Presenter: Dr. Mark Bailey
Panel: Brigadier Corey Shillabeer (Commander, Fires Brigade); Don Roach; Joel (NIOA)
Event: Firepower: Lessons from World War II seminar series — Royal Australian Artillery Historical Company 

Seminar Overview

Naval historian Dr Mark Bailey, academic in maritime trade operations at the Australian Defence Force Academy, argues that Australia’s defining strategic vulnerability is not invasion but sea supply — the essential subset of maritime trade without which an island state cannot prosecute a war. Presented as part of the Royal Australian Artillery Historical Company’s Firepower: Lessons from World War II seminar series, the presentation makes the case that Australia cannot be invaded easily, but it can be strangled, and that the protection of sea lines of communication must therefore sit at the centre of national defence thinking. Bailey draws on Admiral Noonan’s definition of sea supply and situates Australia’s maritime trade dependence within its wider alliance framework.

The presentation traces Australia’s bipartisan twenty-year industrialisation programme from 1919 to 1939, born of the lesson that the First World War was above all an industrial war. By 1942, that preparation meant a militia mobilised from 80,000 to 700,000 which, alongside the AIF, would have crushed any attempted landing. Bailey also reinterprets the Singapore Strategy, arguing it was fundamentally a trade protection and oil bunkering plan rather than a fixed-base concept, and reaches back to the visit of CSS Shenandoah to Melbourne in 1865 and the response of HMVS Victoria to show that maritime trade defence has been the enduring through-line of Australian strategy. The economic war against Japan, including blockade and pressure mining, the cancellation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1923, and the increases in defence spending that followed the Manchurian Incident of 1931 complete the interwar picture.

The presentation carries the argument into the present, framing long-range fires, landing ships, and littoral capabilities as a distinctly Corbettian response to Australia’s maritime geography. The exercise by 14 Regiment firing HIMARS from Puckapunyal into Tasmania is presented as the doctrinal heir of Fort Nepean’s coastal artillery, while the Littoral Manoeuvre Group’s three landing craft battalions basing in Brisbane, North Queensland, and Darwin extend defence at range across Australia’s northern approaches — all under the 2024 National Defence Strategy’s framing of deterrence through denial.

Panel Discussion

The accompanying panel discussion draws the historical analysis into lessons for today’s decision makers. Discussion points include the evolution of integrated command and control from coastal artillery to modern multi-domain strike, the demands of surge capacity, stockpiles, and interceptor resupply across the tyranny of distance, and the Precision Strike Missile within multi-domain strike doctrine. The panel examines the National Defence Strategy’s self-reliance agenda, including the national support base, shadow factories, and strategic mobilisation planning, alongside munitions safety, loitering munitions, FPV drones, and the 20-40-40 investment philosophy of constant adaptation. The discussion closes on littoral manoeuvre and expeditionary advanced base operations, the CAMEL Common Autonomous Missile Effector Launcher, trusted AI within the laws of armed conflict, and the layered approach that underpins defence at range and force projection.