Pointing the finger

Mike Burgess, the head of ASIO has revealed that former Australian residents working for the Islamic regime in Iran perpetrated a series of terrorist attacks against Jewish targets in Australia.

Australia’s fight for algorithmic sovereignty

Australia’s defence debate is about more than ships, aircraft and missiles as competitive advantage increasingly depends on the software, data and AI systems embedded within them.

Battles of perception

Australia’s vulnerability in future crises may not stem from a lack of military capability, but from how quickly confusion, mistrust and informational disruption can shape public and political responses.

The wrong time for the right idea

Australian governments have always grappled with the problem of how best to defend Australia against potential adversaries, when others might not be able, or willing, to arrive in force to save the day, and the Defence Strategic Review of 2023 and the National Defence Strategy (NDS) of 2026 sit within this long tradition of independent Australian thinking.

Ride of the Valkyries

Like Britain’s excellent TSR2 and Canada’s outstanding Arrow interceptor, America’s incredible XB-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber is one of the great ‘might have beens’ of military aviation history and over 60 years since it was deemed obsolete in an age of anti-air and ballistic missiles, the concept might be on the way back.

50 shades of grey

Australia’s grey-zone response requires accepting the reality of hostile acts by foreign powers and responding to them robustly, rather than wishing them away.

Mind wars

China’s newly released 15th five‑year plan offers a revealing insight into how Beijing understands the future of military power as a combination of brute force and advanced technology, including brain‑computer interfaces.

Scratching the surface

The newly released Royal Commission interim report does little to help people make sense of the murderous Bondi terror attack.

More questions than answers

The antisemitism royal commission’s interim report leaves key questions dangling and fails to grapple with the key issue at hand – it’s not about guns, it’s about people.

Looking back shouldn’t stop us looking forward

Though we mourn the dead on ANZAC Day, we cannot fool ourselves that war is to be avoided at all costs in ways that aggressors will seek to exploit.

Learning from Ukraine

Land wars of the recent past were shaped primarily by the industrial-scale production of tanks and artillery but today’s wars are now being determined by the capacity to produce and deploy large numbers of unmanned systems at relatively low cost.

War at the speed of light

For decades, notions of laser weapons have been the stuff of science fiction. Now they are becoming military reality, as directed-energy weapons, including high-energy lasers and high-power microwave weapons, open new approaches to counter swarms of cheap drones.