Last December, the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) appointed Dong Jun, former commander of the People’s Liberation Army navy (PLAN), as China’s new defence minister more than two months after his …
As Australia awarded itself an ill-thought-out peace dividend at the end of the Cold War, the impact fell hardest on the Navy’s surface combatant fleet. Arguably no element was thought through more thoroughly for the …
Attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have had almost no impact on the oil price, despite the volume of oil shipped through the waterway surging 80% over the last two years because of the …
Originally published on 9 February 2023. In March, the government is expected to announce its plans to implement the ambitious proposal for an Australian force of nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) that is at the heart of …
Houthi forces based in Yemen are engaged in what resembles an unhinged, turbocharged form of piracy in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, where disruption and destruction have supplanted the traditional motivation of material …
Sea state Australia has accused China of ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ conduct after Royal Australian Navy divers were allegedly injured last week by a People’s Liberation Army Navy destroyer inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone. The incident …
The hack into the systems of ports operator DP World at the weekend exposes Australia’s high dependence on containerised imports for manufactured goods. Walk into any Bunnings, Harvey Norman, Officeworks, Myers or K-Mart store, and …
Last year, while standing on the foreshore at Nightcliff in Darwin at low tide, I watched an ascending Bell MV-22 Osprey transforming from helicopter to airplane mode. Looking down just after it passed, I saw …
Sea state Japan is fast-tracking its acquisition of US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles, aiming for as early as 2025. The decision, announced by Japanese Defense Minister Kihara Minoru following talks with his US counterpart, Defense Secretary …
Sooner or later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s destructive political magic, which has kept him in power for 15 years, was bound to usher in a major tragedy. A year ago, he formed the most …
Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October marks a decisive moment in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and will be a crucial test of Australian statecraft. As a respected regional power with significant interests in the …
To compete strategically with the United States and undermine President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy, China has quietly been advancing its stealthy divide-and-conquer foreign policy agenda on four different but connected frontiers. The core of Beijing’s …