2 October 2025
Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. To Commodore Peter Leavy, the President of the ANI, thank you for the invitation to come and speak. This is a great annual event, held in honour of a great Australian.
Rear Admiral James Goldrick was a naval officer who exemplified the profession of arms. His commitment to the service of our navy, and to the nation, is aptly characterised as second to none. He was a man of great intellect, and simply a great human being who would give his time for anyone.
He was also a thinker of genuine prescience on our collective topic today. In 2016, in his closing remarks to this seminar – which by then had already taken his name – he advised us that, in the future ‘most of our operations are going to be in the littoral’.
‘Operations in the littoral are more than amphibious’, he told us, ‘and the littoral is not about amphibious warfare alone’.
‘This is’, he reminded us, ‘fundamentally about warfighting’.
So, it is in the spirit of James’s wisdom that I make my remarks today.
Thank you also for choosing for me the topic of ‘The Littoral Pivot: the Army’s Role in the Maritime Fight’. Our Army has been considering this subject in width and depth for the last decade, and with an unrelenting focus since the publication of the Defence Strategic Review in April 2023, some 30 months ago.
My core message to you is a simple one, which I offer upfront. Littoral manoeuvre is fundamentally about the Army’s role in opening and accessing the manoeuvre space in the littorals to create positional advantage in time and space for the joint / combined force.
The Army’s role in this fight is now refreshingly clear, and easy to explain. Just over a year ago, we published a new capstone document entitled ‘The Australian Army’s Contribution to the National Defence Strategy 2024’. This is designed to explain to ourselves, and to our fellow Australians, the answers – on the Army’s transformation to optimise for littoral warfare, and on our current and future role in the maritime fight.
So, I commend the capstone to you, especially if I do an inadequate job this next twenty minutes. Available online, it is (we hope) written in plain English.
I suspect we may cover the technical details of Army’s programs in the Q&A session, so I want to instead invest these opening remarks explaining the theory behind our transformation.
Land power – which it is my accountability to generate for the Chief of Joint Operations – offers an enduring and unique value-proposition in the context of the Indo-Pacific in the 21st Century. This value-proposition results in a set of advantages for the ADF and our ally and partners, of which there are five: presence, persistence, asymmetry, versatility and value.
I’ll expand on these a little, and by doing so I will explain how the Australian Army is optimising to apply these advantages specifically in the littoral, as our contribution to the nation’s strategy of denial … a strategy that in my view rightly has a firm maritime foundation.
So, to the first advantage: presence. Armies tend to be weaved through the societies they serve, and the Australian Army is no different. Our more than 43,000 soldiers are present in 157 bases across our nation, from Tasmania to the Torres Strait, and from Derby in the north west to Holsworthy in the south east.
Our presence fundamentally underpins the security of our society: a symbol of stability during a crisis. It has ever been thus, throughout Australia’s history.
Increasingly, however, we are optimising our ability to be present – and to fight and thrive – in the littoral, which includes the land, the waters, the airspace, the electro-magnetic spectrum, and even into the space above. In every sense a multi-domain approach.
This makes sense both domestically and regionally. Littoral terrain dominates the Indo-Pacific. Hundreds of millions of people in our region live in the littoral, including 87% of Australians. The littoral is the final entry and exit point of our economic well-being, be it through maritime trade, ports and airports, or internet cables. It defines our past, present and indeed our future.
Enhancing the Army’s presence in the littoral terrain of the Indo-Pacific, as part of the ADF’s integrated force, has been a major focus this past two years. Exercises are a case in point.
Exercise Keris Woomera in 2024 was the largest and most complex littoral and amphibious exercise conducted by the ADF and the Indonesian Armed Forces (the TNI) in our shared history. Exercise Alon in the Philippines, which finished a month ago, also continued and solidified the theme.
The Army’s increasing presence, integrated with our navy and airforce teammates and alongside our ally and partners, builds on the longstanding relationships between armies… in a region of armies. Our soldiers are thriving in this challenging environment, re-discovering the DNA of their littoral and amphibious history and heritage.
The second advantage of land power is persistence. I do not need to explain to this audience the difficulties in maintaining a continuous presence of platforms in a given area of operations. Land forces, however, can offset these challenges by persisting for extended periods, in all weather and all terrain, and at a compelling cost / benefit ratio. Land forces are survivable … able to disperse, to conceal themselves in the clutter, and to establish sophisticated physical and electronic deceptions and defences. They are hard to find and identify, and even harder to dislodge.
Once in place in the littoral, land forces can help the joint force to persist … securing the ports and logistics nodes that turn exterior lines to interior lines, and that enable ships and planes to project farther and for longer … and potentially more securely.
History tells us quite how vital this can be. In March 1945 the soldiers of the US Army’s 77th Infantry Division landed on – and secured – the small cluster of islands known as Kerama Retto, just 15 miles west of Okinawa. They then secured Kerama Retto for over three months as a major provisioning, refuelling and repair hub for Operation Iceberg, the defeat of the Imperial Japanese forces on Okinawa. A truly decisive example of the advantage of persistence in the littoral.
The third advantage of land power is asymmetry. The 25th of July this year was a historic day for our Army and our ADF. At Mount Bundy Training Area a young Bombardier from our 10th Brigade executed a fire order that launched an Australian Precision Strike Missile from an Australian HIMARS missile launcher.
Four minutes and three seconds later, having travelled at three times the speed of sound, the missile accurately struck a target over 300 kilometres distant.
At that moment the Australian Army entered the missile age, for the first time in our history and well-ahead of pre-DSR milestones.
The launch of this first missile sets us on a development pathway, formally partnered with the US Army, that will soon see the Army able to accurately strike ships at sea, and to contribute to sea denial and sea control, at ranges of 1000 kilometres.
This is important for the ADF, and particularly for our Navy. Over a century ago Alfred Thayer Mahan was sharply critical of the idea of a ‘fortress fleet’: a navy that operates almost solely under the cover of shore-based fire support. Such an idea, Mahan believed, would be the antithesis of the best execution of sea power. He was correct.
But Mahan could not have foreseen the new ability of land-based maritime strike to contribute tangibly to sea control … able to help protect a fleet, and to create multiple dilemmas for an adversary. This is especially the case for manoeuvre in the tangled sea space of the archipelagos to our north. This is genuinely new for the ADF, and genuinely asymmetric … particularly when you apply the strategic geography and key choke points of our region.
While there are no silver bullets in war, land-based strike undoubtedly provides new options to help the ADF persist on the sea, below the sea, and in the air.
There is an additional asymmetric capability that is particularly relevant to our topic today … our incoming fleet of landing craft. Eighteen medium and eight heavy landing craft will be delivered in the next eight years, equipping three littoral lift battalions to be based proximate to our combat brigades.
This fleet – the largest provisioned to the Army since the Second World War – will be truly transformational, enabling us to unlock the littoral manoeuvre space of northern Australia, the Australian coastline, and into the region. It will help the ADF to achieve positional advantage against any potential adversary … controlling the straits and narrows that represent strategic terrain.
The blending of littoral manoeuvre with land-based maritime strike, along with other key capabilities, will help the ADF deny access through Australia’s northern approaches.
The fourth advantage of land power, which complements the others, is versatility. Again, I do not need to explain to this audience the ‘tyranny of distance’ that characterises our region. It is more than 8,300 kilometres from Darwin to Hawaii, a 13-day sail at economical speed. The most isolated Australian offshore territory that the ADF might need to defend, the Heard and McDonald Islands, lies 4,000 kilometres southwest of our coast.
The scale of these distances and the challenges of re-equipping, resupplying, and regenerating forces demands military versatility … and land forces are amongst the most versatile of forces available.
Pretty much any land formation can achieve pretty much any task, from humanitarian aid and disaster relief to combat operations. The dexterity of land forces to adapt across this spectrum reinforces and draws upon presence and persistence. Land forces have considerable capacity to self-sustain through local or dual-use resources. They can change the tenor of operations – and therefore the tone of a conflict – in stride and with minimal notice.
The versatility of land forces helps to degrade the ‘tyranny of distance’ that characterises our region. This makes land forces exceptionally valuable to any task force commander.
The final advantage offered by land power in the Indo-Pacific in the 21st Century is one that is particularly important today: that of value. Land forces provide a significant contribution to our nation’s maritime strategy for a comparatively modest investment. Time precludes expressing the details here, but this value is clear.
Underpinning all of this value is the Australian soldier. Our soldiers are our best force multipliers: flexible, adaptive, indefatigable and innovative. They are and have always been as worthy – if not more worthy – of our investment as any new technology or capability. Without them, there is no Army … and there is no ‘integrated force’.
Presence, persistence, asymmetry, versatility, value. Five simple advantages of land power that represent the Army’s contribution to our nation’s strategy of denial. The Army … your Army … is transforming at pace to maximise these advantages, and to maximise them specifically in the littoral.
Finally then, taking a step back from the Army, what might help achieve or accelerate this contribution? I have one thought to offer.
The DSR is correct that we must go beyond ‘balanced and joint’ to become ‘focused and integrated’ if we are to make the most of the military element of our national power. My view is that this means we must be integrated as an ADF by design: in development, in force generation, and from first principles. This is more than ‘joint’, which in my experience provides a firm base.
Littoral and amphibious operations sit as the logical litmus test for the ADF as an ‘integrated force’. Historically regarded as the most challenging of military operations, they are in every way multi-domain. They require us to blend together the littoral, the brown water, the green water and the blue water … and the airspace, the electromagnetic spectrum, and even the space above it. Focused and integrated investment across the ADF will be required to achieve this.
Littoral and amphibious operations are the ideal test of our collective progress towards integration, and are therefore worthy of our collective attention.
In conclusion, it was in 1911 that Sir Julian Corbett said the following:
‘Since men live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at war have always been decided—except in the rarest cases—either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and national life, or else by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.’
Some have argued that this is a zero-sum statement. I instead see it as sum/sum. We are designing the Army of the future to help maximise the contribution of the Royal Australian Navy to our nation’s strategy of denial. The Army will be best able to succeed in denying our approaches and defending Australia in and from the littoral if it has the support of the Navy. The RAAF’s ability to achieve air control at the right time and in the right place will be decisive for both. The Chief of Navy, the Chief of the Air Force and I are well-aligned in our opinion, conception and endeavours in realising the ‘integrated force’.
We will need to work together in space and cyber, plus fully leverage the potential benefits of autonomy, AI and quantum computing, in combination to achieve mass and precision in effect.
Ultimately we must contribute together to a maritime strategy: a strategy that is only logical for Australia as a confident and proud island nation. It is a challenging and exciting journey to be a part of.
Thank you for your time, and your attention. If you want to know more, I commend to you ‘The Australian Army Contribution to the National Defence Strategy 2024’. The logic of your littoral Army lies within. Thank you.