More than 200 RAAF personnel were involved. In the chaos of Saigon’s collapse, Australian crews risked everything—facing gunfire, sabotage, and tragedy—to evacuate orphans, nurses, nuns, vehicles, refugees, and staff in a race against time.

The origins of pilots burning pianos isn’t entirely clear. Mostly undisputed, however, is that the tradition traces to early Royal Air Force pilots as a way of honouring aircrew who didn’t return from missions.

Health and defence have been integrated into defence strategies in Canada, Britain, the US and New Zealand. Australia needs to do the same. Ignoring this link weakens preparedness in an increasingly unpredictable global landscape.

Australia’s largest biennial military exercise will extend beyond Australian shores this year, with Papua New Guinea hosting key elements of the multinational training activity, led by the Australian Defence Force and the United States Military.

Australia’s long-standing neglect of transport infrastructure poses real risks—without a national logistics plan, critical operations could stall before they begin. Townsville bases face major supply challenges so transport, logistics and defence integration urgently needed.

Resilience means having the ability to cope with, and rebound from, life’s challenges and still achieve our goals. Our capacity to cope with stressors can determine whether we thrive, or just survive.

Training systems can creep from the old military adage of ‘train like you fight’ and lean towards synthetic options. Taiwan with its increased threats, is focussing on force-on-force and on-site and real-time manner training.

Early research carried out by a group of Sydney-based scientists found that people who had both doses of a vaccination in the same arm produced neutralising antibodies significantly faster, hastening the body’s immune response.

During WW2, wireless operator Gwenda Moulton helped locate enemy submarines using intercepted Morse code—part of a secretive effort that quietly shaped Australia’s wartime response and broke long-held assumptions about gender roles. Later shifted to tracking Russian signals.

The balance of mandatory and career training is contentious. US Army is concerned about the number of training courses soldiers have to undertake. This reinforces why online training should be continuously reviewed for efficacy (read full article through link).