It’s the lot of smaller countries to fret over how seriously their interests are treated by bigger allies. It’s not surprising then that Robert Ayson worries about what New Zealand has to do to stay …
A few years ago, I estimated the per ship costs of the Air Warfare Destroyer program. The conclusion I came to, based on conservative assumptions, was that we were getting three ships for the price …
Here’s this week’s collection of new articles and reports in the defence, strategy and security world for your reading pleasure and some events to attend. Articles and reports If you’re interested in the changing nature …
Thank you to Shahar Hameiri for his recent post on RAMSI. No doubt we’ll be hearing and talking a lot about the impact and legacy of the mission in the coming months. Indeed in the …
Dear Minister In some quarters, your promised 2013 Defence White Paper is already being ridiculed as ‘the white pamphlet’. Others take an even more pessimistic view, with Hugh White doubting that a document will be …
There is a tendency by many commentators to see defence as just being all about money. A cut is intrinsically bad, growth naturally good. For some, the size of the defence budget is held as …
When I’m lecturing on strategic policy or Australian force structure issues, I often make a comment about the ‘defence of Australia’ (DOA) doctrine along those lines of ‘of course, the defence of Australia has been …
Earlier this month, Myanmar announced that it will sign the Additional Protocol to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements—a bold step for a country that has long been suspected of having nuclear …
A special meeting in Port Moresby on Wednesday has ended Fiji’s exclusion from the deliberations of the Pacific group of the European Union’s ACP (Asia Caribbean Pacific) association. That mightn’t sound like the biggest news …
Welcome back for another instalment of new reports, articles and events in the defence, strategy and security world. Articles Iron Dome has been seen as a successful missile defence system during recent violence between Israel …
It’s hard to get folks excited about the Australian–New Zealand defence relationship. It’s uncontroversial because we’re already close partners in a fairly low octane South Pacific neighbourhood, where we’re expected to work together. And it’s …
Australia and Canada, I have argued elsewhere, are Strategic Cousins with more in common than most people realise. The Eurocentric Mercator projection leaves the impression that Canada is far removed from Asia. But in reality …
In response to Nic Stuart’s recent post on strategic airpower, Strategist reader Sven Ortmann brought to our attention his thoughts on the topic. He suggests that the application of air power should be tailored to …
I read Katherine Ziesing’s recent piece on The Strategist, with interest. Unfortunately, as a[n economic] ‘dry’ approaching Thatcher-esque levels, I must disagree with some of her points. My big concerns with the Future Submarine project …
The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI)—an extensive (and expensive) Australian-led state-building intervention under the auspices of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)—has been operating in Solomon Islands since July 2003. It’s about to undergo …
Andrew Davies’ graph of the week about the elderly USAF tactical fighter fleet raises several issues. But before that it is worthwhile looking at the big US Defense budget picture below. The two big peaks …
As I mentioned in last week’s ‘ASPI suggests’, there’s a useful paper from CSIS Jakarta researcher Evan Laksmana that looks at the history of US military assistance to the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and the …
This week’s graph is a case of a picture that is worth $200 billion. Produced by the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2009, it shows the number of tactical aircraft procured by the US …
As Andrew Davies noted here recently, the debate at the 2012 Submarine Institute of Australia (SIA) wasn’t over whether submarines should be built in Australia—that’s a forgone conclusion. Speeches from both sides of politics (both …
In our Mind the gap paper earlier this year, Mark Thomson and I made the comment that a successful program to extend the life of the Collins class submarines would give the future submarine program …