There’s been a slew of criticism recently of Russian and Saudi bombing of civilian areas during Middle East conflicts. And there’s evidence that the Russian bombing campaign in particular isn’t going out of its way …
Articles by: "Andrew Davies"
Yesterday the Australian government (with the PM and three cabinet ministers in attendance) announced that it’s going to split ASC into three separate but still government-owned companies, to ‘support the key capabilities of shipbuilding, submarine …
By all accounts, there’s to be another review of Australia’s intelligence agencies in the near future. The ‘major independent review’ will be the third in 15 years and it’s variously reported that the focus will …
There’s a debate going on in the US at the moment that isn’t attracting much commentary here. While it’s a touch arcane, it’s worthy of public discussion. The question is the organisational arrangement for America’s …
The Australian Army did pretty well post-INTERFET, gaining two extra battalions and some new tanks and artillery. But today the Army has pretty much taken a back seat to Air Force and Navy in the …
There are plenty of ‘headline issues’ in the Australian national Audit Office’s new report on the Tiger Armed Reconnaissance helicopter. That’s not surprising, given that the government effectively gave up on the aircraft as a …
I read Geoff Slocombe’s recent post about quantum computing with interest and, I’ll admit, a little skepticism. While there’s no doubt that practical quantum computing would represent a significant step forward in computing power, there …
Way back when, we started our professional lives in theoretical physics. And sometimes it shows; we’ve never met a data set we didn’t like, and from time to time there’s an outbreak of ‘let’s see …
We read Graeme Dunk’s recent post on Defence’s love affair with the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program with interest. In one sense Graeme is right—as we’ve noted previously, there have been some (slightly mysterious) …
As a long term critic of the ‘silver bullet’ approach to military capability development, Gareth Robinson’s recent piece on the Third Offset Strategy got me thinking. Given the wealth of technical capability and capacity within …
On 31 May, yet another Australian FMS purchase approval was listed on the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) website. This new sale is for ‘up to eighty (80) Standard Missiles, SM-2 Block IIIB’, as …
After the Abbott government approved the purchase of 72 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the RAAF, its fast jet capability was locked in for years to come. From around 2020, the F-35s will join 24 …