Peter Layton’s recent post raises some important questions about force structure but ultimately comes up with an overly simplified characterisation of the alternatives. Peter describes the two ends of the force structure continuum in overly …
Rob Ayson’s dismay about the lacklustre summit of Australian and New Zealand Prime Minister’s last weekend is easily understandable. It produced so little of substance that one was left asking: why bother? What we got …
Earlier today, I took up an invitation to speak at the annual Australian Defence Magazine Congress. My task was to provide an update on the defence budget and make predictions about where it’s headed. The …
Andrew Davies makes some points about maritime operations which need teasing out. The first is in relation to maritime trade and the ability to protect it. It seems to me that in making the declaration …
For Australia, force structure decisions don’t solely revolve around national considerations. The alliance with America has a major influence. In thinking about force structures we have two choices at either end of a continuum: either …
Ben Schreer takes a hard-nosed approach to his analysis of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute in his recent post, but I don’t think I can agree with him. First and foremost, despite his criticism of China …
Welcome back for our pick of the defence and security world’s articles over the past week and listing of interesting events. Navy and fleet sizes The US Navy has reduced its fleet requirement from 313 …
Imagine a parallel universe where the Australian and New Zealand Prime Ministers conclude their annual meeting by announcing that they’d get together the next time there was a large enough issue to require their mutual …
In his recent post, Justin Jones did a commendable job of providing the justification for including submarines in a force structure. Jim Molan was right when he said that too much of the discussion of …
Old soldiers never die, General Douglas MacArthur said, they just fade away. In Australia however, it seems they vanish completely. So few retired generals contribute meaningfully to public debate on Australia’s defence and strategic policy, it …
The internal operations and habits of Canberra’s national security and intelligence departments have altered dramatically over the past four decades. The machinery went from manual to electric typewriters, and now from Microsoft into the Cloud. …
It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the world of cyber security, and it’s been a period that defines the discussion in new ways. Not only did the New York Times directly accuse the …