The US Navy’s USS John C. Stennis carrier strike group has recently concluded a five-day ‘routine patrol’ in the South China Sea. Accompanied by several US vessels based in Japan, at first glance it appears …
The contrast between the replacement for the existing Collins class submarines and the F-111 strike fighter is instructive. Governments didn’t replace the F-111 with the similarly sized F15 fighter, let alone require a much bigger …
Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper states that it’s second Strategic Defence Interest is ‘a secure nearer region, encompassing maritime Southeast Asia and the South Pacific’ (3:68), which includes Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and the Pacific …
A key aspect of the new Defence White Paper is significant enhancement to ADF force structure. In previous White Papers, a list of four principal tasks has shaped Australian military strategy. In …
On 4 February, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the US Navy had developed a new anti-ship missile (ASM)—the Standard Missile 6 (SM-6). But that ‘new’ missile isn’t as new as it might …
Beijing has come under increasing international pressure over its building and militarisation of the maritime features it occupies in the Spratly Islands. On 30 January, the US Navy sent a guided-missile destroyer within 12 nautical …
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 …
Sea State The US Navy’s fleet of Aegis cruisers and destroyers are set to gain new ship-killing missiles, with US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announcing modifications to the Raytheon Stand SM-6 during an address …
One of the questions I’m sometimes asked is ‘why do we call 6,000 ton warships frigates’? The implicit assumption behind the question is that the frigates of the past were vessels of modest size, and …
Sea State The US Department of Defense has confirmed that the USS Curtis Wilbur conducted a freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea on 30 January, sailing within 12 nautical miles of Triton …
Political controversy, design issues and a logistics foul up, including a failure to allocate the resources to sustain the capability—there are some strikingly familiar themes in the acquisition of Australia’s first submarines, two 700-tonne E-class …
In his recent post on Australian policy towards acquisition of nuclear weapons, Rod Lyon responds to a thesis promoted by Christine Leah and Crispin Rovere that Australia should acquire its own independent nuclear deterrent capability. …