In my previous post on project timelines, I made the point that defence projects these days are taking longer to deliver than in the past. The reasons are many and varied–and we shouldn’t rule out …
Debate: "Policy, guns and money"
When is off the shelf not off the shelf? When it takes an age for the shopper to decide that he wants a little from product A and a little from product B. A great …
Andrew Davies’s recent post about long project timelines highlights issues that everyone accepts but rarely factors into the planning and management of the future force structure; modern projects take an unconscionably long time to actually …
In his recent ASPI lunchtime address, David Gould—DMO’s General Manager Submarines—observed that the Collins submarine project ‘delivered a class of six submarines of unique design in a shade under 20 years’. He added that the …
One of the capability announcements made along with the launch of the 2013 Defence White Paper was that ‘the Government will also bring forward the replacement of Australia’s Armidale Class Patrol Boats, with both Australia’s …
There has been quite a spirited debate (here and here) about the meaning behind the largest ships ever built for the Royal Australian Navy. In thinking about this further, maybe we should return to more …
The 1990 classic film Pretty Woman with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts was full of great lines, but the best belonged to veteran actor Ralph Bellamy near the end of the film. Bellamy plays the …
What a difference a year can make. Twelve months ago, it looked like the government had all but abandoned the ambitious plans set out for the ADF in the 2009 Defence White Paper. More than …
Every year I get to watch Mark Thomson pull off a remarkable feat of ‘extreme analysis’, as he cranks out 260 pages of the annual Cost of Defence report in the couple of weeks after …
In the last few weeks, we’ve seen some impressive photographs and the naming ceremony of the first of the 27,000 tonne Canberra class landing helicopter docks (LHDs) coming together in the BAE shipyards in Williamstown. …
Mark Thomson is squirreled away producing his usual tour de force budget analysis (on the streets May 30) so readers of The Strategist will have to make do with my first take on the Defence budget. Let’s …
Mark Thomson is widely quoted this morning as saying that the defence budget outcome is better than many observers hoped. Saved by the government’s decision to keep the overall budget in deficit, Defence was not …