Defence & Security Podcast Network

How can digital engineering help Australia deliver faster, more capable, guided weapons programs?

In this special episode of the Defence Connect Podcast, news editor Robert Dougherty is joined by Dan Christie, chief technology officer and CEO of Australian Missile Corporation (AMC), and Pierre Marchadier, vice president of value engagement industry consultant at Dassault Systèmes.
The pair discuss AMC's new partnership with Dassault Systèmes and how model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is transforming mission engineering, systems design, and guided weapons development under the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise.
The podcast conversation includes the following topics:
AMC's new digital engineering partnership with Dassault Systèmes and its role in Australia's sovereign GWEO capability.
How MBSE connects mission requirements, system design, and manufacturing through a single digital model.
Replacing document-based procurement with live digital models that improve collaboration between Defence and industry.
Using simulation and AI to accelerate design decisions, reduce risk, and shorten development timelines.
Lessons from Ukraine and the need for rapid capability iteration in modern conflict.
The importance of sovereign industrial capability across the entire guided weapons life cycle, from design through to manufacture and sustainment.
Finally, the discussion explores how digital engineering can help Defence make better capability, cost, and procurement decisions while strengthening Australia's sovereign defence industry.
Enjoy the podcast,
The Defence Connect team

A dramatic political shift in Western Australia has put the major parties on notice and raised a much bigger question: what happens to Australia's national resilience when voters stop trusting the institutions that govern them?

Hosts Phillip Tarrant and Major General (Ret'd) Dr Marcus Thompson examine the rise of populism in Australia and why growing political polarisation, cost-of-living pressures and economic frustration should be viewed through a national security lens.

They unpack the erosion of trust in government and institutions, the weakening of Australia's traditional political centre and the risk that social division creates opportunities for foreign interference, information warfare and malign influence.

Finally, the pair look north to the Pacific Islands Forum, currently underway, and Australia's increasingly contested strategic environment. With China seeking greater influence across the region, Taiwan remaining a flashpoint and several Pacific leaders absent from the forum, they discuss why Australia can no longer take its relationships in the Pacific for granted.
Enjoy the podcast,
The Contested Ground team

Australia's commercial logistics network could become one of its greatest defence advantages, according to Steve Roughsedge, senior vice-president of Theatre Supply Chain within the government and defence division of Toll Group.

The shift from peacetime efficiency to resilience is already reshaping how the Australian Defence Force thinks about logistics. Australia's vast distances, limited transport corridors and vulnerability to weather disruption create challenges that cannot be solved simply by adding more military infrastructure.
The opportunity lies in infrastructure that already exists. Toll operates extensive transport, warehousing and distribution networks supporting Australia's resources sector, much of it across the same northern geography where Defence is strengthening its posture – from Darwin and Tindal to Curtin and Learmonth.
Roughsedge describes these capabilities as "capability bricks" that can be brought together around an operational requirement. Rather than Defence recreating every logistics function itself, commercial infrastructure could be integrated into a broader theatre supply chain, providing greater flexibility, resilience and capacity.
That requires a fundamental shift in the Defence–industry relationship. Traditional task-based contracting needs to evolve towards partnerships focused on delivering an operational effect, whether that means moving guided weapons, sustaining forward forces, operating warehouses or supporting naval and allied activity across the Indo-Pacific.
The vulnerability of just-in-time supply chains adds urgency. Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East have demonstrated how quickly fuel, weapons, drones, medical supplies and spare parts can be consumed during sustained conflict. Australia's ability to maintain the fight will depend not only on what it can manufacture, but on whether it can keep those capabilities supplied, repaired and operational.
For Roughsedge, the missing piece is a comprehensive understanding of Australia's commercial logistics infrastructure and establishing access to it before a crisis occurs.
The challenge is no longer simply building military capability. It is ensuring the infrastructure behind that capability remains resilient when supply chains are contested.
Now is the time to build those relationships, not when the roads are cut, the fuel is running short and the ADF is already in the fight.
Enjoy the podcast,
The Defence Connect Spotlight team

Join David Hollingworth and Daniel Croft for this week's round-up of cyber security and artificial intelligence news!

The pair kick things off with the startling revelation that young Australians are turning to AI for their financial advice, as cost-of-living pressures bite. Can AI help get your finances in line? The jury is very definitely out.
Then it's on to the impact of cyber crime on Australian businesses, with a relative newcomer ransomware groups targeting Aussie car and automotive dealers. Is it happenstance, or have the hackers found a vulnerable third party, in common with all the victims, to exploit?
Finally, Hollingworth and Croft take a look at massive changes coming to Facebook and Instagram as Meta settles a US court case alleging the company's actions to create addictive content to capture the teen market. A definite good thing, but Meta wants the industry to go further.
Enjoy,
The Cyber Uncut team

Recent public backlash over the suspected involvement of Pine Gap in the ongoing conflict with Iran has once again raised concerns about Australia's sovereignty, its status as an "imperial" province or valued partner and the future of Pine Gap and other US bases in the country.

The 300-person gathering at Pine Gap in Alice Springs signals a periodic spike rather than a structural acceleration of Australia's anti-bases movement, according to Dr Nicole Townsend, war studies lecturer and director of UNSW Canberra's Second World War Research Group, Asia-Pacific. Yet the movement's durability warrants close attention from defence industry and policymakers alike.
Speaking with news editor Robert Dougherty, UNSW Canberra historian Dr Nicole Townsend argues that recent protests reflect a cyclical resurgence driven by geopolitical instability, not fundamental shift in public opposition to US military cooperation.
Pine Gap dominates anti-bases consciousness not because it is Australia's only joint facility – several operate under Australia–US agreements, maintaining the fiction that no foreign bases exist on Australian soil – but because of what isn't publicly known. Townsend emphasises that protesters' core complaint isn't demand for disclosure; it's the philosophical tension: if you cannot tell us what happens here, should it be here? That secrecy, necessary for intelligence operations, defines the facility's place in public imagination.
What distinguishes the movement is its deliberately assembled coalition. Townsend's David Scott Mitchell Fellowship research into the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition reveals extraordinary heterogeneity: unions, teachers associations, Indigenous groups, pro-Palestine activists and Greens politicians coexist under an umbrella targeting US basing. Yet this breadth obscures fragmentation. A recent national survey of 1,500 Australians found roughly one-third neutral on bases – neither supportive nor opposed – complicating assumptions about movement momentum. Lowy polling suggests 50–55 per cent support US basing, 43 per cent opposed.
Historically, these movements spike during geopolitical anxiety – Cold War nuclear fears, Iraq War opposition in 2003 – then subside. Current resurgence reflects Middle Eastern instability and Indo-Pacific uncertainty rather than new anti-American sentiment.
Townsend cautions against predicting trajectory. Media framing shapes which groups appear prominent; political contexts shift suddenly. Precedent exists for direct action targeting defence expos in the 1990s. But whether current momentum continues upward, stabilises or declines depends on variables historians cannot forecast.
The movement remains a barometer of Australian strategic anxiety, not a settled political force.
Enjoy the podcast, 
The Defence Connect team