To properly understand last week’s announcement from the government about the beleaguered Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project, some background is needed. Back in June 2014, the government received the independent ‘White–Winter report’ into the project. …
Reform programs come and go in the Australian Defence establishment. Sometimes they fulfil their intent; sometimes they don’t. The extent to which the changes sought by the First Principles Review occur will depend on the …
Dr Mark Thomson from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has authored a paper on The Strategist, analysing the recently released RAND report titled ‘Australia’s Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise – Preparing for the 21st Century.’ This memo …
Commissioned in September 2014 under a $2.5 million contract, the RAND report Australian’s Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise: Preparing for the 21st Century was released on 16 April 2015. The government says it’s developing an ‘enterprise-level Naval Shipbuilding …
More evidence of Tony Abbott’s policy stance on the next generation of Australian submarines was revealed with the release of the RAND report into Australia’s Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise. By ignoring an Australian build for …
This week’s Sea State looks at some of the key ideas that emerged from ASPI’s Future Surface Fleet conference, held last week in Canberra. The two-day event brought together a high-powered line-up of local and …
(Or how I learned to stop worrying about naval power and to love the corvette.) Naval capability decisions start with maritime strategy. So I think we should get one. That’s deliberately provocative, but I struggle …
ASPI’s Future Surface Fleet Conference kicked off this morning, with major speeches reflecting a range of positions and political debate. Opening the conference, ASPI Executive Director Peter Jennings lamented the hardline politics of shipbuilding in …
Late last month, Ben Schreer introduced ASPI’s upcoming international conference on Australia’s Future Surface Fleet. In doing so, he observed that many factors—strategic, operational, international and industrial—will shape decisions about the Navy’s future surface fleet. …
Last week ASPI published Preserving the knowledge edge: surveillance cooperation and the US–Australia alliance in Asia (PDF). This short and sharp Strategic Insight focuses on why the C4ISR relationship with the US in the Indo-Pacific provides such a critical …
Yesterday the government made two announcements about naval shipbuilding. The first was its plan to fix the ailing Air Warfare Destroyer program. What emerged wasn’t the approach foreshadowed in the press a few months ago, …
Today, ASPI released our report ‘Jump jets for the ADF?’ (watch the video interview with Ben Schreer here). It asks if there’s a good case for Australia to acquire F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) short take-off, …
