Ask a minister about the Defence Delivery Agency – we did – and the first thing you’ll hear is that it won’t be DMO 2.0. From information released over the past few days, including by …
Articles by: "Linus Cohen"
China’s security footprint was once confined to its immediate neighbourhood. That time is now past. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping since 2013, China has steadily extended its presence across the Indian and Pacific oceans, …
Australia’s 2026–27 budget commits the federal government to daily spending around A$181.9 million on defence. That headline sits on the cover of our 2026 The cost of Defence report, released today. The number is sobering. …
About A$17.4 billion of the Australian government’s promised A$53 billion increase in headline defence spending over the next 10 years remains uncertain. Of the uplift promised by the National Defence Strategy (NDS) a month ago …
Rather than gradually expanding its defence and security engagement across the Indo-Pacific, Beijing may choose to accelerate its trajectory, pushing boundaries to advance its interests and take advantage of a distracted United States. The result …
China’s expanding presence beyond the first island chain is most likely to generate incidents, friction and escalation risks not through deliberate aggression but through growing operational proximity. As Chinese military, paramilitary and law-enforcement activity becomes …
A major strategic shift in the Indo-Pacific is happening quietly: China’s presence in seas and ports far from its coast is becoming routine. The frequency of its appearances has been rising for about a decade. …
China’s defence and security presence beyond the Western Pacific is set to intensify over the next decade, expanding its access, influence and operational reach across the Indo-Pacific. In the Southwest Pacific, Beijing is likely to …
So you thought that watching defence spending was complicated. Well, Australia’s new National Defence Strategy displays three different ways of counting it. There’s the Defence portfolio’s appropriation from government; the appropriation from government plus Defence’s …
Australia may not lose most public accountability for Defence acquisition spending after all. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has quietly begun work on what looks very much like a replacement for the discontinued Major …
A dimming outlook for US defence exports in Europe – outlined by Bill Sweetman in a 24 March Strategist article – should raise concerns for the viability of the Trump administration’s defence export strategy. That …
The main mechanism by which Defence is held accountable to the public for management of its A$20-billion-per-year capability acquisition program has ended. In a press release on 6 March, the Parliamentary Joint Committee of Public …