I agree (for once) with you. all we really need in terms of naval defence are ships that can turn back assylum seeker boats!! nothing more, nothing less...
Who are we under threat from? The ocean surrounding us acts in a similar way to a moat around a castle, except much more effective. We only need a basic defence really. If the biggest world military power in the world can't successfully invade and secure countries when it has bases in adjoining countries that it can use for a ground attack and resupply then what hope has any country got of invading us when it has a huge ocean to contend with? Not to mention the international outrage that such an action would bring. Maybe we have better things to spend the money on than pointless jets. Maybe the tax money that would be used should instead be refunded so it can be spent in the economy instead.
The only thing our navy seems to be good for is rescuing/picking up assylum seekers to add to our list of dole bludgers ... Like we dont have enough home-grown ones, so lets just go to Indonesia and "rescue" some more there... WOOHOO!! The more the merrier! :lol:
You need a much bigger boat, I will lend you my flag, on the sea... :lol: need a dock or middle of the sea transfer are good. :lol: payment in silver bullets, big ONES
Anyone who was suckered into the "Collins Class is crap" meme are useful idiots of the intrinsic rivalry between surface and subsurface factions in the Navy. The surface fleet boffins in the navy couldn't stand that funding they wanted for surface boats was being taken for submarines. The media and media consumers including people here who obviously consider themselves immune to MSM influence, all lapped it up. Yes it is hard to man the submarine fleets but we can thank the highly skilled crews being poached by the mines due to their expensive transferrable skills. The Collins can easilly get close enough to US aircraft carriers to photograph their propellers, just like the Oberon class conventional submarines before them. And then get out again, which even the nuclear powered subs of the world have not been able to do in realistic-condition exercises. As for expecting the F35 to be one airframe to do all conceivable jobs, well yes that's a problem. Sea Sprite - government dictating purchase of second hand airframes at $X cost as opposed to buying new at $XX. The end result is something costing $XXX and is unusable because they wanted to retrofit it to do every job. If only the government would buy off the shelf platforms rather than trying to save money retrofitting something worn out to do every job - and ending up spending more than new. Look at HMAS Tobruk. Disparagingly called HMAS Tobroken by the rank and file of the Navy as it is a useless piece of junk. All the second hand landing ships have ended up being rusty unusable junk. Sadly the F35 project may be an international effort imitating the Australian government.
Is this the thing covered in Four Corners the other night? http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/series/2303988 War is redundant now with the scary weapons they all have. It's all economic manipulation and population control. Corporations don't need to go to war. They just to sell their war machines.
Governments have to legitimise their buying of war machines. Take a look at a the map and pick some country to invade that people don't care about too much, go in heavy initially, declare victory and then make sure your construction companies get the best rebuilding contracts. Use the media to spin all the subsequent bad news of the society you have destroyed. Don't bother too hard because most people want to believe they are the good guys and many either work or have friends or relatives who work in a company with military contracts. Everyone's happy, apart from the few fringe unpatriotic troublemakers who don't like America and who cares about them.
The Indos bought a few billion dollar subs off the Russians a while back and probably have plans to buy some Migs or Sukhois in the future. I'm not a military buff so I really don't know the good/bad/ugly about the F35, but my preference would've been to buy updated versions of F15's or F18's, my guess, more planes for your buck. Or look at some from the Russians. Nothing wrong with diversity What attack helicopters did we end up getting for up north? I remember the Apache was being looked at but they bought something else.
After watching a bunch of police in Jakarta in black riot gear standing around a new British armoured urban suppression truck watching 2 other cops standing on the fenders trying to lift the 1" thick armoured hood so that they could try and start it with a pair of jumper leads and a taxi I realised that we probably don't have much to fear militarily from Indonesia for quite some time. .
Reliability of anything Russian in the long term is an issue. The political damage of using anything Russian would cost more than the outlay of funds to buy them. Army went with a variant of the Tiger made by Eurocopter, thats the one you're thinking of.
That movie is the biggest load of horse shit I have seen for some time. Visual range combat?? WTF is this WW2?? BVR is the only form of combat engaged in when talking about modern fighter jets. If you can see an enemy plane visually your already dead. BVR + stealth is what this plane was designed for not strafing enemy bombers?!?! I am still astounded and I want my 2 minutes of my life back that I just wasted, seriously the JSF35 may have deficiencies but whoever made that FUD up knows nothing about them
We bought Tiger Helicopters and started taking delivery in 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocopter_Tiger
Hey sconejon. This post is definitely not directed at you. I know your history of posting and it's quite good. I'm just using your post as a prompter for a little factitious general comment. I think the F35 might fall under the title "crap". It hasn't even made it into the air. Putting wings on a lemon and throwing it out of the window of a skyscraper would be more successful. :lol: As for the other Yank equipment on offer, we still have this mindset that if it's American made with all the propaganda involved (like that wonderful plastic M16 from the Vietnam Era), it must be better than that cheap rubbish crap (like that ugly AK47 which happens to still be one of the most versatile weapons on offer around the world). Instead of sinking more money into the F35 money pit, we'd have more to show putting that same money towards Russian "crap" like a bushel of MIG-29s with a handful of MIG-35s mixed in. While we're at it, maybe we should invest a few bob in the J-31. Afterall, if we're going to buy a bit of Russian "crap", we might as well buy a bit of Chinese "crap" while we're at it. Somehow, I think we would end up with more in our hands buying the Russian & Chinese options than we've presently invested in the F35 USA option. But damn, we'd then upset our friend and ally. Can't go doing that. Our friend might suddenly become our enemy. Ask the Japs how easy that happens (post WW1). :lol::lol::lol::lol: (I can see the arm chair generals already polishing their computer keys, armed and dangerous).
i agree- Migs would provide much more bang for buck - literally! Not sure what the cost differential would be. i.e. how many migs we'd get for the same bucks, but i'd bet my entire stack that the x number of migs we'd get for the same money as y number of US built fighters would knock ten colours of cr@p outa those us fighters! :lol: of course x > y but that's the bluddy point!
Im constantly amazed at the amount of information available on SS ....now we have military aircraft & submarine experts in our midst :lol:
