Last year, as part of the broader discussion about a Plan B for Australia’s defence strategy, I started a series looking at Australia’s options to project military power in an age in which we could …
Articles by: "Marcus Hellyer"
The title of the latest issue of Australian Foreign Affairs asks, ‘Can we trust America?’ The case of the MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial system would suggest the answer is no. The 2016 defence white paper …
In the first part of this series, I noted that Australia’s Department of Defence spends a relatively small percentage of its budget on national support tasks (less than 0.2%), but around 40% of its capabilities …
The Australian Defence Force has performed valuable services in the 2019–20 bushfire emergency. More than 5,000 personnel have been involved in a wide range of tasks, both on the front line and in logistics and …
Two questions are frequently raised about the process that selected Australia’s preferred partner for the design and build of the future submarine. The first is why the Defence Department didn’t pursue a ‘son of Collins’, …
The Australian National Audit Office has just released its latest report on Australia’s $80 billion future submarine capability. It set itself the task of examining ‘the effectiveness of Defence’s administration of the Future Submarine Program …
Originally published 5 November 2019. We’ve known for a while that SEA 1000, the Defence Department’s future submarine program, is going to cost a lot of money—we just haven’t known exactly how much. But as …
We seem to have been both naughty and nice this year. The Australian National Audit Office isn’t going to put its much-anticipated report on the future submarine program in our stocking before Christmas and we’ll …
If this year’s bushfire season is anything like the new normal, then Australia certainly needs to think about adopting a new normal for the way it fights bushfires. I agree with Peter Layton’s recent Strategist …
It’s commonplace in commentary about the Australian Defence Force to say that its force structure looks today a lot like it did 30, 40 or 50 years ago. The structure remains largely the same, while …
In my previous post, I examined whether the B-21 bomber being developed by the US Air Force could be a viable long-range strike option for Australia. It would provide our air force with immense capability. …
Australia needs to consider its options for projecting greater military power in an age where we can’t assume that we’ll get assistance from the US whenever and wherever we need it. In my recent Strategist …