After a year of intense research, the head of the 350-strong nuclear-powered submarine taskforce is confident the Royal Australian Navy will be equipped with SSNs. Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead tells The Strategist he believes ‘absolutely’ …
Sixty-nine years ago, an armistice ended three years of fighting involving the United States, China, South Korea and North Korea. In a speech marking the anniversary, North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, threatened to use …
It’s been more than 75 years since nuclear bombs were detonated over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, bringing World War II to an end with Japan’s unconditional surrender. Since then, …
Ukraine needs large stocks of heavy weapons, tanks, artillery, long-range missiles and air-defence systems if it’s to defeat a looming Russian offensive in the nation’s east, the Ukrainian ambassador to Australia has warned. ‘I’m sorry, …
Last Sunday, Russian missiles struck the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security at Yavoriv in western Ukraine, a mere 25 kilometres from the Polish border. The strikes were carried out with cruise missiles launched by …
Nations in and near Eastern Europe have long feared the sort of brutal onslaught Russia’s Vladimir Putin is visiting upon Ukraine. That fear is heightened by the horrifying prospect that if, against the odds, they …
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revived many questions about nuclear deterrence. Whatever the outcome of what could be a long war, the issues it has raised won’t go away. In 1994, Ukraine surrendered the nuclear …
The US Navy’s new low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile, produced rapidly by the National Nuclear Security Administration, is intended to provide a proportional response to US adversaries’ concepts of ‘coercive, limited nuclear escalation’. Proposed in the …
A strategist provides the decision-maker with at least three options: the most likely option, the least likely option and the most dangerous option. This methodology applies to all strategists, regardless of their discipline—national security, diplomacy, …
With the presidential election only 10 days away, what US nuclear strategy might be under a Joe Biden administration and what that might imply for US extended nuclear deterrence should be key issues of concern …
No other weapon system embodies the menacing, but also out-of-sight, presence of nuclear weapons better than the stealthy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) that have, for six decades, ceaselessly prowled the world’s cold ocean depths, …
Today is an age of acceleration, a time when Moore’s Law is creating profound changes at diminishing intervals, making it difficult to anticipate strategic, social and technological developments. Some organisations facing these cascades of change, …











