This chapter describes and analyses national force projection rehearsals called the Kangaroo series of joint exercises, conducted in 1989, 1992 and 1995. These exercises measured Australia’s military proficiency in defending the homeland. The chapter finds that the major challenge during these early post–Cold War years involved synchronising Australian maritime, land and air power under joint command and control arrangements. Despite not stress testing other force projection functions, the ADF struggled for military self-reliance on home soil.

The current strategic environment can be characterised as a return to great power competition, centred on the Indo-Pacific region, within an environment of post-pandemic climate change. The ’region is in the midst of the most consequential strategic realignment since the Second World War’, and the confluence of these characteristics has resulted in a major step-change for Australia’s strategic policy and has significantly increased expectations of the Australian Defence Force. For the ADF, the force generation and force employment requirements to effectively shape, deter and respond within a ’competitive and contested’ region increase the demand signal on the force. For the Australian Army, accelerated warfare requires land forces ’to be ready to do more tasks, fight at all ranges, and enable the joint force in every domain’.

In the last few years, the issue of mobilisation for war has, in Australia at any rate, shifted from the arcane to the highly pertinent. Concerns publicly manifested in the government’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update, which asserted that the long-held notion of up to 10 years’ warning for a possible conventional attack on Australia had – as 10-year rules tend to eventually do – evaporated. Moreover, it alluded to what was thought to be a remote, but nevertheless alarming, possibility of a ‘high-intensity conflict’ in Australia’s region. Suddenly, generating combat power, perhaps more than what was readily to hand, has taken on some urgency.

This chapter uses three declassified case studies to examine the varying and complex mobilisation processes that led to each of Australia’s major Afghanistan commitments throughout 2005–6. It examines how the Department of Defence implemented its decisions – what it did to organise for operations – up until the point that military forces deployed overseas. Questions of manpower, supply and logistics, force preparation, combined planning with coalition partners, force insertion and policy development were different for each of these deployments. What worked, and what did not? What was done, and what was left undone? And what impact did any of this have on subsequent operations?

In the years since the deployment to Afghanistan, Australia’s predicament has become increasingly challenging closer to home, and further abroad, as complex environmental and geopolitical security challenges overlap and become more acute. Australian policymakers should look to create an incentivised but voluntary scheme for national and community service to bolster national resilience. This chapter makes the case for such a scheme: an Australian universal scheme for national and community service. It argues that given the current threat environment and the frequency and scale of natural disasters, it would be imprudent for the Australian Defence Force to continue on a course that was appropriate in past decades.

Women are eligible to serve in virtually all roles in the Australian Defence Force and the Canadian Armed Forces. The contributions of women at home and abroad reach back to the establishment of women’s services during the Second World War, and to nursing services during the First World War and other conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars. More recently women have served in numerous conflict zones, including on the battlefields of Afghanistan. While there are notable differences in the historical journey, there are also important similarities that have shaped the experiences of women in the militaries of Australia and Canada.

What can be said about the operational performance of the Australian Defence Force when federal governments ordered selective mobilisations and projections of land force contingents overseas? This chapter examines force projection functions for six selected overseas ADF operations during the period 1987–2003. It applies a grading matrix to each function to produce an audit report. It then compares the reports to derive observations relating to evident systemic problems with operational performance and mitigation of risk.

As 2001 opened, security and defence issues were already more central to Australia’s national agenda, both domestically and internationally, than had typically been the case over the previous three decades. Only a few weeks before the start of 2001, on 6 December 2000, Prime Minister John Howard had tabled in Parliament a new Defence White Paper. Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force committed his government to a new and more expansive conception of Australia’s strategic interests and military objectives and to substantial and sustained increases in defence funding. These decisions were in part a prudent policy response to long-term strategic and fiscal trends stretching back a decade or more. But the tone and style as well as the content of the White Paper clearly showed that, for Howard, security was also at the centre of the government’s political agenda at the start of what was certain to be a federal election year.