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The purpose of Strategic Assessments is to highlight key trends and challenges to the Army in order to inform force design, structure and posture decisions. It considers emergent challenges faced by Australia and assesses their implications for the Army’s future concepts, force structure and narrative.

Strategic Assessments

Cover of Strategic Assessment (Quarter 1, 2023)

Strategic Assessment (Quarter 1, 2023)

20 June 2023 This Strategic Assessment provides insights into the global supply chain issues that will shape Defence’s ability to maintain adequate war stocks of strike weapons. It discusses the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Western stockpiles, the diversification of rare earth processing and the increasing pressure on Western militaries to secure their stockpiles of strike weapons. These topics have been emphasised on the basis of their significance to long-term strategic decision making, the formation of narratives, and their potential influence on capability development and the future…
Cover of AARC Strategic Assessment Q3 2021

Strategic Assessment (Quarter 3, 2021)

28 October 2021 The announcement of the Australia, United Kingdom and United States (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership in September, and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August, are the most significant strategic developments since these Strategic Assessments began. This Assessment may be paradoxically characterised as ‘Consistency and Change’. The pandemic, including its economic impacts and ongoing global issues with insurrection and terrorism reflect continuity. However, the defeat in Afghanistan and the announcement of AUKUS reflect departures from the strategic orthodoxy of recent decades. Both…
Cover for AARC Strategic Assessment for Q2

Strategic Assessment (Quarter 2, 2021)

16 August 2021 Overall, while there has been a constant stream of newsworthy events this quarter, little which is fundamental has changed.
AARC Strategic Assessment Q1 2021 Cover

Strategic Assessment (Quarter 1, 2021)

21 March 2021 A facet of the purpose of this Q1 Assessment is to provide a succinct summary of issues that may influence strategic decision-making in 2021. It updates information within the three Strategic Assessments presented in 2020, focussing upon the COVID-19 pandemic, economics, politics and the geostrategic environment.
Cover of Strategic Assessment Q4 2020

Strategic Assessment (Quarter 4, 2020)

10 December 2020 The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are seemingly stabilising, with global economies, including Australia’s, on the road to recovery. The ‘securitisation’ of diversifying and expanding threats ‘in the national interest’ might counterintuitively inhibit the development of the resilience needed from across all of Australia’s elements of national power. The Quarter 3 Strategic Assessment concludes that Army will face a planning challenge of ‘building back better’ via an expanding scope of resilience considerations and an expanding scope of partnership requirements.
Cover of Strategic Assessment Quarter 3, 2020

Strategic Assessment (Quarter 3, 2020)

29 October 2020 Executive Summary There is a widespread lack of confidence in data concerning the impact of COVID-19, warranting ‘warlike’ government intervention in the economy. Economic problems are creating conditions for nation states to act with ‘hardening’ self-interest. Australia’s forecast economic downturn has now transitioned into recession. Human security costs from the COVID-19 pandemic will influence state fragility and increasingly create the conditions for conflict in our immediate region and across the Indo-Pacific. This AARC Q3 Strategic Assessment…
Cover image for Strategic Assessment Q2 2020

Strategic Assessment (Quarter 2, 2020)

08 July 2020 The purpose of this paper is to highlight key trends and challenges to the Army in order to inform force design, structure and posture decisions. It considers emergent challenges faced by Australia and assesses their implications for the Army’s future concepts, force structure and narrative. This paper is oriented towards the impact of the summer bushfire season, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ramifications of these events within the geostrategic environment. The impact of the pandemic has yet to fully manifest, and therefore further disruption should be expected. A substantial quantity of…
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