Of all the issues facing the new defence minister, the replacement of the Collins class submarines stands out in terms of scale, complexity and difficulty. A critical aspect of this multi-billion dollar program will be …
Debate: "Policy, guns and money"
A few months back, Mark Thomson and I wrote about eight defence challenges for the incoming government. Some of them were obvious, such as getting the budget under control, managing the future submarine project and …
The incoming government’s promise to boost defence spending to 2% of GDP within a decade has attracted a lot of commentary, including here, here and here on The Strategist. And well it should. It’s a …
Remarkably, there’s now bipartisanship in Australian Defence. Both major parties agree that the Defence Budget should be 2% of GDP. The only difference is the timing in getting there. While some express doubts, there’s a certain logic …
The Opposition’s defence policy (PDF) released yesterday was perhaps more notable for commitments it didn’t make rather than ones it did. It’s a cautious document, light on for hard timings for major decisions. But that’s …
An ear-piercing alarm should ring the moment a politician pretends national security is too important for party politicking. You know they’re lying. That’s because within seconds they’ll set about violating their own injunction. Thin, grasping, …
In a speech at the Lowy Institute, the Prime Minister today announced that a re-elected government will … establish the Future Navy Taskforce that will provide advice to the Government on implementing these recommendations and …
At last, defence is being paid some serious attention in the election campaign. In his campaign launch on Sunday, Mr Abbott said: Within a decade, the budget surplus will be 1 per cent of GDP, …
In one of my earlier pieces I mentioned the cost growth experienced by the Apollo program. It’s worth digging a little deeper into that story. In a wonderful paper on cost estimation (yes, I need …
Back in June, I was asked to speak at a workshop in Ottawa on defence reform, alongside presenters from the United States and United Kingdom. It was a great opportunity to catch up on what’s …
Thirteen years on from the release of the 2000 defence white paper (D2000), we’re still waiting for some of the major ADF capabilities it announced to be realised. Given the time it takes to deliver …
I discussed previously that force structure planning should take into account that new equipment projects have very long timelines—Andrew Davies’ post this morning explains clearly the downsides of getting the planning wrong. It might help …