ARTICLES
Crisis? What Crisis? Policy Perspectives and Strategic Coherence
This is an edited version of an address to the Sir Richard Williams Foundation Conference on the Multi-domain Requirements of an Australian Maritime Strategy My thanks to the Williams Foundation for the opportunity to speak. I asked the organisers to add the phrase...
Change, not continuity, is what’s needed to meet the ever-growing threat from China
Promotion in the Australian Defence Force is designed to be this way. The Chief of Defence Force is a“four-star” general (in Johnston’s case, admiral) promoted from a very limited pool of three-starofficers. Johnston is the longest-serving of the current three stars...
6 years of indecision and drift
Angus Campbell ends his 6 year tenure as the chief of Australia’s military having delivered drift and inaction, at a time when Australia has needed urgent and decisive action from our nation’s defence force commander. Whatever his personal character and ethics, he is...
Clean hands and credibility lacking in Special Adviser appointment
The Albanese government has appointed former Chief of the Defence Force Chief Marshal Mark Binskin as Special Adviser to advise the government on the sufficiency of Israel’s response to the Israel Defence Forces strikes which killed seven aid workers in Gaza....
The Apache attack helicopter: another $5 billion in stranded assets?
It’s no secret that technological change can lead to companies having stranded assets, that is, facilities or equipment that are no longer profitable. Smart companies try to avoid this by future-casting, understanding their operating environment, and avoiding the...
Grumpy Strategist Makers Series Episode 3 – NIOA Group
Grumpy Strategist Makers Series episode 3 - NIOA G | RSS.com From a small sporting shooting goods supplier in 1973, NIOA Group has grown to be a major munitions and weapons supplier to Australia's military and law enforcement organisations. Robert Nioa talks with...
An Australian decision on TikTok can use the advice we already have
When asked about a potential ban of TikTok in Australia because of moves to force its sale or banning in the US, Anthony Albanese was right to say that Australia makes its own decisions on national security and that these are “based on our security assessments”, “not...
Pezzullo a victim of Labor’s tribalizing of the public service
Reports surfaced at the end of March suggesting Michael Pezzullo, the sacked former secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, is to be “stripped” of his Order of Australia. This follows a closed-door public service review of Pezzullo’s conduct, after “hundreds of...
High seas drama over deep seabed mining
The race is on to tap high seas mineral riches. The International Seabed Authority, based in Jamaica, is responsible for the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. The ISA is negotiating this week to hammer out regulations for deep seabed mining. ...
Subs, Subs, Subs – 5 big events in the undersea world of AUKUS submarines
Subs, Subs, subs - 5 big events in the undersea wo | RSS.com The Grumpy Strategists cover US budget cuts from 2 to 1 sub in its 2025 budget, the UK Parliament's report (link here) on the UK's unaffordable defence plans & its failing nuclear reactor program, with...
The truth about Australia’s ‘stabilised’ relationship with China
When Beijing is openly preparing to attack Taiwan, endlessly bullying countries into political submission and undermining US alliances in Asia, it takes a special type of Australian diplomacy to pretend bilateral relations are improving and the biggest issues on the...
US SSN(X) decision reveals a more optimal SSN pathway for Australia
There’s been a lot of focus on nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) in Australia in the last week or so. First there was the firestorm in response to the United States Navy reducing its planned procurement of Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs)...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit: the sounds of silence
The most striking thing about the Chinese foreign minister’s visit to Australia is how empty the official events around it have been. Australian government statements about it have been content free, apart from expressing the government’s delight about having the...
Time for Defence to play a bigger role in Australia’s fuel market
The precarious state of Australia’s imports of refined fuels like diesel and jet fuel requires Defence to play a bigger role in Australia’s fuel market to satisfy its ongoing fuel needs. Because in the long run relying solely on the market will place more than...
Grumpy Strategists Makers Series Episode 2 – Gilmour Space
Grumpy Strategists Makers Series Episode 2 - Gilmo | RSS.com In 12 years, Adam Gilmour has grown Gilmour Space to be able to design and build its own space launch rockets, satellite buses to carry users' payloads & now is running his own space launch facility in...
Reform a must before Palestine state is created
As the war in Gaza moves towards a conclusion there’s been renewed discussion regarding the recognition of a state of Palestine without waiting for Israeli approval. Australia has refrained from recognition, viewing the bifurcation of Palestinian territories between...
The dangerous new Defence Industrial Development Strategy – jarringly out of step with our world
The dangerous new Defence Industrial Development Strategy - jarringly out of step with our world | RSS.com Grumpy Strategists Marcus Hellyer & Michael Shoebridge have waded through the Australian Government's new Defence Industrial Development Strategy's 114 pages...
Defence falling further behind the excellence curve
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles has expressed his concerns with the quality of advice coming from the Department of Defence’s leadership. He has stated there are issues of ‘culture within the senior leadership’ and apparently, less than...
New Defence Industry Strategy: a dangerous framework that’s wilfully blind
Defence industry minister Pat Conroy released the government’s Defence Industrial Development Strategy the day after ASIO boss Mike Burgess told the country that a former politician had sold out our country to a foreign spy agency. That was good timing for...
ASIO chief Mike Burgess says violent extremism remains a pervasive threat
ASIO head Mike Burgess’s annual threat assessment speech has been a welcome addition to Canberra’s national security theatre, now in its fifth year. Rather like the great and powerful Wizard of Oz, Burgess emerges in front of a curtain – black, not green like in the...
Leveraging PNG’s strengths and location to become a small maritime power
As Papua New Guinea is our closest neighbour, we’ve got direct security interests in the country’s maritime and border security. Porous borders and poor law and order in PNG waters poses risks to Australia, whether it be from illegal immigrants, biosecurity hazards or...
Grumpy Strategists – The Makers’ Series Episode 1
Grumpy Strategists - The Makers' Series Episode 1 | RSS.com This new Grumpy Strategists series talks with makers & leaders in Australian industry who are key to our security. Tom Loveard, Chief Technology Officer and one of the founders of C2 Robotics is our...
Australian foreign policy shouldn’t be performance art – it should shape outcomes
American comedian Will Rogers once quipped that, “People are taking their comedians seriously and their politicians as a joke”. It’s still true. A proof was laid out recently in the joint statement by the prime ministers of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, who...
A new Navy plan – money, frigates & floating missile trucks but no lessons from the Black or Red Seas
A new plan for Australia's Navy - money, frigates & floating missile trucks, but no lessons from the Black or Red Seas | RSS.com The Grumpy Strategists review the Australian Government's "Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant" Plan, which resurrects the 1990s habit of...
Doubling down: The Navy’s new surface fleet plan by the numbers
The Government has released the broad brushstrokes of a plan for the structure of the Royal Australian Navy’s surface fleet and for the approach to naval shipbuilding to deliver that fleet. This plan is based on the independent review of the navy’s surface fleet that...
New plan to save the Navy, old approach to implementation
It has taken two reviews and 19 months for Defence Minister Richard Marles to understand the Royal Australian Navy is broken. The plans it had to get new warships into the fleet were delivering too late to matter, and the navy’s eight elderly Anzac-class frigates have...
Reversing the slow-motion collapse of our Navy
The Government’s challenge is to get new, properly armed warships into the Royal Australian Navy before the ageing ANZACs break and well before the first underarmed, over budget Hunter class frigate makes its way into service sometime from 2033 – and have these ships...
Richard Marles: stop digging, start leading
Richard Marles and Pat Conroy, our Defence and Defence Industry ministers, are living the lonely nightmare of seeing their careers sputter from a succession of policy and implementation failures. They are hardly alone. Marles is the 10th defence minister since the...
Getting a clear view of the cloudy budget for Australia’s nuclear submarine program
This brief has been updated since Senate estimates hearings on the Defence portfolio on 14 February 2024 to incorporate discussion at that forum. What do we know about the budget for Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) program? Much commentary has focused on...
Grasping the Defence nettle
Recent days have covered the apparent—and to insiders, longstanding—differences between the defence minister and his department. First reported in the Australian Financial Review last week, the fractures include a mutual disregard, frustrations over slowness on...