Articles by: "Malcolm Davis"
Next steps for the Ghost Bat

The future of air combat is about teaming between crewed platforms and autonomous systems rather than relying purely on exquisite stand-alone and extremely expensive crewed platforms. With that mind, the development of the MQ-28A Ghost …

Taking robots and AI to war at sea

The December AUKUS Defence Ministers meeting in San Francisco has reinforced the importance of advanced undersea warfare capabilities as a key element of the agreement’s Pillar 2. A particular focus was the role of autonomous …

Australia misses the boat in the Red Sea

The 2023 defence strategic review noted that Australia’s economy had become more interconnected with the Indo-Pacific and the world, and that brought a fundamental interest in protecting the rules-based order upon which international trade depends. …

Seeing through the DARC, deep into space

The establishment by Australia and its AUKUS partners, the United States and the United Kingdom, of a deep space advanced radar capability (DARC) will help them respond to the threat of attacks on their satellites …

Starships from the north

On 17 November, SpaceX made a second attempt to launch its fully reusable launch vehicle, Starship Superheavy, from the company’s Boca Chica launch site in Texas. The first launch (video here, with launch at 44:48), …

India explores the next space frontier

History was made this week when India made the first-ever landing on the moon’s south pole. A 26-kilogram rover called Pragyan (‘wisdom’) arrived in lunar orbit aboard India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and was carried to the …

Australia’s space future in the north

Australia is a lucky country when it comes to the potential opportunities for space launch. Its geography means that sites close to the equator, which are sparsely populated and enjoy stable weather patterns, are ideal …

‘Impactful projection’—from land and sea

The 2023 defence strategic review has as its centrepiece the concept Defence Minister Richard Marles has defined as ‘impactful projection’. The goal is to defend Australia and its immediate region, and to ‘deter through denial’ …