Second air warfare destroyer enters sea trials
The Australian Defence Force’s second Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD), NUSHIP Brisbane, has begun its first phase of sea trials, which will test the ship’s...
Support ships named Supply and Stalwart
The Minister for Defence, Senator Marise Payne, has announced the names of the Royal Australian Navy’s future support ships: Supply and Stalwart.
Supply will be...
Preconditions for defence innovation success
Gregor Ferguson's* analysis of how a nation like Australia can get the best from procurement is apposite as Australia launches the biggest ship-building exercise in its history.
Australia’s deteriorating strategic outlook
By Paul Dibb and Richard Brabin-Smith*
Australia’s strategic outlook is deteriorating and, for the first time since World War II, we face an increased prospect...
French partnership in Asia-Pacific?
By Denise Fisher*
France is casting a fresh strategic eye over the globe, including a focus on our own Indo-Pacific region, but always with a...
Naval History E05: Oberon’s final years
Australian Naval History Video and Podcast Series
Episode 5 of the very popular Australian Naval History Video and Podcast Series was released this week. It...
Canadian ship: two oceans, two crews?
Defence Watch was told that the Royal Canadian Navy was originally looking at having two crews, one on each coast, for MV Asterix. That is now off the table. Here is the latest from the RCN on how Asterix will be crewed Call for independent cyber strategy
A UNSW Canberra Professor is calling for a new Australian cyber military industrial strategy that needs to be independent of the United States so that Australia can be prepared for major war. The call from Professor Greg Austin, Acting Director of the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra coincides with a report on the economic impact of rapidly changing geopolitical events. The Hon. Christopher Pyne, Federal Minister for Defence Industry, launched the report this week (Nov 2017). HMAS Macquarie, South East Asia Command, 1946
Mike Fogarty looks at the record of HMAS Macquarie . Giant dragons, puffing smoke: Japan’s Pacific war
Our convenient and succinct story of the Pacific War was that Japan was hell-bent on conquest in the South Pacific. The United States only wanted peace. They raped Nanking. We initiated an oil embargo. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto crossed the Pacific with his carrier fleet and treacherously destroyed our battle fleet at Pearl Harbor. It is a convenient and succinct story, repeated by millions of soldiers, sailors, and citizens during the war and in the years after the war. But it is an incomplete narrative.