Latest news with #TalismanSabre
Newsroom
a day ago
- Newsroom
Aukus tech collaboration moves ahead without NZ
The defence technology-sharing arrangement, known as Aukus Pillar II, has moved from theoretical to real-world, but the Government has still not made a decision on if, or when, New Zealand would join in. Last month, during the Talisman Sabre joint military exercise in Australia, the Aukus countries – Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States – carried out tests of underwater drones.
Deccan Herald
2 days ago
- Business
- Deccan Herald
Building the backbone of Indo-Pacific security
Chief of the Australian Army Lieutenant General Simon Stuart's five-day India visit will be more than a ceremonial reaffirmation of friendship. It marks a strategic step forward in an already robust and deepening defence partnership between India and Australia. As the Indo-Pacific becomes more contested and China's coercive manoeuvres intensify, frontline co-ordination between like-minded militaries is no longer a diplomatic nicety. It has become a necessity. The need to forge a concrete and workable strategy becomes even more important due to the ongoing tariff friction between India and the United August 10 to 14 visit will include high-level meetings with India's Chief of Army Staff, General Upendra Dwivedi, and senior Ministry of Defence officials. This is a critical moment in a partnership fast becoming one of Indo-Pacific's most consequential military relationships. For India and Australia, trust has matured into dialogue to the broader Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), signed in 2020, has enabled multifaceted co-operation, it is the army-to-army relationship that now forms the sharp edge of this engagement. The bilateral exercise AUSTRA HIND, launched in 2016, has steadily grown in scope and on counter-terrorism, close-quarter battle, and joint tactical operations, it reflects the evolving battlefield realities both armies face. The upcoming edition in November, to be hosted in Australia, is expected to push the boundaries of interoperability in realistic terrain and combat Army contingents have also actively participated in the exercise Talisman Sabre and the Indo-Pacific Endeavour series. These engagements go beyond tokenism — they reflect a willingness to operate in coalition environments, something that will prove vital in potential humanitarian crises, grey-zone flashpoints, or regional stabilisation trust, operational confidence.A network of institutional mechanisms ensures ongoing engagement throughout the year. The army-to-army staff talks, initiated in 2010 and now held annually since 2016, have helped transform strategic intent into practical frameworks. These talks are complemented by defence policy dialogues, working groups, and frequent 2+2 ministerial the India-Australia Young Officers Exchange Programme, conceptualised by late General Bipin Rawat and launched at the 2022 prime ministerial summit, is quietly shaping the future leadership ecosystem. Young officers today will be commanders tomorrow, and the mutual understanding built in these formative years could become the bedrock of coalition command synergy in a contested Indo-Pacific..A two-way education and knowledge exchange are equally strong pillars of support. Indian officers regularly attend Australia's Army Command and Staff Course, Strategic Studies Course, and Combined Defence Intelligence programmes, while their Australian counterparts are embedded at India's National Defence College, Defence Services Staff College, and Higher Defence Orientation Instructor Exchange Programme at India's Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in Vairengte, Mizoram, reflects the tactical seriousness of the relationship. Subject Matter Expert Exchanges (SMEEs) continue to refine doctrinal understanding on topics ranging from Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) to jungle warfare to counter-terrorism. This joint training vocabulary cannot be built alumni networks play a role: the 2024 'Dosti and Mateship in Defence' alumni connect brought together officers trained at the NDC and the DSSC to reinforce long-term familiarity and continuity across ranks and engagement to private defence sector is also beginning to find a foothold in Australia. Indian firms have successfully exported tactical ISR platforms, protected mobility systems, and battlefield logistics technologies — a quiet but telling indicator of India's growing defence industrial credibility..A promising development is the Indian Army's ongoing discussion with Australia's Digger Works and India's Army Design Bureau (ADB) on jointly developing battlefield solutions, particularly cost-effective, combat-tested technologies suitable for harsh operational the visit must visit comes at a moment when India's global defence posture is rising, as both a credible military partner and a net security provider in the Indian Ocean. The visit is more than symbolism. It is expected to build on shared operational experiences, reinforce strategic trust, and lay the groundwork for expanded collaboration in unmanned systems, cyber resilience, and multinational coalition China continues to exploit regional fault lines through coercion, economic leverage, and grey-zone tactics, India and Australia have little choice but to accelerate defence integration. This doesn't imply entanglement in each other's conflicts — rather, it points to a mutual recognition of shared risks and a shared commitment to preserving a free, open, and rules-based maturity, not strategic much of the 2000s, India-Australia defence ties were polite but peripheral. Today, they are front and centre. Operational interoperability, institutional momentum, and a growing alignment of strategic worldviews back this shift. The relationship is no longer driven solely by ceremony, cricket, or culture. It is anchored in shared preparedness for a turbulent and Australia are learning, training, and planning together. The next step must be co-development, co-production, and — when necessary — collaboration. Because in this era of contested waters and sharpening edges, trusted militaries are the backbone of regional General Dushyant Singh (Retd) is Director General, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi.
Scoop
5 days ago
- General
- Scoop
Japanese Warships Arrive In Wellington
Two Japanese warships have arrived in Wellington for a three-day ceremonial visit. The ships had been holding a training manoeuvre with Australian and RNZAF P-8 martime aircraft. The pair were accompanied by HMNZS Canterbury, which was returning from the major, multi-country exercise Talisman Sabre. The New Zealand Defence Force said the helicopter destroyer JS Ise and destroyer JS Suzunami, with more than 500 crew, were on Indo-Pacific deployment and had sailed to Wellington from Sydney. "The intent of the deployment is to improve the JMSDF tactical capabilities and to strengthen cooperation and understanding with allied and partner navies in the Indo- Pacific, as well as contribute to the peace and stability of the region," the Defence Force said. New Zealand and Japan had a strong and long-standing relationship with a shared commitment to global and regional security, it said. "Both countries have recently been involved in Exercise Talisman Sabre, the multi-domain warfare exercise in Australia, while shortly HMNZS Aotearoa will be sailing to Japan where it will be based while conducting monitoring of United Nations sanctions." The helicopter destroyer Ise was in fact a small aircraft carrier, nearly 20,000 tons in size. It normally had four helicopters but was able to operate up to 18. It's accompanied by a destroyer, Suzunami. The Japanese maritime self defence force said the visit was to strengthen cooperation and understanding with allied and partner navies in the Indo-Pacific.
AllAfrica
7 days ago
- Politics
- AllAfrica
Dark Eagle: US hypersonic deployment has China squawking
US deployment of its Dark Eagle hypersonic missile system to Australia's Northern Territory for the 2025 Talisman Sabre joint military drills has reshaped deterrence dynamics vis-à-vis China in the Indo-Pacific. Capable of striking targets up to 2,700 kilometers away, Dark Eagle is operated via a battery of four launchers and command vehicles, allowing precision strikes at hypersonic speeds. The deployment, conducted by the Hawaii-based 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) represented the weapon's first operational use west of the International Date Line, USNI reported. Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), stated that the military exercise, held from July 13 to August 4 with over 30,000 personnel from 19 nations, validated the US Army's ability to deploy and operate the system in forward environments. Prior to this, the weapon had only been tested in Florida and integrated into Navy-led command drills. During Talisman Sabre, the MDTF also launched an SM-6 missile from its Mid-Range Capability (MRC) platform against a maritime target—a shot that provoked strong protests from Beijing, which warned that such moves risk destabilizing the region and triggering a new arms race. The US Navy plans to field a variant of the hypersonic missile aboard Virginia-class submarines and Zumwalt-class destroyers by fiscal year 2028, reinforcing the Pentagon's long-range strike architecture aimed at penetrating Chinese and Russian anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) networks. As noted by Ankit Panda in an October 2023 report for the Carnegie Endowment, the US strategy increasingly favors mobile, land-based missile systems whose ability to reposition rapidly complicates adversary targeting and enhances survivability in contested environments. These wheeled launchers, employed in shoot-and-scoot tactics, are seen as effective tools for bolstering deterrence without incurring the diplomatic costs of permanent basing. Panda notes that such systems enable a sustained forward presence while adapting to the demands of a more fragmented and escalation-prone Indo-Pacific theater. This evolving doctrine is embedded within the MDTF concept, which integrates capabilities across land, air, sea, space and cyber to counter enemy A2/AD strategies. According to Wilson Beaver and Anna Gustafson in an April 2025 article for the Heritage Foundation, MDTFs are uniquely designed to deliver tailored, theater-specific strikes that degrade adversary capabilities while restoring US freedom of maneuver. Their agility and domain integration make them ideal for operating long-range precision fires in environments where fixed installations are highly vulnerable. At the operational level, forward-deployed missile forces also serve broader strategic goals. In testimony before the US Senate in April 2025, Admiral Paparo stressed that defending Taiwan and preserving Indo-Pacific stability demands forward-deployed missile, sensor and command systems across allied territories, including Japan, the Philippines, Guam and Palau. He described this posture as essential to denying adversaries their strategic objectives, emphasizing that geographic dispersion, allied interoperability and resilient early warning and precision-strike capabilities form the backbone of a combat-credible deterrent embedded across the region's front-line archipelagos. These capabilities have triggered deeper strategic concerns. Aaron Shiffler, writing for the Joint Air Power Competence Center in an October 2023 article, notes that hypersonic weapons compress decision timelines and complicate traditional defense postures. Their extreme speed and maneuverability reduce early-warning windows, increasing the risk of miscalculation. Shiffler argues that these systems could undermine mutual vulnerability—the bedrock of nuclear deterrence—by enabling rapid, precise strikes against high-value targets. In his view, this shift raises the prospect of crisis instability if adversaries perceive a first-strike advantage. While advocates tout the deterrent value of hypersonic weapons, Shiffler warns that without arms control frameworks, proliferation of these weapons may erode both nuclear and conventional strategic balances. But the growing momentum behind hypersonics has met stiff resistance from skeptics, such as David Wright and Cameron Tracy, who argue in a March 2024 article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the systems offer little advantage over legacy missiles. They cite intense heating and aerodynamic drag during low-altitude flight as limiting factors that degrade speed, range and survivability. Unlike ballistic missiles, which briefly heat during reentry, boost-glide vehicles face sustained thermal stress during their glide phase—up to 30 minutes—making faster, longer-range designs difficult. They need large rocket boosters and emit bright infrared signatures, making them visible to early-warning satellites despite claims of stealth. Wright and Tracy contend that the technology suffers from fundamental design compromises and may be more about optics than operational advantage. Shawn Rostker echoes this skepticism in a February 2025 RealClear Defense article, where he critiques the growing political pressure in the US to match Chinese and Russian hypersonic deployments. Rostker argues that recent calls for expanded hypersonic funding rest on inflated threat assessments and that many technical hurdles remain unresolved. He states that both glide vehicles and cruise-type hypersonics lack a compelling strategic rationale beyond symbolic parity. Despite the limited operational success of China's DF-ZF or Russia's Tsirkon, Avangard and Kinzhal, their existence fuels anxiety in Washington, creating a momentum that may not be justified by battlefield utility. Rostker warns that absent clear strategic value, hypersonics risk becoming expensive distractions rather than game-changing deterrents. Yet China's response indicates that it takes these developments seriously. Veerle Nouwens and others, in a January 2024 report for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), state that Chinese analysts view US plans to deploy land-based missiles across the First and Second Island Chains as a direct threat to China's strategic mobility and posture. According to Nouwens and others, Beijing sees these forward deployments as a deliberate effort to undermine its A2/AD systems and target inland facilities. In response, Chinese strategists anticipate a surge in their land-based missile deployments—including conventional and nuclear systems—to break out of perceived encirclement. Nouwens and others caution that such dynamics risk spiraling into a full-blown arms competition and destabilizing the region's already fragile security architecture. That concern has deepened with a June 2025 report by Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank showing that Chinese strategists now view these long-range precision missile deployments as existential threats to China's regional deterrence and national survival. They say Chinese analysts believe these systems could enable decapitation strikes on the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) in a crisis, prompting accelerated efforts to modernize the force. This line of effort includes expanding mobile and silo-based platforms to ensure mission survivability and retaliatory capability. Balzer and Blumenthal argue that this shift reflects a broader consensus in China that survivable, land-based nuclear forces are vital to counter US denial strategies and preserve credible deterrence. The US bet on forward-deployed hypersonics aims to fracture China's A2/AD bubbles before they harden—but the payoff hinges on credibility, not just capability. As China accelerates countermeasures, the strategic equation is shifting toward a high-stakes contest of precision, survivability and political will.
Scoop
7 days ago
- Business
- Scoop
Public Service Association Endorses Government's War Agenda
New Zealand's largest trade union, the Public Service Association (PSA), is fervently supporting moves to roughly double the military budget in preparation for war. Under the guise of seeking to protect jobs in the NZ Defence Force (NZDF), the union has denounced the National Party-led government, from the right, for not maintaining a strong enough military to join the coming US-led war against China. The NZDF confirmed on July 21 that it intends to cut 255 civilian jobs. They include roles in the army, air force, strategy, financial, health and safety, defence college, joint defence services, joint support group, chief of staff office and veterans affairs. It brings a total of one in ten positions axed in the last year, including 'voluntary' redundancies. A further 45 may also be cut. At the same time, a major escalation of military front-line capability, equipment and weaponry is under way. With the support of the opposition Labour Party, the government plans to nearly double defence spending from just over 1 percent to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a $NZ9 billion increase, in line with demands of the US Trump administration and NATO powers. Defence Minister Judith Collins last week told graduating army recruits to prepare for the real possibility of combat 'as the world faces its most complex and volatile global environment in decades.' Nearly 700 NZDF troops this month joined the massive Talisman Sabre exercise in Australia, a multi-national dress rehearsal for war against China. A NZDF spokesperson told Stuff they were 'reprioritising' the workforce to focus on 'maintaining combat readiness' and 'delivering core military activities.' It is establishing 276 new civilian roles while disestablishing 281 currently filled with a further 250 vacant positions not replaced. The PSA criticised the cuts from the standpoint of promoting the government's vast military buildup. The union's national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons condemned the cuts as 'incredibly shortsighted' and 'not how you build a modern, combat-ready defence force at a time of rising security risks.' Fitzsimmons added that civilian defence workers were needed to support new investment in military equipment and technology and warned the cuts would force 'those in uniform to pick up the work of the civilian workers. That is not what they signed up to do and won't help NZDF improve retention.' Fitzsimons commented: 'This is all about saving money, not strengthening security. It doesn't make any sense when tensions are rising across the Asia Pacific area and in Europe… It was only a few months ago that a warship from China was in the Tasman Sea.' In February a 'live fire' exercise by three Chinese warships in nearby international waters was seized upon by the New Zealand and Australian governments, along with the corporate media, to stoke hysteria about an escalating 'threat' posed by Beijing and to justify the military spend-up. The US and its allies routinely carry out naval drills in waters close to the Chinese mainland. The pro-war position advanced by Fitzsimons is thoroughly anti-working class. It expresses the reactionary nationalist outlook of the labour and trade union bureaucracies at home and abroad that are closely integrated with the capitalist state. In May, Spain's General Union of Workers (UGT) and Workers' Commissions (CCOO), the two largest trade union federations, threw their full support behind the European Union's plans for mass rearmament, aligning themselves with the European establishment's preparations for war against Russia. In the US, the leader of the United Auto Workers Union, Shawn Fain, a rabid Trump supporter, has cited the collaborationist labour mobilisation of the American economy during World War II as the model for today's trade unions. There is mass opposition to war, witnessed in the ongoing protests against the genocide in Gaza. In every country, however, including in New Zealand, the union bureaucracy has refused to take any action to stop the supply of weapons and other materials for Israel's war machine. All the imperialist powers are involved the rapidly escalating wars that are engulfing the globe. New Zealand is no exception. A minor imperialist power in the Pacific and a US ally, it is part of the US-led Five Eyes spying network; NZ troops are in Britain training Ukrainian conscripts to fight Russia; and NZ forces are involved in repeated provocative military exercises aimed against China. The trade union apparatus supports the war drive of its 'own' national bourgeoisie because it represents the interests of a privileged layer of the upper middle class, whose wealth is bound up with enhancing the position of NZ imperialism. Unmentioned by Fitzsimons and other union leaders is the fact that the massive armaments upgrades can only be carried out at the expense of the social conditions and basic rights of the entire working class. The PSA is an accomplice in the deepening attacks on jobs and conditions among public sector workers. Prior to the 2023 election the union openly supported Labour's own plan to slash public service budgets by up to 4 percent as 'a prudent move to tighten the belt'—as PSA leader Duane Leo put it in a Radio NZ interview. Fitzsimons was a Labour candidate in that election. In the past 18 months, NZ's far-right government has launched a scorched earth policy against all the social services on which the working class depends. Over 10,000 public sector jobs have been eliminated with no serious resistance from the PSA, which has over 95,000 members, or any of the unions. With unemployment increasing from 3.6 percent in 2023 to 5.1 percent this month and forecast to continue rising, the government is increasingly despised. The right-wing nationalist NZ First and libertarian ACT Parties—which are part of the National-led coalition government—are leading the assault on the working class, despite gaining only 6.08 percent and 8.6 percent respectively of the popular vote in 2023. A broad-based mobilisation against job losses in the public and private sectors would win widespread support in the working class. The government's 2024 budget was handed down amid nationwide protests. In the capital, Wellington, a crowd of 7,000 descended onto parliament grounds while protests coincided with a two-day strike over pay by 2,500 junior doctors. Since then, the unions have dissipated the opposition, with the Council of Trade Unions boasting a purported new 'policy vision' that will be unveiled for the 2026 elections. The corporatist unions have enforced the thousands of job cuts. The PSA's strategy has been to take a handful of legal cases in the Employment Relations Authority, including against the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Health NZ, over the way in which the cuts have been managed. Instead of challenging mass layoffs, the union insists that they are carried out according to provisions in employment agreements which require 'consultation' with the unions. PSA spokesman Leo declared the MoE had rushed through its restructure without complying with the collective agreement, which requires the MoE and PSA to first 'try to agree to the outcomes of cost-cutting exercises and present that view to the management of the MoE.' The fight against austerity cannot be separated from the struggle against war. The demand must be raised for the vast resources being wasted on the military to be redirected to solve the crisis in public education and healthcare, and to put an end to poverty and homelessness. But to carry forward a real fight against war and austerity, workers and young people must recognise who their enemies are. They face a political struggle against not only the National Party-led government, but also the opposition Labour Party and its allies—the Greens, Te Pāti Māori, the various pseudo-left organisations—and the union bureaucracy. The PSA's open support for escalating war preparations against China underscores the urgent need for workers to build new organisations that they themselves control. Rank-and-file committees should be established in every workplace, independent of the union apparatus, to mobilise the working class against militarism and war, and to defend jobs, working conditions and vital public services. This fight must be informed by a socialist political perspective, aimed at putting an end to the capitalist system, which is plunging the world into war.
