Sea State Last week, 10 US soldiers were held by Iran’s military after their riverine boat drifted into Iranian waters. In order to complete the journey from Bahrain to Kuwait, the two vessels were required …
President Obama has delivered his last State of the Union address and thoughtful assessments of it can be found here and here. But in this post I want to look more closely at what the …
When commentators argue that the government should determine the designer and builder of the Future Submarine Program (FSP) via a competitive Project Definition Study (PDS), they seem to forget—or don’t know—that the SEA 1114 PDS …
There are important aspects of Arthur Tange’s 20-year career at the top of the departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence. None include Peter Edwards’ unfounded allegation in The Strategist on 22 December that I’ve claimed …
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, treated CNN as the Security Council’s 16th member. It was a tactic of a natural communicator: not much use being ‘on message’ if the message isn’t loud. …
Welcome to the first Suggests of 2016, straight to you from Washington, DC. Kicking off today is the unfortunate news of a terrorist attack on the Sarinah Mall in downtown Jakarta. In an interview with The …
Yesterday’s helter-skelter terrorist attack in Jakarta brings to an end 10 years of victories in the ‘war on terror’ in the archipelago. As such, Australia needs to rapidly reinvigorate its police-to-police cooperation with Indonesia. At …
There’s a new taskforce in town, and this time, the effort aimed at reducing welfare fraud. While some claim that pursuing welfare fraud demonises women and requires significant resources to reclaim insignificant amounts, it’s still …
In a recent opinion piece with Tony Press, I mentioned that last November, an RAAF C-17A Globemaster delivering heavy lift cargo flew from Hobart to Australia’s Wilkins runway near Casey Station in Antarctica. The flight …
The US Navy and the Australian Air Force have recently been at pains to proclaim certain activities in the South China Sea as pursuant to their right to international freedom of navigation. This new twist …
The Beat High-tech policing The Washington Post’s Justin Jouvenal takes a look at how police and law enforcement agencies are increasingly able to use technology to calculate a suspect’s ‘threat scores’. Software such as Beware …
The Australian Defence Force will soon acquire an important new platform that will enhance its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, focusing on electronic intelligence (ELINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) gathering. The US Defense Department …
Washington’s management of its wobbly and contested Middle East policy has just become whole lot more difficult and complicated with the worsening of tensions between Riyadh and Tehran following the recent Saudi execution of an …
2016 has kicked off in big way with what’s been billed as the first cyber attack to actually disable a power grid. SANS ICS analysis indicates that the six-hour outage in western Ukraine was caused …
In February 2015 the then-Abbott Government initiated the selection of an international partner for Australia’s future submarine program by inviting French, German and Japanese interests to participate in a Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP). Swedish interests …
According to the newspapers, the government’s Competitive Evaluation Process (CEP) for the Collins replacement yielded bids of between $10 and $12 billion for eight boats, with the price for 12 boats below $15 billion. Delighted …
Sea State The US Navy is facing a shortage of aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific and Middle East as it attempts to scale back the duration of carrier deployments. Carrier deployments have grown over …
Dr Martin Parkinson will soon begin his role as the new Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet, succeeding Michael Thawley. Both are highly capable individuals and both have suffered from the lottery of Australian Public …
Australian infrastructure, along with the threat of natural or manmade disasters, is particularly complex, making infrastructure failures inevitable. That’s why I read with interest Paul Barnes’ post on improving the disaster resilience of critical infrastructure in …
Douglas Fry’s recent Strategist contribution, ‘Australian police require proactive approach to shooter threat’, illustrates the challenge of covering complex issues in 800 words. I applaud Douglas for strongly supporting the introduction of active shooting training …