Steel says >> All of our forces in future will be annihilated. That must be accepted because to pretend otherwise is FANTASY.

Sorry WTF? On what basis do you claim this PREPOSTEROUS nonsense? Who will annihilate our forces? What will they do it with? Have you gone over to GIBO’s “dark side” or something. Do you know believe that our future is set and that some “evil” bogeyman is coming to get us all?

But seriously, have you done any kind of comparative analysis between armed forces of the region? I sincerely doubt it.

Steel says >> If people today want to join the armed services in the near future they will be sent home in coffins by the hundred or thousand … “

Oh Why is that Steel? Who’s going to be doing all this killing? And what do you suggest we do to avoid being killed by these unnamed hordes. Should we surrender now perhaps?

You say >> “We will NEVER win an arms race in this region. It will make us bankrupt if we attempt to maintain dominance. The bigger economy and producer always wins. We are neither”

Why do we need to WIN an arms race Steel? We wouldn’t even try to beat China or India. What on earth makes you think we would, certainly Rudd is not suggesting that. He’s merely suggesting we retain a credible threat to any would be enemies.

When Howard invested in planes and choppers from the USA, has the order been fully received? While agreeing that Australia's forces need ships,jets,subermarines etc to operate and protect our country, I don't know that nukes are a viable choice. With the amount of countries that have nuclear weapons, it's only going to take one leader to go off the rails, fire a nuke, it's good-bye all.

Sounds like you had better start digging your air raid shelter,without delay. And don't forget the baked beans, ya could be there for a while.

Steven,

You say>> "Were an aggressive Indonesia ever to acquire a blue ocean navy the only way to protect Australia's sea routes would be to have the capability of destroying their naval bases."

No.

For starters, their Naval capabilities are nowhere near "blue water" operational. It would be obvious to us if they tried to acquire such a capability and I cannot imagine that we would not expand to meet that threat.

Neither do they have any kind of "brown/green water" advantage that would be useful in these circumstances.There are number of options open to Australian forces if the worst was to come about and we had to confront an agressive indonesia.

Firstly our Naval forces with their full complement of sailors for complete operation of all our capabilities is quite strong. Especially when the new AWD's arrive, and the collins class are fully manned.

Secondly our Air Force is far more sophisticated and would be operating on much shorter supply lines than any indonesian expeditionary forces.

We could easily stop any kind of aggressive expedition by the indonesians in situ, were that ever to occur. Until the f111's are finally retired we still have the capability of significant punishment to Indonesian military bases as well as centres of power. At the moment though, this scenario is still fairly unlikely.

As for China, as you so correctly note, we are unlikely to come into conflict with them on our own. At this point, involvement with US forces in defending Taiwan is the most likely (although still fairly unlikely) scenario. In that case there would be no need for offensive nuclear capability.

I think the bottom line with the future defence of Australia is really quite simple.

"If they, China and/or Russia (I always see them as a Gang of 2 against the West) cant target home defence forces in time of war because the forces are so scattered and well-equiped... the nation will survive".

But... we have to make the effort and not say anything else is of greater importance.

What we need is more immigration, so we have some expendables to through around.