ARTICLES
Seabed mining rules lapse is window for Pacific regulations
In late July, after weeks of fierce debate at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) meeting in Jamaica, deep-sea mining proponents failed to get an agreement for the immediate licensing of deep-sea mining operations. The ISA has issued more than 30 exploration...
Podcast: Naval shipbuilding without ships & a Navy review about what?
Naval Shipbuilding without ships & a Navy review about what? | RSS.com The second Grumpy Strategists Production looks at 'continuous shipbuilding' and the Navy. 6 years on, the National Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise hasn't delivered any ships. Meanwhile, the ANZAC...
Australia & Triton: a user’s guide for what not to do with UAVs
One element of President Biden’s FY2024 defense budget that has not attracted much attention here in Australia is one that has direct implications for us - and some very practical lessons about how Defence does capability planning, acquisitions and thinks about the...
Australia can’t be a bystander as Washington’s submarine debate grows
Two years on from the AUKUS announcement in September 2021 and only 6 months from Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Anthony Albanese giving us the ‘optimal pathway’, risks are already emerging that need our attention – and require some immediate big shifts in Australian...
Defence & Australian industry: from low trust & distant to direct partnership for delivery
"Australia’s defence industry is looking for two things: the first is an opportunity to participate in the strategic level thinking needed to bring clarity to a situation of increasing policy disorder. The Government, Parliament and Defence need to create mechanisms...
Podcast: the Defence Strategic Review health check
Health check on Australia's Defence Strategic Review | RSS.com In this first Grumpy Strategist Productions podcast, Marcus Hellyer and Michael Shoebridge do a health check on the Defence Strategic Review, with some disturbing news for the patient and for Australia's...
Talisman Sabre 2023: big lessons from a large exercise
The biggest version of Talisman Sabre ever conducted ended on 8 August. This high-end military exercise between Australian, US and other military forces involved over 34,500 military personnel from 13 nations and covered over 7,000km of Australia’s coastline...
Australia and Israel have a common blue economy future
Around the world, sustainable ocean economic activity, or the blue economy, is swelling. This growth is driven by dwindling land resources, technological advancements, and the urgent need to respond to climate change. The blue economy extends beyond traditional...
We need a national citizens’ militia
Successive Australian governments have had a phobia about being seen, even remotely, to support schemes that smack of national conscription. But we also know that in a time of crisis or conflict, our regular Defence Force will need to expand rapidly and work with...
Mobilisation and making things: how US industry won the war
Freedom’s Forge by Arthur Herman is unapologetic about how free enterprise, creativity and patriotic business figures turned a reluctant and consumer-focused American economy into ‘the arsenal of democracy’ that out innovated, out built and - with its allies...
The East Coast nuclear submarine base decision is needed now, not in 2033
US Republicans in Congress are pushing the Biden Administration to put more funding into US submarine production before Congress agrees to transfer any Virginia Class submarines to Australia. Resolved, this won't damage but will help the AUKUS deal. But it shows that...
Saltwater Strategists podcast “The China Challenge” and Australian security
A podcast covering strategy, capability, the region, China and the US recorded with Saltwater Strategists. Australia's security environment is not 'increasingly complex and uncertain'. It's unfortunately getting simple but in a nasty way - we face a direct security...
Robo debt and digital government: failure demands a broader redesign
In the preface to the Report of the Royal Commission into the Robo debt Scheme, Commissioner Holmes reflects how she was startled at the ‘myriad’ of ways the scheme failed the public interest. A fundamental failure was institutional—the Australian Public Service...
Australia and Germany help ourselves to jobs and vehicles while Ukraine fights a war
Ukraine’s military is running out of ammunition and other military supplies. The problem is so grave that US President Joe Biden has ‘concluded he had little choice but to provide’ Ukraine with cluster munitions – a class of weapons many countries, including...
Ukraine and China: déjà vu all over again for Mr Albanese at NATO
Anthony Albanese faces a testing trip to the NATO meeting in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, this week. And it shouldn’t be like this. Australia has been included in recent NATO meetings because it has provided much-needed military supplies to Ukraine and...
America walks the walk in battle for Pacific minds
NATO leaders gather in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, this week and Ukraine will dominate the summit. Anthony Albanese will be there. Security is global so it’s positive that he is attending. But we can’t escape our own region. Fortunately, there’s good news here. ...
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...