Terms of engagement: Australia’s regional defence diplomacy

Australia is in the process of pivoting back to our own region and looking for new strategies for Defence re-engagement. But the Defence Cooperation Program hasn’t been scrutinised in any depth since an audit report by the Auditor-General in 2001. That pointed to a lack of financial information management and clear and public articulation of the goals and objectives of defence cooperation activities.A fundamental conclusion of the report is that these criticisms remain valid today. The emphasis has shifted over the years from assisting regional countries to build their own defence forces more towards working together to promote a secure region. The report makes a number of recommendations including that our defence engagement in the priority regions should focus on the maritime dimension. The highest priority should be attached to implementing the Pacific Maritime Security Project as the cornerstone of our maritime security engagement in the South Pacific

Communication and Control in Collaborative UAVs: Recent Advances and Future Trends

The recent progress in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) technology has significantly advanced UAV-based applications for military, civil, and commercial domains. Nevertheless, the challenges of establishing high-speed communication links, flexible control strategies, and developing efficient collaborative decision-making algorithms for a swarm of UAVs limit their autonomy, robustness, and reliability. Thus, a growing focus has been witnessed on collaborative communication to allow a swarm of UAVs to coordinate and communicate autonomously for the cooperative completion of tasks in a short time with improved efficiency and reliability. This work presents a comprehensive review of collaborative communication in a multi-UAV system. We thoroughly discuss the characteristics of intelligent UAVs and their communication and control requirements for autonomous collaboration and coordination. Moreover, we review various UAV collaboration tasks, summarize the applications of UAV swarm networks for dense urban environments and present the use case scenarios to highlight the current developments of UAV-based applications in various domains. Finally, we identify several exciting future research direction that needs attention for advancing the research in collaborative UAVs

The cloud-to-edge-to-IoT continuum as an enabler for search and rescue operations

When a natural or human disaster occurs, time is critical and often of vital importance. Data from the incident area containing the information to guide search and rescue (SAR) operations and improve intervention effectiveness should be collected as quickly as possible and with the highest accuracy possible. Nowadays, rescuers are assisted by different robots able to fly, climb or crawl, and with different sensors and wireless communication means. However, the heterogeneity of devices and data together with the strong low-delay requirements cause these technologies not yet to be used at their highest potential. Cloud and Edge technologies have shown the capability to offer support to the Internet of Things (IoT), complementing it with additional resources and functionalities. Nonetheless, building a continuum from the IoT to the edge and to the cloud is still an open challenge. SAR operations would benefit strongly from such a continuum. Distributed applications and advanced resource orchestration solutions over the continuum in combination with proper software stacks reaching out to the edge of the network may enhance the response time and effective intervention for SAR operation. The challenges for SAR operations, the technologies, and solutions for the cloud-to-edge-to-IoT continuum will be discussed in this paper

New Zealand's Involvement in Maritime Security in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, from 1982 Onwards

Surrounded by water, hundreds of miles from its nearest neighbour, New Zealand is uniquely placed as a maritime nation. Therefore, maritime security is a highly important consideration for New Zealand. Despite this fact, New Zealand's focus on maritime security has not always been strong. This thesis examines New Zealand's involvement in maritime security in the three areas which its security policy focuses on: New Zealand territory, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia. After negotiations for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) were successfully completed in 1982, the global maritime situation changed dramatically. Vast areas of oceans which had once been outside any nations' jurisdiction were now the source of territorial disputes. UNCLOS left New Zealand responsible for the fifth largest exclusive economic zone in the world. During the years following World War Two, New Zealand's contribution to Pacific regional maritime security had focused on combating the possible threat from the Soviet Navy. However, following UNCLOS, that focus changed. With its newly acquired fisheries resources, New Zealand began to focus on resource protection through developments such as the establishment of the quota management system and regional cooperation. A shift away from focusing on traditional western alliance obligations was compounded by a falling out with the United States over nuclear ship visits, the signing of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone treaty and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by the French Secret Service. After the end of the Cold War, New Zealand focused on increasing its defence relations with other nations through a range of activities and organisations including Closer Defence Relations with Australia, the Five Power Defence Arrangements, the Mutual Assistance Programme and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum. New Zealand also carried out a series of defence policy reviews which greatly affected defence policy and force structure, resulting in New Zealand disbanding its Air Combat Force and deciding to reduce the Navy's Combat Force to only two frigates by 2005. During this period, fisheries became a highly significant issue and New Zealand was heavily involved in establishing Pacific fisheries management regimes. Following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, New Zealand's primary focus on security turned to terrorism and other asymmetric threats. Existing regional organisations began to adjust to address asymmetric threats and, in Southeast Asia in particular, maritime security began to feature heavily on the agenda of these organisations. At this time, New Zealand's focus on maritime security was strengthening; this was seen through its purchase of seven new ships for the Navy and its increasing involvement in regional bodies dealing with maritime threats. The future holds a wide range of maritime security challenges for New Zealand. New Zealand must prepare itself for a wide range of unexpected challenges as well as being ready to deal with the threats which have already been identified. New Zealand's current focus on maritime security is strong but it cannot afford to let this slip