ADF mulling 14B in arm'd vehicles as fries with 40B in subs?

[David]

[Wokko]

It's one of the main areas of spending that those of a libertarian persuasion are happy to allow a government. I don't think that Joe public is in any position to make judgements on military hardware, capabilities of neighbours and possible enemies, etc, etc. All the public hears is MULTI BILLIONS OF DOLLARS and freaks out because they've got no terms of reference for the huge amounts thrown about.

A current generation Sub, Ship or fast jet is going to cost a shit load, but so is trying to keep 50 year old tech in the field.

Although as North Korea has shown, you can run 70 year old tech if your words are backed up by Nuclear Weapons and nobody will mess with you. Not sure THAT is going to get any traction in Australia but I'd be happy for us to have a small nuclear deterrent and cut back in some other areas (like foreign adventures for example).

[stui magpie]

I'll only weigh into this a little.

We're a really frigging big island so we need to have reasonably well equipped defence forces in all 3 branches to be able to provide any form of self defence other than a token. We can't afford to just rely on allies as alliances are political in nature and can change.

Hardware costs a mint, no argument. You can compare the price of a Sub to how many social programs you could fund with that same dollars but if we can't defend the country there's no social programs left to run anyway so there has to be a balance.

Military funding has been cut back over years and years comparatively and actually, I don't have a problem with giving those troops charged with providing the defence decent tools to do so.

[Mugwump]

^ Absolutely, Stui. The first priority of a government is to defend the country and its borders. Should we ever have to ask men and women to risk their lives for Australia, we must give them the best chance of achieving their aims. Once that is done, then we can decide other spending priorities. Whether this is the right kit is a matter for experts.

[pietillidie]

[pietillidie]

[swoop42]

[David]

[swoop42]

To be brutally honest buying some nukes off the yanks over the years that they would have otherwise destroyed anyway due to the agreement with Russia would be a cheaper and more effective military deterrent.

While a world without nukes would be ideal strangely enough they might be the one thing that has stopped and will stop the outbreak of WW3.

[Mugwump]

[pietillidie]

[David]

I get your point that we can always find some other place where that money could be redirected from, Mugwump, but my point is more that it puts these things in perspective. That is to say, a $10 billion expenditure on military vehicles should be subject to roughly ten times as much scrutiny as the ABC (which I think, even before all its cuts, was only getting about $1 billion a – though if you listened to the Murdoch columnists, you'd think it was the sole reason we weren't in surplus). And yet Liberal politicians tell us that we urgently need to make cuts in comparatively tiny industries.

[HAL]

Where did you get it?

[pietillidie]

^As I said, watch this topic focus on trivia and backyard hobbyist talk about weaponry on the one hand, and vague notions of "threat" on the other. Like clockwork. My favourite's the Indonesia version of the Yellow Peril, an imminent threat ever since I was a kid, and one which has already made an appearance in this thread.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas economies, and our undying devotion and commitment to them, cause monstrous global instability and insecurity at whim, even as we speak.

Remember the 50B for a first-class NBN that was going to send the country collapsing into the sea, and all the humorous talk of serious cost-benefit analyses by the "responsible adults in the room" (done by some revolving-door Glib consulting firm for hire)? LOL.

[Mugwump]