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.
"This appears to be a breakthrough moment, placing China more explicitly and centrally in the rationale for an unprecedented military expansion of post-war Japan," said John Blaxland, professor at Australian National University's Strategic and Defense Studies Center.
If Australia needs US tech for its AUKUS upgrade, arms transfer legislation could get in the way, unless Congress acts, says key US lawmaker.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
"Due to its modular and multi-role nature, our adversaries will need to assume that their every move in the maritime domain is subject to our surveillance and that every [sub drone] is capable of deploying a wide range of effects, including lethal ones," says Rear Adm. Peter Quinn.
"Overall," Charles Edel of CSIS said, "I think this was a fairly robust AUSMIN that underscored just how important the America-Australian alliance has become to both countries — and highlighted how much more work they both need to do."
The US should take the "next Virginia class that's built, designate that to the Australian AOR, and [say] we're going to dual-crew it with Australian sailors and US sailors," Rep. Rob Wittman tells Breaking Defense.
Will the SDR make big decisions and refocus Australia's strategy? "It ultimately comes down to the ultimate question that we're not really good at answering in this country— what are we really trying do with our military?" Marcus Hellyer of ASPI said.
The GPS network continues to prove its unmatched reliability, and it’s only getting stronger.
"The question is," asks Jenny Town of the Stimson Center, "how to step down from this ledge before an accident escalates into something much more dangerous?"
Kim Beazley is best known for leading the Labor Party from 1996-2001, but also served as Minister of Defence from 1984-1990 and ambassador to the United States from 2009-2016.
Support for the AUKUS security partnership "dramatically outweighs criticism, with about half of US and Australian respondents and 28 per cent of Japanese respondents in favour of Australia having nuclear-powered submarines while only 18-19 per cent of respondents in the three countries were against it."
Canberra has emphasized the need for more production in Australia not just for the financial benefits, but for the strategic reality that supply lines off the island nation would likely be the first target in a conflict.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
"I don't know if it's somehow a sign of greater transparency or why, but normally, defence steadfastly resist saying what options it's taking up to government," Marcus Hellyer of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said. "It's quite unusual that they're flagging they are only taking one option to government before they've actually even done it."
"We're talking about a shipping container that includes everything: the power supply, the generator, the batteries, all of the computers, all of the antennas that will fit inside," CEO James Palmer said. "You can put it into an area where you wish to get some coverage, deploy the aperture out, and within half-a-day you're up and running and observing stuff in Low Earth Orbit completely covertly."
"Two new aspects in the revised declaration are intelligence sharing, and greater interoperability. The latter is already underway, so the question is what is actually new here? More detail is required," Japan analyst Rikki Kirsten said.
Lockheed Martin Australia announced a $74 million AUD facility that will be modeled to some degree on its Lighthouse facility in Virginia, where it runs modeling and simulations, as well as wargames.