By Richard Stone Scrutiny of Australia’s defence budget following demands by the Trump administration to increase expenditure has provided some interesting insights into the mindsets of the higher echelons of decision-makers in Canberra. It has also thrown light upon Australia’s designated role to ‘project power’ in sensitive US defence and security provision in the Indian Ocean. All is not what …

By Richard Stone OTE: TECHINT is an umbrella term for the technical INTs: IMINT (Imagery Intelligence), SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) and MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence). It is a section of US-led intelligence-gathering focussed upon scientific material concerned with spatial wave lengths, time dependence modulation and hydromagnetic data. It is data-mined through AI; it is, furthermore, central to Pentagon military planning …