“We keep asking what the next aircraft will be. The better question is whether the force can keep fighting on day forty.” By Robbin Laird. For three decades, “generation” has been a word we attach to aircraft: fourth, fifth, now sixth. The label implies the next step forward is a better machine. The Sir Richard Williams Foundation’s 1 October seminar in Canberra, The Requirement for Air Combat Mass and Depth in the Indo-Pacific, suggested otherwise. It read less like a platfo

“The airplane was never the only point.” By Robbin Laird. Lt. Col. Chip Berke, one of the first Marine pilots to fly the F-22, used to make a point about the iPhone. When Steve Jobs introduced it, he described three devices in one. Nobody describes it that way now. What proved revolutionary was the ecosystem that grew up around the phone. The same is true of fifth-generation airpower. For two decades, the West argued about the airplane: its cost, its schedule, its software, i

“The next generation of airpower is not an aircraft. It is the capacity to fight night after night, week after week, month after month.” By Robbin Laird. The Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar in Canberra on 1 October was framed around a platform question: does Australia have enough air combat mass? By the end of the day, almost nobody in the room was answering it that way. Operators, industry executives and visiting commanders kept reaching for the same ideas: sustainme

“If the platform is a node, the enterprise is the weapon.” By Robbin Laird. At the Sir Richard Williams Foundation’s October 1 seminar in Canberra, three sessions on air combat mass and depth said more together than any one of them said alone. Air Marshal Paul Lloyd spoke from the European theatre, where the RAF is resetting its combat air strategy around a war on its own continent. Air Commodore Jarrod Pendlebury and Wing Commander Chris McInnes made the national case for ai

“Combat mass doesn’t always require buying more. Sometimes it requires thinking differently about what you have.” By Robbin Laird. At the Williams Foundation seminar on October 1, Air Commodore (Retd) Phil Gordon, a former RAAF Joint Force Air Component Commander who now works at Lockheed Martin Australia, was expected to make the case for more platforms. He set that aside. His argument was that combat mass can come from having more things to call on, or from doing more with

“It’s not an industry problem; it’s a combat power problem.” By Robbin Laird. At the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar on October 1, Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) Robert Denney of Northrop Grumman made an argument that cuts against how most air forces spend their money. Denney spent 33 years in the RAAF, including as Head of Air Force Capability and Head of Force Integration. He says the tacticians, himself included in his day, have been optimizing the wrong part of the prob

“In 1937, John Curtin argued that Australia’s defence must lie in aviation. Ninety years later, the country is having the same conversation with different technology.” By Robbin Laird. At the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar in Canberra on 1 October, a panel on collaborative combat aircraft and Australian industry made an argument that cuts against the popular debate. The popular picture is simple. Buy large numbers of cheap uncrewed platforms because you expect to los

“A thousand aircraft orbiting outside an adversary’s engagement envelope do not provide the combat power of a hundred able to penetrate it.”

“Deterrence, absent a grounding in actuality, is dangerous.”

Air power, like every other instrument of defence, is only as durable as the national will behind it.

What does sufficient air combat mass and depth look like for the Indo-Pacific, and is the country building it?

"Historian of the Seminars", a phrase I've earned the hard way: a decade of notebooks, one Williams Foundation seminar at a time. By Robbin Laird.

"If we're not at the table, we're on the menu" applies to air forces too — except in this case, the table is the sky over the Indo-Pacific, and without it, nothing else survives.

'Space as a Fight Tonight Domain: Jeremy King on Australia’s Strategic Imperative' in Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance Proceedings - Paper 5, Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar, 23 April 2026 By Robbin Laird Jeremy King speaking to the 23 April 2026 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar. At the Williams Foundation Seminar on the Fight Tonight Force held on 23 April 2026, Jeremy King’s, Chief Executive of Lockheed Martin Australia and New Zealan

'Training as Combat Generation: The Case for a Systems Approach' in Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance Proceedings - Paper 4, Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar, 23 April 2026 By Robbin Laird Alexander Robinson speaking to the 23 April 2026 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar. One of the more thought-provoking presentations at the seminar came from Alexander Robinson, Sales and Capability Director at Pilatus Aircraft Australia. Robinson opened

'From Prototypes to Operational Realities: Australia’s Maritime Autonomous Systems Unit and the Tasks That Cannot Wait' Interview with Marcus Hellyer, Head of Research at Strategic Analysis Australia By Robbin Laird Alexander Robinson speaking to the 23 April 2026 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar. Australia’s Maritime Autonomous Systems Unit, the MASU, stands at an inflection point. The period of experimentation and prototype evaluation that has defined the past severa

'Air and Missile Defense, Precision Strike, and the Indo-Pacific: Lessons from Ukraine and the Gulf' in Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance Proceedings - Paper 3, Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar, 23 April 2026 By Robbin Laird At the Sir Richard Williams seminar held on 23 April 2026 focused on the fight tonight challenge, Justin Bronk delivered a presentation that cut through a great deal of the conceptual noise currently cluttering Western defen

'From Boutique Concern to Existential Question: Logistics, Sustainment and Combat Power' Interview with Dr. David Beaumont By Robbin Laird During a visit to Canberra in April 2026, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. David Beaumont, writer at the website ‘The Paper War’ (formerly ‘Logistics In War’), and one of the most persistent advocates for taking logistics seriously as a strategic discipline. For years, Beaumont has argued that logistics and sustainment sit at the

'Ten Months, Not Ten Years: Mike Pezzullo on Australia’s Strategic Moment' in Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance Proceedings - Paper 2, Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar, 23 April 2026 By Dr Robbin Laird There is a particular kind of clarity that comes from a man who spent four decades inside the machinery of Australian national security and is now, as he put it, “free” to speak. Mike Pezzullo, former Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs an

'So how to exploit Australia’s strategic advantages?' in Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance Proceedings - Paper 1, Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar, 23 April 2026 By Dr Robbin Laird ACM (Retd) Mark Binskin AC, Chair, Sir Richard Williams Foundation, opening the seminar on 23 April 2026. The Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar of 23 April 2026 brought together practitioners, analysts, industry leaders and allies to confront a deceptively simpl