The Edge

JPME With a Purpose: Breaking Through the Mythology

A personal search for the truth beyond the myths of Canada’s naval success reinforces the merits of Australia’s attitude to cultivating informed leadership through a robust JPME system that encourages the asking of uncomfortable questions.

War-Fighting and the Production of Non-Sense

The 2020 Defence Strategic Update provides a strategic demand signal for Defence to think equally and iteratively across shape, deter and respond. In this context, the notion of warfighting warrants a reconsideration in terms of the dominant position it occupies within the ADF. If this term no longer simply speaks to the activity of fighting a war, what does it actually do, and how does this affect Australia’s current approach to military strategy?

The Race to Manus: 16 REGT RAA’S Foray Into Competition And Conflict 2028

The recollections of Lieutenant David Grieves and Gunner Michael Baker

Grieves was fresh out of Duntroon and ‘Bakes’ was still dreaming of the Dutch girl he met in Townsville when they both found themselves in a heavy combat zone. Their training and high-tech hardware were all put to the test without notice.

The National Security Thinking of Australia and Singapore

Australia and Singapore have benefited from different “means” for the same “ends” in their national security reasoning to date, but China’s potential to overtake US influence in the Indo-Pacific region challenges both ways of thinking.

The shifting sands of war

Familiar concepts of energy, strategy and territory are undergoing a transformation in the new geopolitical frontline of virtual space where intellectual sovereignty is becoming critical. The fight is no longer chiefly over what lies under the sand, but what strategic power can be derived from the sand itself. Australia must reconsider what it means to supply the world with raw material. 

Operations in deception: corrupting the sensing grid of the enemy

Fooling the enemy’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) artificial intelligence system will be as critical as refining our own in a live situation. AI is the future, but it has its vulnerabilities.

Intellectual Edge: The Pursuit of Lifetimes

Attaining an intellectual edge requires more than just ticking progressive boxes of formal education, it calls for a lifelong curiosity to critically observe and absorb experience.

Watch this space: a whole new war domain

‘Spacepower’, the US Space Force’s first published doctrine to define its purpose, declares space a distinctive new warfighting domain – one in which Australia should play its own role.

Countering Robotics and Autonomous Systems through Maritime Area Denial

Muddying the waters acoustically will be equally important as guided munitions when it comes to underwater mine warfare in the new age of Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS). Let’s look at both the kinetic and the non-kinetic approaches.

Intellectual Curiosity: Our ticket to the moon

Stimulating and nourishing intellectual curiosity across all ADF ranks must become the norm if we are to encourage original ideas and attain the Intellectual Edge over potential adversaries in the 21st century.

The Intellectual Edge

This piece challenges common stereotypes and assumptions about intellectualism and puts a price on the pursuit of knowledge for Defence.

What ‘RIGHT’ Looks Like: Linking Command and Moral Authority

…you don’t follow an order because you know for sure it’s gonna work out. You do what you are told, because your CO has the moral authority that says you may not come back. But the cause is just, and fair, and necessary.