Colin Clark, the founding editor of Breaking Defense, is now our Indo-Pacific Bureau Chief, based in Sydney, Australia. In addition to his foundational efforts at Breaking Defense, Colin also started DoDBuzz.com, the world’s first all-online defense news website. He’s covered Congress, intelligence and regulatory affairs for Space News; founded and edited the Washington Aerospace Briefing, a newsletter for the space industry; covered national security issues for Congressional Quarterly; and was editor of Defense News. Colin is an avid fisherman, grill genius and wine drinker, all of which are only part of the reason he relishes the opportunity to live in Australia.
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Keep your eyes on the Second Scarborough Shoal and other atolls in the South China Sea, where China has pressed an increasingly aggressive and dangerous campaign.
Months of Chinese harassment of Philippine vessels culminated in early December with up to 135 Chinese ships swarming the Philippines around Scarborough Shoal.
The biggest strategic shift in the Indo-Pacific was clearly the combination of China’s economy faltering at the same time as turmoil roiled the top echelons of the Chinese Communist Party and its government.
“France is a power in the Pacific, it’s a power in Europe and it’s a multilateral power, and this is a very important partnership to Australia,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.
A senior Defense Ministry official, Taro Yamato, said today that Japan plans to suspend flights of its 14 Ospreys temporarily. A planned training flight in southern Japan was canceled.
“So I know people are frustrated, but the defence budget is increasing. Money is flowing to defence industry to deliver capable projects, critical capabilities,” Pat Conroy, minister for defense industry, said.
The Australian government said a Chinese ship “was detected operating its hull-mounted sonar in a manner that posed a risk to the safety of the Australian divers who were forced to exit the water.”
“Right now, of course, the secretary of defense does not have a counterpart; there is no [Chinese] minister of defense. We’re going to have to probably wait on that one,” NSC official Sarah Beran said.
The proposed legislation “expands Australia’s backyard to include the US and the UK, but it raises the fence,” Chennupati Jagadish, Australian Academy of Science’s president, said.
“There’s no more cost that gets added to the program outside that one design zone change, therefore when you consider that as a value for money, it avoids having to complete a brand-new design from ground up,” Craig Lockhart of BAE Systems Australia said.
Babcock Australasia’s Nick Hines said the companies envision an “AUKUS passport” to more easily track skills of the workforce for the subs, allowing the countries to trade workers and fill gaps quickly.
China wants “to create tense, uncomfortable situations in the hope that US and partner forces will vacate the space that every force has a right to be in,” Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo said.
The retired lieutenant general, Peter Leahy, said he doesn’t see “much of a future for defense industry here in Australia, so we’ve got to pick up our game. I don’t think we can be taken seriously in the halls of Washington.”
