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Opinion: The rapidly deteriorating geopolitical and strategic environment has been used to legitimise the dramatic shift in Australia’s defence policy and posture outlined in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review. For Air Marshal (Ret’d) John Harvey AM, responding requires balance and focus.
Australia’s recent strategic documents – the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and the 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) – propose a decisive shift from a traditional “balanced force” to an “integrated, focused force.”
This transition is framed as necessary to confront rapidly evolving regional threats and support a strategy of deterrence by denial. However, this framing risks presenting a false binary choice.
Australia does not need to choose either a balanced force or a focused force. Instead, it needs both – applied in distinct, complementary ways to match the scale and nature of the challenges it faces.
Historically, a “balanced force” has referred to a general-purpose military, with capabilities distributed across the land, sea and air domains to provide flexibility in responding to a wide range of contingencies.
This approach, central to Australian defence thinking from the 1970s through to the early 2000s, was designed to enable independent operations in defence of Australian territory and near approaches. Importantly, it also reflected a policy of self-reliance: Australia should be able to defend itself, without depending on the combat forces of allies for core tasks.
By contrast, the “focused force” articulated in recent strategy is designed to address specific high-end threats – particularly the prospect of conflict in the Indo-Pacific involving major powers.
This force is prioritised, integrated and joint, with an emphasis on long-range strike, survivability and interoperability with key allies, especially the United States. It is not a force structured for every scenario, but one optimised to deter or respond to the most significant strategic risks.
Yet these two models – balanced and focused – are not inherently incompatible. In fact, Australia’s strategic circumstances demand both.
A balanced force remains essential for the tasks that Australia must be prepared to perform independently. These include border protection, maritime surveillance, humanitarian and disaster relief, counter-terrorism and defence of the continent’s vast northern approaches. These missions do not typically require the presence or support of allied combat forces.
They are the enduring, day-to-day responsibilities of a sovereign nation with a continent to secure and a wide-ranging set of domestic and regional obligations.
At the same time, a focused force is vital for higher-end threats that could exceed national capacity. Responding to major-power coercion or conflict in the region will require not only greater lethality and reach but also deep integration with trusted allies.
This is where the focused force concept is necessary: it prioritises the capabilities most relevant to these threats, while ensuring interoperability with partners through initiatives like AUKUS and enhanced alliance posture arrangements.
Ultimately, the choice between a balanced and focused force is a false dichotomy. Australia’s defence policy should recognise that both are needed – each tailored to a different level of threat and type of responsibility.
While the overall structure of the future ADF may rightly be described as a focused force, it must be built upon a foundation that is balanced – capable of independently undertaking the range of missions expected of a sovereign state.
A well-balanced force allows Australia to act independently where it must. A well-focused force enables Australia to contribute meaningfully and credibly where it cannot act alone. Recognition of the two elements of capability allow Australia to focus its efforts on developing sovereign capability on the “balanced” component of the force and focusing on alliance capability for the “focused” component.
The real task for Defence, then, is not to choose one over the other, but to integrate them coherently within a broader framework of sovereign capability and allied partnership.
John Harvey is a retired Air Marshal in the Royal Australian Air Force. His ADF career spanned more than 30 years, with early emphasis on employment as a navigator and weapons officer in Canberra and on F-111 aircraft and later in more diverse roles such as technical intelligence, military strategy, visiting fellow Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, program manager for the Joint Strike Fighter Project for Australia and Chief of Capability Development Group.
He also served as NSW defence advocate from June 2016 to September 2021.
