China squandered trust, defence chief says
Out-going Defence chief Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin says Beijing’s broken promise not to militarise the South China Sea means it has squandered the...
Mai Tai diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific
By Peter Layton*
It’s Mai Tai time again for many of the world’s navies and some air forces. The month-long, biennial Rim of the Pacific...
Hambantota: Sri Lanka’s Chinese port
By Aarti Betigeri*
In early 2011, I was in Hambantota, southern Sri Lanka, looking for the new port. After hours of driving, from the southern...
Modular mine counter-measures
By Captain Hans Lynch and Dr. Sam Taylor*
Introduction
“The mine issues no official communique.” – Adm. William V. Pratt
Mines are one of the most simple...
World naval developments June 2018
By Norman Friedman*
At the end of May the U.S. Navy announced that it had chosen the Raytheon-Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile to arm the...
Moscow’s other navy
By Victor Abramowicz
Russia’s Navy is a highly visible and generally well-understood instrument of Moscow’s military power that has been on a slow process of...
“Unsinkable” island no substitute for aircraft carriers
By Abhijit Singh*
In a recent article (India’s interest in unsinkable aircraft carriers), David Brewster poses an interesting question: is there a cheaper and less...
Hard news as the sharp edge of Oz soft power
By Graeme Dobell
The old joke that it’s easy to have an open mind if you’ve got an empty mind has a Canberra version. The...
Auditing big defence projects – when?
By Marcus Hellyer*
The Australian National Audit Office’s public assessments of the health of major Department of Defence projects are invaluable — but the fact...
Reflections on the US Navy’s bad year
By Sam Bateman*
The US Navy had a horror year in 2017 with tragic accidents and a major corruption scandal. While the cause may have...