Our modern navy needs to be increasingly a national enterprise, bringing together the private and public sectors of the economy to deliver a fundamental national objective—security above, on and under the sea. That means Navy …
From trying to install 21st century avionics on 1960s helicopters to buying landing craft that crack and can’t fit onto their motherships, defence procurement in Australia has been fraught. Within this context David Peever’s First …
A significant amount has been written about the looming defence maritime mega projects—SEA 1000 (Future Submarine) and SEA 5000 (Future Frigate). Each of these projects has been subjected to intense scrutiny due to the Abbott …
2015 is the year that saw Government announce that Continuous Shipbuilding will be a permanent feature in the nation’s industrial landscape – surely, this is not an outlandish notion for a maritime nation. To understand …
This week’s release in the ADF capability snapshot series takes a look at the Royal Australian Navy. (Here’s a link to last week’s RAAF paper.) Again, there’s a lot more good news than bad in …
In a rare moment of not talking about submarines or frigates at the recent PAC2015 meeting, we sat down for a talk with the good folk from MDBA, a multinational company that does a lot …
There’s been a lengthy and lively debate on The Strategist lately regarding the future of Australia’s surface combatants, specifically the SEA 5000 future frigate. Attracting little attention on the other hand was last months’ closure …
We’ve been at the PAC2015 maritime expo and conference this week. There’s only really been two topics of conversation on the trade floor: the future submarine and the future frigates. Admittedly those two projects amount …
The Government has recently announced a rolling build strategy for building future frigates and corvettes; given my recent post on this subject I think this is a sensible step, even though there are overseas production …
My previous post highlighted the growing challenge of advanced anti-ship missiles to naval surface combatants where I noted that the effectiveness of these counter-intervention systems depends on the adversary achieving early success in information warfare. …
In my earlier article, I argued that Australia’s most important sea-trade during a time of crisis in Asia is likely to be high-value, low-volume importation of machinery and industrial equipment from Europe and North America. …
The fascinating debate on the worth of Australia building the Future Frigates as part of SEA 5000 between Hugh White and James Goldrick (see here, here , here and here ) highlights the issue of …