Originally published on 3 October 2025.
Australia’s northern air bases are vital to national defence, yet improving their resilience remains a work in progress. And the progress is incremental.
This isn’t a new task. The 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR), putting high priority on the resilience of northern bases, was very much reiterating a view from the 2012 Defence Force Posture Review.
‘Immediate and comprehensive work’ was needed, said the DSR, particularly in hardening and dispersal, runway and apron capacity and fuel storage.
The focus is on airfields. The Royal Australian Air Force’s northern bases constitute Australia’s strategic frontline, enabling operations across the Indo-Pacific and underpinning alliance force posture cooperation with the United States. In line with the 2024 National Defence Strategy, the reinforcing of a networked defence posture across northern Australia, and especially the northwest of Western Australia, has become imperative to deter aggression and sustain readiness across Australia’s north and northwestern approaches.
A review of scattered statements and media reports reveals that there’s progress in some places, particularly at RAAF Tindal near Katherine, but elsewhere progress is harder to see. All or almost all of the work appears to have begun since the DSR was published.
Works are happening behind the scenes—such as planning, designing and providing services, fuel storage and accommodation—but the visible pace of construction lags behind Australia’s deteriorating strategic circumstances. Significant spending has been earmarked, but physical progress is being held back by shortages of contractors and by supply-chain issues.
Meanwhile, the threat from strike missiles and even numerous, cheap drones keeps rising.
The lion’s share of spending is flowing into the Northern Territory, with Tindal and RAAF Darwin emerging as the centre of effort. Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy confirmed last year that of the $14 billion to $18 billion earmarked for base upgrades across northern Australia, most would go to the territory.
At Tindal, major works are under way to extend the runway, upgrade fuel storage and build facilities to support new aircraft types in Australian service, such as the MQ-4C Triton uncrewed maritime patroller. Tender documents also show that plans include expanded intelligence facilities, warehouses and maintenance hangars. Increased fuel storage is already built.
The US has also committed substantial funding, with more than US$300 million earmarked so far to co-develop infrastructure at both RAAF Darwin and Tindal. Washington values those bases, too.
In Exercise Talisman Sabre this year, the Australian Defence Force deployed 550 aviators and soldiers to Tindal to exercise an ability to conduct agile, expeditionary airbase operations in austere locations (though the base itself is not austere).
RAAF Darwin is also undergoing substantial runway upgrades for intense military and civilian use, ensuring it can sustain high-tempo operations. With the proximity to the port of Darwin for logistics and supply, and rotational deployments of US Marines and aircraft, these upgrades strengthen Australia’s ability to project power and to host coalition forces.
Beyond the Northern Territory, progress across Australia’s broader northern network of bases is more uneven.
More than $1 billion has been approved for infrastructure upgrades to bases in the northwest in the budget forward estimates, with completion of projects due in 2027. That includes more than $700 million for upgrades at RAAF Learmonth on the western edge of the continent. Learmonth is one of Australia’s bare bases—meaning it is largely empty most of the time but can support aircraft flown in from elsewhere with their operators.
Work to widen and strengthen Learmonth’s runway and taxiway is due to be completed by 2027. Early works were underway in 2024, when modular-structures company ATCO began building a worker’s camp to support large-scale infrastructure upgrades.
Learmonth’s strategic significance is growing: the improvements will allow KC-30A tankers to operate there and extend the range of F-35A Lightning fighters, which will thereby be able to conduct strike, intercept and patrol operations deeper into the Indian Ocean.
During Talisman Sabre 2025, RAAF personnel exercised the forward re-arming and refueling on an F/A-18F Super Hornet at Learmonth. This also involved a C-17A Globemaster airlifter. The objective is to use austere airfields in tactical locations to get combat aircraft back in the air.
Further up the coast, planned upgrades at RAAF Curtin, another bare base in Western Australia, are under contract and include upgrades to runways, taxiways, parking areas and aeronautical ground lighting. Completion is due in 2028, but progress is harder to discern. There has been little visible spending so far on hardening or expansion.
The airfield on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, 2,100 km out in the Indian Ocean, is undergoing significant upgrades. These will allow P-8A Poseidon maritime patrollers to more persistently watch the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. Australia and the US are both funding improvements.
However, unevenness in investment across Australia’s north matters. As US analysis in the Indo-Pacific shows, survivability depends not on a handful of hardened hubs but on a network of resilient airfields. Australia’s current approach appears to be overly concentrated on the Northern Territory, leaving the rest of the country’s northern arc exposed.
An innovation trialled at Tindal is the use of strong and easily laid matting to create temporary hardstands, aprons and taxiways. With such modular surfaces, more civilian airfields can be used for aircraft dispersal. Offering another means of survivability, this would complement isolated hardening.
Australia also urgently requires integrated air and missile defence capabilities, particularly ground-based interceptors able to shield critical northern bases from medium and intermediate range missile threats. Progress has been made on the Joint Air Battle Management System through the AIR 6500 program, which will provide a command-and-control backbone, while interceptor systems such as Nasams add a short-range defensive layer.
Australia is making progress in hardening its northern bases, but much of the work is concentrated at Tindal and Darwin. Elsewhere, upgrades remain slow. In a high-threat environment in which adversaries can target fixed infrastructure with precision missiles, resilience comes from hardening, dispersal, redundancy, speed of repair and active defensive missile capabilities.
Geography dictates the importance of an effective northern base network. Time, however, is the critical factor and Australia cannot afford further delay.
