Thursday, December 6, 2012

This reality is the real new "Defence White Paper"

The next Defence White Paper is due out in 2013. Expect it to be as dumb or irresponsible as the one in 2009.

The new paper will state the importance of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, even though it is a defective and militarily irrelevant failure.

It will claim the importance of needing 12 new home-grown submarines (rent-seeker alert) even if no one has figured out a practical way to build them at anything but an over-inflated price.

It will mention the alleged importance of the new “Air Warfare Destroyers” and new Canberra-class amphibious ships (the size of a small aircraft carrier) even though no one has put reasonable thought about how to crew them and operate them without sucking the resource life out of the rest of the RAN.

None of this shows the true needs of the current “Defence” situation.

Like the policy or hate it, (by the way, Howard got it right), we need resources to cover for illegal immigration.

For example we do not have enough patrol boats for border protection. Various kinds of RAN ships have been commandeered to be used to support the border operations against illegal boat people in what can only be described as, Operation: HAPPY CABBY.

Defence yearly flying operations funds for C-17 cargo aircraft and the new KC-30 (A330-200 Airbus airframes) tankers are being used to move illegals back home and other places. This is at a higher cost than civilian solutions.

Why? Since the current government is in the red (not counting the red hammer and sickle) with deficit-spending and big federal budget debt due to spend-thrift planning, the only current funding available to do what should be civil and civil police ops reside in yearly Defence operations funds.

This is a gross misdirection of the justification for authorised fund-sites. The tax payer should not have money taken from them on the promise of it being used for Defence and then see it robbed to pay for border patrol ops.

So, with no money left, and leftist government leaders trying to patch up bad policy, the only true value they see in Defence is to act as a value-added accessory to under-resourced border patrol operations.

Those are your REAL Defence White Paper needs. Defence as a function of border protection (by other means). There is no money for defective and gold-plated big-Navy dreams and big RAAF flying-club ambitions.

There is money in annual budgets to resource proper border protection against illegals.

Fantasy Defence 2030? How about taking care of the current threat.

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