Despite smaller economy and population, Australia spends considerably more on its military than Canada doesInteresting. Now the rest of the story.
Australians pay a lot for defence. But because of gross incompetence at the Defence management level, they don't get a lot of value in return. Given Canada's sub debacle and the nonsense over the F-35, yes the two are similar.
2 comments:
ELP, the grass always seems to be greener on the other side of de-fence. I don't know that much much about the Australian side of defence procurement, but I know the decision to buy the 4 Upholders from the UK was a poor one by Canada. I still find the comments from Canada's Def Minister and Deputy bizarre in the context of all the problems in the F35 program. My thought that there are political concerns such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline, that dominate the reason they have a "yes-yes" attitude with the US. Given the Canadian $150M investment in the program, with most of the money going to Canadian companies in R&D, there is not much current exposure in the program. Canada can probably sit on the fence for a couple more years before having to make a real decision on the F35. In the mean time Canadian airspace sovereignty is "covered" by the NORAD and Can/US Border security agreement. In Australia's case there they must depend on themselves first, which makes the issue much more critical.
In terms of GDP spending Canada is lower than it probably should be. There has always been a fine line in this country between having an assertive military or blue hat peacekeeping. In fairness to the Canadian Fed Government, their has been a concerted effort since around 2004 to re-equip the military with modern equipment.
Are we about to see a like fiasco with the P-8 Poseidon? Consider these bits:
'...The U.S. Department of Defense wants to follow a program template similar to that of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, with international cooperation from prospective MMA users...Australia and Canada may each pay up to $300 million in order to have first-tier participation in the MMA project...'
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