Sea State Last week in Sydney, the Royal Australian Navy proudly commissioned HMAS Adelaide, second of the landing helicopter docks (LHDs) built by Spanish company Navantia based on the Spanish Armada’s ‘Juan Carlos I’. Permanently …
The launch of the 2015 SDSR provided evidence that UK Defence and Security agencies are being re-invigorated after a period of extensive cuts. Over the next ten years £178 billion will be spent on a …
The grand power shifts currently taking place in the Asia–Pacific are likely to gradually draw Indonesia and Australia closer together in order to face common strategic challenges. Elements of the bilateral relationship will probably remain …
The half-way mark in a marathon is always a testy time. So too is the mid-way point of the Paris climate negotiations. The speeches by 150 heads of state on the opening day of the …
Last week Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled the UK’s latest Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). As usual it was numbers in terms of money and kit that caught the media’s attention. But the bigger …
The case for Australia joining ASEAN will have to be embraced by both sides. Here’s the ‘Yes’ case from ASEAN’s perspective. The first three columns in this series were Canberra-centric, establishing why Australia should seek …
The late edition of ASPI Suggests kicks off with US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s announcement on Thursday that all combat roles were now open to women. The US military has 30 days to enact the decision with no …
In his recent post on Australian policy towards acquisition of nuclear weapons, Rod Lyon responds to a thesis promoted by Christine Leah and Crispin Rovere that Australia should acquire its own independent nuclear deterrent capability. …
The refugee crisis currently confronting Europe is the harbinger of things to come. An unpredictable cocktail of prolonged drought and civil war in Syria has generated over six million internally displaced people, with another four …
In his recent post on The Strategist, Anthony Bergin makes many good points about the use of encryption by non-state actors like Daesh, the related challenges to intelligence collection, and the importance of balancing civil liberties and national security …
The Wednesday hacking of the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) by apparent ‘Chinese’ actors was another example, if one was needed, of the persistent threat to Australian computer networks, both government and private sector. It’s a …
From trying to install 21st century avionics on 1960s helicopters to buying landing craft that crack and can’t fit onto their motherships, defence procurement in Australia has been fraught. Within this context David Peever’s First …
The Beat Taskforce to combat welfare fraud A pilot project to target welfare fraud—colourfully and misleadingly described in the Sydney press this week—has now been converted to a new task force within the Department of Human Services. …
Graeme Dobell has written two posts (here and here) on what the government could have known and asked before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I should start my response by clarifying that I’m not …
What happens in China is central to the global effort to limit the extent of future climate change. China is already the largest emitter of greenhouse gases by far, even as it continues its process …
This week marks the first anniversary of the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Launched by former prime minister Tony Abbott, the ACSC had a busy year. According to this Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet …
A significant amount has been written about the looming defence maritime mega projects—SEA 1000 (Future Submarine) and SEA 5000 (Future Frigate). Each of these projects has been subjected to intense scrutiny due to the Abbott …
The appearance on Russian TV stations Channel One and NTV of the plans for a nuclear torpedo/unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) has prompted much interest among observers. The leak occurred on the last day of a …
Sea State Beijing has announced plans to establish a naval facility in Djibouti with the goal of boosting counter-piracy and peacekeeping efforts in the region. Reportedly, the Chinese installation will be located near a US …
In late October, Christine Leah and Crispin Rovere published a provocative piece on the War is Boring blog. Titled ‘Australia needs nukes’—and the Twitter accounts of the authors suggest it wasn’t their title—the piece argued …