Sea state Australia’s largest multilateral naval exercise, Kakadu 2018, is underway, with China participating for the first time. The RAN’s fleet commander, Rear Admiral Jonathan Mead, stressed the importance of maintaining freedom of navigation in …
The Pentagon’s 2018 annual report on China’s military power puts into sharp relief the speed and scale of China’s ambitious military modernisation drive. According to the report, the People’s Liberation Army is undergoing the ‘most …
The world The UN Human Rights Council has released a report of an independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar that examined allegations of human rights violations by the country’s armed services against the Rohingya people. The …
Marcus Hellyer’s article ‘Army must adapt to evolution in its military purchases’, published in The Australian earlier this month, reveals a number of serious problems with the prevailing wisdom about Australia’s defence. Invoking the obsolescence …
Scott Morrison took a step last week that will define him as prime minister, but it wasn’t about getting party room numbers. It was his announcement as acting minister for home affairs that effectively banned two big …
Sea state The Indian navy secretly test-fired its first indigenous nuclear-capable submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from INS Arihant in the Bay of Bengal on 11–12 August. The B-05 missile can hit targets with nuclear warheads …
The Turnbull government’s latest announcement on how its new telecommunications sector security reforms will apply to 5G in Australia has effectively excluded Huawei (and ZTE, the other Chinese large telecoms provider) as vendors of 5G …
The immediate future of the RAAF’s strike and air combat capability seems clear. We’re getting 72 F-35A joint strike fighters that will form the heart of the force into the 2040s and serve alongside up …
Sea state The US chief of naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, has sounded another warning about increased Russian and Chinese activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Russian submarines have been detected near crucial undersea communications cables …
After a few false starts, the government has released its promised legislation to address the ‘going dark’ problem caused by encryption—something that affects more than 90% of the data lawfully intercepted by the Australian Federal …
Sea state The multinational Rim of the Pacific Exercise concluded this week with an amphibious landing trial. The US was supposed to participate, but was sidelined when two of its biggest warships, USS Bonhomme Richard …
As the Defence Department prepares to spend $10–15 billion buying the modern equivalent of the armoured knight, in the shape of 450 infantry fighting vehicles, it risks committing the army’s future to a capability with …
