My last article concluded that one of the risks Australia might face in a more unpredictable future was ‘strike warfare’ by China to coerce Australia as part of intensified strategic competition with the US in …
Sea State Last week in Sydney, the Royal Australian Navy proudly commissioned HMAS Adelaide, second of the landing helicopter docks (LHDs) built by Spanish company Navantia based on the Spanish Armada’s ‘Juan Carlos I’. Permanently …
Last week Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled the UK’s latest Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). As usual it was numbers in terms of money and kit that caught the media’s attention. But the bigger …
In his recent post on Australian policy towards acquisition of nuclear weapons, Rod Lyon responds to a thesis promoted by Christine Leah and Crispin Rovere that Australia should acquire its own independent nuclear deterrent capability. …
From trying to install 21st century avionics on 1960s helicopters to buying landing craft that crack and can’t fit onto their motherships, defence procurement in Australia has been fraught. Within this context David Peever’s First …
The appearance on Russian TV stations Channel One and NTV of the plans for a nuclear torpedo/unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) has prompted much interest among observers. The leak occurred on the last day of a …
2015 is the year that saw Government announce that Continuous Shipbuilding will be a permanent feature in the nation’s industrial landscape – surely, this is not an outlandish notion for a maritime nation. To understand …
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has just released a report into Defence Test and Evaluation (T&E) that makes a number of important findings. According to the report, this critical enabler to informed decisionmaking in …
Mark Thomson and I were in Tokyo earlier this month as part of an annual exchange ASPI has with the National Institute for Defense Studies. The two organisations have been doing exchanges for over a …
Sea State A report released by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has proposed basing a second US aircraft carrier in Japan. The report argues that a continuous presence of US naval assets will …
The US government has just released one of the most worrying reports about the risk of nuclear war in the Cold War and the dangers of miscalculating Soviet intentions. The top-secret document was released in …
The Government has a clear strategy for achieving a productive, cost-competitive and sustainable naval shipbuilding industry. We also know that Australia cannot afford a naval shipbuilding industry at any price. A reshaping and reform of …