When we discuss the politics of air power it is generally in the context of its employment, not its development. The F-35 appears to have changed this as its cost overruns and production delays have attracted close political scrutiny both in Australia and globally. In this post, originally published on The Strategist on 24 November, Christopher Cowan [...]
The term ‘Red Team’ has made the transition from its origins within military war-gaming to the lexicon of both government and business. What is less well understood is what a red team is, what it does and does not do, and how and why red-teaming can be helpful to an organisation. In Red Team: [...]
The Air Tasking Order (ATO) is the cornerstone of modern air power command and control: If you're not on the ATO, you don't fly. But perhaps we have become too wedded to a concept that can be overly restrictive and which can stifle individual initiative. Perhaps we need to loosen the couplings that currently bind [...]
The study of strategy is a daunting undertaking. Not only must students wade through the dense tomes of the strategy masters but they must also be alive to subtle nuance in the texts, attentive to the significance of word choice, and conversant in the influence of context on the strategists’ theories. Given this complexity, [...]
The Royal Australian Air Force is experiencing a renewed focus on Professional Military Education and Training (PMET). Not only are reviews underway to identify ways to improve the quality of the current PMET system, but oversight of PMET completion is occurring at the highest levels of the organisation. But as Ross Mahoney, the RAF [...]
The demand for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets has grown exponentially in recent years, as commanders recognise the central role of ISR in force protection, situational awareness and decision-making. One area in which ISR can play a vital role – but which has received relatively little attention – is that of humanitarian assistance [...]
Strategic imagination is as important to the Royal Australian Air Force's future success as the innovation that lies at the heart of Plan JERICHO. In this post, Pilot Officer Oliver Jiang defines strategic imagination and explains the importance to developing problem conceptualisers as well as problem solvers. The inability of national intelligence agencies in the [...]
The success of the Royal Australian Air Force's Plan JERICHO rests on the development of innovative ways to exploit the capabilities that will enter service over the next decade. Critical to this innovation will be the ideas of those charged with employing Australian airpower on operations. In this post, SGT G, a current serving Combat Controller, [...]