The head of the North West Defence Alliance says Australia's Chief of Army was "speaking carefully" when responding to concerns that WA's north is under-defended.
The Chief of Army, Lieutenant-General Simon Stuart, downplayed the need for more resources to be stationed in the north during a visit last week.
But he did acknowledge more foreign vessels were likely to be seen off the WA coast.
Defence Industry Minister Paul Papalia has long made the argument for a greater defence presence to protect WA's multi-billion-dollar resources industry, and leaders in the state's north have ramped up lobbying efforts in recent months.
Karratha mayor Peter Long, who's head of the North West Defence Alliance, said there had been indications of support from within the defence force and suggested the Chief of Army was being cautious with his comments because of a pending defence review.
"I'm sure the Chief of Army didn't want to pre-empt what was going to happen with the defence review and he was just speaking carefully," Mr Long said.
"I think there will definitely be a desire to station more people in the north and to have more hardware capability."
Foreign vessels more likely
Earlier this year a high-tech Chinese surveillance ship was tracked off the Pilbara coast, close to a secretive naval communications base at Exmouth.
Lieutenant-General Stuart told the ABC he expected to see more instances like that as foreign interest in Australia increased.
"We see far more interest in Australia and obviously the key waterways and straits that we rely on for our imports and exports," he said.
"If I think to the example [off Exmouth], I do think we might see some more of those sorts of things.
"But as we discussed earlier, the surveillance network that includes Spacebase, radar, maritime and air surveillance, as well as planned surveillance, I think positions us pretty well to understand what's happening."
Mr Long said the Chief of Army's expectation of more foreign vessels in Australian waters added to the North West Defence Alliance's push.
"People have actually seen what China has done to other countries and they have been spying on us as well," he said.
"They've been moving into the Pacific Ocean and they would like to set up bases there, all these things are actually making people a little bit more fearful than they would have been before.
"So I think it's a good time now for us to keep working on raising people's awareness of how vulnerable we are in the north-west."
While Lieutenant-General Stuart outlined the defence force's ability to "project force" into the north of the state if there was an incident, Mr Long questioned the time that would take.
"Those submarines and those ships can move very quickly and if someone seriously wanted to do us harm, you can't move large numbers of people and infrastructure up here particularly quickly," he said.
"Even to get aircraft from somewhere else is going to take eight hours."
Mr Long said it was up to defence experts to decide where resources should be added.
He expected to see a "hardening" of Curtin and Learmonth airfields in the north of the state.
"There could be missile defences around there, there could be mobile missile defences around the north," he said.
"That's by far the cheapest and most effective way to protect us is to have missiles because if you bring in large numbers of people, you've got to accommodate them, and you've got to have machinery for them."
