(Or how I learned to stop worrying about naval power and to love the corvette.) Naval capability decisions start with maritime strategy. So I think we should get one. That’s deliberately provocative, but I struggle …
Debate: "Policy, guns and money"
This post is a contribution to a series leading to ASPI’s Future Surface Fleet Conference from 30 March to 1 April 2015. Registration closes 23 March. Recently, the US Sea Services (Navy, Marines, Coast Guard) released their …
Late last month, Ben Schreer introduced ASPI’s upcoming international conference on Australia’s Future Surface Fleet. In doing so, he observed that many factors—strategic, operational, international and industrial—will shape decisions about the Navy’s future surface fleet. …
A lot has happened since September 2013 when Tony Abbott promised to boost defence spending to 2% of GDP ‘within a decade’. The economic outlook has deteriorated, government revenues have fallen, and the Senate—like many …
Yesterday the government made two announcements about naval shipbuilding. The first was its plan to fix the ailing Air Warfare Destroyer program. What emerged wasn’t the approach foreshadowed in the press a few months ago, …
While the Australian Government has already made its decision to go ahead with procuring a total of 72 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, there’s still cause to watch the progress of the development program. Australia will …
Today’s a great day for the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Defence Force. It marks the commissioning of that $1.5 billion, 27,800-tonne behemoth soon to be known as HMAS Canberra. But as much as …
In 2013, the early replacement of the Anzac frigates was proposed as a way to bridge the shipbuilding ‘valley of death’. The idea was to continue building AWD hulls and equip them with a combat …
According to the South Australian government, the Australian economy will be better off by $21 bn if our next generation of submarines is built in-country rather than purchased from overseas. With the Abbott government likely …
I was pleased to be invited to speak at the South Australian Government’s Defence Industry Policy Summit (PDF) earlier this week. I was invited in my role as a member of the Defence White Paper Expert …
In a recent post, Andrew Davies explained how the government ignored Defence’s advice and chose the MRH90 over the Black Hawk helicopter—presumably because the former offered more for local industry. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with …
My colleague Mark Thomson despairs over the prospect of the early replacement of Navy’s Anzac frigates on cost-effectiveness grounds. He’s probably right, but I worry instead about the possibility that the capability implications and project …