Debate: "Policy, guns and money"
Reader response: Reserves, force structure and need

Like so many people with very little firsthand experience of creating and using defence capability at any sophisticated level, Nic Stuart has effortlessly come up with yet another answer to the financial problems of Defence—Reserve …

Four ships for the price of six?

A few years ago, I estimated the per ship costs of the Air Warfare Destroyer program. The conclusion I came to, based on conservative assumptions, was that we were getting three ships for the price …

Air combat – where to from here?

The recent Australian National Audit Office reports on the current and future air combat capability highlighted the risk and potential cost of keeping the 1980s vintage Hornets flying until they are replaced by the F-35 …

Defence in an age of austerity

Hard times are upon Defence again, which will have implications for the way the nation’s military capability evolves. As Andrew Davies pointed out recently, much of the ADF’s capability today is thanks to a ramping …

Trouble at the docks? (part II)

Earlier this year, Mark Thomson and I wrote a paper that highlighted the challenges in maintaining continuity in Australia’s submarine force. One of the things we didn’t discuss at any length in that paper was …