Prime Minister Turnbull announced a significant restructure of Australia’s national security community and Australia’s set to get a new Office of National Intelligence with a yet-to-be-named director. The Australian Signals Directorate will be elevated to …
By 1917, the men of the Australian Flying Corps’ No. 1 Squadron had been fighting in the Middle East for almost two years. Now Australia’s airmen were ready to join the allies’ broader campaign in …
Australia’s soldiers must prepare to face a widening range of threats, says Chief of Army Lieutenant General Angus Campbell. ‘Conflict is deeply, deeply competitive and human beings are imaginative in the ways they will find …
Australians with more than a passing interest in the supply of electricity can’t have missed the media attention and ongoing political engagement on the findings of Australian Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel’s recently released review …
Sea state The US Navy released a request for information (RFI) last week seeking proposals for a new guided missile frigate. Its previous plans for a new frigate were based on modifying the current littoral …
James Mugg’s recent piece made a convincing case that the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability of surface combatants is more about the aircraft they embark than about systems on the ships themselves. In this post I …
Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing remains a perennial problem in Southeast Asia. While it’s a region-wide phenomenon, it has been particularly pronounced in two areas. The first is the Gulf of Thailand, where the …
The three countries that started the Korean War in June 1950—Russia (USSR), China and North Korea—are still manoeuvring to secure a better outcome. When World War II ended in August 1945, American and Soviet troops …
An Australia seeking to join ASEAN is going to face tough questions about its interests and identity. Some in Southeast Asia think an Australian republic would be a more natural fit for ASEAN than an …
Welcome back. Last week it was Ivanka as seat warmer, and this week it was Donald Jr’s time to shine. (Sasha and Malia never got this much attention …) We now know that there was …
The human rights issue in Vietnam has waxed and waned for a couple of decades now. Much of the Western focus remains on activists and those locked up for speaking out, rather than on many …
Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a standoff in Doka La—where the borders of Bhutan, China and India meet—for almost a month now, the longest such impasse between the two armies since 1962. …
The Australian parliament is investigating a new way to surrender its prerogatives, along with an abdication of basic democratic principles, in favour of the military chiefs and bureaucrats on Russell Hill. On 14 June 2017, …
Defence spent $8.3 billion on sustaining its equipment in 2016–17, compared with $9.3 billion on new capital equipment. But most of the words written on defence procurement (including mine) are about acquisition projects. Thankfully the …
The beat Violence spikes in Rio Brazil’s Institute of Public Security has reported a sharp uptick in the incidence of ‘lethal violence’ in Rio de Janeiro. In the first five months of 2016, there were …
Flares, shell-bursts and burning tanks bathed the snow-covered battlefield in a surreal light as the 4th Australian Division attacked the Hindenburg Line near Bullecourt in the early morning darkness on 11 April 1917. Dense barbed …
With the battles of Mosul and Raqqa dislodging the Islamic State (ISIS) from its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, and the Syrian civil war becoming a war of attrition, the Middle East’s most acute conflicts …
The British government is now fully committed to the Type 26 frigate. On 2 July, the Ministry of Defence announced that it had signed a contract for three hulls, probably the minimum it could get …
The risk of prison radicalisation has been a complex challenge to national security for decades. Whether arising from ethno-nationalist, separatist or jihadist inmates, the threat of extremist ideas and beliefs spreading inside prison walls is …
Despite the continuing concerns over Russia’s adversarial role in cybersecurity, President Trump announced at the G20 that he and President Putin had discussed the formation of a joint US–Russian ‘impenetrable cyber security unit’ to ‘guard’ …