Earlier last month we had this read about the difficulty of Defence/DMO/RAN being able to keep important support ships ready.
And now this joint press release from Saturday.
Maybe if we just teach Defence/DMO/RAN to all speak Spanish we can have a rental agreement with the Armada Española?
Maybe the previous series of messes are being addressed correctly. Although given the consistent behaviour of the Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy, I wonder how?
H/T: Richard
4 comments:
Re the interview with Smith today.
Only 5 out of 14 Patrol Boats are operational.
"They are working very hard"
DMO and Defence unable to comprehend that wear and tear occur when circumstances change.
How unpredictable!
Smith says there're fixing the manning levels with a change of crewing policy. Does that involve an Blue crew and a Pink crew for each boat? If so, that will make the maintenance problems even more difficult to overcome.
I'll bet the AAVN rotary wing people at Oakey are wishing the Australian Government would "gift" them the two Chinooks they're BORROWING millions of dollars to buy - to give, direct from the USA, to the Indonesians!
As for the four 'H' Model Hercs... Smith says they will "be in a flyable state" when they are "gifted" (oh, how I hate the Americani-S-not-Z-ation of our language) to Indonesia. Can anyone tell us how many millions we will spend to put them in that state? And if that money is to be spent and they then have a useful life extension but are surplus to current requirements, why they couldn't be put out to Woomera or some such place to provide Australia with a strategic reserve?
Indonesia has at least 28 Hercules in various state of repair.
Why do they need 4 more?
By the way their GDP is about $1.02 trillion, not far from that of Australia.
They do not need foreign aid.
Albatross you are correct, put the Aircraft in reserve.
We do not study history at all.
Shedding 18 Caribou and 12 C-130H seems a winding back of airlift capacity, notwithstanding acquisition of 6 C-17 and 10 C-27. I guess you could add 5 KC-30 if the Government prefers most assets to be used for virtual 'Peace Corps' roles rather than military functions, like AAR.
These days, it seems realistic to only expect 50 percent on-line availability so probably a shrinking number overall of available platforms. Shedding any airframes for which there are ongoing manufacturer upgrade/enhancement programs is asinine; but that has been the culture within the Australian DoD for decades, apparently supported over time by Service Chiefs. The pretence that Australia is enhancing military capacity (at great cost) is really just a charade.
(Temporarily at Charleville)
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