James Mugg’s recent piece made a convincing case that the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability of surface combatants is more about the aircraft they embark than about systems on the ships themselves. In this post I …
Articles by: "Andrew Davies"
Defence spent $8.3 billion on sustaining its equipment in 2016–17, compared with $9.3 billion on new capital equipment. But most of the words written on defence procurement (including mine) are about acquisition projects. Thankfully the …
We wrote an ASPI report on ballistic missile defence (BMD) back in 2014. We set out to assess whether the time was right for Australia to make a bigger investment in BMD than the ‘watching …
In the previous part of my exploration of the impact of strong encryption on our security agencies, I described the unsophisticated days of intercepting telephony in the 1970s. With voice communications, it’s largely a case …
Today I’m coming back to a subject long dear to me—the cost of the Future Submarine program. Long term followers of the subject might recall ASPI’s 2009 paper How to buy a submarine (PDF), which …
The debate about law enforcement access to encrypted communications has flared up again recently. It seems that everyone has a view on the subject, including a string of American visitors to our shores: US Senator …
It has been a little over a year since the government released its Defence Industry Policy Statement. As well as setting a new world record for using the word ‘innovation’ in a single document, the …
As long-term readers will know, we keep a watching brief on American aircraft development and production programs that are relevant to Australia. The two most significant ones are the RAAF’s current and future first line …
The 28 March 2017 landfall of Queensland’s Cyclone Debbie revealed yet again the value of having military assets readily available to rescue and support those needing help. This time it was the Whitsunday Islands, stricken …
At last we have the Turnbull government’s naval shipbuilding plan. It claims to be the first such plan, yet the Howard government released one in 2003 and we had a de facto one from the …
As discussed recently on The Strategist, rumour has it that construction on the Future Frigate program is now unlikely to start in 2020. If true, that’s not a bad thing for completing the systems engineering …
The rumour du jour in defence circles this week is that the planned date for beginning work on the future frigate program has been slipped a couple years, out to 2022. That’s despite a robust …