Paul Keating, Bob Carr and I [Gareth Evans]seem to have jangled a few security establishment nerves with our critique of the AUKUS submarine deal as having profound negative implications for Australia’s security and sovereignty.

...
Our critique – much of which has either been misrepresented or ignored in these responses – has five basic elements.

One, there is zero certainty of the timely delivery of the eight AUKUS boats. Both the US and UK have explicit opt-out rights. Even in the wholly unlikely event that everything falls smoothly into place, we will be waiting 40 years for the last boat to arrive, posing real capability gap issues.

Two, even acknowledging the superior capability of nuclear-propelled submarines, making large assumptions about their continued detectability advantages, and accepting for the sake of argument the utility of “deterrence at a distance”, how useful will this eight-boat fleet actually be for Australia’s defence? When, given usual operating constraints, only two of them will be deployable across our vast maritime environment at any one time.

Third, even assuming the eye-watering cost of these boats is fiscally manageable, it will make much harder the acquisition of other capabilities – in particular, state-of-the-art missiles, aircraft and drones – arguably even more important than submarines for any kind of self-reliant capacity in meeting an invasion threat, were one ever to arise.

Four, the price now being demanded by the US for giving us access to its nuclear propulsion technology – achieving what is now described as fleet “interchangeability”, not just “interoperability” – has become indefensibly high.

The conversion of Stirling into a major base for a US Indian Ocean fleet will mean Perth now joining Pine Gap and the North West Cape, and probably the B-52 base Tindal, as a potential nuclear target. It is hard to conceive of Australia ever being a target of any kind of Chinese military attack, short of our being sucked into fighting alongside the US in a war not of our making, and manifestly not in our national interest. But that prospect is now very real, given the abdication of Australian sovereign agency inherent in the AUKUS decision as it has evolved.


Five, the purchase price we are now paying, for all its exorbitance, will never be enough to guarantee the absolute protective insurance that supporters of AUKUS think they are buying. ANZUS, it cannot be said too often, does not bind the US to defend Australia, even in the event of existential attack. We can rely on military support if the US sees it in its own national interest to offer it, but not otherwise.

The issue that most troubles me, Keating and Carr in all of this – and which most seems to enrage AUKUS defenders – is what we see as the loss of Australian sovereign independence that’s necessarily involved. Those who deny this is even an issue, such as Dean, or ignore it entirely, such as Blaxland, are simply defying reality. And those who accept the reality of our loss of sovereign agency, but actually applaud it as a price worth paying for our protection – such as Beazley, Dibb and Pezzullo – seem to have lost not only any sense of national pride, but of Australia’s national interest.

So - a she'll be right attitude playing with lives of our service members.  WTF?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-17/taipan-helicopter-that-crashed-into-jervi...







Several defence force personnel were injured when the MRH-90 aircraft ditched in Jervis Bay during training manoeuvres in March 2023.


Update: "One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, who successfully pushed for a summary of the first crash investigation to be tabled, told Parliament the findings were damning.

"'Defence decided to keep flying the helicopters without the modified parts and eventually get around to it, while failing to consider and document the risk these things would lose engine during low-level flight because of this,' he said.

"Investigators failed to find evidence the army had conducted a safety risk assessment to determine the likelihood of an engine failure within its Taipan fleet. They also found the Jervis Bay crash would never have occurred had the Taipan fleet been fitted with the modified blades.

"Greens Senator David Shoebridge said there had been no accountability for the failings inside Defence.

"'Rather than senior officers being held to account, demoted or even sacked, what Defence did is literally shuffle the deck chairs, change the part of the organisation that undertakes this responsibility and just moved on,' he said."

‘Draw your sword’: China releases video of PLA jet harassing RAAF plane

Nationalistic Chinese have mocked an Australian air force pilot and claimed Beijing had cowed the Albanese government after China’s national broadcaster released rare footage of what appeared to be the People’s Liberation Army Air Force harassing an RAAF plane in a tense encounter over the South China Sea.
...
Previously neither the Chinese or Australian governments had released footage of the encounter, which took place in 2022, weeks after Anthony Albanese became prime minister.

The footage featured in the second episode of a six part documentary made by China’s national broadcaster to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party’s army, the PLA, in 2027.

In publicity for the show, CCTV said it had been created to “educate and inspire” Chinese soldiers to follow “Xi Jinping’s Thought on Strengthening the Army”. China’s leader has made achieving a “world-class army”, a key priority during his 12 years in power.

Australia was not named in the show, but widespread reports on China’s internet said the footage was of the infamous 2022 encounter that Defence Minister Richard Marles described as “very dangerous” in some of his first comments after being sworn into his portfolio.

Beijing has told Canberra to keep away from water and air near China, as it tries to push back on military operations by American allies in its near neighbourhood.

The documentary gave a public airing to what is often kept behind closed doors. “You must draw your sword when you meet the enemy,” the Chinese pilot in the encounter said in the documentary.

The incident is one of a number of fraught exchanges between China’s military and Australian forces that have taken place even as the diplomatic relationship between the two countries has modestly improved.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said the CCTV broadcast was an “unacceptable glorification of unacceptable military conduct” and condemned the “timidity” of the government’s response.

“There has been too much timidity on the part of the Prime Minister in particular,” Senator Birmingham said.

He said he was concerned the propaganda video described the Australian pilot as an “enemy” and called on the government to make strong representations to China “at ministerial level”.

Many Chinese cheered the release of the footage of the PLA fighter jet swerving around the “foreign” fighter and releasing aluminium chaff into the “enemy’s” engine. Online commentators gloated at a previous disclosure by the Australian government that the RAAF pilot had received psychological counselling after the encounter.

“Western pilots, accustomed to being domineering, had never experienced a powerful blow, and therefore developed psychological problems,” said one.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/draw-your-sword-china-releases-video-of-p...


Imagine if an Australian fighter jet harassed  Chinese plane like this in an international zone.  The Chicoms are two faced, double dealing buggers. 

Frank wrote on Sep 19^th, 2024 at 8:24am:




Footage

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/video/china-releases-military-video-showing-dangerou...



What does our very own 'Defence  MRB correspondent and moderator" think?

Same as always: Tsk, tsk  and a yawn.

What kind of sex maniac halfwits are we employing in the Australian Defence Force? -

they can't keep their cocks inside their trousers -

they should shoot them by firing squad after a court martial.

Sir lastnail wrote on Sep 19^th, 2024 at 10:46pm:



But would you send a daughter to join the ADF?

"When I’ve really enjoyed a job it’s because I’ve made a difference, where things are a little bit better than they were before. With Manawanui, it’s not just about the command. This is an opportunity to take a ship still in its infancy and further the capability of that ship, and influence and help those who carry our Navy into the future."

https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/media-centre/news/yorkshire-woman-takes-command-of-royal...

More Babylon bee from Frank.

https://babylonbee.com/news/lesbian-captain-crashes-after-insisting-ships-dont-h...