The 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) reiterates the importance of a strategy of deterrence by denial suggested in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review. It also reiterates air, sea and land capability decisions already made to …
Articles by: "Malcolm Davis"
Australia is joining the US and Japan in developing systems for shielding territory from air and missile attack. The news comes as the Department of Defence and Royal Australian Air Force are under pressure to …
What, exactly, is Australia’s intended fleet of nuclear-powered submarines supposed to do? It’s reasonable to ask the question, because the government has not spelled out the roles of the vessels. Nonetheless, the answer is clear. …
Australians should take pride in our prompt and generous response to Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Australia’s ongoing assistance to Ukraine, which is approaching one billion dollars, mostly in the form of …
The Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant review has laid out plans for the Royal Australian Navy to grow larger, with more firepower in the coming decade to ensure that it can meet the challenges highlighted in the …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
The Optus telecommunications network failure followed closely by the cyberattack on DP World, one of Australia’s largest port operators, painfully demonstrated modern society’s dependence on its digital backbone. When critical infrastructure fails—through malicious means or …
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), …
The analysis of the Royal Australian Navy’s surface combatant fleet that flowed from the defence strategic review (DSR) has been presented to the government but no decisions on new capabilities will be announced until 2024. …