AUKUS News, Views, Analysis.

zyklon

zyklon

Junior Member
Registered Member
Lethe said:
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What a character! Thank you for sharing!

I initially mistook Paul Keating for the Australian equivalent of that variety of American congressmen from Texas or thereabouts who like to carry or present themselves with a certain "cowboy swag."

Then I realized that Paul Keating may have very well inspired Kevin Spacey's portrayal of the fictional bisexual American Congressman, the honorable gentleman from South Carolina, and later Vice President and President of these United States, the legendary Frank Underwood of when Netflix was actually still any good.

Lethe said:
The king of political shit-talking in Australia is undoubtedly Paul Keating, who was Prime Minister from 1992-1996 and before that a senior figure in the Labor governments of the 1980s. He also happens to be the most vocal public critic of Australia's ever-closer embrace of the United States and increasing antagonism toward China.
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From the looks of it, Keating, who is obviously very talented with his tongue, came from rather humble roots with little formal education, especially when compared to the vast majority of his political peers.

He almost seems like the type who could've potentially made for a successful communist revolutionary, at a fairly young age like Fidel Castro, had he been born and raised in one of Britain's "darker" colonies on its way towards independence.

Lethe said:
Labor and the Liberal moderates are at least theoretically acquainted with the notion that America's interests and Australia's interests may not necessarily align, and also put more effort into our relations with other nations in South-East Asia and the Pacific.
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So are any of these moderates, who are cognizant of Australian-American misalignments, and presumably the necessity of a productive and healthy relationship with Beijing, which may lead to certain convergences, as persuasive or charismatic as Keating, or potentially on track towards occupying ministerial positions that will allow for a meaningful reassessment of Australian foreign policy?
 
Lethe

Lethe

Captain
vincent said:
The whole flight diversion is totally unnecessary because PLAN ships are shooting at floating targets within visual range. That’s why the PLA spokesperson said the Aussies overreacted.
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The PLAN flotilla was broadcasting notification of a live-fire exercise, including a relevant time window, on the aircraft emergency a.k.a. guard frequency 121.5Mhz and that broadcast is what was picked up by the Virgin flight en route to Australia. There was subsequently direct communication (i.e. not merely receipt of a potentially automated broadcast) between the PLAN flotilla and an Emirates flight en route to New Zealand on that same frequency. The clue is in the name: this broadcast was not intended for dolphins and stray fisherman, it was intended for aircraft. The notion that a broadcast (and subsequent direct communication) on the aircraft emergency frequency was intended to have no implications for the aircraft that received it is implausible to say the least.

It is far more likely that the PLAN flotilla broadcast notification of a live-fire exercise because international law requires that they do so and PLAN is of course a good international citizen. It is also overwhelmingly likely that PLAN was not ignorant of the air corridors between Australia and New Zealand and chose to conduct the live-fire exercise where it did knowing that flights would be rerouted around them. Perhaps this was an element within a broader strategic signaling campaign, perhaps the intention was to obtain a bargaining chip for use going forward (Canberra wants the courtesy of notification practices above and beyond those required by international law, Beijing wants...), or perhaps it was simply to ensure that PLAN's exercise of its rights on the high seas was actually noticed by the lazy antipodeans who might otherwise have missed it entirely, as indeed we would have, for no Australian or New Zealand assets actually observed the first live-fire exercise in the Tasman Sea directly.

As I wrote previously, it is plausible that the specific procedural characteristics of the Australian response, including the apparent reluctance of the ADF to disclose the location of the PLAN flotilla to Airservices Australia and the airlines in order to narrow down the exclusion corridor, magnified the number and extent of flight diversions considerably beyond that which was actually necessary. But that is not the same as the proposition that no diversions were required, intended, or could reasonably have been anticipated.
 
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zyklon

zyklon

Junior Member
Registered Member
00CuriousObserver said:

China alerted Papau New Guinea of warship exercises weeks in advance as 'courtesy' while keeping Australia in the dark​


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This article appears to be looking to sensationalize the (perhaps careless) ambiguity of named sources being quoted. Case in point:

“The Chinese Ambassador did come and see me and alert myself and our government that they did have war ships going past and through our waters. Just out of courtesy,” Mr Tkatchenko said.

In an exclusive interview, PNG's Foreign Minister said China alerted him they were "doing their own drills" and their own programs and activities "in those waters".
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Precisely what was it that the Papua New Guinea FM Tkatchenko was referring to by "those waters?"

China's lopsided approach to Australia's Pacific neighbours, while keeping the Albanese government and New Zealand in the dark, was an expression of Beijing's "darker side", Strategic Analysis Australia defence expert Michael Shoebridge told the Telegraph.

"Beijing has clearly decided to be all smiles with PNG and the South Pacific nations while showing their much darker side to Australia in the way they have communicated and conducted these drills and this military presence,” he said.

“It is a nakedly obvious attempt to accentuate their friendlessness to the Pacific nations while upping the aggression to Australia and New Zealand.”
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I can only imagine or hope that
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has contemplated on why Beijing is "all smiles" with Papua New Guinea and other South Pacific nations while apparently showing Australia and New Zealand her "darker side."

Yet, it's strange, if not bizarre that Sky News failed to meaningfully elaborate further, if at all upon the tensions between Canberra and Beijing and their root causes, or is introspection and/or cause and effect just "not a thing" in Australia with mainstream media and/or most audiences?
 
Lethe

Lethe

Captain
zyklon said:
What a character! Thank you for sharing!

I initially mistook Paul Keating for the Australian equivalent of that variety of American congressmen from Texas or thereabouts who like to carry or present themselves with a certain "cowboy swag."

Then I realized that Paul Keating may have very well inspired Kevin Spacey's portrayal of the fictional bisexual American Congressman, the honorable gentleman from South Carolina, and later Vice President and President of these United States, the legendary Frank Underwood of when Netflix was actually still any good.

From the looks of it, Keating, who is obviously very talented with his tongue, came from rather humble roots with little formal education, especially when compared to the vast majority of his political peers.

He almost seems like the type who could've potentially made for a successful communist revolutionary, at a fairly young age like Fidel Castro, had he been born and raised in one of Britain's "darker" colonies on its way towards independence.
Click to expand...

Keating was and remains a scary figure to be on the wrong side of*. Not only is he a fantastic orator with a vicious tongue, but he also has more intellectual gravitas than 90% of the modern political class, yet without the privileged background and the prejudices and blindspots that typically accompany that. He can credibly be described as one of the key architects of modern Australia, not only through his role as Treasurer throughout the 1980s, overseeing the floating of the currency, introduction of superannuation, and other influential if contestable economic innovations, but also the embrace of multiculturalism, republicanism, gestures toward reconciliation with indigenous Australians and a vision of Australia discovering its own unique identity within Asia. Of course there was a very considerable and sustained backlash against Keating and the ideas he represented, but as the stories say: you can never go home again, and we are still living in the nation that he helped to shape. Indeed, for a long time Labor suffered from the problem of how to move beyond playing the role of
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.

* I mean, what do you even do when the streetfighter is also the public intellectual who is also the great statesman? It's like when the final boss comes back with another pair of arms and a laser cutter. You're just fucked.

Unfortunately, Labor has moved past Keating, such that his
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about AUKUS now falls on deaf ears. He still commands an audience and folks listen with respect and acknowledge his legacy -- and then they move on.

zyklon said:
So are any of these moderates, who are cognizant of Australian-American misalignments, and presumably the necessity of a productive and healthy relationship with Beijing, which may lead to certain convergences, as persuasive or charismatic as Keating, or potentially on track towards occupying ministerial positions that will allow for a meaningful reassessment of Australian foreign policy?
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The moderate wing of the Liberal party (the Liberals being the greater partner in the Coalition with the National party) is now very much an endangered species, as the party has moved further to the right since the moderate Malcom Turnbull was ousted as Prime Minister in 2018. The diminution of moderate voices within the formerly "broad church" of the Liberal party (former Prime Minister John Howard's characterisation) is now serious enough that a new group of "teal" independents has sprung up to hold several seats in the current parliament, attracting economically Liberal but socially progressive folk from the professional classes who would formerly have been accommodated within the Liberal party, but are unable to stomach the cultural and environmental aspects of its current direction e.g. ongoing devotion to coal and hostility to renewable energy.

Even if Labor were required to form a minority government with parties like the Greens that profess to be opposed to AUKUS, I doubt that they would be willing to put defence or foreign policy matters on the table in any power-sharing arrangement, and there are plenty of other ways for Labor or the Coalition to secure the support of minor parties and independents if required. At most they would tinker around the edges.

A continuation of the status quo is about the best that can be hoped for in terms of Australia-China relations in the near-term: open channels of communication, real if modest opportunities for cooperation where possible, not "puffing out their big boy chests". There is almost no prospect of Australia walking away from its relationship with the United States. I previously would've said zero prospect, but there is now Donald Trump and his mercurial whims and threats against other notional allies to consider. So: almost zero. That said, our approach to Trump to date has been to act as quiet as a mouse in the hopes that he won't notice us, and for better or worse that seems to be working. And why wouldn't it work? It's not often that you get to buy a continent for the price of a few submarines. I'm not sure even Trump can aspire to a better deal for America. That said, within the boundaries of strategic continuity there is still a renewed awareness of risk and the possibility of incremental hedging. We would be talking here of shuffling sideways a few millimeters at a time. I'll write about a specific hypothetical example later.
 
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Lethe

Lethe

Captain
Ok, so over the weekend we heard a new
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from Peter Dutton that, if elected to government, the Coalition plans to spend $3bn to acquire an additional 28 F-35A fighter aircraft. There’s more to this than meets the eye and it’s worth paying attention to the strategic implications of this seemingly modest commitment.

Australia’s current air combat inventory consists of 24 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, delivered 2010-11, 12 EA-18G Growlers delivered 2015-17, and 72 F-35As delivered 2018-24. The Super Hornets were authorised in 2007 and explicitly characterised as an “interim” acquisition as our F-111s approached retirement (exiting service in 2010) and the F-35 development/production schedule continued to slip to the right. As such, there has long been a notional commitment to an eventual fourth F-35 squadron, and that was part of the roadmap under the previous Coalition government. Commitment to that fourth F-35 squadron was scrapped by Labor as part of the 2024 National Defence Strategy as part of a slew of
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in the context of AUKUS, the new Tier 2 frigate program, more missiles, etc. The previous notional retirement date for Super Hornet of 2027 was pushed back to at least 2030.

Astute observers will note that 17 or even 20 years of service for the Super Hornet inventory is unusually brief in the context of modern combat aircraft, particularly given that we are operating an airframe reinforced for carrier operations from land-based airfields. The preceding F-111 Aardvarks and F/A-18C/D Hornets were each in service for 35 years, which is in line with modern trends across other western militaries. One could argue that Super Hornet was always considered an interim acquisition, and that there is a technological imperative (VLO) to move beyond it, yet even USN is not rushing to replace their Super Hornets with F-35s, despite greater operational and strategic incentives and greater flexibility to do so. Simply put, there appears to be no compelling reason why these aircraft must be replaced in 2027, 2030, or even 2035. There isn’t even the argument that we would be standardising on a single type, as the EA-18G Growlers will remain in service, requiring near-identical logistical and personnel support.

Why, then, is Dutton so insistent on pushing for this fourth F-35 Squadron? I put it to the reader that this has very little to do with the F-35 and more to do with locking Australia ever more tightly into Washington’s embrace by foreclosing alternative procurement pathways.

Consider the following from Steve Trimble at Aviation Week in
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, via
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:

A missing piece in Australia’s fighter inventory will be filled in the short term by extending the life of the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet for at least another decade and then afterward will be opened up for competition as a new generation of air combat aircraft are scheduled to arrive in service.
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If Australia were not to acquire a fourth squadron of F-35s, we see that a gap opens up in the RAAF inventory from the late 2030s for an aircraft that may or may not be an F-35.

With NGAD and F/A-XX under public radio silence so far as export prospects are concerned, the obvious candidates that present themselves in this timeframe are FCAS and, perhaps most compellingly, the UK-Japan-Italy GCAP program. GCAP will be more advanced than F-35, reflecting its more recent genesis, while also almost certainly offering
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than F-35, particularly now that the US has removed a notional AETP engine from the future F-35 roadmap. Range is directly relevant to Australia’s strategic circumstances and doctrinal ambitions, and the lack of it has been a sore point since the retirement of the F-111.

If there are strong military-operational reasons for us to be interested in GCAP, the broader strategic picture only strengthens them. The strategic risk of Australia’s total reliance upon the United States should now be clear to all but the most blind adherents of the faith, and investing in GCAP would be a small step to mitigating that risk. Conversely, while the UK’s involvement in GCAP is undoubtedly reassuring, Japan’s involvement means that it aligns with our ongoing interest in developing our strategic relations with that nation in order to balance against China (similar arguments were made in relation to the prospect of our acquiring a Japanese SSK, and also the current Tier 2 frigate program for which the Mogami design is one of two remaining candidates). And of course Italy connects us with the EU.

As such, it is my contention that Peter Dutton is pushing for a fourth F-35 squadron not only to please Washington in the present moment, but also to foreclose the future prospect of Australia seeking an air combat capability from outside the American military-industrial complex. Peter Dutton was one of the leading architects of AUKUS, and he was subsequently
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with Labor's selection of a British submarine design for the eventual build-it-here component of that program. This time, he is determined to ensure that we have nowhere else to turn.
 
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zyklon

zyklon

Junior Member
Registered Member
Lethe said:
Ok, so over the weekend we heard a new
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
from Peter Dutton that, if elected to government, the Coalition plans to spend $3bn to acquire an additional 28 F-35A fighter aircraft. There’s more to this than meets the eye and it’s worth paying attention to the strategic implications of this seemingly modest commitment
Click to expand...

Why is Dutton looking to acquire additional F-35A airframes when the F-35B, which should be able to operate off of the RAN's two Canberra LHDs, is almost certainly available?

I can only assume the Canberra LHDs were constructed with ski jumps for a reason, so it seems illogical that Dutton isn't prioritizing the acquisition of the F-35B.
 
coolgod

coolgod

Brigadier
Registered Member
Lethe said:
Ok, so over the weekend we heard a new
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
from Peter Dutton that, if elected to government, the Coalition plans to spend $3bn to acquire an additional 28 F-35A fighter aircraft. There’s more to this than meets the eye and it’s worth paying attention to the strategic implications of this seemingly modest commitment.

Australia’s current air combat inventory consists of 24 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, delivered 2010-11, 12 EA-18G Growlers delivered 2015-17, and 72 F-35As delivered 2018-24. The Super Hornets were authorised in 2007 and explicitly characterised as an “interim” acquisition as our F-111s approached retirement (exiting service in 2010) and the F-35 development/production schedule continued to slip to the right. As such, there has long been a notional commitment to an eventual fourth F-35 squadron, and that was part of the roadmap under the previous Coalition government. Commitment to that fourth F-35 squadron was scrapped by Labor as part of the 2024 National Defence Strategy as part of a slew of
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
in the context of AUKUS, the new Tier 2 frigate program, more missiles, etc. The previous notional retirement date for Super Hornet of 2027 was pushed back to at least 2030.

Astute observers will note that 17 or even 20 years of service for the Super Hornet inventory is unusually brief in the context of modern combat aircraft, particularly given that we are operating an airframe reinforced for carrier operations from land-based airfields. The preceding F-111 Aardvarks and F/A-18C/D Hornets were each in service for 35 years, which is in line with modern trends across other western militaries. One could argue that Super Hornet was always considered an interim acquisition, and that there is a technological imperative (VLO) to move beyond it, yet even USN is not rushing to replace their Super Hornets with F-35s, despite greater operational and strategic incentives and greater flexibility to do so. Simply put, there appears to be no compelling reason why these aircraft must be replaced in 2027, 2030, or even 2035. There isn’t even the argument that we would be standardising on a single type, as the EA-18G Growlers will remain in service, requiring near-identical logistical and personnel support.

Why, then, is Dutton so insistent on pushing for this fourth F-35 Squadron? I put it to the reader that this has very little to do with the F-35 and more to do with locking Australia ever more tightly into Washington’s embrace by foreclosing alternative procurement pathways.

Consider the following from Steve Trimble at Aviation Week in
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, via
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:



If Australia were not to acquire a fourth squadron of F-35s, we see that a gap opens up in the RAAF inventory from the late 2030s for an aircraft that may or may not be an F-35.

With NGAD and F/A-XX under public radio silence so far as export prospects are concerned, the obvious candidates that present themselves in this timeframe are FCAS and, perhaps most compellingly, the UK-Japan-Italy GCAP program. GCAP will be more advanced than F-35, reflecting its more recent genesis, while also almost certainly offering
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
than F-35, particularly now that the US has removed a notional AETP engine from the future F-35 roadmap. Range is directly relevant to Australia’s strategic circumstances and doctrinal ambitions, and the lack of it has been a sore point since the retirement of the F-111.

If there are strong military-operational reasons for us to be interested in GCAP, the broader strategic picture only strengthens them. The strategic risk of Australia’s total reliance upon the United States should now be clear to all but the most blind adherents of the faith, and investing in GCAP would be a small step to mitigating that risk. Conversely, while the UK’s involvement in GCAP is undoubtedly reassuring, Japan’s involvement means that it aligns with our ongoing interest in developing our strategic relations with that nation in order to balance against China (similar arguments were made in relation to the prospect of our acquiring a Japanese SSK, and also the current Tier 2 frigate program for which the Mogami design is one of two remaining candidates). And of course Italy connects us with the EU.

As such, it is my contention that Peter Dutton is pushing for a fourth F-35 squadron not only to please Washington in the present moment, but also to foreclose the future prospect of Australia seeking an air combat capability from outside the American military-industrial complex. Peter Dutton was one of the leading architects of AUKUS, and he was subsequently
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
with Labor's selection of a British submarine design for the eventual build-it-here component of that program. This time, he is determined to ensure that we have nowhere else to turn.
Click to expand...
TBF, even if Dutton wasn't under pressure to please his masters in Washington F-35 would have been a better decision. First, it actually exists and have a decades long track record. Second, no one ever gets blamed (by the public and superiors) for procuring American armaments.
 
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lych470

lych470

Junior Member
Registered Member
zyklon said:
Why is Dutton looking to acquire additional F-35A airframes when the F-35B, which should be able to operate off of the RAN's two Canberra LHDs, is almost certainly available?

I can only assume the Canberra LHDs were constructed with ski jumps for a reason, so it seems illogical that Dutton isn't prioritizing the acquisition of the F-35B.
Click to expand...

The Canberra LHDs are pier Queens.

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I vividly recall that its tour in 2022 was a comedy of errors, with issue after issue being identified. Keep in mind that this is operations in peace-time; I shudder to imagine what breakdowns she'd have in war time, if not being sunk within the opening salvos of a conflict.

HMAS Adelaide is always, always moored at Garden Island.
 
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