Elevated to a military science during the Cold War, deterrence is a relatively new task for the Australian Defence Force. Traditionally, Australia’s armed forces have lacked the mass, range, lethality and ability to project force …
The Australian Liberal-National opposition’s proposal to build nuclear power stations on the sites of old coal-fired plants is misguided. The policy would perpetuate Australia’s concentration of electricity generation and worsen our vulnerability to air and …
The program to equip the Royal Australian Navy with nuclear submarines is in trouble. The takeaway: Australia must begin thinking now about what to do to avoid program failure. Why has this situation arisen? First, …
Might China try to attack Taiwan by 2027? The outgoing chief of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Philip Davidson, thought so in 2021, and he recently reaffirmed his assessment. But whether the United States and China …
Australia and Britain have concluded a new treaty-level Defence and Security Cooperation Agreement (DSCA). To what extent does this move the dial of their close defence relationship towards a formal alliance? This question matters because …
The UK’s tilt back to the Indo-Pacific has had no shortage of critics, including in Australia, but it has achieved tangible results and has lifted Britain’s importance in the region. As the frothy post-Brexit rhetoric of Global …
The catalyst for the Gulf War was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 1 August 1990. After condemning the invasion and demanding Iraq’s withdrawal, the UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions. The Security Council also …
Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the loss of the Royal Australian Navy destroyer, HMAS Voyager (II), which sank 20 nautical miles south-east of Jervis Bay. Of the 314 crew of Voyager, 82 were …
Climate change’s threat to national security has been widely examined by security agencies, researchers and thought leaders across the world. Much of this analysis has focused on adaption and operational considerations associated with the destabilisation …
Last December, the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) appointed Dong Jun, former commander of the People’s Liberation Army navy (PLAN), as China’s new defence minister more than two months after his …
As Australia awarded itself an ill-thought-out peace dividend at the end of the Cold War, the impact fell hardest on the Navy’s surface combatant fleet. Arguably no element was thought through more thoroughly for the …
Attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have had almost no impact on the oil price, despite the volume of oil shipped through the waterway surging 80% over the last two years because of the …