The future submarine project is heating up, with the government due to choose from the three competing bidders in a few months’ time. All of the current press attention seems to be focused on the …
Articles by: "Andrew Davies"
One of the questions I’m sometimes asked is ‘why do we call 6,000 ton warships frigates’? The implicit assumption behind the question is that the frigates of the past were vessels of modest size, and …
Part of my summer reading has been British naval historian Geoffrey Till’s excellent 2014 book Understanding victory: naval operations from Trafalgar to the Falklands. At first glance it doesn’t seem to offer much to anyone …
Mark Thomson and I were in Tokyo earlier this month as part of an annual exchange ASPI has with the National Institute for Defense Studies. The two organisations have been doing exchanges for over a …
The third paper in our Capability Snapshot series was released today. (The fourth, looking at the ADF’s C4ISR networks and capability, will come out next year as part of a larger piece of work.) In …
This week’s release in the ADF capability snapshot series takes a look at the Royal Australian Navy. (Here’s a link to last week’s RAAF paper.) Again, there’s a lot more good news than bad in …
It’s been five years since ASPI last took a detailed look at the capability of the ADF. Our 2010 Capability Review series looked at each of the services and the overall ability of the …
For a number of reasons, it wasn’t surprising to see Canada’s incoming government announce its intention of revisiting the former government’s decision to buy the F-35A Joint Strike fighter for the Royal Canadian Air Force. …
I had the chance last week to give a short presentation at the ADF’s Joint Warfare Conference. As a professional contrarian, I started my contribution with this: ‘Jointness is overrated. It’s a concept more valued …
In a rare moment of not talking about submarines or frigates at the recent PAC2015 meeting, we sat down for a talk with the good folk from MDBA, a multinational company that does a lot …
We’ve been at the PAC2015 maritime expo and conference this week. There’s only really been two topics of conversation on the trade floor: the future submarine and the future frigates. Admittedly those two projects amount …
I noted with interest and bemusement that the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade has announced an inquiry into the capability of Defence’s physical sciences and engineering (PSE) workforce. I’m interested because in …