Who care's about all this crap, we need solutions to plug our defence gap before its too late now. Because whilst we have brave men and women in the defence forces they will need to fight;

frontline Russian fight/bombers, equiped with state of the art french, malaysian and Israeli technology in the cockpit.

their ground forces will have better tank fighting capabilities purchased from South Korea and China that are cheap and easy to use by a novice. In addition to using the latest AKM series and South korean assult weapons in 7.62 against our pathetic 5.56 and have the best optical sights and rail attachments available.

We will fly old unreliable aircraft that will fight well but be eventually blown out of the sky because of the enemies ability to replace them cheaper than ours.

Our ships will be usless because we won't control the skies, our ground forces will have weapons that won't work properly because of faulty springs and bad ammunition.

our old Abrahms tanks will be too big for our transports, and too heavy for the soils in our region anyway and will breakdown very quickly because of the heat.

We need solutions now because our service people are leaving in droves because its just not worth it leaving the defence of this country up to civilians and politicians with their noses in the trough.

Dr Jensen's suggestions look sensible.

Its a shame that he didn't put them to his own Liberal Party (or did he?) while it was in power for more than a decade.

In fact all the deficient equipment decisions he itemises were made by his Party (where the Buck Stops) although on the advice of not only Defence, but also Treasury, Foreign Affairs and the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources amongst others.

Still, its useful that Dr Jensen is advocating positive changes. Problem is that Defence is a massive and complex institution that resists change, knows how to play off politicians and sees governments come and go. This explains why the Coalition was unable to reform Defence.

Labor needs all the determination it can muster to budge the Defence elephant.

Pete

Pete

You will note from the article that I wrote this piece originally for the Catallaxy site way back on January 23 last year, when we were still in government (see bottom of article where this is noted).

Dennis

Yindin, you seem to believe a lot of complete urban myths about the ADF and our strategic situation.

The Abrams tank, for example, has none of the mobility problems you wrongly believe. Similarly, problems with our small arms and other equipment in hot, dusty, desert environments were not unexpected and have been easily managed.

May I suggest you join the Australia Defence Association, or even just visit its website (www.ada.sn.au), in order to update your knowldge.

Neil James
Executive Director
ADA

Dennis

Thankyou for the info.

So what kind of reaction did you receive from your Liberal colleagues when/assuming you made the same suggestions to them about Defence reform?

Regards

Pete

Pete

"I could tell you but I would have to kill you":)

I'll leave it to you to figure what the response might have been.

Dennis