One can only conclude that the Commonwealth Government is actively facilitating the demise of the Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC). The government-owned shipyard has been singled out as responsible for a $3 billion blow-out in cost, …
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 …
Sea State At last week’s MAST Asia 2015 conference on maritime defence and security technology in Yokohama, it became apparent that Japan’s two largest defence manufacturers—Mitsubishi and Kawasaki—are awaiting the Japanese government’s lead on two …
David McDonough gave a stout defence of the Air Warfare Destroyer on this blog. In several respects it’s a superior platform to our existing fleet and some proposed alternatives—namely, the smaller, cheaper ships suggested by …
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 …
Despite press and broadcast reporting that largely focused on the omission of submarines, the RAND report on naval shipbuilding in Australia is a valuable contribution to the discussion of this important public policy issue. No …
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 …
It’s a very interesting time to be rethinking national defence policy and strategy in the Indo-Asia-Pacific, particularly as we see tensions in the South China Sea so close to the sea lanes upon which our …
The second day of ASPI’s Future Surface Fleet conference has so far produced some forthright observations about the state of Australia’s naval shipbuilding industry, including the troubled AWD project. The conference’s final day coincides with …
In this week’s Rapid Fire we update on Boko Haram, Yemen, the Tikrit campaign, US troops in Afghanistan, chemical weapons in Syria, and the ‘Warlord Problem’ in Ukraine. Trouble continues in Nigeria as the presidential …