Many people who are centre-left and beyond tend to ignore the issue of defense, I guess in part because their loathing of wars between nations is so intense that they simply have a visceral dislike of even looking at the issue.

The effect of this is of course is to leave the territory of defense policy uncontested which is why, of course, politically conservative forces are able to claim that they are better managers of this topic despite the disaster of their current track record.

Personally, I have an interest in defense strategy, military history and the technologies of war mainly on a similar visceral motivation; I hate war, but I also realise I must understand it. I have also been blessed by meeting a number of excellent people in the Australian Armed Forces who also seem to share this attitude.

These issues, especially "those bloody planes" and "those bloody tanks", - as one of such people put in it in even more colourful language - have caused enormous concern among those who have even some knowledge of military technology and national strategy. They are an incredible waste of scare finances whose only purpose, so it seems, is to ensure our future participation in cavalier military adventures dictated by a certain superpower and to pay for the privilege of doing so.

A timely, appropriate and accurate article.

Betrayal, clumsy, scary and embarrassing is my honest response to the Howard governments military spending spree in Defense.

I have not felt safe with Brendon Nelson. The hostilities, lack of transparencies, the hash ups in public debate over artillery hardware and design, and the usefulness of funds spent concerning the large ships and faulty helicopters. The lack of previsionary health funds and debacles on our soldiers returning. The horrifying treatment of female officers and the bullying generally within the forces. A shocking state of affairs.

The Dense force under Howard is a narrow approach. It lacks true vision as this was revealed in the gaff retrieved by Brendon Nelson recently, as he explained Australia's motive for going to war with Iraq was about oil.

I think it is important for a nation to have both leadership and a higher vision when it comes to Defense. A 'do by example' collective approach that reflects our valuable citizenship.

I think a Defense force motivated by fear (as it is present) is archaic and bound to be draconian. This character trait undermines the potential. The opportune moments to be greater, for all Australia.

Vision influences the style of spending and becomes critical in the way a nation buys or manufactures its hardware, needed by it's forces. The vision ought not be about more boys and their heavy toys!

Today, a progressive Defense Budget must reflect through development planning, many kinds of purposes. Consider the many roles that a force might, maybe or can be deployed.

I suspect what is missing in the Australian Defense at the moment is identity. Our Defense force needs a visionary multi-pronged dynamic approach toward multi-tasking in the future.

Technically it needs to be innovative, sound in purpose with a keen eye for what is possible and or expected or extended from a developed nation such as ours.

http://www.miacat.com
.

in a way, a good article. but who reads it? does the reader contribute to the decision-making process in oz?

ozzians could have defended themselves against the japanese, in much the same way switzerland defended themselves against the werhmacht: by saying "we'll make you wish you didn't invade", because the prize of victory would not be worth the cost. the japanese army high command understood this, just as the wehrmacht did.

they can use the same strategy now. but this not so much a matter of military strategy as it is political strategy. the masters of the usa and oz conspire together against the interests of their own electorates.

the oz libs get a vote winning slogan:"we're the party that provides american protection". the americans get a dumping ground for their unwanted military machinery

IT'S A COMPLEX SUBJECT, but as one who has dived into an air-raid shelter at Bowen and waited for the all clear when Townsville had bombs dropped on it by Jap planes, I would like to put my opinion in.I do remember my Dad and his fellow school-teacher mate, argueing about what to do if the Japs landed,Dad said he'd take Mum and his five kids in the Austin 7 take as much fuel and head as far west as he could.Ted, his mate said he'd take his 22rifle and go down and try and stop them!They were both in the V.D.C. and trained with broomsticks, no rifles were issued.When the Yanks moved in with the CATALINA BASE, we kids had a ball, give a Yank a ride on your pony and score a packed of LUCKY STIKE cigarettes.When a plane crash landed after a Bombing raid over the Solomans.We collected perspex to fashion broches from the wreck.I firmly believe the CORAL SEA BATTLE was a vital factor in our defence but the KOKODA TRAIL and CURTIN'S insistance that Churchill send home our troops, even though they were given no escort for their ship.HEY!We were bloody lucky!John HOWARD would be shot in WARTIME for his "Buying from the plan" of Aircraft to defend us.And where are our SHIPS to supply our defense troops.Oh they are in the GULF!maritime ships? we haven't got any! Such a small coastline could easily be defended..PIGS! There I've said it!

What a lot of ill-informed twaddle.

The 1986 Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities by Professor Paul Dibb satisfied the Hawke government’s requirements to cut the size of the Defence Force by finding an economic solution to a strategic problem. The Army’s capabilities were whittled away and any capability that could conceivably be used for deployment was deemed irrelevant.

Our ships were ‘fitted for but not with’ weapon systems and the govenment became obsessed with ridding the force of 'British traditions' such as the Waterloo Dinner without even understanding that this began on the shores of Gallipoli to celebrate construction of the first ‘permanent’ pier by Australian engineers. The incompetence was staggering.

Fortunately, Kim Beazley came to the rescueand the purchase of Light Armoured Vehicles for the Army ‘was made counter to all well-established defence force equipment procurement procedures’, to use the authors own turn of phrase. Like the contentious, purchase of F-111 aircraft and Leopard tanks with a previously untried turret this was seen, in time, as a well conceived procurement.

The replacement combat system for the Collins submarine was a stroke of brilliance that will bring our conventional submarines into the 21st Century and undo the failure of this procurement which was a Labor initiative.

Under the tutelage of successive Labor Governments we gradually became a third-world defence force.

It was the Howard Government that recognised the decrepit and hollow state of our national defences and fast-tracked enhancements to allow Australian forces to deploy to East Timor.

The authors has got it wrong on defence lease-back and housing too. Privatisation of housing began in 1987. I remember soldiers had to live in houses that were not fit for dogs complete with rotting floorboards and stairs that collapsed like a deck of cards. Single soldiers sometimes got electric shocks through the showers because the rats had got into the wiring.

That’s enough …

Two aspects are missing.
Firstly how unsafe are we? And following on that who and how do they decide on our interests and perils, the likelihood limited wars, nuclear is out except for the maniacs, and the preparation needed. Gwynne Dyer in War argues a war with to-days weapons means all are gone rapidly and resupply b y building too late, based on the argument of production time, cost and lethality.
Second no mention is made of the UN, an attempt, flawed if you will, to police belligerency much as is done within a nation state.. Whatever causes war, a policing should do much to produce a diplomatic solution. Since this seems an attractive proposition given that taking resources is now probably more expensive than purchase.
In that vein I would just ask even if the Persian Gulf was denied and oil interdicted would the USA demise? Doubtful though greater thought and action might be made w toward reducing dependence on oil a proposal made as often at least as elections. But that is an aside though perhaps relevant for causes.
No the point not noted is that we have chosen, yes I know variously stated many most objected to an illegal war, to trash a foreign country for know good apparent reason. Goaded by misinformation lies propaganda and the media plus of course the Gov. own media controls a wave of fear perhaps prompted the agreement to the move. But the espouses are at least chargeable under our own Criminal Law based on the Rome Statute.
The relevance of course is that if this war was made for reasons of hubris, oil the New American Century, Israel or by a group of people who managed to inhabit the echelons of the Whitehouse limiting the ability (and reason) to wage war renders the choice of weaponry less fraught with immediacy provoked by panic or hubris

I think the author is drawing a very long bow in claiming that Australia would have been defeated in 1942 if Howard had been in charge. The fact is that Australia was very lucky in WW2. Japan didn't even decide to enter the war until 1941, when the prospect of rich european colonial pickings, together with an inability to come to a modus vivendi with the United States and still continue with its territorial ambitions, became irresistible. Even then, we were saved by the inability of the axis to come up with any strategic plan. If the Germans and Japanese had decided that Japan would move into the Dutch East Indies around the time of the Battle of Britain and acquire all its resources (particularly oil), and then attack Malaya and Australia, while leaving the Phillipines strictly alone, the US would have done nothing. Then, having secured its supplies, Japan would have attacked Siberia at the same time the Germans attacked Russia from the west, and Russia would have had the two front war, and would probably have been defeated.

The claims that Australia was able to provide for its defence equipment locally in 1941 takes no account of the very much simpler technology of the time. To make similar provision at present would be almost impossible, and would at least require a national sacrifice comparable to that of Israel. In being able to procure modern equipment at a tiny fraction of its development cost is a benefit that few on the left appreciate. We do extremely well out of the US alliance.

As to the criticism of the F-111 replacement, trouble is I remember the scathing criticism when we purchased the aircraft, mostly from those on the left who hate defence spending, and expected us to be defended by the UN, or good intentions or something.

I believe that the major threat facing us in the next few decades will be from countries demanding we take millions of their surplus population. The tiny dribble of illegal immigrants at present is only a foretaste of the avalanche to come.

Hmmm Lets see.......

A submarine or two - no crews and upgrading in progress.
An attack helicopter or two - well, who knows when they will be available.
An early warning aircraft or two (AEW&C) - perhaps soon... a long delayed project.
A M113 or two - Vietnam era troop carriers being refurbished........really!
An F/A 18 or two - HUG (Hornet Upgrade Program) appears to be in difficulty. I can see another squadron of Super Hornets or two, being purchased.

A FFG or ANZAC or two - Well not really. Suitable for coastal duties (deep water only) and no threat scenario's, if there is enough crews. Upgrades also in progress which to date have resulted in the permanent operational loss of two FFG and the wasting of a few million or so.
A fleet oiler or two - well the new one does not handle helicopters very well (but it does carry oil) and the other one is on deployment and soon to be refitted.
A landing ship or two - well we have not had them very long. They were a bit rusty when we purchased them and we had to spend millions in attempting to fix them. I would not like to live on one (as crew or a deployed soldier). New one's will be at least a decade in arriving.

An Abraham's or two - land bound, no ships to carry them and the new landing barges are suffering structural defects. Nice pictures of them on exercise though. (Only 1 Abraham's can be carried on a C-17).

The really big decision of course is over which shoulder to throw the next billion or so of taxpayers dollars in pursuit of yet another "you beaut" defence procurement.

And pigs might fly. (Woops, actually they do but they are being retired from 2010).

Oh well........

Firstly,

I don't claim to be an authority on the subject matter, but I believe that I have gained knowledge sufficient as to allow me to write a useful article that might help correct one of the Big Lies of the current election campaign.

Some of the ideas in this article were first raised in an earlier discussion thread of 28 July "Can Australia ever be self-reliant for national defence?" at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=860

Nigel from Jerrabomberra,

If you chose to pronounce my whole article as "ill-informed twaddle" then perhaps you should respond to its core arguments instead of making pronouncements about issues not raised in the article.

In regard to the Collins class submarine's combat system, the only aspect of my article to which you have responded:

As a consequence of the criterion for 'interoperability' with the US, the submarine designers were forced to use, contrary to the recommendations of the government sponsored MacIntosh/Prescott report that 'only proven in-service systems' be used, the Raytheon Combat Control System (CCS), a wholly unproven derivative of a system for larger nuclear powered boats, was used instead of the the German STN Atlas ISUS-90 system which had been successfully used in 10 of the world's conventional submarine fleets. The need to adapt the CCS to a conventionally powered submarine has posed major design problems. If you maintain that this has somehow brought Australia's "conventional submarines into the 21st century", please provide more details.

---

In regard to the privatisation of defence housing, it's beside the point when privatisation began. To it's shame the Labor Party did privatise many assets when it was in office, but this was not a policy that any Labor Government worthy of its name would have adopted. In fact, Federal Labor's privatisation policies originated in John Howard's unsuccessful 1985 election campaign.

I for one, am getting weary of the argument for privatisation you have advanced. Because you can cite examples of how defence housing may not have been well managed when it belonged to the government, it therefore necessarily follows that it must be privatised.

(more later)

James Sinnamon (author)

Nigel from Jerrabomberra

You seem to be saying that Labor ran down the defense forces some fifteen years ago. That might well be true, but that's not what the article is about. As for East Timor, you may wish to read the excellent study Dr. Clinton Fernandes, entitled "Reluctant Saviour", who has a little to do with military matters which a modicum of research will lead you to discover.

http://www.scribepub.com.au/Catalogue/Reluctant%20Saviour.html
http://www.etan.org/et2004/october/13-21/20sav.htm
http://www.etan.org/et2005/october/08/13defens.htm

Concentrate on the issues of the article; the purchase of new planes, tanks and naval vessels and engage in a cost-benefit analysis. Could a better choice be made?

Apropros the original article, the following appeared in today's Age newspaper

"Either way, defence will change"

WHOEVER wins the election, Australia's defence and security concerns — and the strategies to deal with them — will change significantly over the next three years.

Both sides have committed to a new defence white paper to map out the country's strategic direction, a move strongly supported by the defence hierarchy.

More at:

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/11/21/1195321865871.html

It should be the policy of any Australian government to get us as close as possible to being able to defend ourselves. Our manpower will never match the likes of China, India or the US but instead we could just try to have a much bigger version of what we have now, a technologically sophisticated (though this could be improved further, well trained, and manpower effecient military.

It is rather embarassing despite the circumstances that a island like Britain with much less coastline has a much greater defence ability than a whole continent. We must do whatever possible to remedy this and make Australia's coastline secure through a world-leading navy, with the air and land support to back it up.

This post from Webdiary with the title "God Help The Country If Howard Wins" at http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/2200#comment-72124 may be of interest:

The admirable Senator John Faulkner has posted a lengthy catalogue of the Howard government's bacchanal at the expense not just of the taxpayer, but of national security as well. Read it all at http://eherald.alp.org.au/articles/0306/magopine23-01.php .

An idea of the processes involved in defence procurement can be gained from Richard Pelvin's article (scroll down) Acquiring Armour: Some Aspects of the Australian Army's Leopard Tank Purchase at http://www.defence.gov.au/army/lwsc/Publications/journal/AAJ_Summer_05_06/AAJ_Summer_05_06.pdf

Howard deserves to be sacked for his cavalier Joint Strike Fighter 'decision' alone, never mind the long list of scandals and rorts provided by Faulkner.

What role will tanks and submarines...even any kind of warship...play in the new kind of warfare ?

Autralia's wars will be fought at home by our children and grandchildren, for the Howard Government has invited our enemies to assault us at railway stations, airports, sporting events and crowded restuarants. They accepted the invitation to assault our citizens in Bali where they were congregating. It could be just a sample of what is to come.

Defence money needs to be spent on diplomacy and on restoring our image to a world that, thanks to John Howard, now dislikes us greatly.
What could the world do with the $12bn per month spent by the US on its immoral, unjustified attack on the innocent people of Iraq ? How much are we spending to help them ?

If I remember we didnt invite anyone to blow up our people in bali.

This happened almost a year after 9 11.

With our defence i remember well the downsizing off our forces, thank you labor.

They also created a new compo scheme to save money and if you got injured whilst on training you can say stiff.

The manning was so bad that exersises for training were half manned and that gave grave safety issues but nobody cared.

But this did give labor the chance to lease a building from themselves to get themselves out of debt that they were in instead of going bankrupt like they did to the rest of the nation.

What do we have now teachers,nurse going on strike for what penny pinching labor.

plerdsus wrote: "The fact is that Australia was very lucky in WW2."

I think the whole world was lucky in WW2. If Germany had attacked the USSR in May instead of in June they could have won before the onset of the winter of 1942. It has been said that the Japanese would have done better to have attacked the USSR from the east while the Germans attacked from the west instead of attack Australia, Britain and the US There are a number of other ways it seems that the course of the war could have been different, but that is really beside the central argument here.

In regard to the Japanese launching an attack before late 1941, Andrew Ross considered that carefully and concluded that it would not have been feasible as almost certainly the US would have intervened. Presumably the Japanese gave it some thought also.

Yes, technology was simpler back in 1941, but that does not alter the fact that Australia was amongst the world's most technologically advanced societies. If it was possible to gain that edge back then it should have been possible to have maintained it since then.

However, this has been lost in my opinion because of the adoption of free market economics which has caused us to export much of our manufacturing capacity to low wage third world economies.

Apologies for the error in the second sentence of the second paragraph in the previous post. It should have read:

"If Germany had attacked the USSR in May 1941 instead of in June 1941 they could have won before the onset of the winter of 1941."

The attack was delayed because it was necessary for Hitler to invade Yugoslavia and Greece to rescue Mussolini's disastrous attempt to invade Greece.

If the Germans had adopted the simple measure of adding one or two extra cogs to their Enigma encryption machines used for their radio communications, then the allied codebreakers would have been forced to search for a needle in 1,000 haystacks instead of a needle in only one haystack. The Battle of the Atlantic could easily have been lost.

So there are many ways in which it was possible for events to have turned out for the worse, and the world divided between the US and the Third Reich depicted in Robert Harris's "Fatherland", or something even worse, could well have emerged.

However, as things stood, even if the US had lost the Coral Sea and Midway naval battles and New Guinea had been over-run, Australia would still almost certainly have been able to resist a Japanese invasion. The US would still have before long have been able to recover with its massive industrial capacity and have been in a position to disrupt the Japanese supply line to it's forces in Australia.

In the unlikely event that the US agreed to a separate peace with Japan, then a Japanese may have succeeded but even then I don't think it would have been a walkover.

Ross's essential point stands. The depiction of a helpless Australia as being saved from an invasion by the Japanese only by the battle of the Coral Sea is factually wrong.

We need to question why Australia's past proud past history of "self-reliance" has seemingly been deliberately buried by even our supposedly fervently patriotic Prime Minister. Certainly if it were not, his policy of always buying American would be much harder to justify.

James Sinnamon (author)

One thing I have never been able to fathom is why the Libs are seen as the saviours of the Defence Force?

In both major World Wars incumbent conservative parties were tossed out soon after the commencement of hostilities & Labor governments installed. After both of these conflicts were won, the returning vets then reinstalled conservative rule. The only time the Libs have run the show during any conflict, with our reliance on American firepower, it has only ended in failure e.g. Korea, Vietnam & now Iraq.

Iraq is such an interesting conflict, when the Hawke government joined the UN in assisting to push Hussein out of Kuwait, they set achievable goals & were prepared not to test the limits of Arab support, rightly or wrongly. When Howard joined Bush in his UN unsupported 'Saddam Hunt', not only did they fragment Arab support & unleash the horror of a war without end, but Howard even made Australia a target! Tough on Terror rhetoric ... blah

With Vietnam, I accept that the Vietnam vets relate the Waterside Workers strike & the Labor Party as part of the reason for it losing that conflict, but hey, lets face it, the unions were more in touch with what was happening on the ground in SE Asia, than LBJ or Holt. At least they knew that there was no way of winning the 'hearts & minds' of any group of people with the use of napalm on children. Those vets ought to thank the unions & the Labor party for extracting them from a conflict that was unwinnable & a waste of resources & human life.

To me, while the Libs continue to buy shiny (second hand) toys & talk tough, it is the Labor Party who, when push comes to shove, gets down & gets the job done ... period

TINMAN,

The popular image of Australia seeming to be unprepared in the earliest stages of the war is consistent with Andrew Ross's thesis. This is because Australia's political leaders judged, correctly in Ross's view, that the Australian economy could not for all the years that war seemed imminent maintain defences forces and the necessary defence industries that would have enusred the defeat of any possible threat. Instead forces suitbal to defeat "light raids" by small contingest of Japanese soldiers were maintained whilst factories and laboratories which would become the core of a much larger defence industry.

This plan worked, on the whole, very well although many mistakes were made as has been pointed out by others on the forum at: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=860

---

csaw59,

You raise some interesting questions. In fact, Andrew Ross argues that Lyons, who died in 1939, and Menzies who succeeded him did manage our defence capably. (However, in the case of Menzies, some questions remain. As the war was engulfing the world, he and a few other ministers seemed overly obsessed with fiscal management to the detriment of arming the country, and he doesn't at all discuss the "Pig Iron Bob" matter.)

The view, presented by some left wing historians of a Government sycophantically serving the interests of their British overlords was wrong. They certainly were not as servile as Howard is today toward the US. Certainly they had to give the appearance of deferring to British interests, but they were, in fact, playing a double game which entailed protecting Australian manufacturing industry to the detriment of British manufacturers, whlst taking advantage of favourable trade terms for Australian primary produce. As Ross shows, the British could have chosen to import more of their primary produce, including beef, from Argentina instead, which, at the time, produced a better product.

---

In regard to the Vietnam war, I wrote the following letter, which was not published, to the Courier Mail newspaper in response to Lord Mayor Campbell Newman's outrageous attempt to denigrate opponents of the Vietnam War as reported on 17 November at http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22771554-5007200,00.html:

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

"Perhaps, if Lord Mayor Campbell Newman understood why a previous generation of Australians opposed their Government's decision to send soldiers to Vietnam, the extreme 'nausea' he felt towards members of the Labor Party who had participated in Remembrance Day commemorations ("ALP in Mayor's sights" 17 Nov 07) would have been directed elsewhere.

"The war started when the unelected government of the Republic of South Vietnam, which had only been created as a result of the 1954 Geneva Peace conference and was not supposed to last beyond the nationwide elections scheduled for 1956, canceled those elections. Even Australia's Foreign Minister of the time Richard Casey acknowledged that the Communists would have easily won those elections in the south as well as in the north.

"The southern regime began jailing and killing anti-French independence fighters, and the ensuing popular uprising grew to become the bloody conflagration which claimed the lives of 520 Australians, 58,000 Americans and a horrific 5.1 million Vietnamese. Many more were maimed and much of Vietnam's landscape was chemically defoliated or turned into a moonscape.

"Campbell Newman should know better than to attempt to vilify those hundreds of thousands of decent ordinary Australians, including Labor Party members, who marched in the streets in order to end this barbarity."

Even though my letter was not published, the Courier Mail did choose to publish another very good letter on Monday 19 November -- although not a letter quite as good and my own, if I may be permitted to offer my own possibly subjective opinion -- which was critical of Newman.

So, clearly I believe that those who opposed the war including the wharfies were absolutely right to have done so. The resentment that some veterans may feel towards the wharfies should, instead, have been directed at the politicians including the aforementioned Menzies who lied to the Australian public in order to justify sending our soldiers to that war.

James Sinnamon (author)

The link given in daggett's previous post concerning the Courier Mail story "Campbell Newman attacks ALP over war veterans" of Saturday 17 November should have been:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22771554-5007200,00.html

... and NOT:

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22771554-5007200,00.html:

---

I posted the above on behalf of daggett, because daggett's daily quota has been exceeded.

I believe this is for the benefit of OLO users as were my posts on behalf of daggett to another forum, for example, at : http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6482#97663

I ask that, if certain other OLO contributors attempt to seize upon this post in order to disrupt this discussion as happened elsewhere (see
"Privilieged Whites" at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6482#97663), please ignore them.