Session 1.8a Expo Session: The North: Australia's Front Line with only One Road in
Tracks
Open Session
| Tuesday, November 17, 2026 |
| 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM |
| Royal Theatre |
Presentation Outline
The 2026 National Defence Strategy sets deterrence by denial as Australia's military strategy, and turns the defence posture north. What has changed is the economics of attack. Distributed sensing, low-cost autonomous effectors and networked command and control have pushed the cost of a successful attack sharply upward. That is not a platform effect. It comes from connecting and fusing thousands of systems at the edge, which makes communications the enabling capability for denial, not a supporting service to it.
The same shift has moved targeting. Long-range strike now favours economic infrastructure over military attrition: refineries, ports, data centres and maritime chokepoints. That puts the north-west shelf, Australia's most concentrated undersea infrastructure, inside the defence mission.
Across northern Australia, communications is where the largest gain is available. Most defence sites are served today by a single carrier and often a single physical path. For remote-operated sites, a second and separate route is the difference between a capability that stops and one that keeps working. It is among the most affordable resilience on offer, and much is already built. Multi-orbit satellite adds paths rather than replacing them, since every orbit lands on a gateway with fibre behind it.
This presentation sets out where the capability opportunity lies, what terrestrial, subsea and multi-orbit satellite paths each realistically contribute, and the questions any organisation should ask before accepting a single-path communications position for a mission critical front-line. It argues for carrier diversity and redundancy as a design requirement, not for any one supplier.
Speaker
Mr Michael Ackland
General Manager Federal Government & Defence
Vocus
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Biography
Michael has over 20 years of experience in the IT, Power, Construction and Telecommunications industries with companies including Powercor, ETSA, Leighton Contractors, Nextgen Networks and now Vocus.
Michael has held senior leadership roles in the development of key regional and international fibre assets including: - the rollout of 9,000km of optic fibre cable across Australia in 2010-11 in partnership with the Commonwealth Government under the Regional Backbone BlackSpots Program, the 2,100km North West Cable System from Darwin to Port Hedland 2014-2016, - the Australia Singapore Cable 2017-2018, and the Coral Sea Cable System, delivered on behalf of the Governments of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Australia, connecting Sydney, Honiara and Port Moresby.
With a deep understanding of the economic drivers that support investing in telecommunications infrastructure as well as the transformational benefits it brings communities, Michael continues to drive for infrastructure based competition to support the needs and demands of end users into the future.
Michael has held senior leadership roles in the development of key regional and international fibre assets including: - the rollout of 9,000km of optic fibre cable across Australia in 2010-11 in partnership with the Commonwealth Government under the Regional Backbone BlackSpots Program, the 2,100km North West Cable System from Darwin to Port Hedland 2014-2016, - the Australia Singapore Cable 2017-2018, and the Coral Sea Cable System, delivered on behalf of the Governments of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Australia, connecting Sydney, Honiara and Port Moresby.
With a deep understanding of the economic drivers that support investing in telecommunications infrastructure as well as the transformational benefits it brings communities, Michael continues to drive for infrastructure based competition to support the needs and demands of end users into the future.
