By Robbin Laird The Australian government has laid out its strategy of change for the ADF in last year’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR) and in this year’s defence investment plan and national defence strategy. But frankly, deep cuts in current capability to play for the future force leaves many of…
By Robbin Laird I had a chance to talk with LtCol Howard DeCastro, the first CO of MAWTS-1 and LtGen Barry Knutson, the eighth commander of MAWTS-1, the day before the change of command ceremony at MAWTS-1. We talked about the approach of MAWTS-1 from the beginning and the importance…
By Pierre Tran Paris - The armed forces minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is due to make an official visit to Vietnam to attend French and Vietnamese commemoration on May 6 and 7 of the bloody battle of Dien Bien Phu, which marked the defeat of French colonialism in the southeast Asian…
After returning to the United States from Australia on April 25, 2024, I buckled up again for a flight to Yuma, Arizona to have the privilege of witnessing the MAWTS-1 change of command ceremony. In the process of finishing up our forthcoming book on MAWTS-1, this seemed a good way…
By Robbin Laird An aspect of modern Western strategic thinking has been a focus on gray zone conflict. This is an area I have always found confusing. In a world which I would characterize as one of the rise of multi-polar authoritarian movements and states, their constant conflict efforts have…
By Robbin Laird Although the Australian Defence Strategic Review and the recent Surface Fleet Review indicated that the threat environment was deteriorating in the here and now, the major investments are being made for a force that will not arrive for a decade. How then to enhance the ADF in…
When I met with LtGen Heckl earlier this year, we discussed the way ahead for the USMC in operating a distributed force, and he underscored it all starts with logistics. “The pacing factor for everything we are doing in shaping the distributed force is logistics and to do so in…
By Pierre Tran Paris - The French and German defense ministers signed April 26 a memorandum of understanding, with a target of signing contracts by the end of the year to launch phase 1A of designing and building a new tank, dubbed main ground combat system (MGCS). The French armed…
