Not a cure

Taxpayer funded “analysis” just isn’t working so well in this country when it comes to air power topics.

Take this latest from some that should know better:

Why the US Air Force needs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

So according to ASPI, the USAF is in bad shape.

Yeah we know that.

Why someone would suggest a failed program to solve USAF problems makes me wonder.

Only just a little bit.

Am I being too harsh? Not when we are talking about spending tens-of-billions on a faulty product...and tens-of-billions more to fix the mistakes.

But, OK, if I am too harsh, consider another reason for ASPI failings re: air power topics.

They aren't stupid. They just have bad luck when thinking.

Who told Defence that Wedgetail was ready for IOC and is it true?

Australian Defence has declared initial operating capability (IOC) with the Wedgetail aircraft, so says this this press release.

"The Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) Wedgetail aircraft has achieved Initial Operational Capability,..."

But is it true?

One of the anonymous Internet mind-guards who help to push the message of various tribal elements within the Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy isn't so sure:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordon Branch
Did anyone else notice the that The E-7 Wedgetail has achieved Initial Operational Capability (IOC)?

Depends on how the Proj defined IOC. There is no standard definition and my understanding is that there is still a fair way to go.

Sometimes there is confusion because the Proj may meet "Interim" rarther than "Initial"

the former is a compromise used to get the platform up and about but still work towards meeting OC

All in all, I'm suggesting that the claim about meeting real world IOC may not be so as the press release claims

In fact I know its not so.

Is the Wedgetail ready for IOC? I don't know. I do know that it was delayed for years; and was looking at shooting for a 90 percent capability of the original expectation after experiencing technology problems.

The root cause of Wedgetail problems appeared where they do in many ill-conceived projects: in the beginning. Numerous identified risks were waved away by the program leadership as being workable. Later when those identified risks evolved into show-stopping problems, the Wedgetail became a project management object lesson.

So, either the Defence Minister's office, the DMO and RAAF are wrong and trying to push an alleged success story where none exists or the anonymous mind-guards are wrong.

This has the potential to be a worthy topic of interest at the next Senate Estimates get-together.

I am curious how the Minister's office will address this gross difference in communication?

Rent-seekers use faith in attempt to take high ground

ASPI opines about home-grown submarine naysayers. They ask a fair question or two. Also, reading what is quoted, I would worry.

Warning signs in the Minister for Rent-Seeking and Platitude speech.

"Like any big project there will be naysayers."

Blame the critic. Not always helpful. For the Minister one has to first see if a "naysayer's" argument is valid. Some are.

Then the leap to the Snowy Mountain project where the Minister refers to some words from that time:

"This Government has faith in its engineers, its people and the future of Australia.”

Faith is no substitute for project management skills and sound leadership. My fear is what I am seeing is an avalanche on Bullshit Mountain.

"Those who say just buy submarines from overseas."

Yeah well, we can get a consistant learning curve and long tribal knowledge for crews and logistics management established. All that and have a lethal defensive weapon.

"Those that lack the faith in what Australian workers and Australian industry can achieve."

Faith is irrelevant. When examining the track record of the Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy, the defective ASC and DMO, one has to depend on what is the goal of all properly planned projects: to perform something that can be realistically accomplished. The evidence of Australia being able to do a big home grown submarine project successfully, just is not there.

On paper, what the Minister outlines sounds great. If only he were working with better clay. The only way for a successful home sub project to happen is if there are massive changes. That is, finding people that can lead, manage and understand the language of engineers as opposed to...rent-seekers.

So the taxpayer just spent hundreds of millions to do a future submarine study, all while the rent-seekers had their foot on the brake underneath the roulette table.

That by any definition is fraud.

How many “free rides”?

There is a lot of talk about Australia getting a free ride by underspending on Defence in relation to the U.S. umbrella of protection.

Let us examine some of this a bit closer.

Currently, the Australian military procurement system is broken. And, not just a little bit. Any increase of Defence spending at this point in time, is just a licence to see more of our tax dollars wasted.

In other words: fix the substance abuser first, before handing them more money.

Also, may we look at some of the other free riders out there? Take the time to look at some of the other U.S. allies.

I am generally a “hawk” on military issues. However, with the current situation, giving the DMO and friends more money to waste means that we will have to spend billions more fixing the procurement of new, yet irrelevant weapons wanted by the corrupt Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy.

Example: field the defective F-35; spend billions more to get something that is actually tactically useful to make up for the colossal mistake.

Ditto: for the troubled RAN. For example: Defence bought a used ship from the U.K. who was having a going-out-of-business sale in relation to their former empire and now the new one: feeding the welfare state. That ship was not properly evaluated; broke recently and went into repair for months.

A sarcastic “thank you” to our imbeciles in senior Defence circles.

And finally for the alleged security wonks out there: knock off the percent-of-GDP-valuation of Defence spending.

It is stupid because it doesn’t address anything of value. What counts is the percentage of Defence spending , in the Federal budget.

Australia not fixing its cancer known as the DMO and friends is like driving a car with a flat tire; buying 3 new tires for the other hubs, and, still driving on the flat tire.

And then calling it progress.

---

-Some of what ails Defence-

Communists and Australia in the Asian Century

"Chinese top brass bags US influence in region", is a good article to read if you can get it online or read the print edition of today's The Australian.

The Chinese general in-question warns us about the U.S. but also Japan's past. He warns us about the dangers of a fascist Japan and how they bombed Darwin.

The general is right to warn us about totalitarianism in the Pacific Rim. However he doesn't mention the dangers of communism. A murderous Mao is not mentioned.

At all.

Something also not mentioned much in the lofty Neville Chamberlain -like goals in Australia's much hyped "Australia in the Asian century white paper".

Although to be fair to Mr. Chamberlain, I don't think he would have put his name to such a shoddy piece of unreality as Australia's new policy white paper.

The title for the above mentioned article in The Australian should be amended to read, "Communist Chinese top brass bags US influence in region".

Lots of cart-before-the-horse stuff in the blizzard of wishful thinking in the overly optimistic white paper.

I would suggest, (as I have in the past) that for Australia to be a leader in Pacific Rim policy, that it must champion free speech above all; without reservation.

Or, prepare to suffer a very bad fate in this century.

George Orwell and all that.

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

Digital warfare

I just hope ADF PCs are up for the challenge.

Two years ago they "upgraded" to Internet Explorer 7 which indicates a high dependency on back-end Microsoft products of the legacy kind.

One can lock a WAN/LAN down.

Still though: very curious.

And what about the Fed Parliament?

Excellent quote

Excellent quote from a reader known as, "Bushranger":

"The so-called Helicopter Strategic Master Plan is an ongoing disaster that has arguably squandered billions of dollars and diminished Australia's military capacity."

From a different time:

The potential greatness of Senator Johnston

A speech the other day by a person that could be the next Defence Minister under a new leadership, Senator David Johnston, shows a man that has his heart in the right place for Defence.

The video here, is recommended viewing.

Unfortunately, he admits he is not very knowledgeable on Defence. Historically this isn't a new situation for Defence Ministers in Australia. It does seem that he has the potential to be more up-to-speed than other Defense Ministers before him even if Johnston admits he is a “slightly educated amateur” in relation to the portfolio.

In my opinion, he still has some views of Defence that are not realistic.

For example he said that Australia's air combat capability is “relatively straight forward” when in fact it has serious challenges ahead. He mentions that in spite of critics, the F-35 will be a “fantastic” capability. He then goes on to mention that DAS on the F-35 saw a rocket launch from 800 some miles away. Hint: it was one of the biggest boosters available on the market. Or as one critic said of this Lockheed Martin marketing effort (that is where it came from and has been pushed elsewhere when hyping the F-35): “With the naked eye, I can see 93 million miles in daylight; quite a bit further at night.”

Johnston goes on to mention the alleged net-centric-warfare capability of the F-35 when this technology exists today in other platforms. He mentions the wonders of the F-35 pilot's integrated sensor helmet but doesn't mention this system is in deep trouble. He mentions that the F-35 will give Australia a “fantastic, regionally dominant capability.” He doesn't mention that the Joint Operational Requirement Document (JORD) for the Joint Strike Fighter, drawn up in the 1990's and signed off on at the beginning of the last decade, insures that this aircraft, as delivered, will be obsolete against regional threats. And that assumes that there are no development troubles. It is doubtful that the claim by the maker of the F-35, that it is affordable, lethal, supportable and sustainable, has any credibility.

In short, he was easily taken in by all the glamour of a junket to Fort Worth to visit the F-35 factory and consume the blue-sky marketing, but has little-to-no critical thinking capability in this area of Defence.

Senator Johnston should not hitch his wagon to marketing hype.

Johnston refers back multiple times to the 2009 Defence White Paper (a wish list of $275B of spending short-falled by around $200B once realism hits), but he doesn't seem to grasp that the document is a horrific joke.

Which leads to something else where he stated that Parliament as a whole, does not understand the complexity of Defence. No surprise here. He praises ASPI for helping out (they do help) but mentions them as, “independent and non-partisan”.

I don't know about that:



If Senator Johnston becomes the next Defence Minister, here is what he must do:

-Make Defence officials accountable.

-Improve professional military education (PME) (art of war, leadership and management) which connects with:

-Improve the bad condition of the military justice system. Hint, this capability improves by leaps and bounds as PME quality improves. When this happens (regardless of the military procurement bungling by the entrenched defence bureaucracy) we will have a strong foundation that our soldiers, sailors and airmen deserve during peace and war.

Johnston may fail with the entrenched defence bureaucracy in relation to procurement stuff ups but if he can produce big victories with the human relations side of the fence for our war-fighters, he will have left a lasting legacy and, improved the defence posture of the nation.

Simply because ethics issues are what plague Defence. There is little difference between a soldier, sailor or airman receiving bad military justice and a $1.5B waste of the Sea Sprite, the many ship and submarine sustainment mistakes or other defence procurement disasters.

All of the bad behaviour comes from the same ills: poor senior leadership ethics and accountability.

Consider the DMO, ASC, RAN relationship which has been in serious trouble for years and as Johnston states, is full of “malice”. Maybe a Defence Minister Johnston can let us know the alleged worse problems in that second and restricted DMO, ASC, RAN report. After all, for years, we have been paying billions for a Navy that has been short-changed by the entrenched defence bureaucracy leaving combat capability for the worse.

Senator Johnston has the potential to be a good Defence Minister. If we all help him out, maybe he can be a great Defence Minister.

Our poor senator

Our most useless war

The Australian government is still happy to mislead the public with its claims of hope and success in Afghanistan.

All; with no credible proof.

There is much more evidence to show that coalition trained Afghan “friendly” troops have poor fighting quality, poor morale, poor sense of mission, little unit cohesion or can even show up for work than there is evidence that they will be capable of standing up to an enemy unsupervised. What our tax money has been wasted on is a slightly less able version of the South Vietnamese Army. For Sale: slightly used rifle, only dropped once.

Until the Australian military bureaucracy can advise our civilian leadership about these facts of life, what they are doing is nothing less than despicable. Blood of our lost and wounded soldiers is on the hands of Russell Office senior leadership. And, guilty as charged for not understanding 4th generation warfare.

Afghanistan, in any condition, is not a threat against Australia. And, it is hard to take this government seriously about national security when they are unwilling and/or unable to perform basic border protection at home.

The ADF may be at war in Afghanistan, but the rest of Australia is at the shopping mall. And with no real justification for the Afghanistan deployment, mall-goers are justified in their behaviour.

Weak news article quotes flawed audit

The cost of a JSF is expected to drop from $127 million to $80 million as the production rate increases.

Not credible.

Only if thousands were made with little to no development problems.

That train has already left.

File under: "copy-paste journalism".

----

Shallow audit held as valuable by some

The Greens are right

Afghanistan will fold. Yet, Smith wrongly believes a pullout now increases risk.

Don't see how. Getting out of Operation:USELESS DIRT now rather than later is the only sensible (and on target) policy I have seen from the Greens.

Japan

Defence looks toward Japan for help. Two high risk projects for Australia: the F-35 and submarines.

At least Japan had some sense and went with a U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) deal with the Just So Failed. Not that this will help defend their, or our, skies much.

With the DMO having their grubby hands involved wrangling the rent-seekers, how can it go wrong?

Labor has shown their gross incompetence dealing with Defence. The return of the other party next year offers no solutions either. Both think money is the problem and, other than platitude and more bad decisions, offer no clear way of removing the dead wood, or improving management competence.

"Small" fire on Collins sub

On the 15th of September, according to Defence, a "small" fire happened aboard a Collins class sub. Decide how many smalls were used in this release for yourself.


(click image to make larger)

More nonsense on Defence issues from The Australian

The Australian has an interesting read from Mr. Sheridan who has an opinion on a variety of Defence matters.

Interesting because it is mostly bad.

He believes in the 2009 Defence White Paper even though it is a joke.

He believes in 100 "Joint Strike Fighters" even though the program is in serious trouble.

Be believes in the "Air Warfare Destroyers" and Canberra-class Amphibs even if the RAN management, along with the DMO management is a shambles.

Unless real adults are willing to fix show-stopping root-cause problems with Defence leadership, bureacracy and the DMO, anything else is a waste of time. This includes comments by some about the need of a higher GDP vs. Defence budget meme.

So, along with bad Defence policy, we have in these parts of the world, a majority of bad Defence reporting. The two make perfect bookends.

More on the big display for the Super

Maybe Mr. Thomson's 60 Super Hornets can have this display.

Marketing and such.

Defence budget vs. GDP red herring

The red herring for Defence that means... really... nothing:

"This in turn will raise questions - not now but well down the track - whether we will be able to continue to meet our defence needs with just under 2 per cent of GDP.

With such irresponsible and incompetent management of Defence programs, more money just means more opportunities to throw it away on stupid decisions.

The moronic cart-before-the-horse thinking must stop. Or, expect no improvement with the moribund and dysfunctional entrenched Defence bureaucracy.

Defence fief

I'm curious how many in the entrenched defence bureaucracy or defence-wide voted labor?

Elections have consequences.

What I find funny is anyone that thinks the joke of the 2009 Defence White Paper has value.

I would suggest that if money is low for Defence, that this would be a good time to get rid of the dead wood. That would be the excess of Defence civilians, flag-ranks and senior executive service.

Canadian politicians have a better understanding of F-35 risk

Canada, and not the U.S. or Australia, has a better understanding of F-35 risk.

Along with that:

In the United States, we don't punish officials for offering misleading statements; we promote them. In 2008, the Air Force's manager for the F-35 program, Major General Charles R. Davis, asserted that the "flyaway" cost of its F-35As would be between $60 and $70 million by the time the purchase reached its fourth production lot and that it might even be less than that. Contemporary with Davis' forecast, GAO had been writing reports warning Congress about optimistic estimates of F-35 cost and schedule. The GAO reports were roundly ignored by Congress and the Pentagon, as were other insiders and experts who spoke out publicly.

In 2012, real-time Department of Defense data for that fourth production batch shows a flyaway cost about double Davis' prediction. For being wrong by a factor of at least two, Davis was given a promotion to lieutenant general and a new job: to oversee the entire Air Force acquisition budget -- more than $40 billion annually.

Similarly, from 2009 to 2011 Ashton Carter served as the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, overseeing all Pentagon weapons purchases. He took special interest in the F-35 program and frequently reported to Congress. When he came to office, Carter was confronted with an analysis from a Joint Estimating Team (JET) predicting $11.6 billion in cost growth just over the next five years, and a year later a "JET II" analysis predicted even more cost growth and delays over the long term. Carter postured, saying he favored the JET reports, but he implemented only some of their recommendations -- ignoring especially the long-term implications for cost growth. A subsequent GAO report made all that clear, and still -- two years later -- some, but not all, additional F-35 cost growth has been acknowledged by the Pentagon.

Despite Carter's half measures and disingenuous embrace of the JET recommendations, senators praised him and unanimously confirmed his promotion to be deputy secretary of defense in 2011. Today, he is a prime candidate to replace Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta if President Obama wins re-election.