Beyond the Buzzwords: Charting the Course to Fully Autonomous Combat AircraftKeirin JoyceAustralian Defence ForceWarfare is undergoing a fundamenta
Imagining potential futures where we create advantage through collaboration.
The planning outcomes at the operational level of war comprise the establishment of operational priorities, the identification of targets, and the allocation and apportionment of combat forces.
Defence Strategic Review and Adapt: Implementing DSR as a Wargame
David Hood
Australian Defence Force
Airbases do not feature significantly in the history of air power unless they are denied.
The Air and Space Power Centre and the Centre for Air Power Studies have come together and collaborated for:
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.
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’.
Air power is distinguished from sea and land power by its flexibility, speed, ubiquity, range and shock effect. These characteristics give air power a unique ability to concentrate force
and manoeuvre rapidly over long distances
