The Australian Defence Force’s equipment is good and getting better. But the ADF’s current and planned force structures have some significant limitations in their ability to deliver some crucial military effects. In an era of …
In the midst of the discussion about the Royal Australian Navy’s future frigate and submarine programs, it’s important to acknowledge the significance of their continuous nature and to remember that they have design and building …
Japan’s decision to deploy the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the joint strike fighter, the F-35B, from its Izumo-class warships will transform them into what many predicted they would eventually become—small aircraft …
Originally published 31 July 2018. Much of the argument for building warships and submarines in Australia ultimately rests on the rather dubious logic that we’re on an island surrounded by water. But Australia is also …
It’s a fantastic idea: given the government is spending some 36.4 billion taxpayer dollars on defence, much of which is in the 10-year, $200 billion investment program buying major weapon systems, it makes sense to …
The transition from the Collins-class submarines to the future submarine fleet will be longer and more complex than any previous capability transition the Department of Defence has undertaken. Today ASPI released a special report, Thinking …
When governments send their militaries into conflicts, the forces usually suffer combat losses—deaths of people and destruction of machines. Between East Timor in 1999 and now, though, there have been (only) 60 deaths as a …
One of the things that often struck me during my career as a civilian bureaucrat in the Defence Department’s capability development area was the relatively limited amount of public debate about our future armoured vehicle …
In part 1, I considered the implications of sustaining and upgrading the RAAF’s F/A-18F Super Hornet fleet (alongside the E/A-18G Growler) as an alternative to buying an additional squadron of F-35s. It’s the next big …
Much of the argument for building warships and submarines in Australia ultimately rests on the rather dubious logic that we’re on an island surrounded by water. But Australia is also surrounded by air, yet nobody …
To provide context for the recent frigate announcement, we asked the Naval Studies Group at the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at UNSW Canberra to provide an overview of the …
The 2016 Defence White Paper stated that the nine new future frigates will be ‘optimised for anti-submarine warfare’. According to the Turnbull government, they will be ‘one of the world’s most advanced anti-submarine warfare frigates’. It …