It was fortuitous (perhaps) that news of delays on the AWD Project broke just before a Senate estimates committee hearing provided the DMO with the chance to tell its story first. But is it really only a capacity issue?

This year’s defence budget is instructive: it highlights the huge difference between the Defence and Industry views of the business environment in which they cohabit.

The death of Bin Laden has raised some interesting questions about the nature of the relationship between the US and Pakistan. And how our own security framework performs.

Ladies and gentlemen, there will be a short pause in my communications whilst I head off on my own capital acquisition project for a few months of maternity leave.

In the wake of lurid headlines about how the defence top brass was being pampered by the arms industry, defence has issued a brand new directive warning officials against free lunches.

One question which doesn’t seem to have been asked from the HMAS Success commission of inquiry is just how outraged should defence and the nation be about a bunch of sailors getting really drunk and misbehaving while on leave.

It seems that Navy just can’t catch a break at the moment. The last few months have exposed a number of damaging issues that have come to light, through the release of various reports and some pointed questions in Senate Estimates.

In June of 2009, then defence minister Senator John Faulkner looked into the Force Protection measures that the ADF was operating with in Afghanistan.

In all the debate about the proposed taxpayer levy plus cuts to government programs to raise $5.6 billion in funds for disaster recovery, your correspondent has been astonished that there wasn’t one demand for defence to wear some of the pain.

The RAAF celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, commemorating the people and planes that have shaped the modern organisation that provides the Australian Defence Force with its air capabilities in all their forms.

On December 16, 1980, the government of Malcolm Fraser made a decision crucial to the shape of the current RAAF and that was to acquire the Pave Tack laser target designation system for the F-111 strike bombers.

As ADM was going to press, the 2009-2010 Major Projects Report was released.

Perhaps by the time this column appears, the great parliamentary debate on Afghanistan will have started and perhaps concluded.

Success can be defined as “an event(s) that accomplishes its intended purpose”.

ADM would like to welcome the new government into office.

With our feature on sustainment this month, I thought of my bathtub; a bathtub curve to be exact. The bathtub curve is widely used in reliability engineering.