American access to Australian bases is only as valuable as Australia’s ability to keep them operating under attack. For Washington, expanding military cooperation raises an operational question: can Australia sustain an American campaign while defending its own territory, infrastructure and population?
For Canberra, the corresponding question is whether investment in national resilience is keeping pace with Australia’s growing usefulness to American operations. Both governments need convincing answers before a regional crisis turns access arrangements into wartime demands.
The benefits are considerable. Australian facilities offer strategic depth, logistical support and opportunities to disperse forces. Australia gains access to American capabilities, intelligence and interoperability. Their wartime value, however, depends on protection, sustainment and the host country’s continued ability to function.
The 2026 Iran war offers a warning. Despite America’s regional military presence, Gulf partners suffered casualties, damage and disruption from Iranian attacks. The lesson is not that every incoming weapon must be intercepted. It is that defending individual facilities and sustaining the country around them are different tasks.
Australia differs substantially from the Gulf states. Nevertheless, an adversary could seek to weaken an American campaign by imposing costs on its Australian support network. A base might remain operational while disruption to surrounding energy, transport and civilian services progressively reduces its usefulness.
Australia could face three simultaneous responsibilities: supporting American operations, contributing combat forces and defending its homeland. Aircraft assigned to coalition missions might also be needed to protect Australian approaches. Maritime forces could face competing demands to support forward operations and secure essential supply routes. Fuel, munitions and maintenance capacity would serve all three responsibilities.
These tensions matter directly to Washington. Disruption could reduce sortie generation, delay replenishment and constrain repairs. Requests for additional protection could divert American forces from other missions. Civilian hardship could generate political pressure over the scale or conditions of continued Australian support.
This is a planning problem, not a prediction that Australia would abandon its ally. Alliance planning should make such pressure difficult to exploit.
The ANZUS Treaty provides a commitment to meet common danger through each country’s constitutional processes. It does not allocate the forces, stockpiles or repair capacity needed to sustain Australia under attack. Those arrangements require practical agreement.
Canberra carries substantial responsibility. It cannot expand its supporting role while assuming Washington will supply whatever protection becomes necessary. Australia’s 2026 National Defence Strategy emphasizes greater self-reliance, industrial resilience and civil preparedness. The test is whether implementation can sustain national defense and alliance operations simultaneously.
Washington must likewise distinguish access from assured capacity. American forces operating from Australia may have missions elsewhere; their presence should not automatically be counted as an equivalent addition to Australian territorial defense. Reassigning them would carry consequences for the wider campaign.
The Wartime Planning Dilemma
Consider a Taiwan conflict later this decade in which the United States intervenes and Australia provides access, logistical support and a limited combat contribution while defending itself. This is a planning scenario, not a forecast. Proposed facilities must be assessed separately from capabilities already available.
Northern airfields, including Darwin and Tindal, could support aircraft rotations, staging, refueling and maintenance. Upgrades at Tindal to accommodate American bombers increase its potential utility. But aircraft parking capacity does not determine sustained combat output. Fuel distribution, munitions handling, maintenance personnel and runway repair would govern how frequently aircraft could operate.
Southern Australia offers additional depth. Reported plans for a Marine Corps prepositioning facility in Victoria, expected to reach full capacity in 2028, illustrate the value of storing equipment away from northern operating locations. Distance can reduce exposure to some threats while increasing transport requirements and replenishment times.
Such facilities also require planning with surrounding communities. Targeting exposure, hazardous fuel and ammunition storage, and pressure on civilian roads, utilities and emergency services must all be assessed. Local preparedness is part of operational resilience.
In Western Australia, HMAS Stirling could support submarine operations and sustainment. Its contribution would depend on qualified personnel, specialist facilities and available components, rather than port access alone. Joint facilities, including Pine Gap’s intelligence and missile-warning functions and Harold E. Holt’s submarine communications, add capabilities whose disruption could affect operations far beyond Australia.
The threat should be assessed across three overlapping tiers. These describe the expanding scope of disruption, not a predictable escalation sequence.
Tier one: military capability. Attacks on airfields, naval facilities, logistics installations or communications could reduce operational output without destroying entire bases. Planners should test combinations of physical attack, cyber disruption and sabotage. Concentrating essential functions at a few locations creates dependencies that dispersal, hardening, redundancy and rapid repair must address.
The relevant measure is how much military activity survives and how quickly lost capacity returns. An intact runway offers limited value if fuel cannot reach aircraft or maintenance systems are unavailable.
Tier two: the civilian systems sustaining military operations. Electricity, telecommunications, commercial ports, roads and fuel distribution connect military facilities to the national economy. Their disruption could constrain operations even where bases escape direct attack. Several modest interruptions could combine into a serious loss of capacity.
Fuel illustrates the problem. Canberra’s 2026 fuel-security package includes a A$3.2 billion government reserve and measures intended to lift diesel and aviation-fuel reserves to 50 days. This is an important investment, but a national stockholding target does not establish endurance under wartime consumption or guarantee delivery to the facilities needing it.
Tier three: national endurance and political decision-making. Prolonged disruption could place military requirements in competition with hospitals, food distribution, civilian transport and essential industry. Shipping interruptions could compound domestic damage. The resulting hardship could become a means of coercion, whether or not civilian suffering was the initial purpose of an attack.
Deliberate attacks on population centers would represent an additional, grave contingency. They are not necessary for this tier to emerge: disruption to shared infrastructure could already produce substantial civilian harm. Planning must therefore include essential-service continuity, emergency communications and support for affected communities, alongside military recovery.
Across all three tiers, the central question is the same: how much pressure can Australia absorb while sustaining its agreed contribution?
Turning Access into Endurance
The answer requires decisions before hostilities. Both governments should establish which functions each facility can sustain, for how long, and under what assumptions about replenishment and damage. Planned capacity should enter campaign calculations only when it is available, staffed and exercised.
The United States Studies Centre has recommended prioritizing the “five R’s” of logistics—refuel, rearm, resupply, repair and revive—through the Combined Logistics Sustainment and Maintenance Enterprise announced at the 2021 Australia–U.S. Ministerial Consultations. This provides an existing foundation for stronger sustainment arrangements.
The additional requirement is to test those arrangements against simultaneous homeland-defense and civilian-continuity demands. Logistics cooperation alone cannot settle who protects facilities or who receives scarce resources.
First, the allies should agree protection responsibilities and procedures for allocating scarce aircraft, fuel, munitions, transport and repair capacity. Australian homeland defense, Australian combat deployments and American operations cannot each assume first call on the same resources. Governments must retain decision-making authority, but the trade-offs should be understood beforehand.
Second, investment should address the dependencies that most constrain sustained output: alternative distribution routes, dispersed reserves, repair teams, replacement components and resilient communications. Additional operating capacity should be matched by the capacity to protect, supply and restore it.
Third, joint exercises should test concurrent disruption across military installations and civilian networks. State governments, infrastructure operators and emergency services should participate where relevant. Exercises should measure sustained output and recovery times under delayed replenishment, rather than merely demonstrate that forces can deploy.
Neither government needs to disclose classified plans to make these priorities visible in budgets and preparedness programs.
A resilient Australia gives Washington more dependable operational options and reduces emergency reinforcement demands. An exposed Australia could require additional protection precisely when American forces are most heavily committed elsewhere.
The alliance’s southern base will be judged by what it can sustain under pressure. Australian resilience must therefore be treated as an essential input to American campaign planning, with responsibilities agreed, resources funded and recovery exercised before war begins.
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