'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

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Paper #12 By Dr Robbin Laird The contemporary Indo-Pacific security environment presents a fundamental challenge to traditional alliance structures: how can middle powers maintain strategic autonomy while deepening military cooperation with major power partners? This dilemma is particularly acute for Australia, which faces the competing imperatives of economic integration with China, security dependence on the United

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Paper #11 By Dr Robbin Laird The recent Williams Foundation seminar on military readiness did not really highlight or provide detailed perspectives on how uncrewed systems could empower the fight tonight force and help drive the ongoing operational re-design process which is becoming a key part of military readiness. Australia finds itself positioned to leverage this technological moment. With sophisticated defence s

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Interview Paper #10 By Dr Robbin Laird Australia faces one of the world’s most daunting maritime security challenges. With 37,000 kilometers of coastline and the third-largest exclusive economic zone globally, the Australian Maritime Border Command must protect an area so vast that traditional approaches simply cannot scale effectively. To put this in perspective, Australia’s maritime responsibility covers more ocean

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Paper #9 By Dr Robbin Laird In an era of shifting geopolitical dynamics and evolving security challenges, traditional approaches to defence logistics and industrial cooperation are proving fundamentally inadequate. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has starkly illustrated that modern warfare demands not just superior firepower, but the ability to sustain, adapt, and surge capabilities at unprecedented speed

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #8 By Dr Robbin Laird The ghost of inadequate preparation haunts modern military planning. Mrs. Marion Chapman’s 1949 letter to the Department of Air, lamenting her son’s death in the Pacific War, carries a haunting accusation that resonates today: “he, with others, was so poorly equipped, directed and eventually abandoned.” This stark reminder opened the panel discussion on building resilience

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #7 By Dr Robbin Laird In an era of growing strategic uncertainty, Australia faces a fundamental question about its defence posture: how does a geographically isolated continent-nation sustain military operations when global supply chains fail? Air Vice Marshal (Retired) Robert Denney, now Country Executive for Northrop Grumman Australia, delivered a compelling answer in a recent presentation th

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #6 By Dr Robbin Laird Air Commodore Alun Roberts, Head Air to Air Missiles Royal Air Force, outlined in a virtual presentation to the seminar, Britain’s ambitious defence transformation in response to evolving global security challenges. The United Kingdom’s recently published Strategic Defence Review (SDR) 2025 represents nothing sa paradigm shift in British defence thinking. He argued that is

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #5 By Dr Robbin Laird In an era of unprecedented global uncertainty, Australia faces a critical question: Can the nation mobilize its industrial base quickly enough to meet emerging security challenges? According to Matt Jones (seen above in the featured photo), Head of Future Business Defence Delivery at BAE Systems Australia, the answer lies not in waiting for crisis to justify action, but in

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #4 By Dr Robbin Laird From left: AVM (Retd) Zed Roberton DSC, AM, Professor Justin Bronk, GPCAPT Steven Thornton, LTGEN Susan Coyle AM, CSC, DSM The nature of warfare is fundamentally unchanged — it remains a contest of political will between adversaries. However, the character of how wars are fought has transformed dramatically. In an era where conflicts can be decided before the first missile

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #3 By Dr Robbin Laird The nature of military transformation has fundamentally changed. Where once armed forces could afford to develop new platforms over decades and then figure out how to use them, today’s security environment demands a completely different approach. This shift represents perhaps the most significant change in military thinking since the advent of combined arms warfare itself.

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #2 By Dr Robbin Laird For decades, integrated air and missile defence has been synonymous with ballistic missile defence, Patriots and Aegis systems standing guard against incoming rockets. But Professor Justin Bronk of the Royal United Service Institute delivered a stark wake-up call at the seminar: the modern threat spectrum demands a fundamental rethink of air defence, and the timeline for p

Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance - Conference Proceedings #1 By Dr Robbin Laird On September 18, 2025, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation held its 2nd seminar for the year which was entitled: “Fight Tonight: Combat Readiness at the Speed of Relevance.” I will highlight the presentations at the conference in a series of articles over the next few weeks. I will conclude the series with an article providing my perceptions of what were the major answers

Dr Robbin Laird, The Imperative for Cost Effectiveness in Multidomain Operations: Final Report, 22 May 2025 Link to ebook (Defense.info)