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Matthew ThorntonAustralian Defence ForceWhen a drone from an adversary attacks an office in Amberley, how many of our industry partners will show u

Dr. Martin Luther King said that a leader does not search for consensus, they mould it (2010).

This article began as a response to Daniel Cook’s recent article on ‘Turning the Tap Off – Stopping the Flow of Pointless Jobs in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)’ (Cook, 2023); as such, it will address some of the points raised in that article within the context a broader trend towards what I term ‘military populism’.

The Australian government has made very clear that, to defend the nation, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) must be an integrated force. This article contends that such a goal remains an unrealised ambition.

Decreasing Reliance on Fossil Fuels to Increase Defence Capability

Benjamin Cole
Australian Defence Force

It is a relatively common trend that solving an organisational strategic issue reveals another.
With the implementation of digital technology, came the resistance to change and
implementing change agents brought about the awareness of having a safe-to-fail culture.

The 'poor man's air force' is a term for employing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hobbyist drones or uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) to strategic level military effect, and that effect cannot be understated (Waters, 2018; Nadeau, 2022; Shift, 2023). The ability for terror organisations to coordinate multiple layers of effects, including using COTS drones, to destroy Command and Control (C2) nodes in Israel causes alarm. Couple this with the use of COTS drones for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, strike and battle-damage assessment missions, and the threat posed by what are essentially toys is alarmingly real.