Air power begins and ends on the ground.

Aircraft are formidable in the sky — but on the ground, they represent fragile concentrations of national investment. The defence of those aircraft, and the airfields from which they operate, has shaped the RAAF's operational effectiveness in ways that have rarely been examined — until now.

Defending the Nest is the first rigorous scholarly examination of RAAF airfield defence from the Service's formation in 1921 to the end of the Vietnam War. Drawing on extensive archival research and firsthand accounts, Sean Carwardine traces a recurring institutional cycle: crisis prompts improvisation, improvisation generates specialist capability — and then, once the threat recedes, that capability is dismantled, diluted and forgotten. Until the next attack.

From the bombing of Darwin in 1942 to jungle airstrips across the Pacific, from Cold War radar stations to the contested perimeters of South Vietnam, the men and women tasked with defending the nest served with courage, ingenuity and professionalism. Their stories have remained largely absent from official histories. This book restores their voices.

Written by a former Airfield Defence Guard who went on to pursue the first doctoral study of this subject, Defending the Nest uncovers themes that are not merely historical. Complacency, bureaucratic inertia, unclear priorities, cultural friction and the vital relationship between purpose and morale — they endure.

At a moment when global conflicts are once again exposing the vulnerability of air bases to ground attack, Carwardine's argument carries urgent contemporary weight: to defend the nest is not a diversion from the Air Force's core business. It is the core condition of that business.

Some lessons are simply too costly to relearn.

'The respect which we, the senior leaders of Air Force, hold for aviators who put themselves between an airbase and a threat is immense, and unwavering.' — Air Vice-Marshal Harvey Reynolds AM, Air Commander Australia

'Should now become required reading for any scholar researching RAAF organisation and command.' — Michael Molkentin, historian of armed conflict