Wings of denial: what’s in the NDS for air power?

What the 2026 National Defence Strategy means for Australian air power, guided weapons and missile defence

When Defence Minister Richard Marles stepped to the podium at the National Press Club in Canberra on 17 April to unveil Australia’s 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS) and its accompanying Integrated Investment Program (IIP), the air power community listened closely.

The headline figure, $425 billion in defence investment over the coming decade, immediately commanded attention. But the more consequential story for the Royal Australian Air Force lies beneath that number: in the weapons manifests, the program timelines, and the ambitious but still-incomplete architecture of an Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) system that Australia’s strategic planners have been attempting to build, with varying degrees of urgency, since the 2023 Defence Strategic Review first named it as a critical gap.

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