New title: ADF gets to play with American toys, while they don’t need them.
Seriously, if this doesn’t result in full control of production and independent use, then these things are useless to be included in defence plans of Australia.
We’d be better off without them, knowing we absolutley don’t have the capability, instead of having the possibility of the rug pulled, like what has happened to Ukraine.
Launch them at the IDF
500km isn’t even from Sydney to Melbourne. Couldn’t even launch them at Pine Gap.
Yeah maybe if they put it way up north they can launch them at a few huts in Papua New Guinea
Well then build non-nuclear ICBMs and launch them at the IDF
Isn’t the problem with ICBMs that a tarfet nation doesn’t necessarily know its non-nuclear and therefore you get into a sprt of game theory situation where the strongest possible answer is the only coreect answer?
The deal locks in Australian access to munitions, technological advancements and the option for future domestic manufacturing and maintenance.
it looks like defence wise we are hoping trump just goes away and we continue to rely on the US
But that is the height of foolishness. Once a partner proves it can be unreliable, then it must influence our decisions regards that partner.
To double down on that partner is crazy. One person doesn’t make policy, Trump least of all, he spends all his time chasing the latest shiny object that distracts from his theft and corruption.
There are many senior officials in that country that take client status for the ADF as a given, after Ukraine that is no longer a position the US can be trusted to hold.
Its probably also true that a large part of the US would probably like a disentanglement from their allies as well, they have foolish reasons, America First, etc… but that is something that makes Australua’s pragmatic decisions all the more important to get right.
yeah if it were up to me i’d be aligning with israel for air defence, ukraine for drones of every kind, uk for ships, europe for fighter jets, korea/germany for tanks etc
It sounds like we might be taking a similar approach to europe and the uk, placating trump costs less than going to war with him
We shouldn’t rely on nations willing to commit genocide for anything. Therefore Israel is a non-starter, and must be treated with caution and distance from here on in all levels of engagement.
A concentration on domestic, or near neighbour manufacturing should be our focus. The European powers are probably more reliable in terms of not letting sudden political values changes, shred their military alliances, but their ability to supply a nation on the other side of the world limits the extent we can rely on such partnerships.
In other words, we can rely on New Zealand absolutely, then other nations to much lesser degrees than we have been, in terms of maintaining a secure logistical supply of our essential ADF technology. This means I do think we have to completely re-engineer our defense force, and community expectations around what our military is capable of delivering.
Our military has been artificially propped up to a more capable technology level than our country has prepared to be able to maintain, in a world where might makes right, that means our sovereignty is beholden to the whims of our senior suppliers. I’d like more independence of manoeuvre than that.
l want the best from allies we can rely on, israel who has the worlds best air defence system which it uses as protection from its genocidal neighbours and islamic terrorists across the border
I have not heard of nz excelling in anything defence related? i forgot they had an army tbh
europe is struggling to keep up with the us, musk for example is a huge influence with starlink, we have to rely on others or we’ll be left behind and inevitably lose influence/wars
If you want the best from ‘allies’ then the US should have been the partner of choice in most of that little list.
Your thoughts on Israel are tiring, a refusal to see a genocide when it is happening in front of you is sad. I hope one day you’ll recognise the ridiculousness of your equivalences with their far less powerful neighbours. Even if you could prove a genocide against Israel by those neighbours (which cant be done), one genocide doesn’t absolve another genocide. A crime against humanity stands as a black mark against those who sink to those levels of depravity.
The reason NZ is the partner of choice, is because they are the only nation we can rely on. I alluded to this earlier, my view is we should accept less influence, but be more able to protect ourselves. Essentially we have become too reliant on the alliance structure as a means of securing our power and prosperity, to a fault. I advocate a paring back of this reliance, which inherently means a trade off of international power, but means we will be a more reliable partner, and not a subject, in a conflict.
Edit: less of a subject
I hope one day you’ll recognise the ridiculousness of your equivalences with their far less powerful neighbours
Ah yes, it’s the israeli’s fault they don’t subscribe to a backwards religion, treat their women like cattle, and spend most of their time praying to a god that doesn’t exist instead of working to improve diplomatic relations and business capacity of their own countries.
If you want the best from ‘allies’ then the US should have been the partner of choice in most of that little list.
They’re a little less of a friend now, it’s completely understandable why we would rely on them in the past but times change eh?
I did see this though:
South Korea clinches multi-billion-dollar Australian Army vehicle contract
Just wish we could get those bloody ships out of Americas grubby tiny hands but this might just be realpolitik
Ah yes, it’s the israeli’s fault they don’t subscribe to a backwards religion, treat their women like cattle, and spend most of their time praying to a god that doesn’t exist instead of working to improve diplomatic relations and business capacity of their own countries.
Thats just weird to call a country founded on a religion thats older than Islam, and quite closely related in many ways not backwards, if Islam is a backwards religion then the same can be said of Judaism and Christianity.
Most of what you said there can just as easily be laid at Israel’s feet. Sans treat their women like cattle, but they treat other humans, like arab Israelis, or Gazans, or west bankers like cattle, so they aren’t any better, they just target different groups.
But I don’t blame these peoples religions for any of their immoral behaviours, its not the religion that makes a crap human, its their lack of empathy and morals to those they deem as other to their own.
As far as improving diplomatic relations, and improving business capacity Israel should also listen to that advice. Their actions since October 7th have vanished all semblance of a ‘most moral army’ concept. Their actions before Oct 7th were already leading to hard questions about colonialism. They’ve materially hurt their international business prospects to a level akin to coal companies, this effects things like borrrowing capacity, complicates expansion and mergers in a less friendly world, they are costs that must be borne. Of course their great benefactor, USA, will ease this pain a great deal but even they can only do so much.
Take these much vaunted Abraham Accords, the autocrat MBS is now in a position where to proceed with them could destabilize their piece of shit regime due to the ill feeling in Arab nations about the treatment of Gazans. So if international diplomacy and business relations were really that important here, Israel again is just as bad as the rest.
Take their judicial system, it has been undermined by its executive branch time and again, making a mockery of a ‘rule of law’, something pretty essential to inspire business investment. Not to mention the lack of justice the aforementioned Arab-Israelis, and Palestinians recieve.
Their key difference, it seems, is again they have the force of the worlds largest military, and possibly largest economy full square behind them, allowing Israel to defy gravity. But lets not believe they are any better, its long since past that those arguments could be made.
I’ll have a read of the South Korea contract piece, looks interesting.
