Rapid Fire

In this week’s update, New Zealand joins the coalition against IS, anti-IS foreign fighters suffer a casualty, Australia’s Chief of Army gets ready to retire, a US special operations task force in the Philippines deactivates, US …

Flight Path

This week reviews all the news from the Avalon international Airshow and Biennale IDEX events, the latest on drones, fifth-generation fighters, China’s military capability, and a debate on the US Long Range Strike-Bomber. The Avalon …

You are what you measure

Recently-released Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) research, Findings from the DUMA program: Impact of reduced methamphetamine supply on consumption of illicit drugs and alcohol, casts further doubts over the effectiveness of Australian border-enforcement agencies’ use …

Army and armour—moving the debate forward

In a recent blog post my colleague Karl Claxton took the opportunity to frame the issues around the Defence Minister Kevin Andrew’s recent Land 400 announcement. Sadly, Karl echoes an old complaint: Most commentators have …

Sea State

Submarines continue to make headlines across Australia, with the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey encouraging Australia to make a quick decision about a replacement for the Collins-class submarines. In …

ASPI suggests

This week’s wrap kicks off with an in-depth profile of German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the New Yorker’s December edition. Pay attention to Merkel’s strategy for dealing with Vladimir Putin and her razor-sharp insights into …

Assessing Australian energy vulnerability

Some analysts have recently observed that Australia isn’t complying with its International Energy Agency obligations—it’s the only member of the International Energy Agency (IEA) that doesn’t have a 90-day supply of strategic petroleum reserves. But …

Australia–Indonesia relations: not a game?

It’s interesting to think about the Australia–Indonesia relationship in terms of game theory, as Peter Jennings, Peter McCawley and Rod Lyon have done in this blog recently. And I even got a few hundred words into …

Australia, Indonesia and Confrontation

Perhaps an old-fashioned diplomatic historian might add to the valuable comments by Peter Jennings, Peter McCawley and Greta Nabbs-Keller on how to handle the current tensions between Australia and Indonesia. In particular, we might usefully …

CT Scan

This week features the Prime Minister’s national security statement, the Countering Violent Extremism Summit in Washington, terror threats in the Asia–Pacific, sweeping CT legal reforms across the globe and the upcoming metadata retention bill. Following …

The Beat

This week on The Beat, we discuss the implications of Abbott’s national security address, the Australian Crime Commission’s appearance at the House Standing Committee on Communications, unexplained wealth and metadata laws, the Australian Cyber Security …

Cyber wrap

Last week Lenovo grabbed headlines for all the wrong reasons following the discovery that the company had pre-loaded adware onto PC’s sold between September 2014 and January 2015. The ‘Superfish’ software monitors users’ online activity …

National security: a surprise present

Surprise—national security agencies are now expected to face a threat growing in capability and intent and the government will reconsider whether they will do so with only slightly less money. The Prime Minister’s National Security …

Perspectives on the future surface combatant

This post is a contribution to a series leading to ASPI’s Future Surface Fleet Conference at the end of March. Early bird tickets are now available. The prospect of future conflict being conducted in contested, extremely …

Rapid Fire

This week’s update features Afghanistan, dishonesty in the US Army, Land 400, the PLA’s war-gaming technology, Houthi rebels, and women in combat. Over on Small Wars Journal, the ADF’s Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Smith released a paper …