From Capability to Command. From Autonomy to Advantage.

Secure Australia 2026 is where delivery happens. Now in its third year, Australia's premier defence and national security conference returns to Canberra with a sharpened mission: to unite the strategic, operational, and industrial communities driving sovereign capability and to accelerate the transition from ambition to action across every domain.

From the Indo-Pacific maritime environment to the cyber battlespace, from autonomous air systems to space and electronic warfare, Secure Australia 2026 brings together the commanders, policymakers, intelligence leaders, and innovators who are building Australia's integrated defence future.

AI and autonomy remain the critical enabling layer but in 2026, the conversation starts with the threat, moves through the domains, and ends with the hard questions of industrial capacity, workforce, and sovereign resilience.

For government, it is the trusted forum where strategy meets execution. For industry, it is the direct line to the capability decisions that will shape a generation of investment. For Australia, it is where the nation's collective resolve becomes operational reality.

Secure Australia 2026. Where AI, Autonomy, and Sovereign Ambition Become Operational Reality

Secure Australia 2026 goes beyond theory to focus on real-world capability deployment - how AI, autonomy, and sovereign capability are transforming operations, intelligence, and resilience across Australia's defence and national security ecosystem.
 
The 10 conversations at Secure Australia Include:

• Strategic Threat Environment: great power competition, grey zone operations, and what Australia's force design must deliver in response
• Autonomous Mass: fielding, scaling, and sustaining uncrewed systems across land, sea, and air at speed and at scale
• AI Command and Decision Superiority: embedding artificial intelligence into command frameworks, ISR, and mission decision cycles
• Counter-UAS and the Drone Threat: defending against autonomous mass and building Australia's sovereign drone defeat capability
• Multi-Domain Operations: connecting sensors, shooters, and decision systems across air, land, sea, space, and cyber
• Defend Forward: cyber resilience, electronic warfare, space, and securing the full spectrum of Australia's digital and electromagnetic battlespace
• Quantum Advantage: navigation, sensing, and communications in GPS-denied and contested environments
• Sovereign or Vulnerable: building the industrial base, supply chains, and workforce that the IIP requires
• Governance, Ethics and the Future Warfighter: testing and evaluation frameworks, AI accountability, human-machine teaming, and the doctrine and skills required for the autonomous force
• AUKUS Accelerated: moving from agreement to operational capability across Pillar I submarines and Pillar II advanced technologies