Search Results for "surface ships"
LHD and F-35B: the debate opens up

Debate over the possibility of operating F-35B aircraft from the Canberra LHDs has opened up—a good thing. This post offers technical and tactical thoughts to stimulate the debate and challenge recent assertions. The feasibility of …

The costs of cutting steel

In 2013, the early replacement of the Anzac frigates was proposed as a way to bridge the shipbuilding ‘valley of death’. The idea was to continue building AWD hulls and equip them with a combat …

A maritime denial role for the Army

Earlier this month Army released a discussion paper on a Joint Archipelagic Manoeuvre Concept. It’s a brief document, so probably still a work in progress. An idea at its heart—the support of air and sea …

Putin is not a strategic grand master

The destruction of Malaysian flight MH17 could hardly have come at a more inopportune moment for Russia, already reeling from Western sanctions and isolation. A growing body of evidence suggests that pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine …

Supporting Australia’s Antarctic interests

Earlier this year, I cited the case of the tourist expedition ship Akademik Shokalskiy, which became entrapped near Commonwealth Bay in the waters of Australia’s Antarctic Territory, as showing up serious limitations of Australia’s weakening …

ASPI suggests

It was a big week for Defence with the Federal Budget handing down, on balance, a win for the portfolio. Check out Mark Thomson’s preliminary analysis of this year’s figures here. His always hotly anticipated Cost …

How to buy a submarine, American style

A couple of weeks ago the Pentagon announced that it had awarded a contract for another ten Virginia class nuclear attack submarines (SSNs). The headline price was US$17.6 billion, or about $1.76 billion per boat, …

Submarines by the dozen?

The press has made much of a perceived backing down from a plan to build 12 submarines. We say ‘perceived’ because no-one has actually said that. But it’s true there’s been some very careful language …