Australian Army soldiers and United States Navy personnel assist members from Depth Defence Logistics with loading M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams main battle tanks to a United States Naval Loading Craft Utility during Exercise Talisman Sabre at the Townsville Port, Queensland on 19 July 2025. Credit: Australia Defence Force.
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) have signed a A$1.5bn ($977m) contract with Toll Remote Logistics Proprietary Limited to deliver equipment, supplies, and support across Australia.
This comes under the Defence Theatre Logistics deal, a ten-year agreement which consolidates two existing contracts which will see the suppliers connect the delivery of warehousing, national distribution, and retail store services across the country.
This will build on previous contracts the ADF have with Linfox and Ventia. The former distributor claims to have delivered 60 million line items to the armed forces while the latter is said to have supplied up to 70 bases across the country.
Meanwhile, the latest contract will oversee the management of more than 50 sites and locations in Australia, and the operation of a national distribution network between those sites and supported Australian military establishments.
“I wish to thank Linfox and Ventia, as the transitioning service providers, for the difference they have made to Defence’s logistics system and their continued support to Defence,” said Commander Joint Logistics, Major General Majgen Watts.
“By improving efficiency, reducing duplication and simplifying delivery of equipment, supplies and support, the [Australian Defence Force] will be better equipped to sustain protracted operations during conflict,” Watts considered.
Distribution and transport
Cultivating a healthy distribution network is one way to ensure supply chain resilience but Australia is a very large country, and it does not help that the government has underinvested in logistical infrastructure for decades according to recent analysis from an expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Chris McDougall.
“The poor state of transport infrastructure in Australia already costs the nation through delays to freight or long diversions. In the worst-case scenario, this lack of investment may disrupt force generation and risk the sustainment of deployed formations.”
This infrastructure vulnerability is acute for heavily armoured units in the north of the country, such as the Royal Australian Army 3rd Brigade, an armoured amphibious unit, based in Townsville, Queensland. Armoured formations impose a particularly heavy logistical burden.
McDougall suggests the ADF do not integrate transport infrastructure with defence strategy as well as it should.
“It is difficult to fathom the army’s acceptance of risk to the movement of heavy combat vehicles via the most direct route, constant disruption to supply lines via flood-prone roads, and inability to guarantee access and use of fit-for-purpose berths in the closest port.”
In the end, transportation and distribution are just two side of the same coin; it would be fruitless to focus on one without the other.
It should be noted, however, that this is not an area that European countries have fared any better. Some European Union member states formed a military transport corridor across the continent, and another northern route through the Nordic region, but this will also prove useless if participants are unable to standardise technical transportation issues, such as road traffic regulations for carrying the weight of heavy armoured platforms.
This then brings in another, more complex, civilian layer to work with, as part of a whole-of-government approach to defence.
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