Sunday, October 28, 2012

Weekend deception

The weekend print edition of The Australian has their annual and grossly misleading feature section on the state of the state of Defence as it were.

As usual it is paid for by big industry rent-seekers from Boeing, LM, ASC and other usual suspects. The big advert dollars are the only reason this feature gets breathing space in the paper.

The cover page of this piece says, "Defence Special Report" and not: Defence marketing advertisement.

From that, one would expect actual reporting.

Every year this sham is always worth reading because it is written by alleged people knowledgeable for Defence which instead of being reporters on the topic are in effect, advert copy flacks for industry.

The average reader would not know this; which makes it a problem.

The "analysis" is really just that poor.

There is the usual rent-seeking inspired article about how Australia will someday have its' home grown white-elephant subs at the cost of tens of billions. It is supported by a big ASC advert. The SA government defence industry advert is on another page. And, this is probably the best "article" in the litter.

Not mentioned is the toxic relationship between the dysfunctional DMO, ASC and RAN.

There are advert-copy pieces on RAAF fast-jet air power.

They are crap.

They mention the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and how great the Growler will be.

There is little mention of the serious pitfalls having to do with the Just So Failed or the fact that the Grower is pudgy and short-ranged, has legacy jamming solutions, and against emerging Pacific Rim threats, it will suffer a similar fate to the F-35: it will get run down and killed.

The entrenched defence bureaucracy is waging a significant disinformation campaign against the tax payer. They are helped by those kinds of people who have employment which depends on our money flowing to dud defence planning schemes. The special Defence feature in the weekend edition of The Australian is part of that effort.


-Australian Defence Reading List

1 comment:

Bushranger 71 said...

Inappropriate hardware choices proliferate throughout the unrealistic Force 2030 vision with capability gaps associated with majority of projects; for example, shedding an Iroquois gunship capacity in mid-2004 before a substitute was introduced, with Tiger not yet operational in 2012!

The alarming problem with Canberra 'group think' is the political/Public Service/military realm religiously defend all of their flawed equipment choices, notwithstanding having diminished Australia's military capacity by not progressively optimising proven in-service hardware at modest cost to maintain continual adequate and credible military preparedness. Those who were instrumental in the unrealistic big defence spend (including multiple former Service Chiefs) are of course lobbying to keep hugely expensive support of largely foreign-parented defence industry as the central plank of defence policy, abetted by a compliant media.

What seems suppressed is the extent to which too much sophisticated hardware will or already is impacting on operational efficiency. Apart from huge and needless waste of funding on acquisition of some very costly inappropriate platforms, the operating cost penalties for some of this hardware are going to soar. Regarding helicopters alone, there might be up to a 500 percent increase in cost per flying hour with the ability to function in remote areas and at sea compromised by complexity and scope of support requirements.

Just how this is already impacting on the 3 separate air components of the smallish ADF warrants public awareness. There are apparently serious deficiencies regarding availability of flying hours and aircrew proficiency – the following link relates to an earlier thread in that forum highlighting these issues (but seemingly since removed): http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/498065-australian-army-aviation-corps.html. It might be argued by some that flight simulators can offset real flight time, but only to a limited extent and with their own attendant cost inefficiencies and overheads for small users.

Regarding aircraft; lessened flying hours due to higher operating costs will impact on aircrew proficiency and operational capacity. Having performed career roles responsible for aircrew maintaining operational efficiency to assure adequate unit preparedness, I believe military aircrew generally must receive a minimum of about 25 flying hours per month. If that level of activity is not now achievable, then the operational capacity of ADF air components must be questioned.

The inescapable facts are defence budgeting will stagnate if not shrink in the foreseeable future due to other national imperatives and pretty static government revenue. If operating costs for much highly complex hardware substantially increase, then capacity to keep much of it in service will lessen. Foreseeably, some of it is destined for storage and/or maybe cannot be adequately manned!

The tip of a very big iceberg is just emerging. How is the debilitated Navy going to be remediated in a relatively short time window to be able to cope with AWDs, LPDs, MRH90, MH-60R and sustain other functions, let alone replacement submarines? Prima facie, Australia's defence preparedness is a compounding huge charade.