arising from this in a 2024 essay: ‘littoral maneuver will almost certainly involve moving in and out of an enemy weapons engagement zone’.^[88] A core requirement of any littoral operations concept must provide Australia’s integrated force with a suitable method not merely to survive but to operate, thrive and win within a hostile A2AD zone. Again, the Deputy Chief of Army summarises the requirement and the risk:

This is important, as the increasing range of emerging land-based strike systems will make the sea a very dangerous place for warships, including ships carrying units of the combined-arms land system. As an Australian force crossed the water to make a landing, it and friendly forces could try to suppress some of the enemy’s ability to attack it. Entirely suppressing that ability may be impossible, however.^[89]

Earlier campaigns conducted by Australia within a permanent weapons engagement zone have never previously been unduly restricted by factors relating to manoeuvre and sustainment. The challenge is new, real, and likely to endure. To be adequate, any concept for ADF deterrence by denial operations within Australia’s northern approaches must meet and treat this reality.

Towards a Solution

Strategy

This article has established that a conceptual ‘ways gap’ exists between the ends and means of Australia’s plan to conduct deterrence by denial within the littorals of Australia’s northern approaches. It is clear from this review that the NDS does not adequately answer the ‘ways’ question posed, and some of the challenges to be addressed have been highlighted. Of note, these are examined in greater detail, including development of principles to inform Australian littoral manoeuvre, in a forthcoming Australian Army Research Centre Occasional Paper titled In Denial: The ADF and Littoral Manoeuvre. What is needed now is a way forward that articulates how to close the ‘ways gap’. The two essential requirements identified are military strategy and concept development.

Strategy sets the direction and the frame for tactics. The actual conduct of littoral manoeuvre would be the tactical expression of the NDS-directed strategy of deterrence by denial. What is missing then is military strategy to provide the ‘ways’ for littoral operations in support of deterrence by denial within Australia’s northern approaches.^[90]

Until recently (within the last decade), Defence developed and published a (classified) Australian Military Strategy on an annual or biannual basis. Supporting the production of this important artefact was a branch in Strategic Policy Division called the Military Strategy Branch. The branch was led by an ADF officer with the title Director General Military Strategy (DG MS). This position and the branch have been retitled and repurposed within the last five years. Paraphrasing the apocryphal statement attributed to Leon Trotsky, it appears that a case of ‘you may not be interested in military strategy, but military strategy is interested in you’ may be playing out in Defence. Defence need not have either a DG MS or a Military Strategy Branch, no matter how peculiar the absence of such a function or responsibility is. Nonetheless, there is an urgent need for a military strategy that logically and causally accounts for the ways and the means described in the DSR, NDS and IIP that will be utilised to achieve the ends of deterrence by denial through littoral manoeuvre in Australia’s northern approaches.

It is irrelevant who takes ultimate responsibility for the task—bureaucratic jostling over responsibility and influence will inevitably arise. One model (and there are countless possible models) sees Strategic Policy Division given authorship responsibility, with deep consultation and engagement with the three services, Joint Operations Command and Military Strategic Plans Division. Hopefully, such a solution would see the emergence of greater clarity around how deterrence by denial would align with the ways and means selected. Another model might engage Chief of Army sponsorship, noting the primacy of the littoral manoeuvre task assigned to the Army in the NDS. No matter who takes responsibility for developing the necessary strategy, it must include causal logic to explain the strategy’s theory of victory.

Developing a Littoral Manoeuvre Concept

Hoffman tells us ‘strategy formulation should rigorously examine different conceptual approaches framed around a hypothesis about how each strategic option can obtain the specified desired aims’.^[91] Clearly, concepts matter to inform the logic of strategy. We previously heard from Chris Field that an ADF concept ‘Identifies and frames a joint military problem, its proposed solution, and the characteristics and attributes of capabilities required to implement the proposed solution’.^[92] Development of a military strategy to address our ‘ways gap’ should be informed by the timely development of a suitable littoral manoeuvre concept.

The responsibility for developing the concept should fall upon the VCDF Group, noting the VCDF’s accountability as Defence’s Joint Force Authority (JFA). This is a suitable task within the remit of the JFA and their Force Design Division’s (FDD) responsibilities. Given what has already been examined in this article, the littoral manoeuvre concept will have to be ‘joint, integrated and multi-domain’. FDD is usefully positioned in Australian Defence Headquarters to coordinate and bring all the constituent services and group and domain capability managers together for the concept’s development, while addressing the issues such as deterrence, logistics and sustainment, and threat A2AD raised here. Cognisant of key contextual differences, there is also an opportunity to review and ‘cherrypick’ from the recent US experience in multi-domain and littoral concept development. This will have an immediate benefit in the ongoing development of interoperability and combined integration between allies, something which is always a force design imperative. FDD also has the capacity and capability to conduct the wargaming, modelling and experimentation necessary to take a nascent littoral manoeuvre concept through to informing doctrine, preparedness direction and capability acquisition.

Conclusion

The Australian Army, and the ADF more broadly, is short of a suitable conceptual way to manoeuvre in the littoral regions of Australia’s northern approaches. The thus far energetic embrace of an inchoate approach to the conduct of littoral operations stipulated in the NDS risks failure when confronted by the realities of the environment. The lack of clearly defined and understood ‘ways’ leaves Army conceptually adrift. The Deputy Chief of Army has stated: ‘Transitioning to an Australian Defence Force that can generate decisive battlefield effects in all domains in Australia’s immediate region is no trivial task.’^[93] The focus will be necessarily broader than Army’s concerns alone, but the imperative to situate Army within the integrated force to meet its task should motivate Army leadership on the issue.

In 2021, Ian Langford posed the question: does the ADF need a single, end-to-end, agreed concept or narrative describing ‘how it fights’?^[94] The answer is yes with respect to how the ADF will conduct littoral operations within Australia’s northern approaches. Achieving this will address the current logic gap seen in policy between ends and means. John Nash highlights the benefit for the Australian Army (and the integrated force more broadly) from doing so:

The Army has an excellent opportunity to move past ideas such as the, not unfairly maligned, ‘air-sea gap’ and finally embrace the sea as a manoeuvre space. As part of an integrated Australian Defence Force, Army can manoeuvre for advantage using the vast littorals of the Indo-Pacific, and position itself for area denial and long-range strike operations.^[95]

The way ahead, then, is the development of a suitable military strategy to provide the ‘ways’ for littoral operations in support of deterrence by denial in Australia’s northern approaches. This strategy should be the product of a collective Defence endeavour, led by Strategic Policy Division. The strategy should include a ‘theory of victory’ with a clear causal logic linking the use of ‘means’ and ‘ways’ to strategic policy’s ‘ends’. Development of a joint littoral manoeuvre concept, appropriately supported by wargaming, modelling and experimentation, should also be directed by the VCDF to inform the logic of the military strategy. In time this will also inform doctrine, preparedness direction and capability acquisition.

In the introduction to this article, I stated an aim of mobilising thought so that the ADF develops a position of advantage in littoral operations. The literature review conducted for this article underscores the ongoing utility and importance to the profession of arms of resources like the Australian Army Research Centre, the Australian Army Journal and the Land Power Forum. It is clear that when official policy falls short, there still exist places for the advancement, consideration and debate of ideas around Australia’s defence and security. The maintenance of such professional institutions is vital to the future of ideas about littoral operations and about other challenges the nation faces.

Editor’s Note The Joint Warfare Note—Concept: Littoral Warfare—The Future Integrated Force in the Archipelagic Region (JWN-C: LW) was approved for publication earlier this year. JWN-C: LW describes how the future integrated force—that is, the force of 2031 and beyond—will conduct multi-domain littoral warfare in from competition to conflict in Australia’s PAMI in order to contribute to a strategy of denial. JWN-C: LW informs joint and domain concepts, force design, plans, doctrine, training, preparedness and operations.

About the Author

Dr Mark O’Neill is a defence and national security professional with experience in the military, policy, non-government, academia and think tank sectors. He has had operational deployments in Somalia, Mozambique, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2006 Mark was the first Chief of Army Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales.

Endnotes

^[1] Simon Stuart, ‘A Multi-Domain Approach to the Defense: An Australian Perspective’, speech, LANPAC 2024, Honolulu, 15 May 2024, at: https://www.army.gov.au/news-and-events/speeches-and-transcripts/2024-05-15/lanpac-2024-speech-chief-army.

^[2] There are several definitions of the term Littoral Manoeuvre. In this paper I use it in the sense defined by Australian maritime doctrine: ‘The use of the littoral as an operational manoeuvre space from which a sea-based joint amphibious force can threaten, or apply and sustain, force ashore’. See Royal Australian Navy, Australian Maritime Doctrine (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010), p. 198. The NDS does not use the term ‘littoral manoeuvre’, favouring ‘littoral operations’ instead. The NDS is silent as to how it conceives of or defines the term ‘littoral operations’. For an exploration of the lexicon and definitions relating to this subject, see Mark Mankowski, ‘What Is Littoral Manoeuvre?—Part One’, Land Power Forum, 23 August 2023.

^[3] Australian Government, National Defence: Defence Strategic Review (Commonwealth of Australia, 2023), p. 5.

^[4] Ibid., p. 7.

^[5] Thomas C Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. x.

^[6] The DSR defines the PAMI as ‘the immediate region encompassing the north-eastern Indian Ocean through maritime Southeast Asia into the Pacific. This region includes our northern approaches’. See Defence Strategic Review, p. 28.

^[7] Arthur F Lykke Jr, ‘Defining Military Strategy’, Military Review LXIX, no. 5 (1989): 2–8.

^[8] Key criticisms include that Lykke’s approach makes strategy static rather than iterative, that it does not account well for adversary agency, and that its separation of military strategy from national strategy can lead to failure to consider wider long-term considerations. Another factor, germane to this paper, it that while helping to avoid ‘ends and means’ mismatches it often has the effect of ‘neutering’ effective consideration of ways. Indicative references for these criticisms include Jeffrey W Meiser, ‘Ends+Ways+Means=(Bad) Strategy’, Parameters 46, no. 4 (2016): 81–91; and Andrew C Webb, ‘Rethinking Strategy: Art Lykke and the Development of the Ends, Ways, Means Model of Strategy’, Masters of Military Art and Science thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2019, at: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1111146.pdf.

^[9] Australian Government, National Defence Strategy (Commonwealth of Australia, 2024), p. 25, para. 3.13.

^[10] Department of Defence, Integrated Investment Program (Commonwealth of Australia, 2024).

^[11] These means are best understood as the sum of the available and ready elements of the current ‘force in being’, those anticipated new capabilities in the IIP that reach a timely ‘interim operating capability’, and any novel asymmetric capabilities delivered by the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator initiative.

^[12] I use the term ‘strategy’ here not in the sense of ‘grand’ or ‘national’ strategy but rather in the sense of ‘strategy as the use of battle for the purposes of war’. Hew Strachan explores such differences in Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy in Theory; Strategy in Practice’, University of St Andrews (website), 2019, at: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/21130/Strachan_2019_Strategy_in_theory_JSS_AAM.pdf  (School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK, 2019.

^[13] Bruce Hoffman notes: ‘The most important and creative aspect of strategy is often silent in the many books on the topic. Critical to the selection of the most appropriate way in a strategy is a hypothesis as to its causal logic.’ Hoffman is addressing the real concern about the identification of appropriate ways in the development of strategy. He regards this as a ‘theory of success’ at the national strategic policy level and a ‘theory of victory’ at the level of applied military force. See Frank G Hoffman, ‘The Missing Element in Crafting National Strategy: A Theory of Success’, Joint Force Quarterly, no. 97 (2020): 57, at: https://inss.ndu.edu/Media/News/Article/2142863/. Brad Roberts suggests ‘a theory of victory can be defined as a plausible set of principles for overcoming an enemy’. See Brad Roberts, On Theories of Victory, Red and Blue, Livermore Papers on Global Security No. 7 (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2020), p. 4, at: https://cgsr.llnl.gov/sites/cgsr/files/2024-08/CGSR-LivermorePaper7.pdf.

^[14] Peter Viggo Jakobsen, ‘Causal Theories of Threat and Success—Simple Analytical Tools Making It Easier to Assess, Formulate, and Validate Military Strategy’, Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies 5, no. 1 (2022): 178.

^[15] The VCDF is appointed as the Joint Force Authority (JFA). As such they are accountable for joint force design and concepts. The strategic policy direction to Army regarding littoral operations suggests a compelling case for Army engagement, advocacy and thought leadership on the issue.

^[16] For readers interested in other cases, an example comparing USMC thinking with that of the UK Royal Marines is provided in David Kilcullen, ‘Stand-in Manoeuvre in a Contested Littoral Environment’, Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies XIX, no. 2 (2023): 238–362.

^[17] National Defence Strategy.

^[18] Colin S Gray, ‘Why Strategy Is Difficult’, Joint Force Quarterly 22 (Summer 1999): 7, at: https://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/99jfqgray.pdf.

^[19] Strachan, ‘Strategy in Theory; Strategy in Practice’, p. 5 https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/21130/Strachan_2019_Strategy_in_theory_JSS_AAM.pdf .

^[20] National Defence Strategy, p. 25, para. 3.13.

^[21] For the nine ‘roles’ see Department of Defence, Defending Australia: Defence White Paper 1994 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1994), p. 30, para. 4.17, at: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/defence-white-paper. For examples of the broad nature of tasking similar to that seen in the NDS, see Department of Defence, The Defence of Australia, White Paper (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1987), p. 32, para. 3.51, at: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/defence-white-paper. DWP 2000 identified three ‘key priorities’ for ‘Australian Military Strategy’; see Department of Defence, Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force, White Paper (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2000), pp. xi–xii, at: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/defence-white-paper. DWP 2009 identified high-level ‘principal tasks’ for the ADF; see Department of Defence, Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030—Defence White Paper 2009 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2009), p. 53, at: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/defence-white-paper. DWP 2016 took a slightly different approach with three ‘Strategic Defence Objectives’; see Department of Defence, 2016 Defence White Paper (Canberra: Australian Government, 2016), p. 71, para. 3.11, at: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/defence-white-paper.

^[22] National Defence Strategy, p. 28.

^[23] See National Defence Strategy, Chapter 4: ‘Defence Force Structure, Posture and Bases’; Chapter 5: ‘People’; Chapter 6: ‘Capability Investment Priorities’; Chapter 7: ‘International Partnerships’.

^[24] National Defence Strategy, pp. 39–40.

^[25] Australian Army, The Australian Army Contribution to the National Defence Strategy 2024 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2024), at: https://www.army.gov.au/our-work/strategy/australian-army-contribution-national-defence-strategy-2024.

^[26] The Army’s introduction of the term ‘littoral manoeuvre’ here, distinct from the term ‘littoral operations’ used in the strategic policy guidance, is unexplained. No distinction between the two terms is offered in either text. For the purposes of this paper, I will defer to the strategic document’s use of ‘littoral operations’ unless using the term ‘littoral manoeuvre’ in the sense defined by doctrine, used by Army and previously explained in footnote 2.

^[27] For the NDS capability delivery direction, see National Defence Strategy, p. 40, para. 6.8.b. For Army’s distillation of this direction, see The Australian Army Contribution to the National Defence Strategy 2024, p. 6.

^[28] Previously defined in footnote 2 as ‘The use of the littoral as an operational manoeuvre space from which a sea-based joint amphibious force can threaten, or apply and sustain, force ashore’. See Royal Australian Navy, Australian Maritime Doctrine, p. 198.

^[29] Chris Field, ‘Five Ideas: On Writing Australian Defence Force Concepts’, The Cove, 21 March 2023, at: https://cove.army.gov.au/article/five-ideas-writing-australian-defence-force-concepts.

^[30] Ibid.

^[31] Australian Defence Force Doctrine Directorate, Australian Military Power, Edition 2’ (Commonwealth of Australia, 2024), p. 4.

^[32] Stuart, ‘A Multi-Domain Approach to the Defense’.

^[33] Australian Defence Force, ‘ADF Capstone Concept APEX: Integrated Campaigning for Deterrence’ (Joint Concepts, Australian Defence Force, 2024); Australian Defence Force Doctrine Directorate, ‘Australian Military Power, Edition 2’.

^[34] Australian Defence Force, ‘ADF Theatre Concept ASPIRE: The Australian Defence Force’s Theatre Concept’ (Joint Concepts, Australian Defence Force, 2023).

^[35] ‘Aspiring to a New Level’, Army News, 2 February 2023, p. 2, at: https://trove.nla.gov.au/ newspaper/article/282199834.

^[36] David Fryer, ‘Aligning Emerging Concepts and Capabilities with Mosaic Warfare’, Contemporary Issues in AIr and Space Power 2, no. 1 (2024): 5, at: https://doi.org/10.58930/bp41567496.

^[37] Field, ‘Five Ideas’.

^[38] For indicative examples of such writing, see Richard Bushby, From the Sea: A Comparative Analysis of Amphibious Operations in the Pacific and European Theatres of the Second World War, Australian Army Research Centre Occasional Paper No. 23 (Canberra: Australian Army Research Centre, 2024); John Nash, ‘Land Power in the Littoral: An Australian Army Perspective’, Journal of Advanced Military Studies 15, no. 2 (2024): 40–53, at: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/419/article/938393; Mankowski, ‘What Is Littoral Manoeuvre?—Part One’; Mark Mankowski, ‘What Is Littoral Manoeuvre?—Part Two’, Land Power Forum, 19 September 2023. Additionally, an entire issue of the Australian Army Journal (XIX, no. 2, 2023) was dedicated to the theme of littoral manoeuvre.

^[39] Simon Stuart, ‘Opening Address—Chief of Army History Conference 2023’, speech, Chief of Army History Conference 2023, Canberra, 16 November 2023, at: https://www.army.gov.au/news-and-events/speeches-and-transcripts/2023-11-16/opening-address-chief-army-history-conference-2023.

^[40] Chris Smith, The Implications of Emerging Changes in Land Warfare for the Focused All-Domain Defence Force (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2024), p. 4, at: https://ad-aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2024-12/The%20implications%20of%20emerging%20changes%20in%20land%20warfare.pdf.

^[41] The presentations from the 2023 Chief of Army History Conference, ‘In Brown and Green Waters: Australian Army Operations in the Littoral’ may be viewed at: https://cove.army.gov.au/article/chief-army-history-conference-2023.

^[42] Bushby, From the Sea, p. 1.

^[43] For example, see Justin Jones (ed.), Australian Maritime Strategic Thought 2013–2023 (Sea Power Centre—Australia, 2023), at: https://www.navy.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/Australian%20Mari….

^[44] Richard Dunley, ‘How Useful Is Classical Maritime Strategy in an Age of Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles?’, The Strategist, 30 June 2020, at: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/how-useful-is-classical-maritime-strategy-in-an-age-of-long-range-anti-ship-missiles/.

^[45] Ash Zimmerlie, ‘Corbett Down Under: Sir Julian Corbett, Maritime Strategy, and Australian Land Power in the Indo-Pacific Arc’, Australian Army Journal XIX, no. 2: 225.

^[46] Department of Defence, Defence White Paper 2013 (Canberra: Australian Government, 2013), p. 28, at: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/defence-white-paper.

^[47] Australian Army, Army in a Joint Archipelagic Manoeuvre Concept, Discussion Paper 01/14 (Canberra: Australian Army Research Centre, 2014).

^[48] Paul Willis, Concept for Manoeuvre Operations in the Littoral Environment (Canberra: Future Land Warfare Branch, Australian Army, 2002).

^[49] Peter Leahy, ‘A Land Force for the Future: The Australian Army in the Early 21^st Century’, Australian Army Journal I, no. 1 (2003): 25.

^[50] Australian Army, ‘Army in a Joint Archipelagic Manoeuvre Concept’, p. 2.

^[51] Ibid.

^[52] Chris Smith and Al Palazzo, Coming to Terms with the Modern Way of War: Precision missiles and the land component of Australia’s joint force, Australian Land Warfare Concept Series Volume 1 (Canberra: Australian Army, 2016).

^[53] Mankowski, ‘What Is Littoral Manoeuvre? Part One’.

^[54] Stuart, ‘A Multi-Domain Approach to the Defense’.

^[55] Smith and Palazzo, Coming to Terms with the Modern Way of War, p. 16.

^[56] Ibid.

^[57] United States Joint Staff Joint Force Development (J7), Cross-Domain Synergy in Joint Operations: Planner’s Guide (United States Department of Defense, 2016), p. 6.

^[58] See U.S. Marine Corps, Operational Maneuver from the Sea (United States Marine Corps, 1996); U.S. Marine Corps, A Concept for Stand-in Forces (United States Marine Corps, 2021), at: https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Users/183/35/4535/211201_A%20Concept%20for%20Stand-In%20Forces.pdf; David H Berger, Force Design 2030: Annual Update, June 2023 (United States Marine Corps, 2023), at: https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Docs/Force_Design_2030_Annual_Update_June_2023.pdf.

^[59] U.S. Marine Corps, A Concept for Stand-in Forces, p. 4.

^[60] Robert B Neller and John M Richardson, Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (United States Marine Corps, United States Navy, 2017), at: https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Littoral-Operations-in-a-Contested-Environment.pdf.

^[61] See U.S. Marine Corps, Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, 2^nd Edition (United States Marine Corps, 2023), at: https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Docs/230509-Tentative-Manual-For-Expeditionary-Advanced-Base-Operations-2nd-Edition.pdf.

^[62] Ibid., pp. 1–2.

^[63] For example, see Thomas Rowden, Peter Gumataotao and Peter Fanta, ‘Distributed Lethality’, Proceedings 141, no. 1 (2015), at: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2015/january/distributed-lethality; Katie Jacobsen, ‘Commentary: Transforming “Distributed Lethality” Strategy into Action’, RAND (website), 8 February 2020, at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2016/02/transforming-distributed-lethality-strategy-into-action.html; Jeffrey E Kline, ‘A Tactical Doctrine for Distributed Lethality’, Center for International Maritime Security (website), 22 February 2016, at: https://cimsec.org/tactical-doctrine-distributed-lethality/.

^[64] I unpack both multi-domain operations and the US Army’s approach in Mark O’Neill, ‘A Festival of Dangerous Ideas: Multi-Domain Operations and Australia’s Joint Force—Risk and Opportunity’, in Designing the Future: Thinking about Joint Operations, Future Land Warfare Essay Collection (Canberra: Australian Army Research Centre, 2021), p. 62.

^[65] United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Concept for Entry Operations (United States Department of Defense, 2014).

^[66] See Stew Magnuson, ‘DARPA Pushes “Mosaic Warfare” Concept’, National Defense 103, no. 780 (2018): 18–19, at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27022377. For a useful graphic introduction to the concept see Tim Grayson, ‘Mosaic Warfare’, slide presentation, at: https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/sto-mosaic-distro-a.pdf.

^[67] Davi Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country, Revisited (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

^[68] JORN is described in ‘Jindalee Operational Radar Network’, Department of Defence (website), at: https://www.dst.defence.gov.au/innovation/jindalee-operational-radar-network (accessed 3 March 2025).

^[69] See Chris Rein, ‘Guadalcanal, a Case Study for Multi-Domain Battle’, Military Review, June 2018, 97, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/Engl… or:; Dudley McCarthy, South-West Pacific Area - First Year, Kokoda to Wau, 1^st ed., vol. V, Australia in the War of 1939 - 1945, Series One (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1959), 153.

^[70] Peter Dean, ‘The (Re)Rise of the Archpelagic Army: Geography, History, and the Ongoing Utility of Land Power in Australia’s Littoral Arc—A Primer’, Australian Army Journal XIX, no. 2 (2023): 9–10.

^[71] Ibid., p. 10.

^[72] Other texts which appear to assume Australia’s ‘opportunity’ to conduct littoral operations in the region is an unqualified freedom because they do not treat the issue of permission include The Australian Army Contribution to the National Defence Strategy 2024; National Defence Strategy; Kilcullen, ‘Stand-in Manoeuvre in a Contested Littoral Environment’.

^[73] National Defence Strategy, pp. 47–50.

^[74] Albert Palazzo, ‘Deterrence and Firepower: Land 8113 and the Australian Army’s Future (Part 1, Strategic Effect)’, Land Power Forum, 16 July 2020.

^[75] Zimmerlie, ‘Corbett Down Under’, p. 210.

^[76] Jon Wilkinson, ‘Humpty Dumpty & the Cracked Joint Force’, War Room, 2 May 2017, at: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/putting-humpty-dumpty-together-organizational-design-cross-domain-synergy/.

^[77] Coningham’s career and contribution to joint and airpower thinking is treated in detail in Vincent Orange, Coningham: A Biography of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham KCB, KBE, DSO, MC, DFC, AFC (Washington DC: US Center for Air Force History, 1992), at: https://media.defense.gov/2010/May/25/2001330278/-1/-1/0/AFD-100525-086.pdf.

^[78] William O Odom and Christopher D Hayes, ‘Cross-Domain Synergy: Advancing Jointness’, Joint Force Quarterly 73, no. 2 (2014): 125.

^[79] Wilkinson, ‘Humpty Dumpty & the Cracked Joint Force’.

^[80] Neller and Richardson, Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment.

^[81] See G Hermon Gill, Royal Australian Navy, 1942–1945, Volume II, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, Series Two (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1968), p. 646, at: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1417375.

^[82] Department of Defence, Force Structure Plan 2020 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2020), p. 41, para. 4.15, at: https://www.defence.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-11/2020_Force_Structure_Plan.pdf.

^[83] Richard Marles, ‘Launch of the National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program’, speech, National Press Club, Canberra, 17 April 2024.

^[84] I examine these capability shortfalls, and their implications for the Australian Army and the conduct of littoral manoeuvre, in greater depth in an Australian Army Research Centre Occasional Paper, Persistent, Lethal and Resilient? Australia’s Integrated Land Force and Littoral Operations in the Indo-Pacific in 2030, to be published by the Australian Army Research Centre in 2025.

^[85] Jennifer Parker, ‘When Naval Capability Is Minimal, It’s Also Brittle’, The Strategist, 16 October 2024, at: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/when-naval-capability-is-minimal-it-can-disappear-entirely-in-an-accident/.

^[86] Chris Smith, ‘Adapting All-Domain Forces to Changes in Land Warfare’, The Strategist, 13 December 2024, at: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/adapting-all-domain-forces-to-changes-in-land-warfare/.

^[87] Frank G Hoffman, ‘Grand Strategy: The Fundamental Considerations’, Orbis 58, no. 4 (2014): 479, at: https://doi.org/doi: 10.1016/j.orbis.2014.08.002.

^[88] Nash, ‘Land Power in the Littoral’, p. 45. 2024 National De\u0002fence Strategy (NDS).

^[89] Smith, ‘Adapting All-Domain Forces to Changes in Land Warfare’.

^[90] I use the term ‘military strategy’ here to distinguish it from the realm of ‘grand’ or ‘national’ strategy, which is largely where the NDS can be seen as sitting. It sits within the sense described in British operational doctrine and cited by Hew Strachan: ‘military strategy is the process by which military objectives and force levels, which will assist in the achievement of political objectives, are decided’. See Strachan, ‘Strategy in Theory; Strategy in Practice’, p. 5.

^[91] Ibid., p. 57.

^[92] Field, ‘Five Ideas’.

^[93] Smith, ‘Adapting All-Domain Forces to Changes in Land Warfare’.

^[94] Ian Langford, ‘A Future ADF Narrative: “How We Will Fight”’, in Designing the Future: Thinking about Joint Operations, Future Land Warfare Essay Collection (Canberra: Australian Army Research Centre, 2021), p. 69.

^[95] John Nash, ‘AAJ Littoral Manoeuvre Collection’, Australian Army Journal XIX, no. 2 (2023): xv.