The Background
Sustaining Communications Across a Degraded NetworkSteven CrawfordAustralian Defence ForceThe increase in interconnected systems within the Royal A
The Kestrel Papers series is one of several publications produced by the Air and Space Power Centre (ASPC).
Education is highly valued in the Air Force, with the acquisition of highly specialised skills and expertise being an integral component of one's career progression. Training comes in various forms, including mandatory, specialist, on-the-job, and professional military education. In addition to these forms of training, members of the Air Force have access to opportunities for scholarship, where they can apply for graduate programs at Masters and PhD level through civilian universities. These programs afford individuals the chance to focus on a particular "problem" for Defence, dedicating an extended period of time to research and scholarship.
There is a blunt but effective thought experiment for anyone in a leadership role: if you see yourself as the village hero, but everyone you lead sees you as the village idiot, you have a problem.
The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is changing.
The main theme of the 2026 Air and Space Power Conference was “building fighting depth” and the Aviator Symposium was “the airminded warfighter.” However, a question that came up repeatedly during the event was “what success actually looks like”? Instead of asking what success looks like now, ask what it would look like decades from now if these ideas had truly taken hold.
In Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat (Higham & Harris, 2016), historians Robin Higham and Stephen Harris assemble a team of experts to investigate examples of failure and defeat in the application of air power. Overall, Why Air Forces Fail is an interesting and important book because it analyses the reasons why air forces have suffered defeat and failure. It draws some important lessons in this regard, and it provides an excellent resource for those studying air power.
