ARTICLES
Indian Ocean environmental security needs a regional centre
Environmental challenges such as climate change, marine plastic pollution and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing are increasingly posing serious threats to Indian Ocean countries, especially the smaller island states. Other threats include...
The internet relies on things: vulnerable undersea cables
According to Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, Russia could destroy subsea cables in Europe and America. As a maritime power the US connects with its friends and allies around the world through submarine cables. Almost all our communications, including...
Apply, pace & learn: language for defence innovation
When the military say ‘move fast and break things’ it usually means something different to that in the world of technology. Yet that saying has been adopted from the tech world by defence ministers and officials, reflecting a conviction that government is too slow,...
Alan C. Wood & Alan Sutton, Military Aviation of the First World War (Fonthill, revised edition, 2022).
This excellent study introduces the embryonic air capabilities of the major combatants in the first World War. Many will think of the war primarily as the grinding infantry and artillery campaigns of the Western Front, but air power grew rapidly. Britain counted 113...
“More security and less dependence”: Germany’s national security policy
The Economist magazine greeted Germany’s June 14 release of the country’s first national security strategy with the snide headline “Big Words.” The document “does not make for exciting reading” the Economist declared. It is true that the statement is cautious and,...
Defence can’t fix itself and that matters for our security
How trusting of Deputy Prime Minister Marles to receive a scathing report about how broken the Defence bureaucracy is and to then turn to that same bureaucracy to heal itself. And how important for Australia’s security that he reconsiders and changes course. That’s...
Our chance to take charge of seabed mining legislation
The extraction of deep seabed mining resources on an industrial scale at incredible depths is a new frontier with many unknowns. But the potential gains are immense. Deep sea deposits contain manganese, cobalt, nickel, gold, silver, copper, and a wide range of rare...
Is Albanese serious about tackling Defence reform?
Australia’s defence industry leaders typically operate below the radar when it comes to critiquing defence policy. That’s hardly surprising. The industry has one customer – the government – and business doesn’t complain about the paymaster. This has created a...
UK’s Barrow-in-Furness gives a glimpse of Australia’s AUKUS subs program
It’s a real positive that prime mInister Albanese took the time to visit Barrow-in-Furness, the UK town which, together with Adelaide, will build the joint Australian-UK subs. His visit demonstrated that the government is committed to the AUKUS deal. That’s good to...
Beijing’s empty words mean deterrence, not dialogue, will prevent war
Australian prime minister Albanese isn’t the only one talking about the need for ‘guardrails’ in our region to manage and reduce the risk of conflict. This idea has been put forward by US President Biden and senior members of his Administration like Secretary of State...
To prevent a China war, we must bind ourselves to Taiwan
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has just issued a warning to China over Taiwan. Delivering the keynote address at the Indo-Pacific's most significant security conference the Prime Minister told delegates at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that taking Taiwan by...
4 selfish reasons to help Ukraine
There are five reasons Australia should be doing more now to support the Ukrainian military fight Putin’s forces. Only one is that helping 44 million people living in freedom resist a murderously brutal invasion is the right thing to do. The other four are more...
Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power. By Mark Wortman (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2022) 310 pages.
Hyman Rickover served in the United States Navy for 63 years. He pioneered nuclear propulsion and civilian nuclear power, personally approved the trials into service of 126 nuclear submarines and through sheer force of personality changed the Navy’s officer culture...
Let’s not forget Taiwan as we kowtow to China on trade
In the skies above the South China Sea last Friday a Chinese People’s Liberation Army J-16 fighter aircraft flew perilously close to the nose of an American RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft. The US Defence Department said the “unnecessarily aggressive manoeuvre” forced...
Tug-of-war existence between Taiwan and China
I stood on Cihu beach, on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, contemplating the hazy silhouettes of Xiamen skyscrapers only three kilometres away on the Chinese mainland. My travelling companion’s phone pinged. The message from Vodafone said: “Welcome to China”. The...
Breaking the suspended animation of defence innovation
As policy advisors and decision makers consider the problem of defence innovation, the video of the SpaceX Starship launch of 20 April 2023 should be required viewing. When they watch it, they should note the audacity of the vision, the engineering, and the global...
Forget transparent seas. What’s the plan to deal with crowded oceans?
Eight Australian nuclear submarines operating sometime in the 2050s is a long way off. Even Australia operating its first Virginia Class submarine, all things going well, by 2033 is a decade and $60bn away. Well before then, Australia’s waters (our large...
A ready reserve of nation’s civilian fleet makes sense for the RAN
Recent revelations that China has launched multiple new civilian ferries that could be used as amphibious assault ships against Taiwan have caused consternation among some strategic analysts. Some analysts see mobilised civilian assets such as roll-on, roll-off...
Do we have a viable military strategy?
With the Albanese government’s adoption of the Defence Strategic Review, Australia’s defence strategy has become more focused. Instead of maintaining a defence force that can do a bit of everything, the focus is now squarely on deterring potential Chinese aggression...
12 questions on the 2023-24 Defence budget
Australia needs to mobilise in order to address the strategic challenges it is facing. The Defence Strategic Review (DSR) proposes ways to do that. However, the 2023-24 Defence Portfolio Budget Statements (PBS) does not yet incorporate the recommendations of the DSR....
G7 de-risks on China and supports Ukraine. Australia re-risks and shuffles feet.
Australia’s attendance at the G7 and Quad leaders meetings in Japan helps Anthony Albanese back home. It portrays him as a respected, influential international leader. But the price of sitting at these tables isn’t smiling and participating in photo opportunities,...
Vacuous Quad joint statement sets off warning bells
The best that can be said of the statements, declarations, compacts and media transcripts from Anthony Albanese’s meetings in Hiroshima is that they make a thin gruel. We now have a Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact with the US, which...
Emergency training program would help plug ADF gap
The Defence Strategic Review recommended our fighting forces be released from most of their domestic disaster-response role to concentrate on deterring wars, and winning them if deterrence fails. The DSR found that the increasing use of the military for disaster...
Modi goes to PNG – why it matters to the region and Australia
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Papua New Guinea early next week and then go on to Australia, despite the cancellation of the Quad Leaders’ summit. Fortunately, Prime Minister Modi’s visit to PNG wasn’t linked to US President Biden’s cancelled visit to...
Biden skipping Sydney Quad meeting’s bad, but our underwhelming Strategic Review is worse
US President Joe Biden’s decision not to attend a summit of the Quad countries in Sydney is disappointing but not unexpected. Given the perilous negotiations in Washington to avert a default on government debt, it is more surprising that Biden is still intending...
Climate changes the role of Australian police in the Pacific
The Defence Strategic Review points out that if climate change accelerates over coming decades it has the potential to significantly increase risk in our region. As affirmed by the 2018 Boe Declaration, climate change “remains the single greatest threat to the...
Defence Budget 2023-24: Living in the past
The bottom line up front: The Albanese government’s May Defence budget is disconnected from its own Defence Strategic Review. Defence funding and the plan for spending is business as usual when instead we need urgent action. Simply committing to the now seven-year-old...
Unpacking the DSR dollars
Like all big policy statements, the public version of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR), released on 24 April this year, is a mix of the good, the bad and ugly. Of course, depending on your point of view, a piece of information (or its absence) could fall into any...
Cyber and the seven questions posed by the Defence Strategic Review
In an age of fast evolving, disruptive digital tools, including emerging forms of AI, how can we reimagine the Australian Defence organisation, including the military, and its functions? What are the concepts of work, financial frameworks, governance, resourcing...
A slow Capability Accelerator is unacceptable
One proven way for organisations to deal with uncomfortable recommendations from external reviews is to accept what they recommend and then implement them in ways that are business as usual, but with new paint. The Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA)...