Bad White Paper authors, Bad DMO, Bad sub ideas

The last Defence White Paper was near worthless. Yet some still entertain the authors of that mess when they come up with nonsense like this.

There are good reasons to buy off-the-shelf subs to help in securing our Northern approaches.

1. Subs by themselves are not the answer. Air power is needed to protect anti-submarine aircraft. Surface ships have their use once air power is established. Off the shelf subs will be part of a useful effort to block sea lanes.

2. Real deterrence and long range strike comes from long-range air power. Defence threw that away on a lie.

3. Off the shelf subs allow us to have a stable training program for crews. We do not have that. No other plan offers that at a faster rate.

4. Any other specialty subs should be considered only after the sub community is healthy. It is not because of the Collins fiasco. It will never be healthy with the poor thinking that goes for a "son of Collins" as the way forward.

5. For all the money we spend on Defence we don't get much. Off the shelf subs offer the least management hassle until we kill off the experiment known as the DMO and/or reshape the logistics support tail to make sense instead of being a money pit of dead weight.