AUKUS News, Views, Analysis.

zyklon said:

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?

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Sky is basically the Fox News of Australia, with all that implies.

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.

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Apologies, F-35A was my own flourish. Our existing F-35s are all As. Dutton doesn't appear to have specified a variant for this notional fourth squadron.

Officially, the ski ramp was incidental to Australia's selection of the Spanish Juan Carlos design for its LHDs: apparently it was more expensive to remove the ramp than to keep it. The claim is that we've never given serious thought to acquiring F-35Bs to operate from them.

Of course, it was also claimed that Australia had no need of SSNs and that their acquisition was impractical, until one day it turned out that SSNs were both readily achievable and in fact essential...

I'm seeing articles criticizing Aussie's overreaction, which is amusing to me.



They are also calling for more spending on defense. But tbh, would increased defense spending even make a fundamental change? To go from 4 ships in the Aussie navy to 8 ships?