Budget Night 2012.

[Stofsk]

Best reaction remains Greg Sheridan flipping his shit over the defence 'cuts'. You'd think after Manne took him to task at the end of last year he'd have learnt his lesson, but apparently not.

Was it this OpEd article?

Also, who is Manne?

[thejester]

Yes. It's fair to say that - like the rest of the budget - Defence has suffered cuts that were politically driven and were not necessarily advisable. But as Hugh White wrote in Fairfax today that comes against the background of a defence/national security policy that isn't coherent and questions over the utility of organisations like DMO. But Sheridan ignores all that in favour of shrill screeching about 'impotence'. He only addresses a handful of actual capability problems and even then often dishonestly - it's a fair point that we need the JSF, but it's absurd to think that the ALP's decision to delay funding the project indicates we're never going to buy it, particularly given that it's already badly delayed in the US.

Robert Manne is the Professor of Politics or something at La Trobe, but he basically abandoned academic research long ago in favour of becoming a fulltime public intellectual. He's (in)famous for going left-right-left in the course of his career - split with the Left over their failure to condemn Cold War atrocities by various Communist parties, became the editor of Quadrant, and then split with the Right over the Stolen Generations. Now he generally writes for The Monthly and Black Inc more broadly - including a Quarterly Essay last year, Bad News, which attacked The Australian. One chapter was devoted entirely to Sheridan's cheerleading for the Iraq War. In a lot of ways Bad News is a frustrating bit of writing because it's basically an extended fact check rather than an examination on the actual role of the news media in Australia, and Manne never really addresses why the Australian is so 'influential' (or what that means) when it has a limited circulation, of which half is in Queensland. But he absolutely nails Sheridan, who basically comes off looking like a total idiot whose position is guaranteed by his willingness to trumpet Chris Mitchell's and Rupert Murdoch's line.

[bobalot]

I never forgot the shameless whoring for the Iraq war that the Murdoch press (and to a less extent Fairfax press) did in the lead up to the war. Anybody who disagreed was a leftist, intellectual "elitist", greenie or Islamist. The hundreds of thousands who protested against the war were simply labelled a "mob".

The ABC was smeared as being "too left wing" for not reporting the more ridiculous claims about Iraq's capabilities.

None of these dipshits ever admitted being wrong about anything.

[Stofsk]

Yes. It's fair to say that - like the rest of the budget - Defence has suffered cuts that were politically driven and were not necessarily advisable. But as Hugh White wrote in Fairfax today that comes against the background of a defence/national security policy that isn't coherent and questions over the utility of organisations like DMO. But Sheridan ignores all that in favour of shrill screeching about 'impotence'. He only addresses a handful of actual capability problems and even then often dishonestly - it's a fair point that we need the JSF, but it's absurd to think that the ALP's decision to delay funding the project indicates we're never going to buy it, particularly given that it's already badly delayed in the US.

Heh I read that Hugh White article. It reminded me of another article John Birmingham wrote about defence matters on his blog. I agree with both of them, that our defence matters are sort of paid lipservice by successive governments, none of whom bother to establish an actual vision for what our defence needs are now, and more importantly will be in future decades. It would be nice if there were actual analysis going on about what defence needs Australia has and what are the best and most cost effective ways of meeting those needs, but as Birmingham said a lot of this shit is pretty arcane for the average punter who goes to the polling booth every three years. Even I don't know all that much about the JSF for example (other than I kind of wish we'd gotten SuperFlankers instead because eh fuck waiting).

Anyway that Sheridan article was a riot. I read the opening paragraph and was like 'Jesus christ, you wanna lay it on any thicker?'

[Alkaloid]

Aye, that is a weird article. Apparently we aren't ready to fight the Nazis. Who knew.

I have to say I don't always agree with Hugh White, he is a bit too isolationist for my tastes and his insistence on subs subs and only subs strikes me as strange, but I am entirely willing to acknowledge that the man at least understands what the defence force does, and is right when he says that there is no real plan from anyone as to what is happening. Sheridan on the other hand seems to believe the JSF's were going to fly cover for the LHD's while performing landings, (no, I don't know where they are going to be flying from either) that the SPG program was actually going somewhere, (it wasn't) that the mothballed tanks were actually being operated (they weren't) and that the M113AS3/4s aren't being delivered straight into storage (they are). He seems to have no concept of what any of the forces are actually doing, planning to do or are capable of doing.

[HMS Conqueror]

To be fair, Australia is impotent in the region, and will become more so into the 21st century. Partly that's political - Australia spends about a third as much as the US per capita - but mostly it's because Australia has only 20m people up against China and India that are rapidly transitioning into great powers, and Indonesia which is less rapidly doing so but still with 10x the population.

Ultimately the only answer in the medium term is for Australia to acquire nuclear weapons.

e: in the short term subs are a very good idea. Come on, Australia gets no benefit from landing ships and "light, mobile rapid reaction forces" that the safe European nations like. Who are you going to invade? One of the countries that is both massively bigger than you and/or >1,000km away from any friendly base? New Zealand? Australia's needs are purely defensive.

[weemadando]

WHA?

Yeah, I suppose we have zero use for Landing Ships, it's not like we've utilised them extensively in relief work in the region or that it's unheard of that we might need to assist neighbours who are fighting a civil war, insurgency, proxy war or similar.

And getting nuclear weapons? There was always the apocryphal tales of there being a single gravity bomb in inventory that was the "Jakarta deterrent", but fucking hell. That's a whole kettle of fish we don't want to even look at.

[thejester]

e: in the short term subs are a very good idea. Come on, Australia gets no benefit from landing ships and "light, mobile rapid reaction forces" that the safe European nations like. Who are you going to invade? One of the countries that is both massively bigger than you and/or >1,000km away from any friendly base? New Zealand? Australia's needs are purely defensive.

I think you need to read up on the East Timor intervention and specifically the massive logistical problems it posed for the ADF before you keep posting in this thread.

[Alkaloid]

Conky, Australia is sitting in a pretty sweet spot at the moment defence wise. It is functionally impregnable to anyone short of a superpower with the US level of global dominance providing defence is not completely neglected, but not enough of a threat without nuclear weapons for anyone involved in a serious war to even really look at us speculatively. That is pretty much the definition of a middle power, which is what Australia is, nasty enough to make anyone think twice about attacking them but without the clout to make anyone very afraid.

There was a push through the 80s and early 90s to focus entirely on maintaining that status, and it meant that when we needed to intervene in places like the Solomons and especially East Timor defence collectively shat itself because even though all we were facing were not too bright militias who may or may not have had some support from the Indonesian army we very nearly couldn't pull off that intervention. That triggered a pretty serious switch in defence policy to imporve the ADFs ability to provide small scale interventions to the local area, places like Fiji which you may recall recently had an abortive coup, and then 9/11 came along and the entire force had to be restructured again to operate in the MEAO while maintaining the ability to defend the mainland. We got lucky in that regard, because if we hadn't gone into Timor we never would have known how out of shape the whole force was an would probably have taken much more serious casualties in Iraq/Astan than we have thus far.

The main thrust of all these points though is that the last thing Australia needs is nuclear weapons. It needs the ability to intercept and destroy forces heading for Australia, which is strike aircraft, AWACS birds, submarines, the improved ANZAC class frigates and AWDs, as well as the ability to deploy a small but reasonably well equipped force to a local island nation to intervene should it all go tits up, which is the LHDs, Tiger ARH, MRH90s and infantry and ASLAV/M113A3/4. Tack on some M1A1s not because we are really likely to use them but because you can't really be taken seriously as a defence force without at least token heavy armour and you essentially have the ADF. Nukes just arent really needed.

The only issue is trying to keep far enough ahead of the other countries in the area to maintain the ability to deploy a small force fast enough to be useful in an intervention and maintain that middle power status is expensive and requires a bit of long term planning, which our politicians seem largely incapable of.

[HMS Conqueror]

The problem is focusing on discretionary humanitarian interventions when you are going to have real adversaries in the near future. Adversaries that will be much more powerful than you in conventional forces regardless of any sustainable level of defence spending.

[Alkaloid]

Really? Care to name some?

[HMS Conqueror]

China, India, Indonesia.

[Alkaloid]

And how, pray tell, are any of those countries going to pose a military threat to Australia? Given that none of them can now, or in the next 50 years at the very least, come close to having a military aircraft conduct a mission over Australian territory without being outnumbered at least 5 to 1. Bearing in mind that one of the most advance radar networks in the world is covering the entire area they would have to move through in order to get here.

[HMS Conqueror]

The RAAF currently has 95 combat aircraft. India and China both will be able to deploy a force on that scale with aircraft carriers in the next 10 years. Indonesia is currently not militarily strong, but the key fact is that its economy is growing at 6.4% vs Australian 1.8%, with currently a slightly larger GDP.

It's just too small a country, in a region soon to be filled with behemoths.

[tim31]

So explain for the class please why China and India would want to stop giving Australia(via fucking Palmer and Rinehart) a lot of money in favour of attempting an invasion

[Alkaloid]

India and China? No. India is currently building 1 light carrier. It might have a few in the next 10 years, but nor enough to seriously threaten a properly networked air defence without getting torn a new on in the process. China has finished building a carrier they bought from Russia, might have 1 or two light carriers operational by 2015 and mayyyybe a nuke powered carrier by 2020. Again not enough to threaten a properly networked air defence without taking some serious hurt in the process. Assuming of course they don't get hit by submarines moving into position, something that happens to the US in exercises despite their actual long term experience in operating carriers and trying to defend them. Indonesia will have neither, and I suppose they could send a purely naval invasion, but it would be sunk pretty quickly because aircraft can pose a pretty serious threat to uncovered ships.

That's the point, Australia will never be able to fight a full scale war with a global superpower and win it. It is isolated enough, however, that a global superpower is going to have to extend itself to fight a war with Australia and in the process makes itself vulnerable to taking more losses in winning the war than it is worth to fight it. So as long as appropriate long term plans are made a sustainable level of defence spending can protect Australia from actual assault (why anyone would actually attack is another question entirely, but I don't expect you to have a reasonable answer to that) and put out brushfires in our own backyard. Thats why the discussion earlier was about having to establish what our defence strategy actually is, so we can spend the money appropriately.

[HMS Conqueror]

India is building a 40kT carrier - the same size as the French Charles de Gaulle - and a 65kT that will be the largest non-US carrier in the world. India will have the capacity to deploy an expeditionary airforce as large as the RAAF in the next 10-15 years. 50 is just a joke, on that timescale Australia is to Asia-Pacific as Estonia is to Europe.

The issue isn't really invasion, which seems to be uncool just lately. The issue is Australia being forced into the sphere of a country that might not treat it as well as the US does, or have such a good human rights record.

e: Indonesia is going to rise a lot, just it doesn't really matter to anyone except Australia so it's not mentioned so much. It's growing at a comparable rate to India. On the 50 year timescale, Indonesia will be plainly the more powerful actor in the South East Pacific.

[weemadando]

So fucking what?

I think that you do not understand how culture, politics and economies interact.

[Alkaloid]

Yes, all three have more potential for growth. They still need to spend massively more than Australia does to attack it than Australia needs to spend to defend from them. Quite simply all three need multiple supercarriers and attendant fleets to counter the RAN surface forces and RAAF as it stands now. Factor in any purchase of the JSF, the damage submarines will do to the fleets and logistics trains and the fact that considerable effort has gone into detection systems for the north/west/east coasts so the ADF will not be taken by surprise and it will be more trouble than its worth.

What human rights records have to do with Australia before it is invaded I don't know, but you would be hard pressed to say the US is squeaky clean in that regard, and treat us as well as the US? Some noise is made about ANZUS is suppose, but the one time we requested military aid we didn't get it so that can't be it. Favourable trade conditions? We don't get those. Military hardware? Well we buy some from the US but they are hardly the only people selling and we really only do it now because we expect to operate with the US overseas. They don't threaten to invade but given any such threat is so outlandish as to be laughable? The US is valuable to Australia now primarily because it keeps the Asia Pacific region stable. Any other power taking over in influence there will want to keep the region stable as well and it is in their interests to let Australia keep order in it's section of relatively worthless ocean and focus on the more profitable parts themselves.

[HMS Conqueror]

RAN surface forces are negligible. Submarine forces - now that imposes some serious cost on an attacker, which is why I say they're good in the short term. In the long term, Australia's small industrial base doesn't allow enough of them to be decisive. The required air power will be provided by just the carriers China and India are building anyway to be taken seriously as great powers. Australia doesn't have a lot of air power, and the F35 will [at best] replace, not augment the existing aircraft. There isn't much threat to Australia right now; on the timescale military procurement decisions operate India and China will be comparably powerful to the US and Australia will be one of the pawns in their Great Game.

And really, do I need to argue it's better to be in US sphere of influence than PRC sphere of influence?

[Alkaloid]

OK, lets be quite clear. If you use the JSF like a 4th Gen fighter it will offer slightly better performance than current planes. The JSF, however, is not a 4th Gen fighter, it is not a 4.5 Gen fighter, it is a genuine 5th Generation aircraft and will very much change the way the RAAF and the RAN fights. The HAMS Perth is currently operating the single most advanced maritame air defence radar on the planet, designed to track and direct counter missiles to more targets than any other system as well as direct fire from other vessels. By 2017 all 8 ANZACs are planned to be doing the same. Shortly after they are going to be supplemented with three AEGIS destroyers and at that stage limited JSFs and a not insignifican number of bugs, superbugs and growlers. Properly networked, the way modern weapons systems are supposed to be, they will be a significant step forward capability wise because they can flat out share targeting data between each other, AWACS birds, P-8's if they are selected, JORN and civilian ATC radar as well as mobile radar units.

They will be able to share targeting information between each other meaning they do not have to directly target an enemy to fire on it and can be directed to intercept enemy aircraft and shipping they would not otherwise have been able to detect from directions that things like the vaunted SU-35 radar will not detect them, while submarines wait to have vulnerable enemy fleets shepherded toward them. Eventually sheer numbers will win out, but it is going to hurt and it will be a long time before China or India and even longer before Indonesia can match that capability from fleet assets alone.

[Questor]

Conqueror, there's only one country with anything approaching the combined sea and airlift to pose a threat to Australia large enough to even start the nuke discussion.

Care to name it?

[Simon_Jester]

Also, having a nuclear arsenal makes you a nuclear target.

At the moment, there really isn't a good reason to hit Australia with nuclear attacks in the event of a war. They can't nuke you, so you don't need to aim deterrent missiles at them. And if you're a superpower with a major nuclear arsenal, you also have enough conventional forces that fighting a purely conventional war with Australia is a reasonable option. Which from Australia's standpoint is not too bad- they can fight a conventional war, and even if they lose, it's not the end of the universe. By being reasonably strong in conventional war, they can deter casual bullying by conventional weapons, and if it comes to war they can fight the sort of war they can survive fighting.

Whereas Australia could not survive fighting a nuclear war against a nuclear-armed adversary. Australia is ecologically marginal and very centralized- much of the population and agriculture is supported by a relatively limited set of infrastructure and territory. It would not take many nuclear attacks to utterly ruin Australia as a state and destroy their long-term prospects for recovery. Even a few nuclear devices hitting Australian soil would be so disastrous that being invaded and conquered might actually be better for the Australians in the long run.

A country with more physical resilience (like the US, or India) can contemplate fighting a nuclear war and still surviving as a nation even if their ten largest cities are wrecked and several million hectares of farmland are radioactive wastelands. Australia can't- given a choice between fighting a nuclear war and surrendering, they're probably better off surrendering unless they're being attacked by GENOCIDAL YELLOW PERIL HITLER, which is a ridiculous thing for them to plan around.

[HMS Conqueror]

Having the arsenal is what makes you not a target. Why do you think Iraq, which did not actually have nuclear weapons, was invaded by the US despite its large conventional army, yet North Korea and Pakistan are not? It's not because North Korea and Pakistan are more friendly to the US than Iraq was. Similarly, why do you think there was extensive fighting in Indochina and Central Asia during the Cold War, and none in Europe? It's not because Europe was the less important theatre. The point of nuclear war was never to actually fire the missiles, but to manoeuvre adversaries into a position of having to spend too much money or risk losing too much to achieve their goals.

It's all about the cost of doing of business. Australia has a lot of land and a lot of resources. It would be a valuable satellite state. With nuclear weapons, it's more trouble than it's worth. Who cares if Australia would be destroyed in an exchange? Well done, you took out the Pacific equivalent of Belgium in exchange for half your population and industry. The practical outcome is no one will risk that.

Nuclear weapons equalise the standing of otherwise unequal powers, for a [comparatively] very low price.

[Questor]

Simon, that precisely why I said that only one threat could even possibly justify it. The reality is that unless you're willing to spend the money to get from the "has a couple nukes/delivery vehicles" tier to the US/Russia tier, nukes represent more of a national pride thing (at least in my mind). Australia is never going to build SAC or a boomer fleet, so there's really not a heck of a lot of point in having their own nukes.

As for deterrence, I highly doubt that a country who hits Australia with a nuke will enjoy the experience.