How to buy a submarine: part 2

This paper describes some of the approaches that could be taken to replace Australia\u27s Collins class submarines and outlines their pros and cons. Executive summary The building of a replacement for Australia\u27s Collins class submarines will be the country\u27s most expensive defence project to date. It\u27s also likely to be the most complex, with a myriad of capability, commercial and industrial issues to be managed: the expertise for the design and construction of conventional submarines resides in Europe and Asia while Navy\u27s preference is for American combat and weapon systems. Pulling those elements together while managing the technical risks is no easy task. Local construction of the future submarine has been a bipartisan position for several years, and it has the support of industry and the bureaucracy. But there\u27s no simple or fast way to produce a unique Australian submarine. If the government decides to go down that path, it will have to do so in the knowledge that it\u27s a high stakes venture. This paper describes some of the approaches that could be taken and outlines their pros and cons. Despite claims to the contrary, there\u27s little doubt that the merger of a European design and American combat system is possible—after all, that\u27s what the Collins is. But a sensible early step in the process would be to have government-to-government discussions with the potential players—especially in Washington—to determine what the actual constraints are, and what\u27s merely unsubstantiated folklore. Surveying the world market, conventional submarine design capability with the experience and maturity required for our purposes can be found in France, Germany, Japan and Sweden. The UK hasn\u27t designed or built a conventional submarine in over two decades, but the trusted nature of the \u27five eyes\u27 intelligence relationship and its ongoing nuclear submarine programs means that it\u27s also a potential partner

An enterprise-level naval shipbuilding plan

Overview: This paper reviews the past performance of Australian naval shipbuilding, describes the pros and cons of a rolling production model, and unpicks the issues that the government will have to take into account. It concludes that we’re likely to see a bigger surface navy—potentially a much bigger one—as well as the sell-off of at least part of the currently government-owned ASC Pty Ltd. The paper also looks at strategies to manage the risks in the likely course of action and recommends mitigation strategies

One Defence: one direction? The First Principles Review of Defence

Overview: The recently released report of the First Principles Review of Defence, Creating One Defence, is set to reshape the Defence enterprise over the next few years. This ASPI special report explains the review’s recommendations and analyses the consequences for Defence. It provides three perspectives on the forthcoming reforms: Peter Jennings, ‘One Defence–root causes, risks and values’; Andrew Davies, ‘The capability development life cycle’; Mark Thomson, ‘One Defence in two parts’

ADF capability review: Australian Army

The Australian Army is small by regional standards and tiny given the size of our continent. This paper is the second in the series of capability snapshots produced by ASPI towards the Rudd Government\u27s new Defence White Paper. With over 27,000 permanent and almost 16,000 part-time Reserve personnel, the Australian Army is small by regional standards and tiny given the size of our continent. Structured as a standing force rather than a mobilisation base, the Army is designed to be able to deploy and sustain a brigade group of around 3,000 troops indefi nitely while retaining the capacity to deploy a battalion group of around 1,000 temporarily. Larger scale deployments are possible for a limited duration—as occurred to East Timor in 1999—or for extended periods if the current six-month troop rotation policy is relaxed. The Rudd Government is developing a Defence White Paper that aims to align resources, capability and strategic aims. To provide a baseline for discussions of options for future force structures, ASPI will produce a series of capability snapshots that discuss current and planned capabilities, and any significant shortfalls. This paper is the second in the series and it reviews the capability of the Australian Army. Future papers will review the capabilities of the Air Force and ADF C4ISR

Reviews and contestability: new directions for Defence

Overview: The First Principles Review of Defence is arguably the most significant review of the defence establishment since the 1973 re-organisation led by Sir Arthur Tange. This Strategic Insights brings together a series of contributions to ASPI’s blog The Strategist written by ten experts with long experience and broad knowledge of Australia’s defence bureaucracy. They bring a wealth of different perspectives and point to significant challenges ahead for Defence if the reforms proposed by the First Principles Review are to succeed

Optimizing astrophotonic spatial reformatters using simulated on-sky performance

One of the most useful techniques in astronomical instrumentation is image slicing. It enables a spectrograph to have a more compact angular slit, whilst retaining throughput and increasing resolving power. Astrophotonic components like the photonic lanterns and photonic reformatters can be used to replace bulk optics used so far. This study investigates the performance of such devices using end-to-end simulations to approximate realistic on-sky conditions. It investigates existing components, tries to optimize their performance and aims to understand better how best to design instruments to maximize their performance. This work complements the recent work in the field and provides an estimation for the performance of the new components.Comment: Conference proceedings in SPIE 2018 Austin Texa

Bacterial physiological adaptations to contrasting edaphic conditions identified using landscape scale metagenomics

This project was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (standard grant NE/E006353/1 to R.I.G., A.S.W., and M.B. and Soil Security grant NE/M017125/1 to R.I.G.). A.A.M. has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant no. 655240. We wish to further acknowledge the lab assistance of Phillip James and the staff at the NERC Biomolecular Analysis Facility, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A validation of the diathesis-stress model for depression in Generation Scotland

Abstract Depression has well-established influences from genetic and environmental risk factors. This has led to the diathesis-stress theory, which assumes a multiplicative gene-by-environment interaction (GxE) effect on risk. Recently, Colodro-Conde et al. empirically tested this theory, using the polygenic risk score for major depressive disorder (PRS, genes) and stressful life events (SLE, environment) effects on depressive symptoms, identifying significant GxE effects with an additive contribution to liability. We have tested the diathesis-stress theory on an independent sample of 4919 individuals. We identified nominally significant positive GxE effects in the full cohort (R 2 = 0.08%, p = 0.049) and in women (R 2 = 0.19%, p = 0.017), but not in men (R 2 = 0.15%, p = 0.07). GxE effects were nominally significant, but only in women, when SLE were split into those in which the respondent plays an active or passive role (R 2 = 0.15%, p = 0.038; R 2 = 0.16%, p = 0.033, respectively). High PRS increased the risk of depression in participants reporting high numbers of SLE (p = 2.86 × 10−4). However, in those participants who reported no recent SLE, a higher PRS appeared to increase the risk of depressive symptoms in men (β = 0.082, p = 0.016) but had a protective effect in women (β = −0.061, p = 0.037). This difference was nominally significant (p  = 0.017). Our study reinforces the evidence of additional risk in the aetiology of depression due to GxE effects. However, larger sample sizes are required to robustly validate these findings