Overview This paper surveys the capability of the Royal Australian Navy and is an update of a previously published ADF capability review: Royal Australian Navy from 2008 and the Navy Capability Review 2010. Navy has made great strides in the past five years. Some smart acquisitions have helped, but there’s also been a better focus...

Overview This paper reviews the capability of the RAAF, and concludes that the service has been remarkably successful in winning government support for its acquisitions. More importantly, the money has turned into real capability. There are a couple of areas where more work is required, the most important of those being anti-submarine warfare.

This paper reviews the past performance of Australian naval shipbuilding, describes the pros and cons of a rolling production model, and unpicks the issues that the government will have to take into account. It concludes that we’re likely to see a bigger surface navy—potentially a much bigger one—as well as the sell-off of at least...

Overview: The First Principles Review of Defence is arguably the most significant review of the defence establishment since the 1973 re-organisation led by Sir Arthur Tange. This Strategic Insights brings together a series of contributions to ASPI’s blog The Strategist written by ten experts with long experience and broad knowledge of Australia’s defence bureaucracy. They...

Overview: The recently released report of the First Principles Review of Defence, Creating One Defence, is set to reshape the Defence enterprise over the next few years. This ASPI special report explains the review’s recommendations and analyses the consequences for Defence. It provides three perspectives on the forthcoming reforms: Peter Jennings, ‘One Defence–root causes, risks...