In the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest, the hero (played by Cary Grant) is drawn in a northwesterly direction to the movie’s climax on Mount Rushmore. The movement is inexorable and inevitable. In a pair of Strategist posts, ASPI’s John Coyne implies that there’s a degree of inevitability in the movement of the Australian Defence Force to the north (-west and -east) of the country.

This northerly movement is predicated on the assumption that ‘it’s reasonable to conclude that in a future conflict the north of Australia, and more specifically Darwin, could well become the ADF’s forward operating base or a stepping stone to another location in the Pacific or in the first or second island chain’, and that bases in northern Australia ‘provide important geostrategic advantages to an army striving to own the speed of initiative’.

Are these statements accurate, and does the northerly impetus have a momentum that it is actually inevitable? Do we need, or want, to go north?

There’s no doubt that the north of Australia provides geographic advantages for the projection of airpower. It’s closer to likely operational areas, meaning less time in transit and more time actually doing the job. Similarly, there are benefits in having army elements stationed forward for defensive purposes and, as argued by ASPI’s Peter Jennings, to demonstrate Australia’s resolve to our regional partners.

Northern Australia is important for Australia’s economic wellbeing and security, and obviously needs to be appropriately protected. Military units in the north provide a measure of deterrence that units in the south simply cannot, as demonstrated by the recent announcement to upgrade the Royal Australian Air Force base at Tindal in the Northern Territory.

For humanitarian activities and for operations short of conflict, there can also be advantages to being positioned forward. A northerly stepping-off point reduces the time to get to potential operational sites if the units being moved, and the units doing the moving, are somewhat co-located. This implies that airlift and/or sealift elements must also be located in the north in order to achieve the speed of initiative that is being proposed.

So far, so good.

However, the central thesis of Coyne’s argument focuses on conflict, and it’s there where the cracks appear.

First, forward positioning of strategic airlift and sealift capabilities exposes them to far greater risks than they would face with southerly basing. The entire ability of the ADF to respond with the movement of massed troops would rest on the ability to protect the lift capabilities in their northern bases. This implies the need to acquire a level of defensive capability that we currently don’t have.

And the risks multiply from there.

Operations to the South Pacific from Darwin require transit of the Torres Strait, a passage that imposes significant operational limitations on naval manoeuvring and screening activities. It can be easily blockaded, using either sea mines or small conventional submarines. Australia’s large naval ships, replete with army personnel and equipment, will be in constrained and constraining waters for significant amounts of time, and thereby highly exposed to air and missile attack.

Transits to the likely operating areas to the north of Australia from Darwin will mean moving though the Indonesian archipelago, an area ideally suited to the operation of small submarines. The embarked army will be under significant threat during the journey. The risks are magnified if the adversary can establish itself in Papua New Guinea or East Timor. Townsville as the departure point is also bedevilled by the need to transit the Great Barrier Reef through one of a small number of navigable passages. The seaward end of these passages provides a choke point that will require sustained anti-submarine coverage to ensure safe passage. As with any Torres Strait transit, naval units will be constrained until they are in open waters.

Somewhat counterintuitively, southern locations provide the greatest protection, and the greatest operational flexibility. The choke points are fewer, the water is deeper, and the operational limitations from the departure points are minimal.

If the army is stationed forward and the lift capabilities are in the south, then, because the lift will have to go to Darwin to collect the troops, all we’re doing is exchanging a situation with manageable risks for one in which the risks have increased significantly and operational flexibility has been eroded.

Deploying from the south undoubtedly entails increased transit time, but it also brings increased survivability. There’s little ‘speed of initiative’ when the ability to arrive safely at the point of the operation is compromised, perhaps fatally so.

Australia’s geography has largely been its friend in the past. We need to ensure that we continue to realise the benefits that this geography provides, rather than sacrifice them, and potentially lots more, in an attempt to get closer to the fight.

ASPI’s ‘The north and Australia’s security’ program has just turned one. Over the past year, more than 30 pieces have been published under the banner of the program’s ‘North of 26° south’ Strategist series. Authors from an array of disciplines have explored the role of the north in the broader security of Australia and proposed some new ways of thinking about it.

Interestingly, almost all the discussions I’ve had about this work—with politicians, policymakers, the media and other interested parties—have involved questions about whether we’ve got the right defence personnel numbers and the right capabilities in Australia’s north.

Such questions are unsurprising; the strategic importance of Australia’s north to our defence has long been recognised by governments and policymakers (see here for more detailed analysis). Indeed, as ASPI’s Peter Jennings recently pointed out, the value of Australia’s north isn’t lost on our friends or rivals either.

Despite this shared understanding, Australia’s policymakers have consistently struggled to develop a coherent long-term plan for the defence of the north and the role of the north in Australia’s defence. To be fair, though, until recently there hasn’t been any real urgency to get this thinking right.

Over the past year, I’ve spent some time discussing the Australian Defence Force’s reduction in troop numbers and capabilities in Australia’s north (see here, here and here), with a focus on the army. I’ve sought to highlight that such changes haven’t been accompanied by a clear strategic narrative, and often fly in the face of the prevailing strategic context.

There would be few in uniform who would disagree with the premise that the army’s decisions on force posture in northern Australia ought to align with broader defence policy and be guided primarily by the threat context and mission requirement. However, as successive defence white papers have illustrated, even with these well-defined parameters, reaching a consensus on the army’s northern force posture has been difficult because of the number and variety of divergent perspectives.

Strategic geography remains important, in terms of both traditional security responses and geopolitical messaging.

While it may be easier and cheaper to raise, train and sustain capabilities in Australia’s southern states, the army’s presence in the north is an important part of our strategic and defence posture. Arguably, the army should be increasing its presence in northern Australia to match America’s commitment to regional security: the presence of the US Marine Corps, and the accompanying ‘enhanced air cooperation’ initiative in Darwin.

Dots on a map marking deployments or bases can have substantial strategic importance, even if they don’t directly contribute to operational capability. The US government’s increased use of Australia’s north for individual and collective training illustrates this point particularly well.

Army chief Rick Burr’s 2018 command statement declares that the army ‘is a versatile, decisive force, offering broad utility for the nation’. His futures statement, Accelerated warfare, argues that the army must ‘own the speed of initiative to outpace, out-manoeuvre and out-think conventional and unconventional threats’.

As I’ve noted in the past, it’s reasonable to conclude that in a future conflict the north of Australia, and more specifically Darwin, could well become the ADF’s forward operating base or a stepping stone to another location in the Pacific or in the first or second island chain.

Deploying army capabilities from bases in southern Australian to northern Australia takes time. It also requires the right enabling functions to be in place—or be rapidly established—in northern Australia. Northern Australia in general, and the bases in Darwin and Tindal more specifically, will provide important geostrategic advantages to an army striving to own the speed of initiative.

Whether the army is projecting into the region in support of its partners or undertaking humanitarian and disaster relief activities, the minimum mission requirement is increasingly a battalion battlegroup. These agile and lethal battlegroups must be capable of deploying by air or sea and supporting themselves logistically for up to 14 days.

Given the strategic importance of Australia’s north, at least two, if not three, such battalion battlegroups are needed in Darwin. The army’s current force posture in Darwin falls well short of the mission requirement.

The Department of Defence is currently engaged in a ‘re-assessment of the strategic underpinnings of the 2016 Defence White Paper’. Defence Minister Linda Reynolds has indicated that the review will be finalised early this year; hopefully it will address the question of what the army’s force posture in northern Australia ought to be. Darwin needs a greater army presence, not a smaller one. But the first step in quantifying the ADF’s force posture in northern Australia ought to involve the development of a single shared policy position.

Critical minerals such as rare earths are driving faster and more powerful technologies and Australia is an ideal place to source and develop these new materials. Rare earths, including those transformed into high-performance metals, are essential to advances in computing, manufacturing, energy and transport.

Over the past decade, the main investment in the Northern Territory’s rare-earths industry has come from China. Although that tide is now ebbing, government intervention is required before investment from other international investors can be expected to flow.

China has a strong grip on the global supply of rare-earth elements, prompting fears that access to these minerals could get caught up in a trade war between the US and China. Even if the political risks to supply are overcome in the short-term, a long-term vision and a willingness to intervene in the market are required to ensure that the global availability of rare-earth elements is not beholden to a near-monopoly supplier.

That is where Australia—and the Northern Territory in particular—can play a role.

But while there are clear signals from our national and Territory leaders in support of mining and processing rare earths, the local market has been slow to take up the call.

In the Territory, we’ve found that Chinese investors have a long-term view and are prepared to take risks to secure their supply and develop technologies. It’s this approach that has contributed to China being by far the most advanced processor of rare earths, controlling 80%-plus of the international market.

US defence manufacturers are a major user of rare-earth elements, which are essential to missile and weapon guidance systems, armoured vehicles, GPS, lasers and night-vision goggles. In everyday life, they are present in rechargeable car batteries, smartphones, computers, lighting, catalytic converters, magnets, alloys, PET scanners and wind turbines.

Japan is anxious to find alternative rare-earth sources and the United Kingdom and Europe are significant users at the manufacturing stage.

Australia has a limited demand for rare earths in manufacturing. But what we do have is abundant rare-earth deposits of exceptional quality.

The federal government has gradually woken up to this fact. Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan, and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds have all expressed interest in promoting the production of rare earths and critical minerals in Australia.

They see broadening the availability of rare earths as an economic opportunity, which will also assist Australia’s allies while reducing the overwhelming reliance on a single supplier.

On this point, the US has been slow to progress rare-earth production. It has only one productive mine in California. A more prosaic explanation may be that the world has been caught napping, allowing China to dominate the market.

Early last year, President Donald Trump and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed ‘to work together on strategic minerals exploration, extraction, processing and research, and development of rare earths and high performance metals to sustain the jobs of today and develop the jobs of tomorrow’.

It has been reported that a single F-35 fighter jet (which Australia is acquiring 72 of) requires ‘417 kilograms of various REEs [rare-earth elements] to support information transfer, energy storage, computational devices and in some cases stealth coatings’.

With China so well advanced in rare-earth research and extraction, its ability to dictate prices makes some people nervous. The US will step up the pace from now on, and also wants Australia to join it in order to return some balance to the global rare-earth market. That provides the Northern Territory with an economic and strategic opportunity.

Arafura Resources’ Nolans rare-earth project in central Australia has the potential to produce rare earths needed for key military programs and is well suited to supply the global market. The project can supply the rare-earth elements neodymium and praseodymium, which are used in the manufacture of the iron boron magnets that are increasingly required for electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence applications.

The challenge for Australia is not identifying rare-earth deposits. We have a number of undeveloped resources and, according to Geoscience Australia, we rank sixth globally in rare-earth resources.

The problem lies in finding private money to back rare-earth projects and improving cost efficiencies in extracting rare earths once they’re dug from (typically) open pits. These elements don’t hang together in easily accessible clusters. Rather, they are spread throughout the beds where they lie and require complex and expensive extraction processes to render them into their pure form.

Arafura Resources has now received all environmental approvals for its Nolans mine site, but still awaits a final investment decision. Yet there remains a bottleneck.

From an investor perspective, rare earths are heavily hyped and subject to extreme stock market fluctuations. There are long lead times to actual production and genuine concerns about the high costs and environmental impacts of rare-earths mining. These are key challenges which the market alone is unlikely to resolve.

The federal government’s planned package of measures to support the critical minerals industry will advance Australia’s position. Considering tax breaks for miners, using the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to encourage start-ups, and backing research and development in the field of rare-earths extraction are all steps in the right direction.

Such research should focus on improving efficient and environmentally robust extraction methods in order to satisfy both investors and the general public that the process is safe.

The CSIRO has been investigating ways to use less heat and acid to separate rare earths from their ore. Chris Vernon, the research head of the CSIRO’s extractive metallurgy program, has urged Australia not to think of itself as simply a raw-ore exporter. Instead, he argues, we should maximise the strategic benefit by processing rare earths at home.

Most importantly, the smaller companies that are typically most interested in rare-earth extraction need sales agreements with rare-earth users. Government might even need to be willing to take a role in the aggregation of offtake agreements to give projects the demand certainty they require to attract financing.

The federal government is well placed to take positive steps towards encouraging investors to see the value of rare earths, and to make the case that rare earths are intrinsic to the development and manufacture of many climate-abating technologies.

It can also assist rare-earth producers to make the necessary connections to the giants of US defence manufacturing and their commercial suppliers, together with prospective customers in Japan and Europe. If we start seeing the first investors holding their nerve and committing to projects, the hype could become reality.

With Australia’s increasingly contested and uncertain strategic environment, defence diplomacy is more important than ever. The Australian Defence Force’s extensive and diverse training areas should play a key role in that effort.

The Australia–Singapore military training initiative and the US government’s force posture initiatives, including the Marine Rotational Force—Darwin, clearly demonstrate the value of our nation’s military training areas. However, the benefits of these agreements are by no means one way. While Singaporean and US forces come here to reap the benefits of our large training areas, Australia gains a high return on investment in terms of economic and strategic benefits and ADF interoperability.

The Singapore Armed Forces have been conducting individual and joint training in Australia since 1990, when the first Wallaby Exercise was held at Shoalwater Bay Training Area in central Queensland. These exercises have been growing in scale ever since.

In 2016, the Australian government announced that it had entered into a 25-year deal with Singapore under which the number of Singaporean troops training in Australia each year would increase to include as many as 14,000 personnel. These personnel will now stay in Australia for up to 18 weeks a year. The agreement also includes the co-development of a new training area in northern Queensland near Townsville. Singapore has pledged $2.65 billion to the project, which also includes an expansion of the Shoalwater Bay facility.

While it’s taken some time for the US Marine Corps to reach its target of training 2,500 marines in Darwin during the dry season, each of the US military services is cognisant of the benefits northern Australia’s training areas provide. The presence of the Marine Corps, and the accompanying Enhanced Air Cooperation initiative in Darwin, are important expressions of America’s strategic commitment to the security of the region.

To support the US Force Posture Initiatives, Australia and the US are investing around $2 billion in defence infrastructure and facilities at defence sites in the Northern Territory.

Even with the presence of the Marines and the SAF, we are yet to fully utilise northern Australia’s vast training areas, and their unique capabilities.

Earlier this year, our ASPI colleague Malcolm Davis highlighted the value of Delamere weapons range. But there are other training areas just waiting to be fully used. One of the most prominent and currently underutilised is the Bradshaw Field Training Area.

Bradshaw was established in 1996 on a former pastoral station near Timber Creek and the Victoria River in the northwest of the Northern Territory. Covering approximately 871,000 hectares, Bradshaw was initially acquired at a cost of $54 million to provide a training base for the 1st Brigade because the existing Mount Bundey Training Area was inadequate for manoeuvre exercises. Mount Bundey is limited in its capacity to handle some types of manoeuvre training, principally because of the impact of armoured vehicles on the environment and infrastructure.

In contrast with Mount Bundey, the Bradshaw Field Training Area is designed to support training in formation manoeuvres, field live-firing, and aerial live-firing and bombing. Its facilities include field firing areas, high explosive impact areas, manoeuvre areas, training sectors and infrastructure to support management and operational use.

Its remoteness also allows the ADF and its partners to use the full array of its electronic and cyber capabilities. It’s now part of the electronically networked North Australian Range Complex, which also includes the Delamere range and Mount Bundey.

Defence has already invested heavily in Bradshaw’s infrastructure, and it has promised more. With a road network of approximately 340 kilometres, maintenance areas, a range control facility, a 500-person campsite and support facilities, Bradshaw has become a turnkey capability that’s ready to go. Which is why it’s already regularly used by Australian, US and other forces (such as Singapore) for infantry and armoured formation manoeuvre and munitions training.

Of course, training at Bradshaw has its challenges. Northern Australia’s wet season makes year-round training, especially for land forces, particularly difficult. In addition to the practical mobility challenges of the wet, range users must be constantly mindful of their detrimental environmental impacts, which can get worse over time if they’re not careful. The Aboriginal heritage and cultural sites dotted across the training area also require careful management.

It’s clear that Bradshaw, like Delamere, is a critical defence asset. At present, however, the tempo of exercises by Australia, the US and Singapore at Bradshaw has plateaued, especially with the relocation of many of 1st Brigade’s armoured assets to Adelaide.

With the spare capacity in many of the north’s training areas, there’s plenty of opportunity to increase our defence diplomacy efforts by offering regional partners space to train.

Bradshaw, like other training areas in Australia’s north, has spare capacity that could be used by our Japanese, South Korean, Indonesian and Vietnamese defence partners.

As we continue to come to terms with our more dangerous and unpredictable strategic outlook, Australia’s defence diplomacy efforts should make use of these important assets to demonstrate our strategic commitment to cooperation in our region.

For over a century, Australian federal governments have periodically tussled with the question of what to do with, and at times how to defend, what they’ve long considered Australia’s underdeveloped and underpopulated north. The Australian government’s sporadic northern foci have over time led to the development and delivery of a long list of infrastructure investments and new policy initiatives.

Regularly, to the detriment of the Northern Territory, the benefits of those investments fail to be fully realised. The driver of this underperformance is probably the stopgap nature of Canberra’s commitments to developing the north, which favour short- to medium-term economic gains. It appears that this dynamic is once again playing out in Defence’s strategic posture in northern Australia.

In his 1986 review of defence capabilities, Paul Dibb argued that, ‘If we are to project credible military power in the most vulnerable part of the continent, we require a larger permanent presence in the north of Australia.’ Over the first decade following the release of the landmark 1987 defence white paper, and its ‘defence of Australia’ concepts, Dibb’s thinking would shape Defence’s force posture in Australia’s north. Bit by bit, the ADF moved army and air force units to the Northern Territory, eventually establishing Headquarters Northern Command as a fully functioning operational command.

On paper, the Australian government has made a strong declaratory commitment to northern Australia. The 2015 white paper on developing northern Australia included a pledge to strengthen Defence’s presence in the region.

The 2016 defence white paper stated: ‘Investment in our national defence infrastructure—including the Army, Navy and Air Force bases in northern Australia, including in Townsville and Darwin, as well as the Air Force bases Tindal, Curtin, Scherger and Learmonth—will be a focus.’

It also predicted that Defence’s presence and investment in northern Australia would gradually increase. Defence is still looking to upgrade the Bradshaw Field Training Area (Northern Territory), Robertson and Larrakeyah Barracks (Darwin) and RAAF Darwin, albeit with a much smaller budget.

In contrast with these grand statements, there’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that there’s an expanding gap between declaratory policy and actual Defence activities and presence in the north. While funding might be earmarked for facility upgrades in the Northern Territory over the next few years, there will be fewer defence personnel, exercises and units there to use them.

To start, Defence annual reports reveal that the number of personnel in the Northern Territory is already at an 11-year low (see figure below).

Defence personnel in the Northern Territory, 2007 to 2018

The large national-level tri-service exercises, such as the Kangaroo and Crocodile series, that once focused on the defence of Australia’s north have ended.

Headquarters Northern Command’s responsibilities have been downgraded, and command has become a part-time role for the commander of the Darwin-based 1st Brigade.

The unchanged environmental challenges of wet seasons have become, over recent years, a justification to move whole units and capabilities—such as the tanks of the 1st Armoured Regiment—south to Adelaide. The 7th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, along with supporting subunits from the 8th/12th Regiment, 1st Combat Engineer Regiment and 1st Combat Service Support Battalion, has moved to RAAF Base Edinburgh, just outside Adelaide.

These changes seem incongruous at a time when the US is continuing to implement its force posture initiatives in northern Australia.

Of course, a lot has changed since the 1987 white paper was drafted, and it wasn’t legally binding. However, there’s been little public discourse to suggest a reduction in the strategic importance of northern Australia.

As I noted in January, many of the factors that have shaped the assumptions of our ‘defence of Australia’ strategies have changed substantially, and in many cases even deteriorated, since 1987.

China’s projection of soft and hard power across Eurasia and its waters, at a time when the dynamics between the globe’s great powers are changing, is creating increased strategic uncertainty. The likelihood and consequences of miscalculations are rising.

Today, the security of the north is just as important to Australia’s national security as it was in the 1930s when Japan invaded Manchuria. In this environment, Defence is placing renewed emphasis on the 2016 white paper’s first strategic objective: ‘to deter, deny and defeat any attempt by a hostile country or non-state actor to attack, threaten or coerce Australia’.

Clearly, the ADF’s slow move south needs to be not just arrested but reversed. It may be easier and cheaper to raise, train and sustain capabilities in Australia’s southern states but, as stated in the 2016 white paper, the ADF’s significant presence in northern Australia is an important part of Defence’s strategic posture. The first step in achieving that outcome is for Defence to develop a single shared policy position on its presence in the north.

Arguably, security in the north isn’t just about boots on the ground and infrastructure development, but the promotion of economically and socially flourishing northern communities. The development of industry capacity in Australia’s strategically important north is critical for defence and national security. Policy success is predicated on the Australian government making a long-term strategic commitment to northern Australia and its economy.

In bridging the gap between policy and action, the government would do well to pay heed to three lessons from its historical northern experiences:

• To be successful in the north, you must be there for the long haul.
• Building a resilient and secure north depends on creating social and economic prosperity.
• Defence’s social licence to operate in the north can’t be taken for granted.