Earlier this week, The Australian ran a story about delays in the construction of the Navy’s new amphibious ships. At first blush, it looked like a familiar story of poor shipyard performance, with 14,000 defects found …
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Recently, commentators have argued that Australia should seek closer defence ties with Japan. In his AFR column, Peter Jennings suggested that to consider China’s reaction to such ties would be to ‘let China think their …
The rapidly-warming strategic relationship between Australia and Japan has drawn considerable attention this week. Some are for it, some are against it. Some see it as a mechanism to reinforce the growth of a responsible …
Australia is developing the habit of balancing an address to the Parliament by an Asia-Pacific ally with a matching speech by China’s President. The contentious words in that sentence are ‘balancing’ and ‘ally’, even if …
The building of a replacement for Australia’s Collins class submarines will be the country’s most expensive and complex defence project to date. There are a myriad of capability, commercial and industrial issues to be managed: …
In December last year, National Interest listed the world’s five greatest battleships, defined as the most iconic. Definitions matter. Less adventurous but maybe more easily defended, here’s a list of the five greatest metal battleships …
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 …
The fifth Australia–Japan Foreign and Defence Ministerial (2+2) Consultations in Japan in early June 2014 led to another significant step forward in the growing strategic relationship between the two countries—the signing of the Defence Science, …
Last Friday, the defence minister announced no fewer than three shipbuilding initiatives. First, to the dismay of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (PDF) and the indignation of the opposition, the government announced that it would …
As memories are lost it becomes the role of commemorations to shape our view of history. The 40th anniversary commemorations of the Normandy landings in 1984 brought Ronald Reagan to Pointe du Hoc, where US …
In my last post, I considered the operational and technical challenges of Australia acquiring F-35B STOVL Joint Strike Fighters and operating them from the Canberra class LHDs. In an ideal budget environment, were the decision …
The issue of ballistic missile defence (BMD) was a controversial one when US President Reagan first advocated a strategic-level system in the early 1980s. It remains so today—defences against theatre- and tactical-range missiles are gradually …