An artist’s impression of the of the Royal Australian Navy’s Future submarine.
By Michael Shoebridge*
One of the pearls in my memory of working in a big bureaucracy showed how things that make sense inside it simply don’t in the outside world. It’s a corrosive dynamic that applies to how the Defence Department’s decades-long megaprojects—whether frigates, submarines or even armoured fighting vehicles—are designed and implemented. And it must be addressed—probably by external pressure and ministerial direction.
