Readers of Australia’s DWP 2016 might well think themselves sold short in relation to one key concept: Australian strategy. The White Paper’s awash with money and equipment, but somewhat less clear about why power and …
The 2016 Defence White Paper mentions ‘unmanned’ systems 15 times. The accompanying Integrated Investment Plan (IIP) [pdf] has 39 references. The government has clear ambitions to purchase UAVs for maritime surveillance and airborne strike, with …
Like its predecessors, Australia’s new Defence White Paper pays considerable attention to Southeast Asia. Its ‘Strategic Outlook’ chapter reiterates the long-held and axiomatic conventional wisdom that the geography of the archipelago to Australia’s north ‘will …
Australia’s defence thinkers are ever worried about self-reliance and order. The Rs reign: rules and self-reliance and region. Those themes run through the 40 years from the first Defence White Paper in 1976 to the …
The record of the RAN’s Oberon- and Collins-class submarines shows that diesel-electric submarines can perform valuable long-range operations. However, Australia’s range and endurance requirements are much closer to the operating profiles of other nations’ nuclear-powered …