ARTICLES
ISIS families: are we more afraid and less compassionate than we were in 2019?
How is it that Australians - and our political leaders across the spectrum - seem so afraid of 34 women and children who have been living in a camp in Syria for 6 years? And why do we lazily talk about them as “ISIS brides” when the majority are children?...
Mindboggling! celebrating $30 billion on sub sheds (not actual subs), while leaders outdo One Nation’s darker instincts
Mindboggling! celebrating $30 billion on sub sheds | RSS.com The Grumpy Strategists boggle at the sheer chutzpah of PM Albanese and State Premier Malinauskas announcing as a triumph spending $30 billion & taking until 2040 to build submarine construction sheds...
History and Service tradition relevant to a modern military? Apparently they’re just costly and counterproductive….
You know a family is in trouble when they start flogging off the furniture to fund their lifestyle. First, it’s bits of the family silver and grandad’s stamp collection, then the holiday house. But as the trouble deepens, it’s mum’s jewels and then the family home....
Australia’s Defence budget: a sugar hit followed by a $2.6 billion cut. Take that, Mr Trump, sir!
Australia's defence budget update: a sugar hit fol | RSS.com The Grumpy Strategists pan for gold in 234 pages of dense, incoherent Government paperwork setting out the Albanese Government's revised plans for our nation's defence, and find some rather smelly nuggets....
Defence’s 2025-26 budget update— billions spent earlier, but billions go out the back door
The Defence portfolio’s mid-year budget update, the Portfolio Additional Estimates Statements (PAES), has dropped and will be discussed at upcoming Senate estimates hearings. The PAES is meant to disclose any changes to the funding picture since the Portfolio Budget...
Deceased estate: Oz Defence sells the silver to fund poor lifestyle choices, & US obliterating Iranian nukes (again).
Deceased estate: Oz Defence sells the silver to fu | RSS.com The Grumpy Strategists look at the recent 'historic" plan for Australia's Defence real estate (okay, a shameless Government asset sale of historic sites to perhaps produce a one-off cash dribble that will be...
Penguins, not principles, key to Australia’s Trump management – & Ozzie maritime strategy tied to a collapsing US Navy
Penguins, not principles, key to Australia's Trump | RSS.com Marcus & Michael pull together a deal Australian PM Albanese can offer to his great & powerful pal, US President Trump, at his first meeting of the Board of Peace, with lessons in Trump-management...
Trump shows what coercing the neighbourhood looks like
Donald Trump ordered the US military and CIA to abduct Venezuela’s president Maduro and his wife - and in a stunning raid against the Venezuelan capital, the US military did just that. It was a confronting use of military force by America that will make...
Trump’s edifice complex gets Grumpy, & 2025 strategic & Aussie military takeaways
Trump's edifice complex gets Grumpy, & 2025 strate | RSS.com What's in a name? The Trumpy Strategists Bunker showcases the direction of Australian policy in 2025, while the Grumpies ponder MAGA tensions from Turning Point USA to Susie Wiles' cry for help in Vanity...
AUKUS gets steamy, while even cherrypicking can’t make the US National Security Strategy good news
AUKUS gets steamy, & cherrypicking can't make the | RSS.com Well, well, well. the Pentagon's AUKUS review is out - well, actually under lock and key, but apparently its' great news that is about "strengthening" AUKUS. Hard to know how something that was flawlessly on...
The hunt for Defence reform downunder: Mr Conroy & the Yeti. And the mystery of sea control with a tiny fleet
The hunt for Defence reform downunder: Mr Conroy & | RSS.com Marcus & his fellow SES emergency volunteers hunt for the "Biggest Defence Overhaul in 50 years" somewhere deep in the Brindabellas (WARNING: parts of this episode contain disturbing remains of earlier...
A democratic lockdown fit for an authoritarian & marking Defence’s Annual Report homework Part 1
A democratic lockdown fit for an authoritarian & m | RSS.com The Grumpies broadcast from Australia's Parliament House while admiring the Government's lockdown of our democracy's capitol to make a visiting Chinese Communist Party member feel right at home. They start...
Australian industry gets more Aussie, while Australia writes defence cheques it can’t cash
Australian industry gets more Aussie, while Austra | RSS.com Marcus and Michael pursue littoral dominance in Canberra's Lake Burley-Griffin while pondering the Australian Government's new definition of Australian industry, and PM Albanese's defence agreement with...
Trump’s Asia Tour: Crowned with success – and stalemated. And ‘Nuclear Submarines For EVERYONE!!!!’
Trump 's Asia Tour; Crowned with success - and sta | RSS.com The Grumpies consider the net effect of US President Trump's Asia tour, and are outraged he was gifted a REPLICA crown. They examine the idea of South Korea building nuclear submarines, potentially in...
Albanese meets Trump: champagne all round – but a harder meeting would’ve been better for Australian security & the alliance
Albanese meets Trump: champagne all round - but a | RSS.com The Grump Strategists move back into their renovated bunker deep in the Brindabellas and assess the finely managed Albanese-Trump meeting. Full marks to PM Albanese and Ambassador Rudd for stage managing and...
Australian government prefers talking about defence funding over actually spending more.
The Trump administration has been calling on its partners and allies to lift defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. NATO has agreed to that benchmark, with another 1.5 per cent thrown in for vaguely defined national resilience and critical infrastructure programs....
The legalities and politics of the Sumud Flotilla to Gaza
In the Mediterranean Sea, on Thursday 2 October 2025, the Israeli Navy intercepted a 45-boat ‘Sumud Flotilla’ that sailed from Spain intending to breach Israel’s blockade on Hamas in Gaza. The flotilla was an expensive expression of confrontational political activism...
Having finally signed treaty, Australia must strengthen PNG defences
Recruitment in the region sits comfortably with the goal of security integration with Canberra, at a pace and scale welcomed by Pacific Island countries. on Monday, Anthony Albanese and PNG Prime Minister James Marape will sign amutual defence treaty known as the...
Sovereignty costs. If you won’t pay for it, you don’t have it
Sovereignty was once, fleetingly, the poster child of Australian defence policy and pronouncements. While it continues to be mentioned, it’s now in such a vague and superficial way that it has been emptied of meaning. This is a mistake. Sovereignty will be, needs to...
Albanese-Trump meeting: PM advised to lead with fact we are a strong and capable military ally
If Anthony Albanese wants to avoid being berated by Donald Trump or JD Vance about how little Australia spends on defence, he should go to Washington with a list of proposals to expand alliance co-operation. President Donald Trump has emerged the winner in the battle...
Episode 50: With friends like this…& Why spend real money on defence when you can just seem to?
Episode 50: With friends like this...& Why spend r | RSS.com Marcus is back from Australia's croc-filled Outback. He catches up with Michael on global events: America's end to a Baltic states security initiative and the Trump Administrations' prep work for a Xi-Trump...
Beijing is running rings around us in Pacific
The Albanese government’s failure to conclude security treaties with Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu shows the hollowness of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific. Not finalising these deals is the result of insufficient diplomatic engagement, a lack of genuine local...
The Trump-Albanese meeting: Good news – he’s just not that into us
In the beating heart of this nation’s capital, Canberra, many of us have been thinking and rethinking about the Australia-US alliance and the AUKUS sub deal that is now so central to it. We’re reaching a crescendo as the long-awaited, much anticipated...
The contribution to peace Albanese could make at the UN
Anthony Albanese will be in New York next week to participate in a high-level meeting to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the UN. One of those sessions will be dedicated to the “Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution”. This follows...
Team Albanese works hard to make Australia’s Defence budget LOOK ‘bigglier’
Mr Albanese has two choices on Australian defence spending as he prepares to meet US President Donald Trump in New York (hopefully, perhaps). He can increase Australia’s defence budget from its current 2 per cent share of GDP to somewhere around the 3.5 per cent...
The Age of Impunity: unilateral use of force damages us all
Anyone thinking the Israeli government’s strike on senior Hamas personnel in Qatar or the American government’s strike on a boat carrying 11 alleged Venezuelan drug runners in recent days is good news needs to think again. We have now officially entered the age...
Questions for the federal government about ISIS brides’ return
Anthony Albanese is hiding his government’s involvement to return the third group of so-called “jihadi brides” to Australia, apparently before Christmas. These are women who are currently in refugee camps in northern Syria, who travelled to that region to support the...
Pacific leaders’ Ocean of Peace is disturbed by pushy Beijing rule maker
As Prime Minister Albanese heads to Honiara for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting this week he won’t find one big happy family. Solomon Islands Prime Minister, Jeremiah Manele, may well have undermined efforts by the Forum leaders to manage increasing...
Xi Jinping’s parade: strongmen, hubris and overreach
Back in the days of the Roman Empire, during parades in their honour Roman commanders used to have someone standing behind them whispering ‘Remember you are mortal’ to prevent the pomp and pageantry going to their heads. So, as Xi Jinping watched his massed...
Europe’s lessons in dealing with unreliability, extended deterrence for Aussie streets & lost luggage
Europe's lessons in dealing with unreliability, ex | RSS.com In Episode 49, Marcus and Michael go over the lessons for Australia from Europe's approach to dealing with an unreliable US over the war in Ukraine. They discuss the now disturbing centralisation of...