ARTICLES
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...
Poor performance won’t improve while it is kept hidden
The Government has just tabled its ‘Portfolio Additional Estimates Statement’ in the Parliament to provide foundational information for our elected Senators to understand what the Department of Defence is trying to achieve with the $52.6bn of taxpayers’ money it has...
Questions on Defence’s mid-year budget update
The Defence 2023-24 Portfolio Additional Estimates Statements (PAES) were published on Thursday 8 February. The PAES outlines changes to the Defence budget since the Portfolio Budget Statements were released in May 2023. In essences, it is the most current information...
Megaprojects: Taking Flyvberg’s ‘outside view’ on Australia’s nuclear submarine program
Will Australia’s AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) program deliver as promised? The unavoidable answer is no. That’s because megaprojects virtually never deliver. That’s the finding of the person who has probably studied more megaprojects than anybody else:...
Lavishly funded but broke: Australia’s Defence Department needs a zero-based budget
The Australian Defence Department is broke. That must sound outrageous to almost every other military on the planet – and to pretty much every other part of the Australian Federal bureaucracy who are looking at efficiency dividends and a government obsessing...
2024 with a bang: Escalating war with de-escalating words, May Budget expectations & broken disposals
2024 with a bang: Escalating war with de-escalating words, May budget expectations & broken disposals | RSS.com The Grumpy Strategists look at the escalating conflict in the Middle East, the expectations and pressures the Albanese Government's reviews and delay have...
Will Trump sink AUKUS if he wins?
A second Trump presidency is not a certainty, but a forward-thinking Australian government would start planning for that possibility. Much more is at stake than bonhomie about alliance relations. If Trump trashes the AUKUS partnership on the false grounds that it...
Labor’s evasive action on grounded choppers won’t fly
There is something deeply suspect about the government’s decision to disassemble and bury 45 MRH-90 Taipan utility helicopters. Attempts to justify the decision have been incomplete, evasive and at times incoherent. What’s at stake is potentially $900m to $1bn of...
Ukraine and helicopters: Mr Albanese needs to dig Defence and Pat Conroy out of a hole of their own making
“Australia stands with Ukraine. We pay tribute to the unwavering resilience and courage displayed by the Ukrainian people.” That’s what prime minister Anthony Albanese says when asked about Australia’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Putin’s invasion. ...
Island recruits a win-win solution to ADF shortfall
Generation Z, hooked to smartphones, isn’t signing up to serve in the Australian Defence Force. Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh recently pointed out that the ADF allows transfers for personnel from the British and US armed forces. Now the Albanese...
Who will PNG call for assistance when Port Moresby is burning?
Large-scale rioting, looting and burning took place in Port Moresby last week, sparked by a payroll “glitch” deducting up to $120 a fortnight from public service pay packets, including Papua New Guinea police, defence and corrections personnel. Several hundred...
Getting on the front foot to help pave way for Gaza’s future
Foreign Minister Penny Wong arrives in Israel this week with an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of key developments to better inform our approach to the Israel-Gaza war. The minister will also be able to convey Australian ideas that might be...