Tag Archive for: AirSea Battle

Sea State

CANBERRA, Australia (Feb. 10, 2015) Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Vice Adm. Tim Barrett, Australian chief of navy, salute the Australian Federation Guard and national flag during a full honors ceremony to welcome Greenert to the Russell Offices, which is the Australian defense headquarters. Greenert is in Australia meeting with government and military leadership to discuss continued mutual maritime security interests and enhanced partnership opportunities. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Peter D. Lawlor/Released)

Submarines were the big story in Australia last week, and there was a great deal of coverage focusing on the political dimensions of that story in the Aussie press. The Prime Minister ruled out an open tender for the RAN’s future subs, with the Government to use a ‘competitive evaluation process’ instead. ASPI’s Andrew Davies had this piece in the Financial Review on the topic:

Before news filtered out that Australia’s future submarine project would be subject to what was described as a “competitive evaluation process”, the acquisition strategy for a project that will likely consume tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money was decidedly opaque. The bad news is that it still is.

Australia also took delivery of the second batch of four LCM-1E landing crafts, to be operated from the new LHDs.

Two notable missile stories: first, North Korea tested its new H-35 anti-ship cruise missile with the North Korean press releasing pictures on Saturday of a test-firing from a catamaran-hulled fast patrol craft. Naturally, Dear Leader Kim Jong-Un was present to observe the event. Read more

Time to start thinking about land-based anti-ship missiles

HY-1 launch vehicle in the Beijing military museum. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has developed an impressive array of land-based anti-ship missile systems, which are part of a robust sea-denial capability. That growing capability is forcing the United States (US) and Australia to rethink Pacific strategy. Some are now asking why the US, and Australia for that matter, have no land-based anti-ship missile systems in their inventory. After all, we want to be able to do sea denial in Asia as well. So, should we be developing our own?

Both the US and Australia have other anti-ship systems in their arsenal of air and sea-launched weapons. But there’s a real prospect that land-based systems would pay operational and strategic dividends. That’s a view that has also been recently expressed by members of the US Congress, think tanks, and scholars. Read more

ASPI suggests

J-town, Indonesia

Here’s our weekly round-up of links and events in the NatSec, defence and strategy world.

For those interested in AirSea Battle, Richard A. Bitzinger and Michael Raska have a new RSIS Policy Brief on the concept and the future of conflict in East Asia (PDF). ASPI’s Ben Schreer also has a paper on the subject due for release soon.

In the world of energy security, few technologies have offered so much hope and so little apparent progress over the past half century as nuclear fusion. Now Lockheed Martin have announced that they are planning to bring a reactor online by 2017.

Sticking with the United States, William C. Martel has a longread that argues the US needs a grand strategy to help grapple with foreign and self-generated sources of ‘disorder’.

Admiral Gary Roughead and Kori Schake have a new Brookings policy brief on restructuring the US military in a time of change.

Here’s a new post by Kenneth G. Lieberthal that examines prospects (or not) of negotiations with China on cyber security. Read more