As Australia prepares its 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS), the nation must recognise that a window of strategic risk exists now and will do so into the early 2030s. The medium-term acquisition of nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines under AUKUS, intended to deter conflict, is irrelevant to the short-term problem of maintaining deterrence through the coming five-year period of heightened risk (2027–2032). That's because the first AUKUS submarines—US Virginia-class boats—won't be delivered until 2032, while the purpose-built SSN-AUKUS won't arrive until the early 2040s. We can't, in effect, solve a 2027 deterrence problem with a 2032 deterrent capability.
Australia's traditional reliance upon 'great and powerful friends' and extended nuclear deterrence now seems no longer assured. There's no equivalent to NATO's Article V for Indo-Pacific security; even if there were, adversaries' demonstration of 'grey zone' capabilities—aiming to weaken alliances, isolate targets, erode resolve and impose costs—suggests that formal alliance commitments may be insufficient.
Conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East are demonstrating that smaller players—both middle powers and non-state actors—can generate strategic asymmetry against major powers, in turn deterring them from initiating conflict or escalating in conflict. As recently identified in the UK's Strategic Defence Review (2025), Ukraine is pioneering a new way of war; British decision-makers have recognised the need to rapidly adapt and are using special operations capability to drive that adaptation.
This paper explores asymmetric methods of deterrence and asks whether they might be appropriate for Australia. We organise those methods under the term unconventional deterrence to differentiate them from traditional concepts of conventional and nuclear deterrence, which broadly conform to deterrence-by-punishment or deterrence-by-denial logic. Today's technologies, however—along with the emergent realities of information and influence operations in a post-industrial information age—offer new asymmetries, new ways to create and apply both military and non-military elements of national power, and thus new mechanisms to deter beyond-peer adversaries from armed aggression.
This paper explores those options, offering the concept of unconventional deterrence as an organising principle for special operations, cyber and other specialised capabilities that might be rapidly fielded by Defence and other agencies, and could best be orchestrated through an empowered National Security Adviser reporting directly to the National Security Committee of Cabinet. It also offers a comparative analysis, demonstrating that like-minded middle powers have embraced unconventional deterrence concepts in their military strategies, and are using them to face down their own beyond-peer threats.
Australia has options to fill today's deterrence gap: we just need to look beyond conventional paradigms.
