Secretary of State Pompeo on the China Challenge
On October 30, 2019, Secretary of State Pompeo provided an overview of how the Trump Administration…
Read More »Australian Prime Minister, President Trump and China
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s successful US visit should not be regarded as a ‘set and forget’ box ticking…
Read More »European Security Cooperation After Brexit
We have written several pieces over the past two years on the key question of what…
Read More »“You can’t describe what it really represented:” Looking Back at the Fall of the Berlin Wall
“You can’t describe what it really represented.” Countless times this is what people describe as the…
Read More »President Macron (and Edith Piaf’s) “Cri de Coeur”: Present at the Creation Round 2
President Emanuel Macron’s long and provocative interview in “The Economist” coincided with the celebrations marking the…
Read More »Sustaining the Fifth Generation Manoeuvre Force: The Durability Dimension
The most recent Williams Seminar focused on how to build a fifth generation manoeuvre force or…
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Two broad findings can be drawn from my five years of visiting Australia and working with the Australian Defence Force. The first is that they are very focused on building out as integrated a force as they are capable of doing, and that means not only leveraging an advanced asset like the F-35 but shaping common combat systems throughout the force. This is why they refer to their effort as building a fifth-generation force; it is not just about interoperability but about building out an integrated force across the spectrum of crisis management and warfare. The second is that they are keen to enhance their ability to build a more sustainable force, which in shipbuilding terms means to put in place what they refer to as “continuous shipbuilding.”...