Hasbeen wrote 9 November 2010 2:46:39 PM:

>... navy has done a reasonable job of catching up with the real world ... ships get more technical every year ...

Australian industry is helping with this. While Australian warships have mostly US sourced electronics, the antennas for the phased array radars will now be from the company CEA Technologies, based in Canberra: http://www.cea.com.au/!Global/Directory.php?Location=ProductsServices:PhasedArrayTechnologies:CEAFAR

The software engineering students at the Australian National University (some of whom I teach) produced a Radar Target Simulator for the CEA system: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/10/cea-radar-target-simulator.html

But as you point out, high paying jobs in areas such as mining are attracting skilled people away from defence jobs. There are some bonuses to encourage technically skilled people to stay in the military, but these tend to be tens of thousands of dollars, rather than the hundreds of thousands needed: http://www.defence.gov.au/dpe/pac/V2_Ch3_Pt5.htm

Tomw, you are still missing the whole point. As an old navy fly boy, I saw this same problem back then. Some snotty nose kid fresh out of college would upset one, [or more] of the airframes fitters, with some BS, & we would have no Venoms flying for weeks. No good having us brilliant pilots sitting on our butts, because some idiot upset the mechanic.

Our officers are really pretty good, as fighting navy officers, perhaps the best in the world, but they still have a problem with managing sailors, [looking after the welfare, & moral of the blokes they need]. In fact the whole defence force management could be seen as designed to make the best men leave. There is a real problem in valuing people who today are critical.

Those bonuses are a point of interest. Designed to try to convince stokers, & electronics technicians to sign on for a second term, they were the typical stuff up the defence forces have perpetuated for over half a centaury.

Seamen are cheep, & quick to train, only have to sign on for 4 years & the navy has them coming out of its years.

Technical bods are expensive, & slow to train don’t become much use for 4 years, have to sign on for 6 years, & ships are sitting idle, because we don’t have enough of them. So what does the navy do? It offers a re-signing bonus, not to those it needs, but to everyone.

The seaman the navy doesn’t need get the bonus after 4 years service, & sign up. Those the navy do need are most offended that they have to serve 6 years to get the same bonus, & many quit.

Continue

A couple of years later, having re-signed many seaman, [& a few stokers], at great expense, the scheme is stopped. We now have heaps of seamen, with nothing to do, quite a few 5+ years’ service stokers, who were going to re-sign, & had plans for the $26 thousand, with their knickers really in a knot.

When they find they can earn that much extra, & more in just the first year ashore, they quit too. A scheme, designed to keep necessary skilled men, has now cost hundreds who may have stayed, if no scheme had been introduced.

This is why I say, the navy needs to learn how to treat valuable men. Once the navy was run by its Petty Officers, but it’s not today. It’s the skilled leading seaman that make the machinery go, half the POs are too out of date to know how much of the stuff works, or have been posted to ships that have machinery they have never seen.

Unless this lesson is learned, the navy will have trouble getting even a quarter of its ships off the jetty, except under tow, by a civilian tug

We've already made our choice. We happily accept increasingly arbitrary decisions made by our governments behind closed doors or on the fly, with public discussion either ignored, or hobbled by secrecy. Freedom of information is becoming more and more difficult. Our "representatives" increasingly blatantly ignore the opinions of their voters.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are changing. I see a form of political convergence developing during the next decade or so.