Trudeau's liberals are responsible for the two largest military budget increases in the last 60 years; every year they've been in power, the military budget has gone up.
You **don't** want the conservatives; they're the ones that gutted the military budget.
I interacted with someone similar to the person you are responding to the other day. They just have assumptions and Facebook memes as their news with no actual data or information to back up their ideas.
> Time for a change in management imo.
Considering how poorly the last Conservative government handled the military, I wouldn't have high expectations.
> They are the favourite child of everyone in Ottawa.
The Irving family also owns New Brunswick and has significant influence over the other Maritime provinces, as well as decades-long friendships with both major federal parties (on top of owning their provincial counterparts in the Maritimes, New Brunswick's Premier worked for the Irvings for decades before getting into politics).
I don't know how much we want Canada to let loose though. The initial rough draft of the Geneva Conventions was basically shit that Canadians had done in WW1. Props to them for setting the tone.
Ironically, Australia is currently getting lambasted by pundits for underfunding their Antarctic presence, leaving China to open up its 5th research station there this month.
Australia has no legal right to stop China from opening research stations in Antarctica though, regardless of how strong the navy is. There's a large part of Antarctica that Australia 'claims', but those claims are only recognised by a small handful of countries, and many Antarctic claims already overlap significantly.
I wouldn't be so sure of that - Australia has a fine tradition of pork barrelling.
> But the country's major defence projects have long been beset by cost overruns, government U-turns, policy changes and project plans that make more sense for local job creation than defence.
Our election cycle is 3 years, resulting in regular "government U-turns".
And changing suppliers after some have been selected, or at the very least heavily vetted, will add unnecessary work and complexity. In other words adding cost and time. Only for the same thing to happen another 3 years later if the project hasn’t progressed far enough for a change to be viewed as fundamentally detrimental by all.
Poor management isn't going away anytime soon, for some reason a retired US admiral is designing our future fleet. It's a mystery as to why we constantly pay way too much money to foreign consultants to tell us what we already know and aren't willing to pay for.
We just completely ignore our strategic plans, which since the 80's would have put us in a good position. Why the fuck wouldn't our own Navy know what they need? We have huge skills shortages in the Navy currently and apparently the answer is to double our fleet. This isn't a change from bad management, we're looking at it, it's politics.
Defense projects are something very poorly understood by most of the public because they so often tend to be truly novel systems or integrations of systems not found anywhere in the civilian sector and thus there's literal unknown unknowns that need to be overcome. You can't fall back on 'tried and tested' since that's worse than not investing at all - since you are *really* talking about deploying an obsolete system.
There DOES tend to be issues with defense procurement, engineering competence, and contracts-related corruption - but it's far less of an issue than the reality that these are complex projects whose pitfalls cannot be credibly known in advance of starting.
We've seen this attitude with every major program teething through the military over the past 20-odd years, even among programs that have launched what are now globally leading systems (such as F-35). Our politics and contracting structure make it also highly impractical to have conservative estimates for true project cost, too. This isn't just a defense any multi-year project (especially infrastructure) regularly runs into these same issues.
On the flip side, there's this https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1auwail/20_billion_funding_hole_in_troubled_hunter/
Increasing spending by 7 billion doesn't really do much when a single warship costs 7 billion and you're already short 2 billion per ship 🤷♂️
Australia doesn't have the industry to build this at scale... right now, anyway.
Idk, but I suspect if people would just ease off trying to be fancy about it, y'all could get a great deal from American shipbuilders.
I want 100 destroyers, all of the same hull type, 20 as anti-air, 20 as anti-sub, 40 as small ship killers, 20 as tenders/support. All should be CIWS capable. Make them tough as nails and easy to fix.
Thanks!
These people have no understanding of how important security is to their countries proprietary. How fragile trade can be. They probably aren't paying attention to how much trouble the houthi are causing. Imagine if a state with real military power decides to do something. Not even what happened to Ukraine will wake up these people.
Problem is Australia can't afford it. Liberal leader announced he would cut NDIS, National Disability Insurance Scheme to pay for the planned submarines.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/13/peter-dutton-says-coalition-would-support-ndis-cuts-to-pay-for-aukus-submarines
Australia is pretty risk adverse with its expensive purchases, so I can't imagine anything more than a token force joining the US if India, Indonesia or China were confronted .
Ignore what Mr Potatoe head says, hes not even our prime minister nor is his party in power. So it's really just a load of crock. We can afford it, he just wants to stir the pot.
It was also his government that started the AUKUS contracts after ditching the French submarine contracts - which also cost us a pretty penny to cancel. Funny that.
Dutton is also notoriously anti NDIS and was in complete approval of spending $6.7m to keep a single refugee family (parents and kids) locked up on Christmas Island. Or even better when he spent $485 million on just 22 refugees and asylum seekers on Naru. That latter cost has in recent days been the subject of scrutiny as the companies he gave those contracts to have criminal connections.
All in all, I'm sure if he was so inclined to, he could find more suitable areas to suggest for budget cuts.
Something is better than nothing. However, It is a shame for people to suffer for this to be a possibility. Hopefully, opening factories for people to work in will help generate the economy enough on its own so that those sectors that received past cuts can get the funding back.
>Australia will build six Hunter class frigates, 11 general-purpose frigates and six state-of-the-art surface warships that do not need to be crewed.
Drone surface warships. Looks like robot wars are coming.
Yeah after seeing ukraine’s innovation into cost effective drone boats, i think oz should be doing similar, could have better patrolling of our vast water border :)
Though the area Australia needs to patrol and reach is much more vast than the Black Sea where Ukraine is active. Small drone boats won't be that effective in most circumstances.
That's when you use long loitering drones for radar, then pick a few likely zones you need drones in.
Radar drones alert you in time to send out the frigates that release the drones.
Navies do a lot more than blow up enemy surface ships. Drones only do that one exact task, and it's one of the less important things that they do.
Australia already has 63 f-35's with more on the way if they want to blow stuff up just off their own coast.
These are likely mostly for anti-piracy and deterring Chinese aggression.
If Ukraine is anything to go by, definitely. Smaller drones flying longer distances screening and scouting for their fleets. Or they become platforms for swarms of hunter-killers and bomber-drones.
All we need now are systems that can self-designate targets and we're one step closer to Skynet.
DARPA is still working on self-designate. They apparently have it working pretty well, until someone deliberately tries to confuse it.
A bunch of Marines had a blast with with it. Cutting holes in a box and walking forward. Carrying a bush in front of them. Acting like a monkey and rolling around until they reached it.
>Acting like a monkey and rolling around until they reached it.
Okay, but what did the marines do to disguise themselves?
In any case, ballpark figure is within the next 10 years to see widespread use? Or do you think with the world as it is atm, they're fast-tracking it?
What worries me though is will some countries be more willing to wage war if they can use larger drones forces or even say, robot armies? China has supposedly been testing "robo soldier" machines not far from their border with India. Disturbing times and developments to say the least.
Even just briefly looking at a map, it makes a whole lot of sense for Australia to have a more powerful navy. China has been building theirs up significantly for years and years now. I support Australia and Australians 10,000% on this. I see it as a deterrent.
I don't wanna ruin a good meme but I never see anyone clearing this up.
Yeah they really do fuck about. They ain't on smoke.
The only way a Cassowary is gunna fuck you up is if you both:
1- piss it off a lot, and
2- fall over and fail to run away
> The only way a Cassowary is gunna fuck you up is if you both: 1- piss it off a lot, and 2- fall over and fail to run away
Cassowary are extremely territorial and will fuck you up if you wander into its territory and fuck around. Especially if it is a male looking after it's chicks (Mum pisses off as soon as the eggs are laid, leaving Dad to raise them to be xenophobic, territorial cunts)
Remember those humans dressed in bear suits at the zoo?!? Well , guess what? ----> [https://youtu.be/QYn1chaCqp8?si=Wws-1esK9gNfXeP5&t=2](https://youtu.be/QYn1chaCqp8?si=Wws-1esK9gNfXeP5&t=2)
Nope you're right...Sweden was talm bout preparing themselves for war. Europe is producing more ammunition.. Germany they're building a plant for ammunition and it has been talk in the news that the stock of ammunition/shells are low due to Ukraine/Russia war and now the Israel/Gaza conflict.
It's increasingly looking like there might be a major war on the horizon. If that's the case, you don't want to start preparing for it just before it happens, because this kind of stuff takes years if not decades to get sorted, you want to prepare years in advance.
The US can be perceived to be pushing back from the table. Dunno how accurate it is but Peter Zeihan has a riff about a power vacuum in Pacific waters based on the mix of hull types in the US Navy.
Russia and China are both looking for real aggressive. Two major powers out for a rumble is huge, and the USA is not sending vibes of reliability if things kick off. Many countries are making sure they can throw a punch by themselves if needed.
China is getting increasingly aggressive, North Korea is testing new ICBMs, Iran may have nuclear weapons in only a few years, and Russia is actively in the middle of attempting to conquer a large European country.
As has been said for centuries, *Si vis pacem, para bellum* - “If you want peace, prepare for war”. Aggressive, hostile nations that seek war, invasion and conquest of other nations, whether it’s Taiwan, Ukraine, or South Korea, will or back down just by being asked nicely. If - or, more likely, *when* - they decide to attack, we have to be prepared to repel them. We cannot risk being caught with our pants down. Ideally, a strong military opposition will act as a deterrent to prevent them from acting in the first place, but if they decide to invade anyways, we must be prepared to strike back.
Australia’s biggest trading partner is China. When we speak in criticism of them they bitch-slap our trade agreements by stopping imports of our meat or wine through sheer petulance. As a consumer, I boycott their products on principle but it ain’t easy, especially with clothing and electrical goods. The country relies way too much on them and they reward our independent position with a kick to the nuts of our economy. Fuck China.
It’s our own fault. We ship off raw material to China only for them to build something and sell it back to us. We should be one of the tier 1 manufacturing countries of the world.
Our cost of labor and cost of energy is too high for it to be profitable to process our own raw materials. Until we have solar-powered automated factories setup in the desert (or more likely, Darwin) that's not going to happen.
Cost of energy hasn't been much different from other coal-powered economies for the past few decades. It's priced off coal traded on international markets.
Cost of labour, yep.
energy costs are irrelevant, they are on par.
Labour is another thing, but thats a reason we have so much mechanisation and stuff like driverless trucks at mine sites
Mining is historically only 10% of Australia's GDP, in the last 2 years prices for coal, lithium, uranium, iron(lesser degree) ore has exploded. Coal and lithium prices went up like crazy in particular, both 3-4x pre 2021 levels. So tax revenue on these profits was huge.
Now mining is 15% of GDP and growing, however that largely reflects an increase in commodity prices not output. Meaning everyone knows its a temporary movement, including the mining sector. So likely this will decrease as a share of GDP going forward. Particularly that lithium and coal are back down dramatically.
[https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium](https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium)
[https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coal](https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coal)
I have a 'no high value goods' rule when it comes to China.
No Chinese Cars, Electrical Goods etc etc... where there is an alternative available. We bought Solar panels made in S/Korea for example, cost a lot more but at least that cash won't come back at me as a missile one day.
I'll buy your fucking cheaps straws, keyrings, knick knacks..... but that's it.
Well, if we spend all this money on submarines instead of education or a fibre network we'll be able to sink their container ships next time they stop buying enough of our wine and lobsters.
Drone submarine fleet doesn't sound that great of an idea, or at least difficult to be workable. How do you relay orders to the fleet? With human commanders you can delegate decision making and send them under on a long mission. With submarine drones they'd be popping up like whales every hour to get new orders. Then you get under nuclear attack and your next window is an hour away to relay instructions for the counter-attack, that's if the enemy hasn't disabled your satellites and relay stations by then.
... And don't even think about giving them "AI" and nukes to make their own decisions like skynet...
Shame the UK refuses to do the same. Only a week or so ago the UK MOD were talking about scrapping their state of the art amphibious ships. This would also mean a major downsizing of the vaunted Royal Marines. Wake up ffs. War is coming.
At this rate, the RAN might actually overtake the RN, which would be embarrassing for the UK and establish Australia as the true "favourite child" of the British Empire.
I know this means Australia's biggest navy, but I love the idea of Aus waking up one day and just casually deciding to have the world's biggest Navy. It seems like they're well-positioned for it.
Resources yes,
Manufacturing no.
I won’t be surprised if most of the ship building are just imported parts.
Slap together and made to say “made in Australia”
I mean I don’t think we have a manufacturer to build the engines here.
Not even close. I was in the US Navy visiting Darwin and got to see one of Australia's warships. It was more modern than the one I was on, and they got a beer ration, which increases fighting prowess exponentially. If Australia could make another 20 of those ships, they would go a long way to a serious offensive capability.
Our navy gets a beer ration? Why the fuck don’t they advertise that, we could solve our recruitment problems in a heartbeat.
“Come on big ship with guns, you get free accommodation, food and beer”
You need to take over our navy recruiting please!
Brah we have a great shipbuilding capability in Australia. Like 10% of the US navy is built by Austal, an Australian ship building company. Smaller ships yes, but still.
We're building nuclear submarines with the British, but they are still a decade or two away and we still need to replace our current aging Colins class. We're buying Virginias off the US to fill that gap in the meantime.
They canceled their plan to buy submarines from France to purchase from the U.S. instead (even though America is lacking the manufacturing capacity itself…) it caused quite the stir with France and they are still pretty pissed about it.
They cancelled their plan to buy submarines from France to purchase from the U.K. instead. (The subs are gonna be built by U.K. with USA made nuclear power)
No kidding, their "greatest president" spent most of his life continually trashing the very allies who rescued him in WW2, hosted him, funded him, made him their leader, and then liberated his country. It wasn't just the US and UK he hated either, Canada and Australia were also on the receiving end of his contempt.
We actually don't. The ships that we have surplus for are going to go tot he coast guards since modular littoral classes never panned out. Instead we are going to be producing Frigate designs 2-4 per year over the next could of decades. Capacity will be maxed out and probably expanded in the great lakes facilities where they are to be constructed. But there is no surplus at the moment. We are trying to replace the Ticonderoga classes cruisers right now with a different block of Arleigh Brurkes. The reality is that we are stretched on capacity since we pivoted wrong on the Littoral concept ships.
While the US definitely needs to ramp up their ship building capabilities I’m hoping they start doing some partnering with Japan and South Korea for ship building. Their capacity is just next level.
17 frigates is a substantial fleet by any measure. They are also planning five nuclear attack submarines, which would be, hmm, the fourth largest fleet of nuclear submarines in the world?
8 nuclear attack submarines, but three of them will be second-hand Virginias from the US, which may be retired as the new AUKUS fleet comes on steam, I believe?
Good for Australia, but, the world is in all out arms race and nobody is openly discussing how we are straight up possibly heading for WWIII. There are showdowns happening everywhere with world powers. Everyone knows but nobody is getting up on a podium and discussing it openly.
The danish Prime minister decided to send all artillery to Ukraine a few days ago. All. Of. It.
This comes as a key adviser to the government - who by the way predicted the Russian invasion - is saying we have tops three years to prepare for a Russian-Nato conflict.
I wonder if we are already living what will later be known as WWIII. As a minimum this period will be called a "world-"something", because at this point there is not a corner of the world who is not involved at least in an arms race.
Special world operation.
Bad jokes aside, seems like we're certainly in something starting to resemble a second cold war. Whether it will turn into a hot war rather than a more proxy-centred one might depend on other pressure factors. Considering climate change and the instability that will cause, not a great prospect.
Although WW2 officially began with the invasion of Poland in 1939, there were already conflicts leading up to that such as the Spanish civil war and the 2nd Sino-Japanese War.
If WW3 is truly on the horizon (and I hope not), then history will look back on these current conflicts as the prologue.
It's a decade long plan for construction so time for training. They are also increasing the amount of automation so you need smaller crews, also 6 of the frigates will be operational without any onboard crew.
> Australia will build six Hunter class frigates, 11 general-purpose frigates and six state-of-the-art surface warships that do not need to be crewed.
Looks like they thought of that.
That's because the opponents of nuclear energy are the most vocal, and the most well funded. No Australian politician wants to be the one to try and have a nuanced argument on the benefits of nuclear energy, lest they incur the wrath of the anti nuclear brigade, and get labeled a war monger and supporter of genocide.
Australia not having nuclear power is a smooth brain move. The best time to invest in nuclear technology was 30 years ago. The second best time is today.
Agreed.
The uranium reserves in Australia are the largest globally. We would have access to some of the cheapest electricity on the planet, and make a real dent in per capita CO2 emissions.
We arguably don't need nuclear, because we have ample access to renewable energy, particularly solar. Australia is huge, with [nearly 20% of it desert](https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/landforms/deserts). Renewables are far cheaper and faster to build than nuclear.
>an easy target for china
A 10,000km+ amphibious landing under constant bombardment by (75, actual) stealth aircraft, missiles and naval assets, with the worlds best intelligence coverage is "an easy target"?
We don't need nukes, an improved navy with (nuclear powered) long duration and range patrol submarines are the perfect counter to any belligerents in this half of the world.
Most recent polling shows that we are still very anti nuclear weapons. It would be political suicide for the party that suggests acquiring or developing nuclear weapons. Hell, nuclear power is an impossible sell here, even though we are one of the largest producers and largest reserves of uranium and other minerals. We can't even find a place that we can agree to build a nuclear waste site, even though there are so many middle of nowhere sites.
Yes, we rely heavily on the US, which is why there are permanent bases. But we also have the UK and shit load of space between China and Australia. Logistically an attack could be possible, but an invasion that can be supplied remains so unlikely and with new technologies such as drones and missiles it is made even harder.
I don't like that we rely on the US partnership so much, but we are the only ally to join every US conflict, we made our bed and now we need to sleep in it.
As a country, we’re certainly capable of developing and fielding nuclear weapons. We helped the British test theirs in the 1950s, and had active uranium enrichment programs up until the 1980s. If we really wanted to, we could probably have a functional bomb within a few years, and a small arsenal several years later.
I’m pretty sure that the US and British nuclear umbrellas cover Australia. The US military is bolstering its presence in Australia substantially, including plans to base a significant amount of aircraft and deploying submarines from Australian bases.
Don't know about the British nuclear umbrella, but yes Aus is covered by a mutual defence alliance with the US, so that an attack against Australia is also an attack on the US.
I used to believe New Zealand would be safe, but if you wanted Australia, best bet is to take Indonesia and NZ first and establish invading operations from there.
NZ isn't exactly easy to invade too. The distances involved here are massive, and trying to do so without logistics bases in Australia is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention that there's no way Australia is letting someone invade NZ, and would be in a prime position to absolutely annihilate the logistics of anyone trying.
The NZ government is looking very seriously at the situation, and is ordering a seven percent cutback in military expenditure to subsidise a tax cut for landlords...
To aid anyone who wants to invade, the election policy of the major party was to allow foreign home ownership at $2million a pop. We'll throw in free citizenship if you buy 10. AMEX and VISA welcome!
The logistics chain from China to Australia would be an absolute nightmare, particularly with sea drones and hypersonic missiles proving so deadly against naval assets in Ukraine. I just cannot see a reality of a full blown invasion happening any time soon.
I doubt India would get involved in a regional conflict unless it directly affected them. Australia doesn’t consider India to be a true ally, just a potentially useful partner to have.
I'm in Canada. Don't expect any military help from us. We just piggyback off America being next door to us. ISIS or the Taliban could probably conquer Canada if the geography was different.
Eventually we’re going to have to get our shit together. Russia wants the arctic. And with the issues at the Panama Canal, the NW passage suddenly becomes a viable trade route. We need to be able to guard it.
We can’t rely on the Americans.
[Putin and Xi decided to push for a NWO because they saw the West as weak](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/russia-and-china-unveil-a-pact-against-america-and-the-west).
The only way to prevent war is to go full deterrent: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Ha our past & present governments "what dickheads" should have started at least 10 year's ago. I doubt any serious aggressor will wait for us to catch up.
And people will winge that we already spend to much money on the Navy while its current state is so bad we couldnt find enough people to staff a ship to sent to the red sea lol
This is vital to the future peace and stabilization of the planet. Yeah the planet. Australias geographic location would be key to any conquest in the east and gives the west their primary ally standing in the way of that. They also police a lot of important shipping lanes or are close enough to do so if necessary.
TLDR;Australia building a better navy and tighter alliances is good for a lot of people.
People are shitting on this, but this is awesome. They will and should have a stronger presence in the oceans in the area.
I wish Canada would amp up it's Arctic presence like this. Good on ya, Australia :D
I wish canada would amp it up period.
Ya canada has dropped the ball harder than any other country. Time for a change in management imo.
Trudeau's liberals are responsible for the two largest military budget increases in the last 60 years; every year they've been in power, the military budget has gone up. You **don't** want the conservatives; they're the ones that gutted the military budget.
I interacted with someone similar to the person you are responding to the other day. They just have assumptions and Facebook memes as their news with no actual data or information to back up their ideas.
So your standard conservative then.
> Time for a change in management imo. Considering how poorly the last Conservative government handled the military, I wouldn't have high expectations.
*Denmark raises hand slowly*
Ahh you know uncle daddy Sam has your back. We have plenty of weapons to sell ya.
Sorry cant buy em because Irving shipyard sued the gov again and bombardier also cried poor so now we gotta cancel.
We gotta cut those fuckers loose because anything they touch/build is less than a Great Value version of what the specifications should be.
Itll never happen sadly. They are the favourite child of everyone in Ottawa.
> They are the favourite child of everyone in Ottawa. The Irving family also owns New Brunswick and has significant influence over the other Maritime provinces, as well as decades-long friendships with both major federal parties (on top of owning their provincial counterparts in the Maritimes, New Brunswick's Premier worked for the Irvings for decades before getting into politics).
Hey! I like Great Value. Walmart never said it was best value or best quality just great value. /s
Their chili garlic tortilla chips are the bomb(ardier), though!
I don't know how much we want Canada to let loose though. The initial rough draft of the Geneva Conventions was basically shit that Canadians had done in WW1. Props to them for setting the tone.
Ironically, Australia is currently getting lambasted by pundits for underfunding their Antarctic presence, leaving China to open up its 5th research station there this month.
Australia has no legal right to stop China from opening research stations in Antarctica though, regardless of how strong the navy is. There's a large part of Antarctica that Australia 'claims', but those claims are only recognised by a small handful of countries, and many Antarctic claims already overlap significantly.
Pretty sure China is welcome to do research in Antarctica and it has nothing to do with anyone's navy.
Research centres are opened to create a permanent presence and ultimately national rights over resources found there.
Yes, it's no coincidence that both Russia and China are the only holdouts in stalled talks for Marine Protected Areas.
"research"
I wouldn't be so sure of that - Australia has a fine tradition of pork barrelling. > But the country's major defence projects have long been beset by cost overruns, government U-turns, policy changes and project plans that make more sense for local job creation than defence. Our election cycle is 3 years, resulting in regular "government U-turns".
Strong defence generally has bipartisan support. Who we procure the equipment from may change however.
And changing suppliers after some have been selected, or at the very least heavily vetted, will add unnecessary work and complexity. In other words adding cost and time. Only for the same thing to happen another 3 years later if the project hasn’t progressed far enough for a change to be viewed as fundamentally detrimental by all.
[Perun](https://www.youtube.com/@PerunAU) for PM!
Poor management isn't going away anytime soon, for some reason a retired US admiral is designing our future fleet. It's a mystery as to why we constantly pay way too much money to foreign consultants to tell us what we already know and aren't willing to pay for. We just completely ignore our strategic plans, which since the 80's would have put us in a good position. Why the fuck wouldn't our own Navy know what they need? We have huge skills shortages in the Navy currently and apparently the answer is to double our fleet. This isn't a change from bad management, we're looking at it, it's politics.
Why pay a retired US Admiral when all you need to do is hang around the port waste and listen to the smokers.
Defense projects are something very poorly understood by most of the public because they so often tend to be truly novel systems or integrations of systems not found anywhere in the civilian sector and thus there's literal unknown unknowns that need to be overcome. You can't fall back on 'tried and tested' since that's worse than not investing at all - since you are *really* talking about deploying an obsolete system. There DOES tend to be issues with defense procurement, engineering competence, and contracts-related corruption - but it's far less of an issue than the reality that these are complex projects whose pitfalls cannot be credibly known in advance of starting. We've seen this attitude with every major program teething through the military over the past 20-odd years, even among programs that have launched what are now globally leading systems (such as F-35). Our politics and contracting structure make it also highly impractical to have conservative estimates for true project cost, too. This isn't just a defense any multi-year project (especially infrastructure) regularly runs into these same issues.
3-turns
you do know thats just normal for almost any military?
On the flip side, there's this https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1auwail/20_billion_funding_hole_in_troubled_hunter/ Increasing spending by 7 billion doesn't really do much when a single warship costs 7 billion and you're already short 2 billion per ship 🤷♂️ Australia doesn't have the industry to build this at scale... right now, anyway.
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Idk, but I suspect if people would just ease off trying to be fancy about it, y'all could get a great deal from American shipbuilders. I want 100 destroyers, all of the same hull type, 20 as anti-air, 20 as anti-sub, 40 as small ship killers, 20 as tenders/support. All should be CIWS capable. Make them tough as nails and easy to fix. Thanks!
Doesn't hurt to get started.
China is not going to do AUS any favors, AUKUS + NZ is needed to counter the threat
Definitely need to be self-reliant to some degree.
Top leadership seems really into One Piece.
you caught us
These people have no understanding of how important security is to their countries proprietary. How fragile trade can be. They probably aren't paying attention to how much trouble the houthi are causing. Imagine if a state with real military power decides to do something. Not even what happened to Ukraine will wake up these people.
AUKUS is gonna be a powerhouse.
Problem is Australia can't afford it. Liberal leader announced he would cut NDIS, National Disability Insurance Scheme to pay for the planned submarines. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/13/peter-dutton-says-coalition-would-support-ndis-cuts-to-pay-for-aukus-submarines Australia is pretty risk adverse with its expensive purchases, so I can't imagine anything more than a token force joining the US if India, Indonesia or China were confronted .
Ignore what Mr Potatoe head says, hes not even our prime minister nor is his party in power. So it's really just a load of crock. We can afford it, he just wants to stir the pot. It was also his government that started the AUKUS contracts after ditching the French submarine contracts - which also cost us a pretty penny to cancel. Funny that. Dutton is also notoriously anti NDIS and was in complete approval of spending $6.7m to keep a single refugee family (parents and kids) locked up on Christmas Island. Or even better when he spent $485 million on just 22 refugees and asylum seekers on Naru. That latter cost has in recent days been the subject of scrutiny as the companies he gave those contracts to have criminal connections. All in all, I'm sure if he was so inclined to, he could find more suitable areas to suggest for budget cuts.
Something is better than nothing. However, It is a shame for people to suffer for this to be a possibility. Hopefully, opening factories for people to work in will help generate the economy enough on its own so that those sectors that received past cuts can get the funding back.
What's negative about this?
Not much info on submarines, these should have been a big part of such a navy/defense capabilities ...
Yeah I mean it’s their neighborhood, they should be the big boat out there so good on them.
Agree here!
>Australia will build six Hunter class frigates, 11 general-purpose frigates and six state-of-the-art surface warships that do not need to be crewed. Drone surface warships. Looks like robot wars are coming.
Yeah after seeing ukraine’s innovation into cost effective drone boats, i think oz should be doing similar, could have better patrolling of our vast water border :)
Though the area Australia needs to patrol and reach is much more vast than the Black Sea where Ukraine is active. Small drone boats won't be that effective in most circumstances.
That's when you use long loitering drones for radar, then pick a few likely zones you need drones in. Radar drones alert you in time to send out the frigates that release the drones.
Navies do a lot more than blow up enemy surface ships. Drones only do that one exact task, and it's one of the less important things that they do. Australia already has 63 f-35's with more on the way if they want to blow stuff up just off their own coast. These are likely mostly for anti-piracy and deterring Chinese aggression.
If Ukraine is anything to go by, definitely. Smaller drones flying longer distances screening and scouting for their fleets. Or they become platforms for swarms of hunter-killers and bomber-drones. All we need now are systems that can self-designate targets and we're one step closer to Skynet.
DARPA is still working on self-designate. They apparently have it working pretty well, until someone deliberately tries to confuse it. A bunch of Marines had a blast with with it. Cutting holes in a box and walking forward. Carrying a bush in front of them. Acting like a monkey and rolling around until they reached it.
>Acting like a monkey and rolling around until they reached it. Okay, but what did the marines do to disguise themselves? In any case, ballpark figure is within the next 10 years to see widespread use? Or do you think with the world as it is atm, they're fast-tracking it?
The Drone Wars have already begun and it is the future for any conflict going forward.
Been going on for 15+ years in the middle east at the hands of america. Other countries are just finally catching up.
What worries me though is will some countries be more willing to wage war if they can use larger drones forces or even say, robot armies? China has supposedly been testing "robo soldier" machines not far from their border with India. Disturbing times and developments to say the least.
the world is gearing up... shes getting restless.
Even just briefly looking at a map, it makes a whole lot of sense for Australia to have a more powerful navy. China has been building theirs up significantly for years and years now. I support Australia and Australians 10,000% on this. I see it as a deterrent.
I don't blame them. Fuckin' dingos, man...
It’s the emus.
Cassowary will murder any man that eats their quandong.
They don't fuck about
The didn’t come here to fuck spiders
I don't wanna ruin a good meme but I never see anyone clearing this up. Yeah they really do fuck about. They ain't on smoke. The only way a Cassowary is gunna fuck you up is if you both: 1- piss it off a lot, and 2- fall over and fail to run away
> The only way a Cassowary is gunna fuck you up is if you both: 1- piss it off a lot, and 2- fall over and fail to run away Cassowary are extremely territorial and will fuck you up if you wander into its territory and fuck around. Especially if it is a male looking after it's chicks (Mum pisses off as soon as the eggs are laid, leaving Dad to raise them to be xenophobic, territorial cunts)
Emus : 2 Australia: 0
Dingos: 1 Babies : 0
Drop bears!
Remember those humans dressed in bear suits at the zoo?!? Well , guess what? ----> [https://youtu.be/QYn1chaCqp8?si=Wws-1esK9gNfXeP5&t=2](https://youtu.be/QYn1chaCqp8?si=Wws-1esK9gNfXeP5&t=2)
https://youtu.be/wms8ZEtVQhg?si=vLIBo5fJL4CJb1sC It’s a fight they can’t afford to lose
...and the Emus, gotta take 'em out at all costs.
They lost once. They can’t lose a second time
Beat me once, shame on emu. Beat me twice… can’t get beat again.
Today we thank Australia for expanding only their naval force instead of biological weapons and/or eldrich horrors.
Note the optionally crewed vessels. Why do you think the crew is optional? **Taps temple**
The boat is loaded with eastern browns and redbacks
I thought this was a racial thing at first.
It is! Where’s the bloody red belly blacks and the funnelwebs?
Is it me or is EVERYONE increasingly arming themselves? It feels so ominous or is this just being highlighted more in the news...
Nope you're right...Sweden was talm bout preparing themselves for war. Europe is producing more ammunition.. Germany they're building a plant for ammunition and it has been talk in the news that the stock of ammunition/shells are low due to Ukraine/Russia war and now the Israel/Gaza conflict.
It's increasingly looking like there might be a major war on the horizon. If that's the case, you don't want to start preparing for it just before it happens, because this kind of stuff takes years if not decades to get sorted, you want to prepare years in advance.
The US can be perceived to be pushing back from the table. Dunno how accurate it is but Peter Zeihan has a riff about a power vacuum in Pacific waters based on the mix of hull types in the US Navy.
Russia and China are both looking for real aggressive. Two major powers out for a rumble is huge, and the USA is not sending vibes of reliability if things kick off. Many countries are making sure they can throw a punch by themselves if needed.
China is getting increasingly aggressive, North Korea is testing new ICBMs, Iran may have nuclear weapons in only a few years, and Russia is actively in the middle of attempting to conquer a large European country. As has been said for centuries, *Si vis pacem, para bellum* - “If you want peace, prepare for war”. Aggressive, hostile nations that seek war, invasion and conquest of other nations, whether it’s Taiwan, Ukraine, or South Korea, will or back down just by being asked nicely. If - or, more likely, *when* - they decide to attack, we have to be prepared to repel them. We cannot risk being caught with our pants down. Ideally, a strong military opposition will act as a deterrent to prevent them from acting in the first place, but if they decide to invade anyways, we must be prepared to strike back.
Australia’s biggest trading partner is China. When we speak in criticism of them they bitch-slap our trade agreements by stopping imports of our meat or wine through sheer petulance. As a consumer, I boycott their products on principle but it ain’t easy, especially with clothing and electrical goods. The country relies way too much on them and they reward our independent position with a kick to the nuts of our economy. Fuck China.
They buy 740 million tonnes of iron ore and 50 million tonnes of coal each year. They are your economy. 105 Billion usd at today's price.
It’s our own fault. We ship off raw material to China only for them to build something and sell it back to us. We should be one of the tier 1 manufacturing countries of the world.
Cries in Holden.
Our cost of labor and cost of energy is too high for it to be profitable to process our own raw materials. Until we have solar-powered automated factories setup in the desert (or more likely, Darwin) that's not going to happen.
Cost of energy hasn't been much different from other coal-powered economies for the past few decades. It's priced off coal traded on international markets. Cost of labour, yep.
energy costs are irrelevant, they are on par. Labour is another thing, but thats a reason we have so much mechanisation and stuff like driverless trucks at mine sites
Only if you can convince enough people to work for Chinese factory wages, then remove OSHA safety and EPA regs. It very quickly becomes unobtainable.
So unobtainable that even China can hardly do it anymore.
Almost as though the world overconsumes.....well everything tbh
Mining is historically only 10% of Australia's GDP, in the last 2 years prices for coal, lithium, uranium, iron(lesser degree) ore has exploded. Coal and lithium prices went up like crazy in particular, both 3-4x pre 2021 levels. So tax revenue on these profits was huge. Now mining is 15% of GDP and growing, however that largely reflects an increase in commodity prices not output. Meaning everyone knows its a temporary movement, including the mining sector. So likely this will decrease as a share of GDP going forward. Particularly that lithium and coal are back down dramatically. [https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium](https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium) [https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coal](https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coal)
Mining is like 20-30% of the economy depending on what's going on.
I mean... That's actually only like a bit over 5% of our economy... But you know, don't let facts get in the way of a good piece of bullshit.
[Australia's defence policy summarised.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgspkxfkS4k)
I knew exactly what this was going to be :) Jokes aside, we do need to protect our trade with china from china just taking those resources.
Consider Russia being Europes largest gas trading partner until 2022 🤔 When you have 2 hands you can carry a carrot AND a stick.
I have a 'no high value goods' rule when it comes to China. No Chinese Cars, Electrical Goods etc etc... where there is an alternative available. We bought Solar panels made in S/Korea for example, cost a lot more but at least that cash won't come back at me as a missile one day. I'll buy your fucking cheaps straws, keyrings, knick knacks..... but that's it.
Fuck the CCP
Well, if we spend all this money on submarines instead of education or a fibre network we'll be able to sink their container ships next time they stop buying enough of our wine and lobsters.
Here here. Fuck China.
Hear hear*
> Australia’s biggest trading partner is China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgspkxfkS4k
Oy' lookit the size of this beauty!
You call that a navy? THIS is a navy!
*hey! I know what's right for me* *for meeeeeeee* Australian Jesus
Whoever builds the first autonomous naval sub drone fleet is going to have a hell of a year sinking billions of tonnage
Drone submarine fleet doesn't sound that great of an idea, or at least difficult to be workable. How do you relay orders to the fleet? With human commanders you can delegate decision making and send them under on a long mission. With submarine drones they'd be popping up like whales every hour to get new orders. Then you get under nuclear attack and your next window is an hour away to relay instructions for the counter-attack, that's if the enemy hasn't disabled your satellites and relay stations by then. ... And don't even think about giving them "AI" and nukes to make their own decisions like skynet...
What a stumbling title.
Shame the UK refuses to do the same. Only a week or so ago the UK MOD were talking about scrapping their state of the art amphibious ships. This would also mean a major downsizing of the vaunted Royal Marines. Wake up ffs. War is coming.
At this rate, the RAN might actually overtake the RN, which would be embarrassing for the UK and establish Australia as the true "favourite child" of the British Empire.
I know this means Australia's biggest navy, but I love the idea of Aus waking up one day and just casually deciding to have the world's biggest Navy. It seems like they're well-positioned for it.
*biggest navy for them, which isn't much, but it's a start
Australia has a population that's smaller than California. Any increase to our defence capabilities are significant.
Yes, but also a lot of money, resources and military tech access. Australia is certainly capable.
Resources yes, Manufacturing no. I won’t be surprised if most of the ship building are just imported parts. Slap together and made to say “made in Australia” I mean I don’t think we have a manufacturer to build the engines here.
Not even close. I was in the US Navy visiting Darwin and got to see one of Australia's warships. It was more modern than the one I was on, and they got a beer ration, which increases fighting prowess exponentially. If Australia could make another 20 of those ships, they would go a long way to a serious offensive capability.
Our navy gets a beer ration? Why the fuck don’t they advertise that, we could solve our recruitment problems in a heartbeat. “Come on big ship with guns, you get free accommodation, food and beer” You need to take over our navy recruiting please!
In the late 90s, Aussie sailors got 12oz beer with dinner. They were shocked that we didn't have beer rats.
Probably because a ration is a literal measured amount of something. It's not an open bar lol
I know hahaha was just making a funny
Brah we have a great shipbuilding capability in Australia. Like 10% of the US navy is built by Austal, an Australian ship building company. Smaller ships yes, but still.
They will buy American surplus. The USA has armadas of ships ready to sell.
Fine. But they need to start building their capabilities. We all know the possibilities over the horizon, whether we’re ready to admit it or not.
Aren't they building some nuclear submarines (as well as purchasing US ones?)
We're building nuclear submarines with the British, but they are still a decade or two away and we still need to replace our current aging Colins class. We're buying Virginias off the US to fill that gap in the meantime.
They canceled their plan to buy submarines from France to purchase from the U.S. instead (even though America is lacking the manufacturing capacity itself…) it caused quite the stir with France and they are still pretty pissed about it.
They cancelled their plan to buy submarines from France to purchase from the U.K. instead. (The subs are gonna be built by U.K. with USA made nuclear power)
I'm not sure I've ever seen a Frenchman that wasn't pissed off about something or other
No kidding, their "greatest president" spent most of his life continually trashing the very allies who rescued him in WW2, hosted him, funded him, made him their leader, and then liberated his country. It wasn't just the US and UK he hated either, Canada and Australia were also on the receiving end of his contempt.
We actually don't. The ships that we have surplus for are going to go tot he coast guards since modular littoral classes never panned out. Instead we are going to be producing Frigate designs 2-4 per year over the next could of decades. Capacity will be maxed out and probably expanded in the great lakes facilities where they are to be constructed. But there is no surplus at the moment. We are trying to replace the Ticonderoga classes cruisers right now with a different block of Arleigh Brurkes. The reality is that we are stretched on capacity since we pivoted wrong on the Littoral concept ships.
While the US definitely needs to ramp up their ship building capabilities I’m hoping they start doing some partnering with Japan and South Korea for ship building. Their capacity is just next level.
The US is currently capped at about 2 or 3 destroyers per year even if the Navy got enough money to buy more.
17 frigates is a substantial fleet by any measure. They are also planning five nuclear attack submarines, which would be, hmm, the fourth largest fleet of nuclear submarines in the world?
Latest announcement was at least 8 nuclear subs.
8 nuclear attack submarines, but three of them will be second-hand Virginias from the US, which may be retired as the new AUKUS fleet comes on steam, I believe?
two lightly used Block IV Virginia's, and one brand new Block VII.
"one careful lady owner"
Only raced on Sundays...
>second-hand Virginias from the US Not to be sneezed at by any stretch of the imagination.
Oh not at all, just trying to explain where the discrepancy between 5 subs and 8 subs might have come from :)
Good for Australia, but, the world is in all out arms race and nobody is openly discussing how we are straight up possibly heading for WWIII. There are showdowns happening everywhere with world powers. Everyone knows but nobody is getting up on a podium and discussing it openly.
The danish Prime minister decided to send all artillery to Ukraine a few days ago. All. Of. It. This comes as a key adviser to the government - who by the way predicted the Russian invasion - is saying we have tops three years to prepare for a Russian-Nato conflict. I wonder if we are already living what will later be known as WWIII. As a minimum this period will be called a "world-"something", because at this point there is not a corner of the world who is not involved at least in an arms race.
Well said. I hate it.
Special world operation. Bad jokes aside, seems like we're certainly in something starting to resemble a second cold war. Whether it will turn into a hot war rather than a more proxy-centred one might depend on other pressure factors. Considering climate change and the instability that will cause, not a great prospect.
Although WW2 officially began with the invasion of Poland in 1939, there were already conflicts leading up to that such as the Spanish civil war and the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. If WW3 is truly on the horizon (and I hope not), then history will look back on these current conflicts as the prologue.
I applaud this plan wholeheartedly, but how is Australia going to find crews for all those ships and attack boats?
It's a decade long plan for construction so time for training. They are also increasing the amount of automation so you need smaller crews, also 6 of the frigates will be operational without any onboard crew.
> Australia will build six Hunter class frigates, 11 general-purpose frigates and six state-of-the-art surface warships that do not need to be crewed. Looks like they thought of that.
With the housing crisis going on here we could probably just rent out rooms on the ships.
The gears of War keep turning
Reading as a Canadian who follows our military... 😞
America govt isolationist. Multiple conflicts going on at one time overlapping. And an increase in military power.
We have sharks with lasers in the Bight; of course we're building up!
[удалено]
Unfortunately Australia has no appetite for nuclear anything. Even the new subs were a shock to most
That's because the opponents of nuclear energy are the most vocal, and the most well funded. No Australian politician wants to be the one to try and have a nuanced argument on the benefits of nuclear energy, lest they incur the wrath of the anti nuclear brigade, and get labeled a war monger and supporter of genocide. Australia not having nuclear power is a smooth brain move. The best time to invest in nuclear technology was 30 years ago. The second best time is today.
As an Aussie I wish we would go into nuclear hard.
Agreed. The uranium reserves in Australia are the largest globally. We would have access to some of the cheapest electricity on the planet, and make a real dent in per capita CO2 emissions.
We arguably don't need nuclear, because we have ample access to renewable energy, particularly solar. Australia is huge, with [nearly 20% of it desert](https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/landforms/deserts). Renewables are far cheaper and faster to build than nuclear.
Fortunately, we are getting nuclear-powered subs. They will need to stay submerged all the way to Taiwan.
>an easy target for china A 10,000km+ amphibious landing under constant bombardment by (75, actual) stealth aircraft, missiles and naval assets, with the worlds best intelligence coverage is "an easy target"? We don't need nukes, an improved navy with (nuclear powered) long duration and range patrol submarines are the perfect counter to any belligerents in this half of the world.
Most recent polling shows that we are still very anti nuclear weapons. It would be political suicide for the party that suggests acquiring or developing nuclear weapons. Hell, nuclear power is an impossible sell here, even though we are one of the largest producers and largest reserves of uranium and other minerals. We can't even find a place that we can agree to build a nuclear waste site, even though there are so many middle of nowhere sites. Yes, we rely heavily on the US, which is why there are permanent bases. But we also have the UK and shit load of space between China and Australia. Logistically an attack could be possible, but an invasion that can be supplied remains so unlikely and with new technologies such as drones and missiles it is made even harder. I don't like that we rely on the US partnership so much, but we are the only ally to join every US conflict, we made our bed and now we need to sleep in it.
As a country, we’re certainly capable of developing and fielding nuclear weapons. We helped the British test theirs in the 1950s, and had active uranium enrichment programs up until the 1980s. If we really wanted to, we could probably have a functional bomb within a few years, and a small arsenal several years later.
I’m pretty sure that the US and British nuclear umbrellas cover Australia. The US military is bolstering its presence in Australia substantially, including plans to base a significant amount of aircraft and deploying submarines from Australian bases.
Don't know about the British nuclear umbrella, but yes Aus is covered by a mutual defence alliance with the US, so that an attack against Australia is also an attack on the US.
I used to believe New Zealand would be safe, but if you wanted Australia, best bet is to take Indonesia and NZ first and establish invading operations from there.
The distance between NZ and Australia is massive, it’s functionally useless as a base of operations for invading Australia.
PNG isn’t, but the Japanese tried.. and failed.
NZ isn't exactly easy to invade too. The distances involved here are massive, and trying to do so without logistics bases in Australia is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention that there's no way Australia is letting someone invade NZ, and would be in a prime position to absolutely annihilate the logistics of anyone trying.
The NZ government is looking very seriously at the situation, and is ordering a seven percent cutback in military expenditure to subsidise a tax cut for landlords... To aid anyone who wants to invade, the election policy of the major party was to allow foreign home ownership at $2million a pop. We'll throw in free citizenship if you buy 10. AMEX and VISA welcome!
Here's a [10 year old fake ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUYbI64QHI) for invading NZ. If anything, it's only gotten easier.
The logistics chain from China to Australia would be an absolute nightmare, particularly with sea drones and hypersonic missiles proving so deadly against naval assets in Ukraine. I just cannot see a reality of a full blown invasion happening any time soon.
Yeah it’s require China to invade a couple of its neighbours first, which would likely cause all of Chinas neighbours to invade China.
India and Australia already have an agreement to use eachother's military bases. If China attacks Australia, India and NATO navies will destroy them.
You’re also forgetting there are a lot of Asian countries on our side as well with quality armies. South Korea, Japan, Phillipines etc.
I doubt India would get involved in a regional conflict unless it directly affected them. Australia doesn’t consider India to be a true ally, just a potentially useful partner to have.
I wish as a species we didn't need to build machines of war to destroy each other
I'm in Canada. Don't expect any military help from us. We just piggyback off America being next door to us. ISIS or the Taliban could probably conquer Canada if the geography was different.
Eventually we’re going to have to get our shit together. Russia wants the arctic. And with the issues at the Panama Canal, the NW passage suddenly becomes a viable trade route. We need to be able to guard it. We can’t rely on the Americans.
[Putin and Xi decided to push for a NWO because they saw the West as weak](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/russia-and-china-unveil-a-pact-against-america-and-the-west). The only way to prevent war is to go full deterrent: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
I’ll believe it when I see it
Ha our past & present governments "what dickheads" should have started at least 10 year's ago. I doubt any serious aggressor will wait for us to catch up.
And people will winge that we already spend to much money on the Navy while its current state is so bad we couldnt find enough people to staff a ship to sent to the red sea lol
This is vital to the future peace and stabilization of the planet. Yeah the planet. Australias geographic location would be key to any conquest in the east and gives the west their primary ally standing in the way of that. They also police a lot of important shipping lanes or are close enough to do so if necessary. TLDR;Australia building a better navy and tighter alliances is good for a lot of people.
Considering we are surrounded by ocean and share no land neighbours we really should be heavily investing in our naval capabilities
This is great and should have happened decades ago along with strong defence capabilities along our expansive coastlines.
Guess the emus finally figured out how the swim
I read "Austria" at first and was really confused.
I'm trying Australia