ARTICLES
The post-Budget blues edition: Backloaded cash, unachievable plans and Collins dies young
The post Budget blues edition: Backloaded cash wit | RSS.com In Episode 18, the Grumpy Strategists look at the challenges, contradictions and half truths the numbers in the 2024 Defence Budget reveal. The headline early $5.7 billion turns out not to turn up until...
The 2024-25 Defence budget: one project to rule them
The name of the project to deliver Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) is now public: DEF 1. It’s an appropriate moniker for the one program destined to rule all of Defence. With the Defence portfolio budget statements (PBS) coming only a few weeks after the...
Truth Decay – some corrective action is necessary and possible
Australia’s Chief of Defence Force General Angus Campbell recently described the challenge of “truth decay”, where misinformation and emotions often intersect. This has played out in recent incidents in Bondi Junction and Western Sydney. An innocent person’s...
China’s aggressive military shows Australia needs a new playbook
The latest dangerous aggression by China’s military against Australia’s defence personnel – dropping flares in front of a Navy helicopter enforcing United Nations sanctions – showed us two things. Xi Jinping is happy to see his fighter pilots and ship captains acting...
Beijing’s bullying needs to be called out, loud and clear
Defence Minister Richard Marles was absolutely right to call out China publicly for the “unsafe and unprofessional interaction” in which a People’s Liberation Army jet dropped flares in the flight path of an Australian helicopter operating off the air warfare...
Rolling back dangerous Chinese military behaviour – it starts with a phone call
It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that a Chinese jet has endangered an Australian Navy helicopter and the lives of its crew by unprofessional flying and launching flares in front of it in the Yellow Sea. This is just one of hundreds of similar aggressive and...
The numerology of Australia’s new National Defence Strategy & investment plan
The numerology of Australia's new National Defence | RSS.com In Episode 17, Marcus Hellyer and Michael Shoebridge assess the foundations of defence minister Richard Marles' new National Defence Strategy, looking for clarity and focus that the welter of priorities,...
The National Defence Strategy’s 2 key shortfalls: strategic purpose & the nature of warfare
Years ago, a task often assigned graduates newly arrived in Defence was to draft responses to letters from the public. Responses would be composed by stitching together relevant ‘standard paragraphs’—pre-agreed words to common issues or concerns—then dispatched to the...
Unpacking the numbers in Defence’s new Integrated Investment Plan
On Wednesday 23 April, the Albanese Government released its National Defence Strategy (NDS) and Integrated Investment Program (IIP). The NDS was foreshadowed in the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and is meant to appear every two years, replacing Defence White Papers....
Anthony Albanese turns a deaf ear to Australia’s rising terror threat
The appearance at the National Press Club of ASIO director-general Mike Burgess and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw on Wednesday coincided with a massive counter-terror operation in NSW. On Thursday, five juveniles were charged with various...
A Pacific Ocean Expedition
Pacific leaders have long recognised the benefits to be derived from investing more in ocean science to support national and regional economic growth in ocean sectors. The islands, while small, have huge ocean areas. That makes them large ocean states. Managing the...
Why we should pay attention to China’s Antarctic moves
After Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s recent meeting with Penny Wong in land-locked Canberra it was surprising he didn’t head to Hobart for a photo op next to the Xue Long, one of China’s three icebreakers, that had travelled to Hobart from Zhongshan in China. In...
The West must act against Tehran aggression
The massive and direct aggression against Israel by Iran should wake up the democratic world to the true nature of the geopolitical and terror threat at the heart of the Israel-Hamas conflict. We’re all facing the same rectangle of rogues: Iran, Russia,...
Finding the money for submarines is squeezing the Australian Defence Force
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles unleashed a blizzard of numbers yesterday when he launched the Albanese government’s first National Defence Strategy and the first public version of the Department of Defence’s acquisition plan in four years. Those numbers included...
Wakeley terror attack: Seven questions our leaders must answer
At the start of inevitably lengthy police and intelligence inquiries into the terrorism-motivated stabbing at the Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, Sydney, it is best to begin by outlining the questions that need to be answered. In an age of increasing...
Iran blitz exposes peace ‘fantasy’ of Labor foreign policy
On Israeli estimates, Iran launched 185 drones, 36 cruise missiles and 110 surface-to-surface missiles against targets in the Negev desert. That’s quite a barrage considering Tehran’s overwhelming objective is to avoid rather than to start a full-scale war with...
There is no deterrence without a manufacturing base
Deterrence has been this Government’s mantra from the early stages of its time in office. Initially promoted under the guise of “impactful projection”, the position was reinforced in the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) with the stated, repeated, need to ‘focus on...
Devalued words and dollars damage Australia’s security
Devalued words and dollars damage Australia's secu | RSS.com The Grumpy Strategists assess the state of public decisions and defence policy making in Australia: the damaging path of 'profound' and 'transformative' policies that aren't; the distracting symbolic...
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)...