Abstract
Support to resistance—in which Australia might aid other regional nations in emulating Ukrainian methods of resistance—should constitute Army’s next major step towards developing Australia’s strategy of deterrence by denial.[1] I argue that this is a logical and appropriate role for Australia’s special operations, cyber, and information advantage communities, applying lessons from in-person and remote support missions conducted over the past decade.
In part, this argument sees alignment with and amplification of how certain regional countries intend to exercise their own sovereign defence. Put another way, these countries have a right to defend as they see fit, so why not help them to be more militarily effective in the manner they wish to exercise national sovereignty? This paper expands upon the 2026 National Defence Strategy’s introduction of the term ‘national defence’ by illuminating certain facets of the European ‘total defence’ doctrine and highlighting its relevance to Australia’s circumstances and those of our regional neighbours. The argument thus illuminates a form of conceptual and command asymmetries, as has recently been demonstrated in several conflicts. The logic and meaning of the doctrinal term ‘support to resistance’ is expanded and described to aid Army planners in understanding how such concepts might be implemented.
Introduction
Australia’s Department of Defence affirmed the centrality of deterrence by denial with the release of the 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS). Deterrence will operate within the context of an evidently changing character of war, leveraging ‘asymmetric operational advantage by combining innovative technologies with adaptive concepts of employment and command’.[2] The NDS asserted this objective, informed by lessons derived from the war in Ukraine and recent Middle Eastern conflicts, and rightly recognised the imperative to adapt command approaches and concepts to this rapidly changing character, particularly regarding uncrewed systems.
The NDS also offers a more subtle aspect of deterrence by denial that relates to our necessary conceptual adaptations with the introduction of the term ‘national defence’.[3] Indeed, an entire chapter of the NDS is written on this topic, which seeks to improve civil preparedness and national resilience. This is new to Australian strategic documents and, being new, it requires analysis as to where it might lead.
The NDS offers little detail regarding what is meant by national defence, despite several parallels to what a dozen European nations term ‘total defence’ and to the wealth of doctrine and recent academic work oriented to this theme.[4] The language of total defence carries significant meaning by encapsulating the European response to today’s changing character of conflict and competition; hence, it is worthy of detailed analysis in the Australian context. Total defence can encompass a broad range of societal resilience functions, many of which also include what are termed ‘resistance’ capabilities. This facet is exemplified by Latvia (2016), Lithuania (2017),[5] Estonia (2010 and 2022),[6] Czech Republic (2015),[7] Sweden (2015 and 2024)[8] and Finland (2017 and 2025).[9] Resistance has been defined as:
a nation’s organised, whole-of-society effort, encompassing the full range of activities from nonviolent to violent, led by a legally established government (potentially exiled/displaced or shadow) to re-establish independence and autonomy within its sovereign territory that has been wholly or partially occupied by a foreign power.[10]
In an Australian context, the threat of even partial occupation is very unlikely—but the threat is markedly different in Taipei, Manila, Tokyo, Seoul and Hanoi (and indeed, perhaps also in other countries). While national defence looks to be a major shift in Australia’s conceptual and command approach to conflict preparations, similar concepts of improved resilience and civil–military coordination are being pursued by our regional neighbours. The under-explored form of adaptation that resistance concepts offer as part of a total defence strategy is highly relevant to Australia’s region, given that European states now provide models that might be rapidly emulated particular to national context. Indeed, a comprehensive analysis of total defence doctrine (including analysis of what lessons might be drawn from the European experience) appears in recent and forthcoming Australian Army Research Centre papers.[11]
In our region, the acute sense of threat that certain countries perceive means that a resistance element within a form of total defence strategy either exists, might soon exist, or probably should exist. This description includes Indonesia’s Total People’s Defense and Security System (Sistem Pertahanan dan Keamanan Rakyat Semesta: Sishankamrata), Singapore’s Total Defence,[12] the Philippines Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units, and possibly Taiwan’s Overall Defence Concept (2021).[13] Indeed, Indonesia recently announced its intention to raise at least 150 new battalions to ‘guard vital state assets’, expanding upon traditional doctrinal ideas of ‘protracted warfare, total people’s defence and guerrilla warfare’—i.e. resistance—within the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Armed Forces).[14] Further, Australia has historically engaged in support to resistance warfare in the face of a more powerful aggressor. The vignette of Sparrow Force’s resistance to the Japanese invasion of Timor during World War II is instructive in this regard.[15]
In short, Australia has seemingly well assimilated the need for technological adaptation, but the NDS’s call for ‘conceptual’ or ‘command’ adaptations illuminates the potential for both unilateral actions and partnered efforts to support adaptation in our region. Conceptual and command adaptations might leverage the experience of European nations and, indeed, a broad range of recent lessons born from conflict.
This paper thus explores the issue of ‘conceptual’ and ‘command’ facets of asymmetry through the mechanism of support to resistance. This issue matters because the 2024 and 2026 NDS identified asymmetry as a central tenet of Australia’s warfighting paradigm. It is also a prescient issue: Ukraine had between a 5:1 and 10:1 disadvantage across most metrics of military power in February 2022, yet it managed to resist and grow a credible capability while in contact with the enemy. Yet Ukraine has thus far endured and has denied the more powerful actor its primary objective. In part, the use of uncrewed systems has aided in such efforts, but delegated command and control—employing unorthodox and innovative operational concepts—has also demonstrated the efficacy of such concepts. In other words, a focus solely upon technological asymmetry would misunderstand the full potential that the Ukrainian experience heralds.
A broader and more holistic exploration of asymmetry matters for Australia if it is to deter powerful adversaries from military offensive action in our region. Australia might anticipate that ADF elements projected forward into the region against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may well find themselves out-massed and out-gunned, like Sparrow Force. Army can learn from its own history, but recent conflicts have also demonstrated the efficacy of modern resistance warfare, which can inform our development of asymmetric concepts.
Resistance and Strategy in the Indo-Pacific During World War II
On 17 December 1941, Sparrow Force, consisting of the 2nd Independent Company, 2/40th Battalion, and approximately 1,000 Dutch troops, landed to defend Dutch and Portuguese Timor.[16] Sparrow Force was one of several forces that the Allies deployed forward across the Netherlands East Indies (NEI), Portuguese Timor, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia. The original purpose of these forces was to support an air striking force from Darwin using forward advanced bases in the NEI at Ambon and Koepang.[17]
Sparrow Force’s mission was soon overtaken by events due to the speed of the Japanese advance across a broad front. This speed was enabled by a range of factors, including technological evolution in carrier-based air power, combined operations and practised amphibious operations. Relevant to this inquiry, the Japanese also conducted years of ‘grey zone’ subversive activities and intelligence collection operations prior to Pearl Harbor. Indeed, the narrative of ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ landed on fertile soil in the then NEI and British Malaya, leading to ‘fifth columnist’ activity that supported Japanese operational campaigning.[18]
On 20 February 1942, the Japanese landed in Timor, while a guerrilla resistance was formed and centred upon the 2nd Independent Company (later the 2/2nd Independent Company (2/2 Ind. Coy)). Over a period of just under a year, and at the cost of some 50 members of the company, 1,500 casualties were imposed on the occupier.[19] These actions tied up nearly a division of Japanese troops in occupation duties and clearance operations against the 250-odd men of the 2nd Independent Company.[20] While 2/2 Ind. Coy was ultimately forced to withdraw to Australia, its well-trained, disciplined and comparatively independent resistance to the Japanese bought time and denied the Japanese the use of troops elsewhere—an important consideration as the battles of Guadalcanal and the Kokoda Track were being waged.
Despite this gallant achievement, the vignette of the 2/2 Ind. Coy in Timor is not the ideal to which Australia should aspire. It was certainly heroic, but prudent strategy should steer clear of ad hoc situations which might otherwise have been avoided, or which might have been substantially enhanced. The British Special Operations Executive understood this lesson from the experience of the German invasions of Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in 1939–40. Consequently, strategic decisions to prepare stay-behind networks were made to avoid these ad hoc situations. The logic was that the coordination of a local resistance force is far more difficult to achieve once a nation has been overrun. There was also hoped that such efforts might be apparent and could deter further Japanese expansion.[21] This history of British policy illuminates the failure to communicate resistance preparations and thus to contribute to the deterrence of the Japanese. This point matters; many European nations (notably, half of the 32 NATO member states) are currently employing resistance forces as a component of total defence, and these forces might frustrate an aggressor’s efforts to achieve a fait accompli or a rapid decision—a deterrence by denial dynamic.[22]
Despite the failure of the communicative aspect of deterrence, British strategists learned the need to prepare stay-behind networks ahead of aggression. The British attempted to effect such efforts by working through the Commonwealth to create coordinated responses worldwide.[23] In South-East Asia, this effort was termed the Oriental Mission, which aimed to develop ‘stay-behind’ resistance forces in South Thailand; for equipping a strong stay-behind party in the New Territories, Hong Kong; and for fostering sabotage in Indo-China, Hainan, and the Treaty Ports.[24] Oriental also included the raising of Mission 204 in February 1941 to support the raising of 10 Nationalist Chinese guerrilla battalions that would force the Japanese Kwantung Army ‘to lock up the maximum forces’.[25]
The Oriental Mission was supported by the establishment of No. 101 Special Training School (Scapula), raised in Malaya in July 1941, which trained ‘stay-behind’ operatives.[26] Scapula was inhibited in its preparations for resistance due to fears that it might trigger a loss of confidence in British military preparations. Scapula thus experienced a dilemma of preparedness versus discretion, similar to that of Mission 204.[27] As war with Japan grew increasingly likely, Scapula famously engaged the Malayan Communist Party, establishing stay-behind teams totalling approximately 25 British and 150 Chinese soldiers across Malaya. There was simply not enough time for alternative or further preparations.[28]
The Oriental Mission was too little, too late—it had less than six months of preparations before war arrived. Its efforts did not include preparations in Portuguese Timor, nor in the NEI. The modest efforts that were undertaken were hindered by British officers who viewed such preparations as ‘defeatism’.
Interestingly, the intent of the mission to organise pre-prepared resistance was aided in execution by the phenomenon of emergent resistance networks following the Japanese invasion of certain countries. For example, in the Philippines, harsh Japanese occupation policies had led to a self-mobilising national network of Filipino guerrillas who fought local battles against the occupier. Over time, and working with isolated US Army officers, the Filipino resistance managed to tie down a staggering 150,000 Japanese troops in occupation duties in 1944.[29]
A third phenomenon emerged in South-East Asia during World War II which might best be termed ‘nationalist resistance’ and was best exemplified by events in Thailand. In 1941, Bangkok prudently cooperated with the Japanese to avoid confrontation. A rapid surrender to invading Japanese forces in December 1941 was an element of this non-confrontational posture. This allowed the Thais to maintain national sovereignty and to keep military and policing forces relatively intact. This policy position also included the development of clandestine networks that did not engage the Japanese in open hostilities. The network served to exfiltrate downed Allied airmen and prisoners of war, ultimately saving some 400 men.[30] The network additionally secretly trained Thai police and military personnel for paramilitary operations, ultimately creating a clandestine army 50,000–90,000 strong.[31] The secret force was therefore armed, distributed and disciplined, and upon the Japanese surrender it rapidly reasserted Thai government control.
One implication of this history is that countries, ethnicities and even local villages will respond to the rapidly changing situation that conflict precipitates. Occupied territories will incur a need for the occupier to rapidly assert dominance and control the conquered territories and populations, which might absorb significant combat power. Occupation, historically speaking, is highly likely to elicit a form of armed response by elements of the local population, who are very likely to be killed absent some form of training or preparation. The maturity within total defence strategies is to deliver relevant and tailored training to prevent emotive and ineffectual resorts to violence, and to instead tailor civil efforts towards subtle support to the joint force, such as intelligence, logistics support, flank security, and disruption in depth. Second, the Thai case demonstrates a nuance within internationalised conflict where a ‘with us or against us’ mentality is unhelpful and, indeed, may prove counterproductive. Finally, pre-prepared resistance efforts require time to build—waiting for conflict will only guarantee that any efforts will fail to deliver any value towards a coordinated defence. Furthermore, if no preparations for resistance are undertaken pre-conflict, they cannot contribute to an integrated deterrence message that might well cause an aggressor to avoid escalation in the first place.
The asymmetry demonstrated by the 2/2nd Ind. Coy against a much larger force is highly instructive. Resistance to the Japanese occupiers was primarily waged via ambush and with sharpshooters using hit-and-run engagements at long range, leveraging the hunting skills developed by many of the men in the company from living on the land in Western Australia. In other words, the skills that the men of 2/2 Ind. Coy brought with them from civilian employment were applied to military campaigning.
The lesson from such history becomes apparent if we work backward from the worst-case Australian context of escalation into conflict, involving an aggressor seizing territories from which coercive effects can be brought to bear against Australia’s sea lines of communication (SLOCs) and potentially against the Australian continent. Today’s modern version of guerrilla warfare against an occupier would tap into extant civilian skills in robotics and other STEM-related fields. The development of uncrewed systems extends the tactical range of the find, fix and finish targeting cycle of high-value targets out to hundreds of nautical miles, as has been well demonstrated by the Ukrainians against the Russian Black Sea Fleet.[32] What 2/2 Ind. Coy was doing with ambushes at 400–500 metres away may well be occurring at 400–500 kilometres today. Certain uncrewed systems will require civilian skills in robotics, engineering, fabrication, programming, use of civilian communications bearers, and open-source intelligence analysis. Conceptually, the idea that guerrilla warfare draws upon civilian skill sets and integration with a local population remains the same, even though the means of exercising violence is changing.
Furthermore, the analogy of 2/2 Ind. Coy might mislead given that it was an ad hoc response. Ideally the future guerrilla will not be Australian, the effector might not be West-manufactured, and the target acquisition and tracking method might leverage regional civilian systems. The analogy is also no longer land-centric; it may very well be persistent and multidomain by design that could threaten SLOCs in isolation and prove highly disruptive when layered with broader ADF joint capabilities. Indeed, the respective geographies of Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia yield tremendous latent power to influence the global economy utilising such concepts.
Unconventional Methods of Deterrence by Denial
A 2015 article discussed the challenges of neutralising an access-denial/area-defence (A2/AD) system—terminology that was ironically born from Iran’s recognised capability to deter the United States by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz—and included scenarios that might be emulated in our region.[33] The enduring nature of the South China Sea’s archipelagic geography is, as Robert Kaplan describes it, ‘Asia’s Cauldron’.[34] The logic of exploiting this geography to contain remains today. By working with partners for basing arrangements and acquiring long-range anti-ship missile capabilities, the PLA Navy might face a similar dilemma to that which the United States presently faces in the Strait of Hormuz and at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The Chinese military is adapting to this reality, adapting its historical Maoist concepts to the contemporary context. Summarising the lessons born from a survey of the military history of China, Professor Harold Tanner argues that:
China will still use ‘people’s war’—mobilisation of civilians and civilian infrastructure in support of the military. However, this mobilisation will no longer be a matter of organising logistical support for a guerrilla or infantry force. In its twenty-first-century iteration, the people’s war has become the mobilisation of ‘civilian scientific and technological capabilities … and resources … to support military operations’. The principle of ‘active defence’ has been refined from a homeland defense to a forward defense.[35]
In other words, Chinese military doctrine has legacy total defence concepts that have stood the test of time. Indeed, the campaign to seize the Paracel Islands in 1974 demonstrates the subversive use of Chinese trawlers—perhaps better termed ‘little blue men’—to provoke the Vietnamese and thus justify a PLA Navy response.[36] Evident continuity in Maoist ‘people’s war’ at sea and in cyberspace is evident today.
Conflict in the Indo-Pacific region would thus prove to be extremely complex and difficult to fight. The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) challenge of finding highly potent A2/AD systems in the cluttered urbanised littoral, not to mention then effecting a timely neutralisation strike, favours the defender. This logic has only gained greater resonance and validity over time, particularly once the Australian Army’s littoral transport capability (complementing existing Air Force tactical airlift and Navy amphibious force projection capabilities) is fielded. Indeed, as Elbridge Colby had highlighted, the argument of similarly employing A2/AD capabilities to contain Western competitors has a certain enduring appeal:
Just as Beijing has sought the ability to deny US forces’ ability to operate inside the first island chain, so the United States, Taiwan, and other allies should seek to be able to deny Chinese forces’ ability to operate in the Taiwan Strait.[37]
The United States has begun to adapt to the argument Colby presented. The United States Marine Corps (USMC) has demonstrated the greatest adaptation in conceptual and command asymmetry across the US military by adopting the idea of stand-in forces (SIF). The USMC defines SIF in an aspirational manner 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.[38]
The theory argues that SIF might help to deter conflict due to the threatened ability to impose significant costs through multi-domain strike, creating such asymmetry due to the ISR challenge favouring the defender.
In an Australian context, some adoption of the SIF concept may soon be possible.[39] The dilemma, however, becomes apparent when Australia’s limited Army asset is considered: establishing company-sized SIF astride key terrain in the archipelago would quickly culminate the 1st Division. Importantly, however, regional nations also have a say. A unilateral application of the SIF concept simply doesn’t work if the permissions and authorities to first deploy to and then engage from these third-party regional locations are not forthcoming. Large footprint and overt presence can present political challenges for such regional partners, which challenges a wide-ranging application of this concept.
The conception of leveraging Asia’s geography for presenting an A2/AD challenge that is instead founded upon the capabilities of partners—as opposed to unilateral operations—represents a robust ADF ‘Plan B’ for the conduct of joint warfighting. The necessary conceptual adaptation, then, is the logic of developing the ability of regional partners to resist armed coercion or occupation, based in part on the efficacy of such concepts as demonstrated by Ukraine. Australia might have sufficient time for one or more SIF detachments to reinforce a point of contention, but reliance upon sufficient warning time to secure necessary approvals, deploy, and then manoeuvre is an assumption that might well prove bold in the face of significant coercive pressure. Indeed, such was the case for Portuguese Timor in 1941.
If we reframe the challenge, however, we realise that for these regional partners, their forces are inherently ‘SIF’, as their homes, shopping malls and workplaces are within weapon engagement zones, their families will face the stress of becoming collateral damage, and their options for trading time for space are limited. When this challenge is understood, the provision of light-footprint training teams to enhance regional capabilities towards the SIF ideal—as the USMC defines it—might very well be possible. Often, such training will be focused upon non-violent functions: the safe communication of intelligence, information warfare / propaganda functions, avoidance of the occupying military forces in sweeps and checkpoints, provision of clandestine logistics networks etc. These defensive skills, developed with the host nation government, enable the imposition of costs against the occupier—not all of which are delivered by the resistance movement itself. Indeed, a resistance will have greater endurance and effectiveness when external military forces are those visiting violence upon the occupier. The lethality of such defensive concepts might also aid in deterrent messaging if it is communicated —addressing the failure of the British Oriental Mission.
Somewhat importantly, such SIF capabilities need not be real to contribute to deterrence—they only need to be perceived to be real. The Sacred Sword of the Patriot’s League, the fake resistance network created by US Special Forces during the Vietnam War, tied down three divisions of North Vietnamese Army troops in rear-area security operations throughout the period 1965–1968.[40] This vignette illuminates that an asymmetric ‘shell game’ can further deplete the availability of valuable ISR assets by a relatively small psychological operations staff.
The geography of the region to Australia’s north highlights that the inability of an adversary to project force from one of our regional neighbours (due to the determination of that nation to maintain its sovereignty) serves to protect Australia from most military threats. If Indonesia enforces the sovereignty of its airspace, it is difficult for an adversary to launch air strikes. If Papua New Guinea can effect sea denial, Australian waters in the immediate north are protected. These statements are important, as the implication is that Australia’s defence benefits from any resistance by regional neighbours to an adversary from further afield. Akin to the Thailand example in World War II, neutrality or enforced sovereignty in particular locations can be of benefit to Australian defence interests.
The region’s geography must also be viewed in the context of the SLOCs through which most global trade flows. A former CEO of Stratfor, George Friedman, applied this economic reality to the Australian context, articulating that Australia was a nation whose arteries ran external to its body.[41] The same metaphor could be applied to any industrialised economy in Asia. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), for example, recognises this through its own articulation of its ‘Malacca Dilemma’.[42] This recognition suggests the potential for further asymmetry: even a threatened effect against SLOCs would be likely to elicit a disproportionate response in Beijing for the damage it would inflict on China’s economy. This realisation also posits the question of how our ‘arteries’ are to be hardened against interdiction; regional countries are critical in this regard.
A Plan B of enhancing regional resistance capabilities thus forms a metaphorical ‘shield’ which might be coupled with the ‘spear’ of long-range strike from platforms hidden within the cluttered archipelago.[43] This logic has an enduring nature based upon the geography of the region, but it is influenced by the transition from the colonial context of World War II conflict in South-East Asia to today’s context of sovereign nations scattered across this vast region.
The logic of enhancing partner capacity through asymmetric concepts and capabilities is not for the purpose of reinforcing the remnants of a global rules-based order, although such objectives might be supported via this means. Enhancing partner capacity enhances Australia’s security. The cognitive shift that would build upon Australia’s NDS is:
the need to develop security with Asia, as opposed to security against Asia (as in the Defence of Australia strategy of the 1990s) or security in Asia (the Forward Defence strategy of the 1950s–1970s).[44]
Adopting Asymmetric and Unconventional Means
The disparity in power that Australia faces vis-à-vis the PLA requires the use of asymmetric methods, which prompts a need to review the scholarship that might guide the employment of asymmetry. Andrew Mack, in the context of the US and allies’ exit from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1975, wrote compellingly about how a big nation could lose a small war.[45] He tellingly recognised both that it was important for the lesser power to impose a steady accumulation of costs on their opponent and that it was not enough for the lesser power to be undefeated; they had to be seen to be undefeated.[46]
Such comments seem prescient in the context of Western defeat in Afghanistan and point towards the importance of the informational or cognitive domain. In this context, the next NDS should not only address the need for asymmetric methods but also recognise the importance of information operations capabilities that might deliver deterrence messaging in unambiguous terms. Further investment in what are now termed ‘information advantage’ capabilities is thus essential to realising potential asymmetry.[47]
But a narrative of success is more effective when a military force is indeed being successful. In this regard, unorthodox defence concepts have been on full display in recent years, merging innovative concepts, command structures and contemporary technologies. Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces (TDF) aided in denying Russia a fait accompli in the opening days of the full-scale invasion and have since maintained a low-level insurgency in occupied territories and in the Black Sea.
These unconventional methods can be aggregated into a simple idea that I term ‘unconventional deterrence’. What makes these methods unconventional is deliberate engagement with the ‘human terrain’—civilian services relevant to enabling military effects.[48] This is different from and augments the military-to-military capacity building the ADF undertakes daily. What is meant here is engaging with partner civilians, policing forces, intelligence forces, businesses, levels of government and the military.
Australia has little choice but to adapt strongly if it is to generate asymmetric concepts that might deter escalation into conflict, assimilating ideas advanced by the terminology of unconventional deterrence. Furthermore, the ADF needs to do so quickly; emulating concepts that others have taken the time to refine, test and implement may well prove the fastest pathway. The driver for such change is simple: as a so-called middle power, Australia’s capabilities are diminutive in comparison to those of the PRC across all prominent metrics of conventional military power—firepower, mass, technology, industrial base, and perhaps even its ability to generate tempo. These facts also have implications regarding how asymmetry should be adopted. After all, asymmetry is an inherently relative and hence competitive dynamic—the competitor must also be considered.[49]
Reliance upon technological asymmetric means appears to be a losing bet. The PRC has enormous scientific and industrial efforts directed towards developing military capabilities against which Australia is either unlikely to be able to compete, or able to compete only fleetingly before the advantage is lost through a PRC-developed countermeasure. A view that uncrewed systems will deliver the ADF from its present mass inferiority vis-à-vis the PLA is negated by the PRC’s already enormous market share in first-person view (FPV) drone manufacture (estimated as 90 per cent of the global consumer market in 2024).[50]
We cannot ship-build our way out of our present dilemma; and we cannot treat uncrewed systems as a form of deliverance.
Conceptual and command adaptations, however, offer a certain jujitsu dynamic given the rigidities of the Chinese Communist system of governance. Empowerment of lower echelons is anathema to this system. Innovation and experimentation by lower echelons can carry certain political risks when these new actions veer from or challenge dictated policies. Furthermore, the sheer mass of the PLA demands a certain doctrinaire approach to warfighting, particularly given the limited combat experience across the force. One must, however, be careful with over-emphasising such statements, as Maoist ‘people’s war’ doctrine blends military with civilian functions and the use of broader forms of contestation, such as subversion.[51] While the PRC’s leadership demonstrates some continuities with its Maoist doctrinal legacy, it may well be aware of the limitations the PLA may well face in combat—hence the present focus upon ‘grey zone’ or subversive methods that might ‘win without fighting’.
As Ukraine has well demonstrated, unorthodox employment concepts vis-à-vis autocratic regimes might buy time, impose costs and erode the will of the aggressor. Better yet, demonstration of asymmetry through unorthodox concepts and command structures might serve to deter, even if only for a while. Deterrence might not even be direct; the Houthi ability to engage just 1 per cent of maritime vessels transiting the Bab el-Mandeb in 2024–25 had second- and third-order effects upon approximately 50 per cent of global maritime traffic. These effects, which included increased maritime insurance and longer transit times, added costs to supply chains that permeate through national economies.
Recognition that such asymmetry has been on display for the past 20 years, in varying forms of lethality and reach, is a critical cognitive reframing that opens new apertures to how the ADF adapts. While the NDS did recognise the need to learn from recent conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, what is inferred is adopting uncrewed systems at scale for use in conventional warfighting. It is unconsciously implied that Australia’s own lessons from engaging in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan seemingly offer little to learn from or to guide our present challenges. This implied message reflects a narrative that has crept into Australia’s national security discourse in which such commitments were a ‘distraction’. This heuristic is a mistake.
The ADF gained some 20 years of conceptual knowledge regarding the prosecution of fleeting and hard-to-discover targets. In Operation Okra, the commitment to defeat Islamic State, targeting included the processes of drawing information from our Iraqi partners within highly urbanised environments. The necessary command adaptation was the establishment of a strike cell—a team which could remotely coordinate fires in support of Iraqi partners, based primarily on open-source information.[52] US and UK militaries likewise gained experience with this adaptation. The strike cell function also enabled delegated command responsibilities of target engagement authority, gathering evidence that unsurprisingly demonstrated that centralised fires coordination was less effective and less responsive, particularly in the cluttered environment of the largest urban combat that had then been witnessed since World War II— the Battle of Mosul.[53]
Innovation under fire was aptly demonstrated through what the reporter Ben McKelvey described as an air strike near al-Asad air base in Western Iraq that was coordinated through a ‘pipeline of an Australian mobile phone, an Iraqi wi-fi hotspot and Viber’.[54] The unorthodox pathway ADF personnel employed is only one facet of this vignette; far more important is the scalability of ISR collection, aggregation and analysis that might be achieved through partners utilising today’s communications technologies. This type of ‘crowdsourced’ ISR is a highly asymmetric vector given the ‘cluttered’ nature of South-East Asia and its waterways.
Our US and UK colleagues expanded upon their experience from Iraq and Syria to Ukraine in what was a highly asymmetric option, reportedly involving only some 50 UK Special Forces personnel during the period 2022–23.[55] Remote advise and assist functions that had been learned in the Middle East were an appropriate solution for overcoming ‘boots on the ground’ limitations prior to the Russian escalation and as full-scale hostilities commenced.[56] Procedural controls for classified information that could support combined targeting efforts had already been developed and thus were quickly repurposed to the Ukraine context. Derivation and verification of open-source information from partners was already a well-practised routine using applications like ATAK (Android Team Awareness Kit).
Such conceptual and command adaptations were continued by our US and UK colleagues beyond the Iraq–Syria theatre. The 10th Special Forces Group began to assist Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (UKRSOF) from as early as 2015 through the mechanism of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force 10 (CJSOTF-10) and its Task Group—Ukraine (TG-U).[57] TG-U fielded a remote advise and assist cell to ‘coordinate live streaming battlefield awareness for UKRSOF and their supported conventional units’.[58] Through TG-U and UKRSOF, training and preparing the TDF followed Ukraine’s 2021 establishment of resistance within its national defence strategy.[59] Similar support missions are being undertaken by CJSOTF-10 pre-emptively with Baltic and other European nations, seeking to disseminate the lessons derived from Ukraine’s resistance to Russian incursions.[60]
These virtual networks enable what is meant by the terminology of ‘support to resistance’ that is used by US and UK special operations capabilities. While Ukraine’s employment of drones has drawn significant attention, it is this conceptual approach and unorthodox command network that is critical to the intelligence requirements of deep or operational and strategic strike using these uncrewed systems against air, land and naval targets. This narrative is important given the absence of recognising these conceptual and command adaptations that our US and UK colleagues have been assimilating.
Therefore, Iraq and Afghanistan were not distractions; in some ways they were training grounds for today’s asymmetric ability to frustrate the Russian military. Furthermore, it is these networked functions that enable asymmetry in the form of limited personnel in harm’s way. This narrative is also important because an entire generation of Australian Special Operations Command (SOCOMD) personnel gained very similar experience and procedural understanding, albeit of procedures that have since evolved further in Ukraine.
In other words, along with our ‘five-eyes’ partners, a very small footprint of personnel deployed forward into the region have the knowledge and experience to rapidly leverage ‘crowdsourced’ ISR networks to impose cross-domain costs at scale, and to do so in support of aiding the territorial sovereignty of their hosts. Communicating this message unambiguously can enhance Australia’s deterrence messaging and support the objectives of the NDS.
In the NDS, barely a dozen words articulate what is needed from SOCOMD to contribute to Australia’s ability to deter. Such limited guidance, in the context of the adaptive processes our US and UK colleagues are continuing to undertake, suggests a limited recognition of the potential for Australian SOCOMD (and other ADF elements) to rapidly field partnered intelligence networks and multidomain strike capabilities, and to support the ability of regional partners to resist invasion and occupation. It is this indirect approach, as Liddell Hart might describe it, of operating through local populations that makes this policy option unconventional, and thus differentiates it from the present adaptation Army, Navy and Air Force are undertaking with the Ghost suite of systems and FPV drones.
The 2026 NDS can be enhanced by assigning this ‘support to resistance’ mission to SOCOMD in the context of drawing and applying the lessons derived from our own conflict experience in the Middle East. This mission codifies our historical lessons derived from Sparrow Force in World War II and leverages the geographic realities of Australia’s northern approaches. This mission will require cyber and information advantage capabilities if the concept is to be fully realised and thus contribute to deterrence.
Improving the resilience—and, in some cases, resistance—capabilities of our neighbours thus might constitute a core but understated element that is needed to realise Australia’s 2026 NDS.
Conclusions: What Next?
We are presently experiencing the highest level of armed conflict globally since World War II, with some 65 active conflicts—the majority of which are intrastate (irregular or civil wars) and internationalised intrastate (or proxy irregular wars).[61] The global trend, unequivocally over the past 80 years, is towards an increasing democratisation of violence where non-state actors play a major role in conflict. The lesson that should be drawn from Ukraine’s experience is the manifestation of this phenomenon within a conventional war. This experience, exacerbated by Russia’s efforts to coerce, intimidate and divide NATO, illuminates why several European nations have adopted total defence strategies, some of which include pre-prepared resistance networks.
The character of war is changing, demonstrating an ‘emptying’ of the battlespace through uncrewed systems and their increasing range capabilities. What is needed is a conceptual approach that is cognisant of these trends. Whether a revolution in military affairs has occurred with such trends is yet to be fully understood, but vignettes such as operations Spider’s Web, Grim Beeper and Rising Lion—examples David Kilcullen has termed ‘asymmetric strategic strike’ —suggest a revolutionary effect. When special operations and intelligence organisations pair uncrewed systems with irregular networks, directed towards otherwise inaccessible strategic targets, highly asymmetric outcomes have been demonstrated as feasible.[62]
As Australia adapts to the proliferation of uncrewed systems, there is a risk that planners will perceive such technologies as just a better type of artillery—an evolutionary approach. This would be a mistake on two levels. First, systems like FPV drones are not a panacea; ‘old-school’ artillery still has a place for all-weather, contested electronic environments, and mass strikes. Second, a ‘better form of artillery’ is but one level of adaptation that makes attrition more effective; it doesn’t change the combined arms system. Thus, if we are not careful, our biases may well constrain us to evolutionary thinking and miss potentially revolutionary concepts.
A range of authors over recent years have already alluded to the shifting character of warfare, using terminology such as remote warfare, vicarious warfare or surrogate warfare. Indeed, we have already seen an evolution of such technologies in counterterrorism strategy under the term ‘over-the-horizon targeting’. The language Admiral Paparo has used of a ‘hellscape’ of layered uncrewed systems is revolutionary on several fronts: it switches from favouring the offensive to the defensive, it is at a scale disproportionate to the personnel involved, it is vicarious (in terms of preserving manpower) and, communicated as such, it seeks to deter.[63]
Applying the efficacy of uncrewed systems in new systemic ways is perhaps best described as multidomain guerrilla warfare—a revolutionary paradigm. The systemic approach undertaken by the Houthis and Ukrainian special forces in generating littoral strike capabilities against SLOCs is fundamentally different from just a technological adaptation. Recent Israeli innovations similarly represent bold and novel capability. Conducting strike functions deep into an adversary’s rear echelons has been a role central to special operations, and the evolving technologies of uncrewed systems are now allowing such raids to occur with an exponential increase in range and target effect. But the systemic approach reveals that ISR functions are needed over comparably larger areas if increases in range are to be realised. Support functions, inclusive of communications relays, are also needed. These effects will need to be drawn from local populations to realise the full potential of the evolving technologies. The assistance of local populations to contribute to conflict is termed ‘resistance’, and it is the idea of cultivating support to such resistance efforts that offers a step-change in ADF asymmetric capabilities.
The ADF, particularly its Special Operations component, has significant experience in the conduct of unconventional strike due to experimentation and adaptation conducted within Operation Okra. There is a solid base from which to further adapt, commensurate with the demonstrated exemplar missions UKRSOF has undertaken. By communicating that these lessons have been shared among allies—and that such allies stand willing to support regional partners with this developed capability—the desire of the NDS 2026 for means of asymmetric deterrence through partnered resistance concepts may well be achieved.
Wide-ranging systems or networks of ISR, support and strike functions across our region require a range of sovereign partners to realise. The greater the foundation of societal resilience such partners can develop, the greater the potential of such networks to aid unconventional strike effects. Working with partners in this regard may serve not only to deter would-be aggressors (deterrence by denial) but also to reassure partners who might otherwise tilt towards acquiescence to coercive pressure. Pre-prepared networks that elicit confidence in an ability to resist aggression might yield political will not to buckle to coercion. Indeed, Russia’s efforts to coerce European states has proved a catalyst to the development of total defence strategies.
Enhanced resilience to external shocks, and confidence born from practised responses to shocks and buttressed by assured ADF support to resistance capabilities, might thus prove critical to containing conflict should deterrence fail. Australia has fought effectively alongside regional partners before, fighting unconventionally to impose costs and frustrate the aggressor’s plans. Contemporary conflicts are demonstrating the potential of resistance yet again, albeit now empowered with digital-age technologies and operating across joint, space and cyber domains.
Endnotes
[1] I made similar arguments in Andrew Maher, ‘A Plan B: An Australian Support to Resistance Operating Concept’, Australian Army Journal 20, no. 2 (2024); and Andrew Maher, ‘Resistance Strategy: Lessons from the Russo-Ukraine conflict for Europe, Australia and the Indo-Pacific’, Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies 5, no. 1 (2023), at: www.defence.gov.au/research-innovation/research-publications/australian-journal-defence-and-strategic-studies-vol-5-number-1.
[2] Australian Government, 2026 National Defence Strategy (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2026), p. 15, at: www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/2026-national-defence-strategy-2026-integrated-investment-program.
[3] Ibid., p. 17.
[4] For example, Gjermund Forfang Rongved (ed.), European Total Defence: Past, Present and Future (London and New York: Routledge, 2025); Tim Sweijs, Saskia van Genugten and Frans Osinga (eds), Defence Planning for Small and Middle Powers: Rethinking Force Development in an Age of Disruption (London and New York: Routledge, 2025); and Joakim Berndtsson, Irina Goldenberg and Stéfanie von Hlatky (eds), Total Defence Forces in the Twenty-First Century (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023).
[5] Stephen J Flanagan, Jan Osburg, Anika Binnendijk, Marta Kepe and Andrew Radin, Deterring Russian Aggression in the Baltic States Through Resilience and Resistance (RAND, 2019), p. 2.
[6] Kaitseliit [Estonian Defence League], at: www.kaitseliit.ee (accessed 4 June 2022).
[7] The Defence Strategy of the Czech Republic (Prague, 2012).
[8] ‘Total Defence: What’s Your Role Defending Sweden in the Event of a Military Attack?’, The Local, 4 March 2022, at: www.thelocal.se/20220303/total-defence-whats-your-role-defending-sweden-in-the-event-of-a-military-attack; ‘Objectives for Swedish Total Defence 2021–2025 Government Bill (Totalförsvaret 2021–2025), Government Offices of Sweden (website), 18 December 2020, at: https://www.government.se/government-policy/total-defence/
[9] For an example, see Finnish Defence Forces, ‘Taistelukenttä 2020 [Battlefield 2020]’ (video), YouTube, 8 June 2020, at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTmWCbcYwb8.
[10] Otto Fiala, Resistance Operating Concept (Stockholm and Tampa: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2020), at: https://theresistancehub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ROC_final_cc.pdf. An alternative but similar definition is ‘a form of contention or asymmetric conflict involving participants’ limited or collective mobilisation of subversive and/or disruptive efforts against an authority or structure’. Jonathan B Cosgrove and Erin N Hahn (eds), Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies: Conceptual Typology of Resistance (Fort Bragg: United States Army Special Operations Command, 2021), at: www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-D101-PURL-gpo107948/pdf/GOVPUB-D101-PURL-gpo107948.pdf.
[11] This is an issue addressed by Andrew Maher and Matthew LM Jones, Towards Total Defence: A Literature Review and Feasibility Assessment for Australia, Australian Army Occasional Paper No. 39 (Australian Army Research Centre, 2026); and Matthew Jones, Sam Stevenson and Andrew Maher, Towards Total Defence: Implementing National and Regional Resilience in the Australian Context (Australian Army Research Centre, forthcoming).
[12] ‘Total Defence’, MINDEF Singapore (website), last updated 27 July 2025, at: www.mindef.gov.sg/defence-matters/defence-topics/total-defence.
[13] A resistance strategy was advocated by Admiral Lee Hsi-min in particular. Lee Hsi-min and Eric Lee, ‘Taiwan’s Overall Defence Concept, Explained’, The Diplomat, 3 November 2020, at: https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/taiwans-overall-defense-concept-explained.
[14] Dio Suhenda, ‘Indonesian Military Expansion Plan Raises Fear of Overreach’, Asia News Network, 27 July 2026, at: https://asianews.network/indonesian-military-expansion-plan-raises-fear-of-overreach; and Muhammad Fauzan Maulfti, ‘Indonesia’s One Million Soldiers Questions’, War on the Rocks, 23 January 2026, at: https://warontherocks.com/indonesias-one-million-soldiers-questions.
[15] Peter Henning, Doomed Battalion: The Australian 2/40th Battalion 1940–45—Mateship and Leadership in War and Captivity (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1995).
[16] ‘Fighting in Timor, 1942’, Australian War Memorial, last updated 28 August 2020, at: www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/timor.
[17] ‘Commonwealth Government to Lord Cranborne, U.K. Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (27 March 1941)’, in WJ Hudson & HJW Stokes (eds), Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937–49: Volume IV: July 1940–June 1941 (Canberra: Australian Government, 1980), p. 516.
[18] Ten Years of Japanese Burrowing in the Netherlands East Indies: Official Report of the Netherlands East Indies Government on Japanese Subversive Activities in the Archipelago During the Last Decade (New York: Netherlands Information Bureau, 1942); Andrew Maher, ‘Special Operations Developments in the Pacific: Back to the Future?’, in Martijn Kitzen and James Kiras (eds), Into the Void: Special Operations Beyond the Global War on Terror (London: Hurst, 2024).
[19] John Hanson, The White Ghost: The Amazing Story of an Original Australian Commando (Toni McRae and Martin Morris, 2014), at: https://doublereds.org.au/files/JackHanson-TheWhiteGhost.pdf.
[20] A division usually ranges from approximately 10,000 to 12,000 troops. Hanson gives the much higher number of between 20,000 and 30,000 troops, which seems likely to be excessive but might account for locally raised Timorese fighters for the Japanese and local collaborators. Hanson, The White Ghost.
[21] Gladwyn Jebb, ‘Subversion’, TNA HS8/334 (5 October 1940); ‘Subversive Activities in Relation to Strategy’, COS (40)27(0), PRO CAB-80-56 (25 November 1940); David Stafford, ‘The Detonator Concept: British Strategy, SOE and European Resistance after the Fall of France’, Journal of Contemporary History 10, no. 2 (1975): 185–217.
[22] Kyle Atwell and Olga Chiriac, ‘Is Resistance Working in Ukraine?’, Irregular Warfare Podcast, 14 November 2025, at: www.irregularwarfare.org/is-resistance-working-in-ukraine.
[23] ‘From the War Office to CGS Canada, CGS South Africa, CGS Australia, CGS New Zealand’, 75159, TNA WO 193/606 (29 June 1940), p. 1.
[24] Major JML Gavin, ‘Report on No. 101 Special Training School, Malaya (Scapula Mission)’, December 1942, pp. 1–2.
[25] Lionel Gage Wigmore, ‘Appendix 1—Australians in Mission 204’, in Australia in the War 1939–1945, Official History, Series 1—Army, Volume IV—The Japanese Thrust (1957), p. 643, at: www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1417309; War Office to C. in C. Far East, Desp. 88880, WO106/3555A (9 Sep 1941); C. in C. Far East, 41239, WO106/3555A (5 Sep 1941); Andrew Maher, ‘When Australia Went to War in China’, Land Power Forum, 25 July 2023.
[26] Gavin, ‘Report on No. 101 Special Training School’, p. 1.
[27] F Spencer Chapman, The Jungle is Neutral (London: Chatto and Windus, 1949).
[28] Gavin, ‘Report on No. 101 Special Training School’, p. 2.
[29] RW Volckmann, We Remained: Three Years Behind Enemy Lines in the Philippines (New York: Norton & Company, 1954), p. 216; Elmer N Lear, ‘Collaboration in Leyte: The Philippines, Under Japanese Occupation’, The Far Eastern Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1952).
[30] John B Haseman, The Thai Resistance Movement During the Second World War, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, Special Report No. 17 (1978).
[31] Ibid., p. 126; E Bruce Reynolds, Thailand’s Secret War: OSS, SOE, and the Free Thai Underground During World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
[32] Thane Clare, A Navy of Necessity: Ukraine’s Unmanned Surface Vessels at War (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2025), at: https://csbaonline.org/resource/a-navy-of-necessity-ukraines-unmanned-surface-vessels-at-war.
[33] Andrew Maher, ‘Regional SOF Capacity Building: An Asymmetric Australian Maritime Strategy’, Australian Army Journal 12, no. 1 (2015).
[34] Robert D Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (New York: Random House, 2014).
[35] Harold M Tanner, War in Modern China: A Military History (London and New York: Routledge, 2026), p. 293.
[36] Ibid., p. 263.
[37] Elbridge A Colby, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2021), p. 160.
[38] David Kilcullen, ‘Stand-in Manoeuvre in a Contested Littoral Environment’, Australian Army Journal 19, no. 2 (2023): 245.
[39] Similar ideas were argued by Chris Hall, Development of an Infantry ‘Disrupt Force’ and Technological Experimentation in an Operational Unit, Australian Army Occasional Paper No. 31 (Australian Army Research Centre, 2025).
[40] Richard H Shultz Jr, The Secret War Against Hanoi: The Untold Story of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam (New York: First Perennial, 2000), p. 139.
[41] George Friedman, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (New York: Doubleday Press, 2010).
[42] Plan B: A Service-Framed Examination of Economic Warfare, Marine Corps Futures Monograph Series, Book 1 (Quantico: Marine Corps University Press, 2025), p. 26, at: www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/Books-by-topic/MCUP-Titles-A-Z/Plan-B.
[43] A similar argument could be intimated by the Minister of Defence calling for ‘impactful projection’; this argument also seems similar to that of Andrew Carr and Stephan Frühling, Forward Presence for Deterrence: Implications for the Australian Army, Australian Army Occasional Paper No. 15 (Australian Army Research Centre, 2023).
[44] Sally Burt, Ian Langford, David Kilcullen and Andrew Maher, Unconventional Deterrence in Australian Strategy (Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2025), at: www.aspi.org.au/report/unconventional-deterrence-in-australian-strategy.
[45] Andrew Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict’, World Politics 27, no. 2 (1975): 175–200.
[46] Ibid., p. 185.
[47] Jason Logue, ‘Rethinking Information Dominance and Influence Battlespace Effects’, Australian Army Journal 7, no. 3 (2010); and Jessica Craig, ‘Mind over Manoeuvre’, Australian Government: Defence, 30 October 2025, at: www.defence.gov.au/news-events/news/2025-10-30/mind-over-manoeuvre.
[48] Burt et al., Unconventional Deterrence in Australian Strategy.
[49] This argument of relativity to an adversary is central to Matthew A Tattar, Innovation and Adaptation in War (Cambridge: Belfer Center Studies in International Security, 2025).
[50] Zeyi Yang, ‘Why China’s Dominance in Commercial Drones Has Become a Global Security Matter’, MIT Technology Review, 26 June 2024, at: www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/26/1094249/china-commercial-drone-dji-security.
[51] Thomas A Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1996).
[52] Dana JH Pittard and Wes J Bryant, Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell (New York: Post Hill Press, 2019).
[53] US Army, Mosul Study Group: What the Battle for Mosul Teaches the Force (U.S. Training and Doctrine Command, 2017); Christian Brose, The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare (New York: Hachette, 2020).
[54] Ben McKelvey, Mosul: Australia’s Secret War Inside the ISIS Caliphate (Sydney: Hachette, 2020), p. 220.
[55] Harry Davies and Manisha Ganguly, ‘Up to 50 UK Special Forces Present in Ukraine This Year, US Leak Suggests’, The Guardian, 12 April 2023, at: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/11/up-to-50-uk-special-forces-present-in-ukraine-this-year-us-leak-suggests.
[56] Brian S Petit, ‘Can Ukrainian Resistance Foil a Russian Victory?’, War on the Rocks, 18 February 2022, at: https://warontherocks.com/2022/02/can-ukrainian-resistance-foil-a-russian-victory.
[57] Spencer Meredith, ‘The Key to Ukrainian Victory Is Partnering (Not Ukrainifying)’, Irregular Warfare Initiative, 6 February 2024, at: https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/the-key-to-ukrainian-victory-is-partnering-not-ukrainifying.
[58] Ibid.
[59] Viktoriya Fedorchak, The Russia–Ukraine War: Towards Resilient Fighting Power (London and New York: Routledge, 2024), p. 33.
[60] Kirsti Brooksby, ‘U.S. Special Operations Forces Bring Unique Capabilities to NATO Allies in the Baltic Sea Region’, Baltic Amber Magazine, 1 August 2023, at: https://mncne.nato.int/baltic-amber-magazine/us-special-operations-forces-bring-unique-capabilities-to-nato-allies-in-the-baltic-sea-region.
[61] Shawn Davies, Therése Pettersson and Magnus Öberg, ‘Organized Violence 1989–2025, and Violent Political Protests’, Journal of Peace Research 63, no. 4 (2026): 705–723, at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jopres/xjag046; Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala Conflict Data Program (website), at: https://ucdp.uu.se/encyclopedia.
[62] David Kilcullen, ‘Israel–Iran War Reveals Rising Age of Unconventional Conflict’, The Australian, 21 June 2025, at: www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/israeliran-war-reveals-rising-age-of-unconventional-conflict/news-story/130f765ab1a5bb9ec665283daf196da3.
[63] The ‘hellscape’ language is examined by Stacie Prettyjohn and Molly Campbell, Hellscape for Taiwan: Rethinking Asymmetric Defence (Centre for a New American Security, 2026).