The problem with generals

One of the paragraphs at the start of this story shows how empty the thinking is from our military "experts" (retired or not).

Retired Major General John Cantwell - a former commander of Australia's troops in Afghanistan and author of the 2009 Defence White Paper which called for an ambitious expansion of Defence capabilities - has told the ABC the budget cuts are eating away at a clear strategy in Afghanistan.

Where to start? Well, the 2009 Defence White was a joke. Realistically, any author of it should be humiliated at their participation in such a useless document.

As for Afghanistan; what "clear strategy"? Or, as that famous saying goes, "YGTBSM".

Australia has no interest in Afghanistan. There is no strategy if someone is not determined to win. With Cambodia and Laos nearby (Pakistan) it is a forever dead mission.

Operation: USELESS DIRT takes money and resources away which could be better used in our own Pacific Rim region. Big time defence savings right there by stopping this effort of no value.

As for the self-propelled artillery (gold-plated and all), I find it funny that this is a big deal and there is no mention of mismanagement of the M-113 program or any number of other needed things for the Army.

If the General and his friends are unwilling or unable to mention that the core problems are with the incompetent Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy, they bring nothing of use to the conversation.

The problem is not the money given to Defence by the taxpayer because so much of it is wasted on poor decisions.

If the general and his kind want to identify part of the problem, they only have to look in the mirror.

Tanker problem for RAF

The UK MOD has a air-refueling tanker problem. It seems that the hardware involved is having trouble passing gas to RAF Tornados.

I suspect the problem is fixable. More interesting in the article is the lease for 14 converted Airbus A330s for $16.7B (USD).

Leases are in some ways like rentals. It would be interesting to see the terms of the lease in detail.

At first look, acquisition of 14 tankers would be less. However budgets (especially a death-hospice MOD budget environment) are all about what colors of money you can spend at different times.

In that case, I wonder if a civilian contractor could do it better cheaper?

UK air-refuelling requirements are almost all hose-and-drogue. Interesting as I would have thought getting the C-17 and used Rivet Joints would get in the way of all this.

I could be wrong, but as far as I know, the RAF's A330s will not be fitted with a boom system.