China’s grey-zone fleet pressures Taiwan
By Nathan Attrill*
China’s pressure on Taiwan increasingly relies on vessels that aren’t warships. Instead, Beijing is deploying a maritime grey-zone fleet: a network of...
RAN inching towards the war zone
By Tom Sharpe*
In early March, HMS Dragon was being yanked unceremoniously out of dry dock in response to the latest round of hostilities in...
NZ at crossroads on frigate replacement
The Royal New Zealand Navy is standing at a crossroads. Its two current frigates, HMNZS Te Kaha and HMNZS Te Mana, have served the...
Naval defence without AUKUS Pillar I
By Michael Keating and Jon Stanford*
Back in 2021, the then prime minister, Scott Morrison announced the AUKUS agreement with the then American president and...
Budget shows spending brought forward
The 2025-26 Defence budget was supposed to come in at $58.9 billion but it actually came in at $63.2 billion, around $4 billion higher...
Sea control is not enough
Commander Jeff Vandenengel has written the most rigorous analysis of the Navy’s strategic concept since Samuel Huntington. His diagnosis is correct, his framework is...
The wrong ships for the wrong job
The United States is not winning the Iran war. It is not going to win it. I have been making that argument since the...
Tanker sailor’s terror in Gulf
The blast tore through the engine room of the tanker MKD Vyom without warning on the morning of 1 March. “There were immense shock...
Exercise Pitch Black to return
From 20 July to 7 August 2026, aircraft and participating nations will return to RAAF Bases Darwin and Tindal in the Northern Territory, and...
US has shot away a lot hardware
By Tom Sharpe*
Since February 28, when the United States launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran, American forces have conducted an intense 39-day air and...