Australia's Defense Planners Recast Control of the Seas

Stewart Dunne says Australia can no longer assume it will have access to the ocean on which its trade routes, energy supplies, offshore infrastructure, alliance commitments and northern approaches depend. His answer is a defense doctrine called “Assured Ocean Access,” a framework for deciding where forces can move and operate when disruption, uncertainty and contest shape conditions.

Dunne directs AusPac Hydrospatial, served as a former hydrographer of Australia, spent 36 years in the ADF and continues to serve as a Naval Reserve Commodore. His argument centers military planners, intelligence systems and defense infrastructure in maritime security. People and commercial activity tied to those sea routes form part of the stakes, while the proposed response rests on the state’s operational capacity.

The access problem

Dunne writes that familiar concepts such as sea command, sea control and sea denial remain useful, but can make maritime power sound like an all-or-nothing choice. A force might not control an entire theatre and still protect a corridor, move a submarine, escort shipping, sustain a task group or secure critical undersea infrastructure for a particular time and purpose.

Ships, submarines, aircraft and weapons alone don't guarantee access. Dunne says their effectiveness depends on hydrographic and oceanographic knowledge, sensors, networks, intelligence, data fusion, trained people, operational authorities, sustainment, infrastructure and decision-making. A force may have impressive platforms yet lack the environmental understanding, information resilience, decision speed or logistical depth needed to use them confidently.

He defines “Assured Ocean Access” as the ability to create, sustain and adapt enough freedom of manoeuvre and action in, on and through the maritime environment for designated forces and missions, at acceptable risk despite contest, uncertainty and disruption. The aim isn't perfect knowledge of every part of the ocean. It's enough trusted understanding, quickly enough, to act and keep acting when an adversary tries to disrupt that ability.

Lessons from contested waters

Dunne points to the Russia-Ukraine war as an example of a force changing maritime conditions without conventional fleet parity. Ukraine combined coastal defence, intelligence, long-range strike, uncrewed surface systems, deception and pressure against bases and logistics. The result, he says, wasn't sea control across the theatre, but a significant reduction in Russia's freedom of action and restored commercially meaningful access from Ukrainian ports.

The lesson he draws isn't that autonomous vessels replace navies. Rather, maritime advantage increasingly comes from understanding, deciding and adapting faster than an adversary. That formulation keeps focus on the military apparatus around the technology: systems that gather information, people who interpret it, and authorities that make operational decisions.

The Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz offer another warning in Dunne's account. Missiles, mines, drones, proxy forces, cyber activity, electronic warfare and political signalling can impose costs on commercial movement without a traditional fleet battle. Powerful navies can protect individual ships and strike threats ashore, yet still struggle to restore confidence in free commercial passage.

The machinery behind the mission

Australia's long sea lines of communication and northern approaches run through a crowded, shallow and environmentally complex archipelago, where military, commercial, legal and political risks overlap. Dunne says limited environmental knowledge can matter as much as a shortage of weapons. He argues that mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, hydrography, oceanography, route survey and protection of critical undersea infrastructure should count as parts of one access problem—not separate tasks assembled only after a threat appears.

He wants force design to begin with the access effect required, not with a preferred ship, aircraft, sensor or autonomous system. Defense planners should identify the operational risk, the information needed to reduce uncertainty, the decisions that must happen quickly and the mix of crewed and uncrewed systems, data, people and sustainment needed to provide dependable service.

Uncrewed systems can widen surveillance, extend persistence and reduce risk to personnel, Dunne says. But a sensor that can't pass information securely, a vehicle that can't be recovered or maintained, or a data feed that can't be trusted in contested conditions creates vulnerability instead of assured access. His account is clear: the advantage doesn't automatically belong to the force with the most impressive platforms, but to the one that can turn information into operational freedom repeatedly and credibly.