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Dr Charles Edel will cover various aspects of the evolving security environment, including how the coronavirus is changing the contours of US-China competition. Please note, due to COVID-19 restrictions, attendance will be extremely limited and you will be required to register . The event organisers will make every effort to accomodate your attendance, but there may be the need for last minute changes and we apologise in advance. Restrictions are subject to change in accordance with Government directions. …

In response to the growing geopolitical competition within our near-region, Australia must become more assertive when projecting its strategic interest. This may require an ADF that is capable of suppressing a more aggressive range of threats, and independently capable of creating the environmental conditions for political stability to return. This is a strategic reality not only recognised by the 2020 Defence Update, [i] but also forecasted in the 2019 Future’s Statement by the Chief of Army. An era of ‘ …

Deterrence From Foreign Policy , a reflective piece upon the employment of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the resultant Cold War arms race. This theme was picked up by the AIIA arguing for the endurance of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In a thought-provoking piece from the Modern War Institute , the idea is posed of swarming drone technology as a weapon of mass destruction (thereby intimating an ability to deter using such capability). The threat posed by swarming drones is an idea …

On 4 June 2020, Dr Nitin Gupta—Defence Economist at the Australian Army Research Centre and the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Coral Bell School, Australian National University—presented this seminar, foreshadowing many of the announcements and conversations that would come out of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plan within the national security and defence communities. Please note that this presentation was given on 4 June 2020, in the earlier stages of the COVID-19 …

The Future of Warfare The Australian National University launched the Futures Hub earlier this year. The hub explores future trends and to promulgate consumable material that helps to inform decision-makers. This site has now reached a healthy quorum of analytic material of interest to Army, namely: That ‘Asia will go from being a global centre of economic growth and political stability, to a centre of economic power but political instability’ ( here ). That ‘Economic growth in Southeast Asia will taper …

Part 1 of this series addressed the factors surrounding the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, concluding that legitimacy is arguably the single most important resource for governments recovering from civil war. In terms of regional and international pressure, Yemen’s neighbour Saudi Arabia remains the most dominant regional pressure and vocal actor in the Yemen conflict. The UAE is another major player with heavy influence in the region. The success of peace processes and efforts to legitimise Yemen’s …

Yemen’s pathway to peace will involve a focus upon human security issues, inclusive of halting violence, alleviating poverty and unemployment. Through a two-part blog, I demonstrate how this pathway is inextricably linked with issues of the ADF’s security posture and partnership with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Australia’s support to UN-led humanitarian initiatives. Even though the ADF has not been actively involved in the growing humanitarian crisis in Yemen, Australia’s trade interests in the …

Major Lyndsay Freeman is a mother of two and a Transport Officer in the Australian Army. She has been awarded the  Chief of Army Scholarship  in 2020 and is studying a Master of International Development Practice, specialising in Gender, Peace & Security, at Monash University. Lyndsay is a Senior Visiting Fellow at UNSW and a co-founder of the ‘Women in Future Operations’ initiative. She was recently listed as one of the ‘ 2020 Young Women to Watch in International Affairs ’. She is passionate about the …

Numerous single-service training adversaries have been developed by the Australian Army over the past 70 years. This process has created a variety of training adversaries, all of which have rapidly become out-dated. These training adversaries usually represented either opponents the Army was actually fighting, or opponents it had just fought. This led the Army to train for operations against an adversary it was unlikely to fight, rather than preparing for probable future conflict against a reality-based, …

Lieutenant Colonel Kane Wright is the Commanding Officer of the 1st Combat Service Support Battalion. He is an Art of War Scholar and Distinguished Honour Graduate of the United States Army’s Command and General Staff College, and Honour Graduate of the United States Army War College’s Strategic Art Program. He has served in regimental, staff and command positions in 1st and 3rd Brigades, 17th Sustainment Brigade and Army Headquarters. He is published in the Australian Army Journal , The US journal …