There was a time back in the 1990s when the Defence Annual Report listed not just the availability of the Navy’s various platforms for deployment, but also the actual number of days at sea for …
Debate: "Policy, guns and money"
In a recent post, Neil James made some interesting points about defence spending metrics and the political economy of defence in a democracy. With the federal budget due in three weeks’ time, I thought I …
Media reporting indicates that we’ll soon see an announcement about the acquisition of twelve extra F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter aircraft at a cost of US$3.6 billion. This will be a classic example of a ministerially …
We’re in Washington this week for the Alliance 21 project being run by the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. It’s an interesting time to be in Washington. Over the next 24 hours the US budget negotiations will come …
Last week ASPI and the Submarine Institute of Australia sat around a table for a day to discuss the rationale for the future submarine. The aim was to set out as clearly as possible what …
I would like to reinforce Justin Jones’ recent points on submarines and in doing so take issue with some of the points made by Andrew Davies in his response. I think the unique features a …
I was invited this week to be part of a panel discussion at the Australian Defence Magazine 2013 Congress. Part of the brief was to address a series of questions relating to the role of …
Following on from last week’s graphs, I thought it would be worth looking at some of the consequences of the decline in western naval fleets. The graph below reprises last week’s data for the size …
For the first graph of 2013 we’re going back to a topic that has been exercising the minds of force planners around the world for decades: how can we keep up with the rising unit …
Andrew Davies has taken me to task on one part of my reply to Nic Stuart’s post on the use of reserve forces in the ADF. How do I plead? Not guilty, your Honour. Apart …
Early in the New Year, this government will take what will come to be seen as its single most significant Defence decision. More than anything else, the choice of new submarine will become the issue …
Being an editor of this blog, I try to avoid jumping into a stoush with our much valued contributors because it looks a bit uneven. But Jim Molan is big enough and tough enough for …