By Robbin Laird Over the past thirty years, the United States and its core allies have gone through three phases of innovation with regard to conventional forces. The first was air-land battle designed for the European theater and executed in the 1991 Iraqi War. The second was the innovations associated…
By Michael Shoebridge The post mortems on Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s US visit and speech in Chicago on Chinese state trade distortions didn’t wait for the trip to finish. We’ve had the line from opposition leader Anthony Albanese that the big issue was that the speech was delivered in the US. And another…
By Robbin Laird In today’s world, full spectrum crisis management is not simply about escalation ladders; it is about the capability to operate tailored task forces within a crisis setting to dominate and prevail within that crisis. If that stops the level of escalation that is one way of looking…
At the 45th Essington Lewis Memorial Lecture delivered this week in Adelaide, Rear Admiral (Retired) Kevin Scarce provided his perspective of the need for Australia to shape an “integrated and wholistic approach” to the threats facing Australia. And in so doing argued that without a broader public engagement this would…
Recently, I attended the Chief of the Royal Australian Navy’s Seapower conference being held in Sydney from October 8th through the 10th, 2019. For five years, I have been attending the Williams Foundation Seminars and writing the reports on the transformation of the RAAF and its impact on shaping a…
By Robbin Laird Syria is being controlled by Russia and Turkey, two elements of the rise of 21st century authoritarianism. While the EU discusses and while the United States retreats or whatever it is doing, Turkey and Russia are shaping the territory from which the migration crisis is holding Europe…
By Robbin Laird In my lifetime, the U.S. military has gone through three major phases of development. The first was the shaping of the force in the 1980s to deal with the Soviet threat to Europe and encompassed air-land battle. Hardwired networking was introduced and working ways to integrate forces…
By Robbin Laird To deal with the challenge posed by the 21st century authoritarian powers, the United States military and its allies are rebuilding their combat approach. The strategic trajectory is to shape a force which can prevail in an area of interest with a coordinated or integrated dispersed or…
