i agree that Murdoch,an ex--Australian,may not like oz.
But can we just forget the boss of this journalist ,the award
title of the journalist
and this lousy lion?Can we just zoom on the content of these two
articles?
Nowadays,people do not read the content first.They,like u,just
look at who
is the writer and the background.There,before u read,a lot of
perception
occupy your mind.
i will be waiting here and read your valuable responses to these
2 articles!!
before we continue,read wat Janes reports
Australia
acknowledges 'hollowness' of defence capabilities
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Cameron Stewart | March 31, 2009
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IF there were a moment when the fragile
relationship between Joel Fitzgibbon and the defence establishment
finally snapped, it might have been the surprise attack the
minister launched on his own flock in Brisbane last
October.
On that day Fitzgibbon did what previous defence ministers have
rarely done: he gave his own defence force a blunt public spray
about its big-picture priorities and its lack of preparedness for
battle. Fitzgibbon was angry about not having the option of
deploying the army's Black Hawk helicopters into Afghanistan. The
minister had been taking political heat over an inadequate number
of NATO medical evacuation choppers available for Australian troops
at their base in Tarin Kowt, in Oruzgan province.
"If we do see a strategic and tactical justification for sending
Black Hawks to Afghanistan tomorrow, we would be unable to do so as
they lack the electronic warfare self-protection they require,"
Fitzgibbon lamented. "We spend a lot of time thinking and talking
about important capability as we look far out into the future, but
we seem to spend much less time talking about the capability we
need to do the things we do right now and on a regular basis."
The minister's comments broke the rules of keeping such
criticism in-house. Defence likes to see its ministers keep a stiff
upper lip in public, confining any criticism to private meetings.
Fitzgibbon put his department offside on that day, but he also made
a telling point. Few Australians are fully aware that tens of
billions of dollars' worth of front-line weaponry from the navy,
air force and army cannot be sent to war today unless it is a
low-level, low-risk operation.
As the Government puts the finishing touches to the new defence
white paper, it is gearing up for a public relations blitz about
the futuristic, sleek and powerful Australian Defence Force of
tomorrow.
What the Defence Department won't tell you is that, as things
stand, most of Australia's warplanes and ships cannot be sent to
any conflict involving an opponent with a half-decent air defence
system and modern anti-ship missiles.
Across the entire ADF, an alarming amount of expensive military
equipment is not in a suitable upgraded condition to be sent to
war. This is the legacy of project mismanagement and a Defence
Department mindset that focuses more heavily on the defence force
of tomorrow than on the force of today.
"It really is amazing how little (equipment) can be actually
deployed overseas when we have a defence budget of more than
$22billion," says Andrew Davies, an analyst withthe country's
premier independent military think tank, the Australian Strategic
Policy Institute.
Former senior defence official Allan Behm agrees: "I think the
public would be absolutely astonished and gobsmacked to think we
spend so much on defence every year and yet we can't send much (of)
it into harm's way because it won't work or will not survive in
acontest."
As the Government considers its military options for an
increased role in Afghanistan, the frustration of the Rudd
Government at the depleted state of the ADF is growing.
An investigation by The Australian reveals just how ill-prepared
the ADF is for an immediate crisis. It finds much of the defence
force's most powerful weaponry is awaiting future upgrades or
promised replacements and is useful only for training purposes or
deployment on operations where there is little or no risk of
high-level conflict.
This problem needs to be seen in context. No defence force keeps
its entire inventory on war footing; such a practice would be
prohibitively expensive and pointless when no enemy is
apparent.
All Western defence forces, including the ADF, are in a constant
state of transition with armoury being upgraded and replaced as it
becomes obsolete. But this long-term upgrading process must be
balanced against existing requirements and future short-term
contingencies. Experts say this balance has been lost.
"The problem with readiness planning has arisen because of
peacekeeping and other short-notice commitments (that) have seen us
having to deploy assets quickly and put them in harm's way," says
Daniel Cotterill, a defence analyst with Hill and Knowlton and
until recently Fitzgibbon's chief of staff.
"There is a bias within defence towards investing in the future
force rather than giving government the fully functioning options
they really need today." For example, if Australia were asked to
provide warplanes for an immediate operation against a country with
a functioning air defence system, it could not do so.
The F-111 strike bomber, which will be retired next year, can't
be deployed to a hot war zone because it has insufficient
electronic warfare self-protection and is too easily detected by
enemy radar. "The F-111 has the radar cross-section of a house and
(it) would have great survivability issues in a modern threat
environment," Cotterill says. "I don't think the Government would
deploy one of those to a hot fighting war."
That conclusion has precedents. In the 1990s the F-111s were not
able to deploy to Operation Desert Fox (against Iraq) because they
lacked the required radar warning systems. Similarly, most of the
air force's 71 F/A-18 Hornets can't be deployed against modern air
defence systems because they have not yet been upgraded with a
mature electronic warfare capability.
Defence says only 16 F/A-18s have received electronic warfare
upgrades and even these have been given only an "interim electronic
warfare capability", raising doubts about theirdeployability.
"Most ADF aircraft could not operate in an environment where
there was a radar-based air defence because of electronic warfare
self-protection issues," ASPI's Davies says.
The navy also would be largely impotent if it were asked to sail
to a high-operations war today. "The surface combatant fleet
comprises two classes of frigates and is ill-equipped for
high-level operations," says Davies. "A plan to upgrade the Anzac
class frigates into a capable air defence platform was abandoned,
although an air-surface missile defence upgrade will provide a
self-defence capability."
Says Cotterill: "The Anzacs stem from a time when there was zero
real growth in the defence budget and they were fitted 'for but not
with' a lot of systems and so they can't be sent to hot zones by
themselves."
Those Anzac class ships that have deployed to the low-threat
environment of the Persian Gulf in recent years have enjoyed the
protection of US air defence systems. Meanwhile, the navy still has
none of its four guided-missile frigates available for active
service because they have not been cleared for operations after a
bungled upgrade was delayed for five years, blowing the total cost
out to $1.5 billion. Even if both classes of ship could be
deployed, they would be an easy target for enemy submarines because
the navy's anti-submarine warfare capabilities are negligible.
"Our ability to actively search for submarines is very limited
to short-range technologies and we have little or no ability to
successfully fire a weapon at a modern submarine," Davies says.
This is not a new development. In the late '90s a suspected
foreign submarine was detected off East Timor during the ADF's
deployment there, causing concern in Canberra because of the known
deficiencies in the navy's anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
The navy's helicopter capability is also in disarray, especially
following the cancellation last year of the troubled Seasprite
project.
"The current fleet of helicopters suitable for embarked
operations is limited in numbers, availability and capability,"
says Davies, who has written recent capability assessments on all
three services. "With the cancellation of the Seasprites and the
limited war-fighting capability of the Sea Kings, the only
helicopter suitable for embarked war-like operations at the moment
is the Seahawk."
But he says these do not have an anti-surface warfare
capability. "In other words, they have no ability to fire a missile
at any surface target whether it is a warship or not."
The navy's submarine fleet is also poorly equipped for immediate
and sustained operations, given that half of its six-boat fleet is
in dry dock for maintenance. In any case, a critical shortage of
qualified submariners means there are only enough crews to staff
three boats at any one time.
If one of those submarines were to be damaged in action, the
crew would almost certainly die because the navy's only
Australian-based submarine rescue vehicle, the Remora, is
non-operational.
The army is the best placed of the services to send troops to a
hot war zone at relatively short notice, but in surprisingly small
numbers and only with air protection from allies such as the US.
"We can't really send the army to any place where they have to
provide their own protection from hostile air attack," Davies
says.
An army insider says that despite having 27,000 members, 15,000
of which are in the combat force, the army would struggle to deploy
more than 1000 extra troops overseas on a sustained basis on top of
its deployments in Afghanistan, the Middle East, East Timor and
Solomon Islands.
"Despite official denials, the army remains stretched," one
insider says. Another defence insider says there are other problems
with army deployment capabilities.
"The army also has a shortage of blue force tracking
transponders, which allow friendly forces to know where our troops
are and help avoid friendly-fire incidents. This would limit the
number of elements we could deploy into a coalition
environment."
In the field, Australian troops cannot be supported by the
army's Black Hawks because they do not have infrared shields over
their exhausts, making them vulnerable to shoulder-launched
missiles. The entire fleet of 33 choppers - a core part of the
army's capability - cannot be safely deployed to Afghanistan, much
less to a more intense war.
This means Australian troops deployed in Oruzgan province are
still relying on NATO helicopters rather than their own Black Hawks
to evacuate wounded soldiers.
The army's ability to provide armoured personnel carriers for
its troops in a war zone also has been undermined because of doubts
about the deployability of one of its three types of armoured
vehicles: the M113 armoured personnel carrier.
Defence has spent almost $500 million refurbishing the more than
400 of the Vietnam War-era M113s, only to find that they may be
vulnerable to roadside bombs, rockets and mines used by insurgents
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"While the upgraded vehicles will protect occupants against
small arms, anti-personnel mines, light anti-armour weapons, and
shrapnel, the vehicle will remain vulnerable to 12.5mm or larger
projectiles, medium to heavy anti-armour weapons, large improvised
explosive devices and anti-armour mines," Davies says.
For more than 25 years, successive Australian governments have
talked up futuristic visions of a more powerful, capable and modern
defence force.
The same promise will be made by the Rudd Government in its
forthcoming white paper. But the Government needs to focus more
clearly on the reality of today, rather than the elusive armada of
tomorrow.
Cameron Stewart is associate editor of The Australian and
Australian Journalist of the Year for 2008.
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Cameron Stewart | March 31, 2009
BILLIONS of dollars of fighter jets, warships
and military equipment cannot be used in their current state
because they would be too vulnerable to enemy fire.
A critical lack of upgraded weaponry has left the Australian
Defence Force unable to deploy most of its frontline fighters or
warships at short notice against any enemy with modern air defence
systems or anti-ship missiles.
An investigation by The Australian reveals much of the ADF's
most powerful weaponry is awaiting upgrades or promised
replacements and is useful only for training purposes or deployment
on operations where there is little or no risk of high-level
conflict.
As such, the ADF, which receives $22 billion in taxpayer funds
each year, cannot conduct any high-level operations without
substantial support from coalition forces such as the US.
Former Defence official Allan Behm said: "I think the public
would be absolutely astonished and gobsmacked to think we spend so
much on defence every year and yet we can't send much of it into
harm's way because it won't work or it will not survive in a
contest."
Defence experts say none of the RAAF's soon-to-be-retired F-111
strike bombers nor the majority of the 71 F/A-18 Hornet fighters
can be used against modern air defences because they lack
sufficient electronic protection.
Similarly, they say the navy's eight Anzac frigates cannot be
sent into a hotly contested war zone because of a lack of defensive
weaponry, while the four other frigates, the FFGs, are still
unavailable after a bungled and delayed $1.5 billion upgrade.
Experts say the problem reflects a litany of delayed equipment
upgrades as well as a Defence Department mindset that focuses more
heavily on future purchases than on current operations. They say
the proper balance between current and future defence needs has
been lost.
Daniel Cotterill, former chief of staff for Defence Minister
Joel Fitzgibbon, told The Australian: "There is a bias within
Defence towards investing in the future force rather than giving
government the fully functioning options they really need
today."
The Government is in the final stages of preparing a Defence
white paper that will outline a multi-billion-dollar shopping list
of new planes, ships and hi-tech weaponry. But the ADF is in a
parlous state of readiness for serious conflict.
A deficiency in anti-submarine warfare capabilities means the
navy would be unlikely to risk sending surface ships into zones
where enemy subs were present.
Andrew Davies, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy
Institute, said: "Our ability to actively search for submarines is
very limited to short-range technologies and we have little or no
ability to successfully fire a weapon at a modern submarine."
Only half of the six-boat Collins-Class submarine fleet is
available and a shortage of crew would make it impossible to
sustain operations for long.
The army cannot deploy any of its 33 Blackhawk helicopters into
warzones, including Afghanistan, because they remain vulnerable to
shoulder-launched missiles.
It is also considered unlikely to deploy its M113 armoured
personnel carriers because, despite receiving a $500 million
upgrade, the M113s are considered vulnerable to large improvised
explosive devices, such as those used by the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
Experts say the Government needs to pressure the ADF to make its
existing equipment more operationally effective rather than wait
for future replacements.''
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