The unrelenting aerial bombardment of Iran by the US and Israel continues – with no known end point. Israel would probably like to keep attacking forever and in the case of the US, it might stop when President Trump gets bored. Gulf states have called for assistance from a number of countries to counter Iran’s aerial attacks, including Australia. The sad reality is that with an annual Defence budget of almost $60 billion there’s not a lot we can send. Army has a good ground based system called NASAMS but it’s not optimised for this sort of conflict – and there are likely to be major problems with the resupply of the main weapon it uses, the AIM-120 AMRAAM.
In the meantime, South Korea has signed a huge defence technology cooperation agreement with the UAE. This could have been Australia but we are too slow, too dim and too obsessed with the US to take advantage of numerous offers that have been made.
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Thanks Kym, a helpful, if depressing overview of anti-air capability in Australia. No surprise.
Interesting that the AFR went with a ‘leak’ regarding a ramp-up in defence allocations in the May budget. It seems that two years of evidence from Ukraine wasn’t enough evidence, but twelve days of conflict in Iran seems to have touched a nerve in Minister Marles’ office. Any thoughts on which platform/s they might be looking to?
Unfortunately, I see any extra money simply going into the black hole of AUKUS Pillar One. I hope I’m proven wrong.
Senator James Paterson on the 7:30 last night agreed that AUKUS was cannibalising the defence budget. He suggested that it was always the intention of the LNP to increase defence funding in the forwards to ensure for a balanced force. Amidst the demands to increase defence funding to 3.5% of GDP, I hear no suggestions as to how this is to be funded. By comparison, the Commonwealth currently runs a deficit of 1.5% of GDP, so the demanded ramp-up in defence funding, without new revenue sources or identified savings, would double the current deficit in perpetuity.
That’s very easy to answer: any increase to the debt and deficit by the Coalition is fine, but if Labor does it the economy will be destroyed.