In my previous post on the US Long Range Strike–Bomber (LRS-B), I promised to return to the likely cost-effectiveness of the future system. But first I’m going to back-track to examine the possible costs in …
From the time it came into being in 1947, the United States Air Force has had a state-of-the-art long-range bomber in its inventory. The first was the extraordinary B-36 Peacemaker (see photo)—the name intending to …
In a recent post I reviewed some of the possible future modifications to the ADF’s force structure. Today I want to look at the particular case of future surface combatants. As I’ve said before, the …
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 …
I’ve often argued that the best predictor of the ADF’s future force structure is the current one. In other words, it’s much more likely that today’s platforms and capabilities will be replaced by something that …
We’ve written a lot about the future submarine project over the years. Last year, Mark Thomson and I surveyed the possible range of acquisition strategies the government could opt to pursue. We made the observation …
Today is the last day for submissions to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee inquiry into the potential use by the Australian Defence Force of unmanned air, maritime and land platforms. The Strategist …
I was far from convinced by Deane-Peter Baker’s recent post on Australia’s gun laws and their allegedly deleterious effect on our Army’s effectiveness and safety in combat. But it evidently struck a chord with readers, …
With the end (of the year) nigh, it’s time once again to have a look at what’s been making Strategist readers click. The 2013 top ten showed that our readership was most interested in submarines, …
With the launch of ASPI’s Strike from the Air paper yesterday, I thought it was worth looking at some data from both the current campaign and the now well-documented 1991 Gulf War air campaign. There are …
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, …
While the Australian Government has already made its decision to go ahead with procuring a total of 72 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, there’s still cause to watch the progress of the development program. Australia will …