Australia's military capability expansion

[jtzzr]

IMHO...It doesn't matter who nukes the US, we will be left vulnerable in this location....

We`ll be fine our Air Force will take care of any missiles/bogeys. Iv`e heard they`ve just put new propellers on our 4 Cessnas`.

[spudchucka]

What's your thoughts...?

Good on the Aussies, New Zealand has its head stuck deep inside its own arse when it comes to defence.

[Swoop]

US will remain the most powerful nation in the world for decades to come...

Rubbish.

Anyone who has been studying this area would tell you this as well.
China is now in a position to start doing anything it wants to. It has tied up a serious chunk of the world's manufacturing and production capacity so that when it decides that Taiwan is going to be part of China, the world will not be able to do too much in retaliation.
China hides approximately 2/3rds of it's military budget in "other areas", so if it says it has only spent 50 Billion on their military, just read it that they have really spent 150 Billion.

Underground submarine base being built.
Aircraft carrier purchases.
and other nice toys to play with.

Tawan was recently supplied with a large amount of anti-shipping missiles to deter a seaborne invasion. This has effectively "levelled" the game, but only for the next little while.

China lacks the capability to manufacture jet-fighter engines. It has to purchase these from Russia.

Economically they can do pretty much as they please.
Practically, they are hamstrung in several areas... but these are being worked on with great enthusiasm.


The Aussies are quite correct and are doing the right thing.
NZ should be working with them.

[sil3nt]

Its not really hidden if you come on here and tell everyone you know

[spacemonkey]

Well my take on it is that New Zealands economy is far too small to realistically afford a half way decent level of force projection.

If we were hypothetically to bankrupt ourselves buying vast amounts of weapon systems, we STILL would not be able to remotely stop any nation that currently has the ability to stage down this far (USA, Russia, China, France, Japan, India are all capable), Even a "bigger than we can pay for millitary" would just be swatted aside with comparative ease, so it would be a waste of time even trying to foot it in those circles.

We would be far better off specializing in having a smaller highly trained force for use in regional stability ie the Timor or Solomons type deployment.
Sure it doesn't have the macho man/rambo feel good factor of a big military, but that image would be nothing more than an pointless ego trip, I'd rather have a more usable force.

Diplomatically it would also work better for us to have such a force, to be seen as "Good world citizens" rather than a nation seen as being in someone elses pocket and suffering a sort of short mans disease. And that sort of playing nice would win us more friends that can apply pressure if in the unlikely event we were ever on the receiving end of hostile behavior.

Heh a big military budget would also bring me back to having a bit of good old fashioned kiwi cultural cringe again as we would look like pretty dumb, cut price, John Howard style brown noser's. (I'll pass on that thanks)

[Genestho]

Rubbish.

Woa there cowboy, that's a quote taken from the Story, appropriate quotation marks and reference to story updated!! Apologies!!


Anyone who has been studying this area would tell you this as well.
China is now in a position to start doing anything it wants to. It has tied up a serious chunk of the world's manufacturing and production capacity so that when it decides that Taiwan is going to be part of China, the world will not be able to do too much in retaliation.
China hides approximately 2/3rds of it's military budget in "other areas", so if it says it has only spent 50 Billion on their military, just read it that they have really spent 150 Billion.

Underground submarine base being built.
Aircraft carrier purchases.
and other nice toys to play with.

Tawan was recently supplied with a large amount of anti-shipping missiles to deter a seaborne invasion. This has effectively "levelled" the game, but only for the next little while.

China lacks the capability to manufacture jet-fighter engines. It has to purchase these from Russia.

Economically they can do pretty much as they please.
Practically, they are hamstrung in several areas... but these are being worked on with great enthusiasm.


The Aussies are quite correct and are doing the right thing.
NZ should be working with them.

I agree, I remember having this Chinese industrial revolution chat years ago and the impact of that...

I agree, NZ should be working with Aussies

[scuzeme]

While the rest of the world are thinking in terms of the next 20 to 50 years the Chinese think in terms of what they want to do in the next 200 years! i shit you not.

The Chinese do not yet have the commitment or capability to invade Taiwan without sparking international condemnation and massive losses but they do have a plan and they will follow it through no matter how long it takes.

Wars between the super powers have been going on since the end of world war two they have been waged in client countries through proxy and more recently (from the 1970's on) in the sphere of economics.
The socialists have wisened up to the fact that they couldnt gain global ascendency through force of arms and aggressive foriegn policy and that their economies werent robust and wealthy enough to gain ascendency through economical means either.
The Soviet block didnt give in to the west they just decided to restructure to come back stronger and fight another day as their current economies couldnt support the military or stave off Western economic manipulation.
Why did the Chinese Elite suddenly decide that "to get rich was glorious" for ths exact same reason they have restructured their economy to generate vast wealth and vast power inorder to go toe to toe and beat the West at its own game!

At the end of the day i dont think that the Chinese people are going to invade anyone becuase its not good business, but what they will do is become the big boy in the neighbourhood just as the Americans have been doing for the last 50 years or more manipulating and coercing weaker nations for there own ends.
If your going to be worried it might make more sense to be worried about the likes of Indonesia.
We have bragged and relied on our remoteness being a reason that we will never be in the sites schemes and plots of the big players, but the very thing that we thought made us safe may undoubtedly become the verything that endangers us as the global picture becomes increasingly...liquid.

Think of it as a spinning top which is slowly losing speed and beginning to wobble before it falls over thats exactly where we are at the moment, i think we can look forward to some momentus and unprecidented things happening in the future i just hope they are good things for us as a Nation.
I know i would feel alot safer if we had a state of the art defence stratagey that recognises that we may not be able to rely on our allies and one that centres on protecting us from suprise seaborne invasion.

Better still get the states to set up some big military bases here included in my shopping list would be a submarine base or two and a number of multitipped 20 megatonne warheads then we'd get some fucken big repect round this neck of the woods hahahaaaaa.

We should atleast be working with the Auzzies instead of acting like their poor country bumpkin cuzzies its down right embarrasing.
The pacifists will continue to rely on good moral upstanding and the goodness and sense of justice that lives in every mans heart regardless of color or creed (yes you can quote the Tui add right here guys), a man a women even a child and certainly a Nation will do anything to save there existence, way of life when it comes down to it, anything even blood shed and violence can be justified when its a means to an end,

In the mean time its a nice Sunday afternoon and i think i;ll go out and take the Sexy 1098s for a spin cheers.

[gegvasco]

As an Aussie military guy who works in the areas directly affected by this Policy:

Sadly, affordability is all that matters when it comes to Democratic government defence policies. Even our defence policy is entirely based on what we think we can afford. And what we can afford is in large part determined by the size of our population. So I think it is a natural progression that NZ will not have the sort of capabilities that we have. It makes sense to have niche capabilities that you can deploy for things like stabilisation ops which have a great effect on reducing the need for a "ring of steel" around NZ. You also need a robust maritime surveillance and border protection capability. While I know you have some assets in this respect (and from personal experience, extremely switched-on operators), there are probably some gaps in capacity and technology.

I'm no fan of your previous government, and especially not a fan of the UN which I think is entirely useless in the modern realm of terrorism and asymmetric warfare, but I never really disagreed with NZ cancelling the orders for F16s and Collins submarines (remember that NZ was looking at buying Collins # 7 and 8). They are big ticket items with a big support tail that would have sucked up a lot of constrained resources that could have been used to much better effect in other more pressing areas.

And let's face it, if the balloon really goes up, Australia will cop it first. Don't discount your geographic isolation as a credible deterrent. Look at the Japs in WWII. They were overstretched trying to get to Australia and once they suffered some defeats that severed some critical supply lines, they stalled. Compare that to the Brits in Singapore who were too close to be able to stop the deluge being thrown at them. They were one of the closest targets, were smacked early and didn't have a chance. And any country that can knock us off (easy for some of the bigger players), will then use Aus as a base to knock off NZ. So by then, there will be no way to defend NZ so why even bother having 20 fighters? It won't make one single bit of difference when it comes time to use them for real.

[scuzeme]

Very good points...
I think that NZ would be more likely a better staging area to invade Auzzie because we are the soft underbelly, unless of course your using the Islands north of Dawin.

The only real deterent is some nice nukes
.
If there is a Nuclear exchange we are all fucked anyway, if a country is greedily eyeing you up and you have Nukes then even a limited nuke exchange would destroy the prize (famous quote from JFK "even the fruits of victory would be ash's in our mouths").

If having Nukes makes you a Nuclear target it also makes your enemy think very seriously about coming after you because at some stage even the loser has the ability to fuck you up badly, what the hell they are losing anyway.

Hmmmm i think ive been waching too much history channel.

[Headbanger]

I reckon we need to train some Ninjas.

Who wants to fuck with Ninjas?

Nobody, that's who.

That Aside, China were THE SUPERPOWER for 2000 years, Europe overtook them and then imploded,letting America move to the forefront,But this has only been the last 200 years, China are putting themselves back on top as the dominant player, well, they have done that already, the next step is to show any of the little infant countries like Yankee land exactly where the power is.

All Hail our new masters, HAIL, HAIL.

[davereid]

Very good points...
I think that NZ would be more likely a better staging area to invade Auzzie because we are the soft underbelly, unless of course your using the Islands north of Dawin.

Absolutely true. During WW2 the Japanese seriously considered invading NZ before Australia. They reasoned that a toehold in Darwin still put them thousands of miles from inhabited Australia - the real targets being the southern coastal cities. They also felt that Australia could be re-inforced and provisioned indefinately from NZ, and that NZ deep water ports meant that they would have immense difficulty controlling the Tasman Sea.

Invade NZ first and you turn it all around. You have the ports, the food production, control of a massive area of the pacific ocean, and easy dominance of the tasman sea.

[Mully]

I reckon we need to train some Ninjas.

Who wants to fuck with Ninjas?

Nobody, that's who.

And Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris and Ninjas FTW

[spacemonkey]

Nah stuff the ninjas!
And didn't Norris get beaten by one of those Chinese your so worried about? (Bruce Lee).

What we need is Pirates for teh win!
Couple of dozen Somalian's and we'd be set.... give em a speed boat and a cheap as chips Ak and they run rings around any navy!

[gegvasco]

Absolutely true. During WW2 the Japanese seriously considered invading NZ before Australia. They reasoned that a toehold in Darwin still put them thousands of miles from inhabited Australia - the real targets being the southern coastal cities. They also felt that Australia could be re-inforced and provisioned indefinately from NZ, and that NZ deep water ports meant that they would have immense difficulty controlling the Tasman Sea.

Invade NZ first and you turn it all around. You have the ports, the food production, control of a massive area of the pacific ocean, and easy dominance of the tasman sea.

That's fine as long as you have unimpeded control of the sea. Moving hundreds of thousands of troops from Asia to NZ non-stop would be an enormous undertaking and unless they had an enormous level of sea superiority, the sorts the yanks can inject into a theatre with a Carrier Battle Group or two, then it is an extremely risky venture and if the worst happens, could turn the war the other way.

Whereas by leapfrogging through the Malaysian Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Papua then Australia, the amphibious assault distances are less and require less sea-based air power as land-based air cover will still be in range. Supply chains node-to-node are also shorter which provides flexibility and response.

It could be done from NZ but only if you had an unparalleled Naval presence. Once they get there, then actually taking control might be easy but then supply can still be threatened.

[scuzeme]

Give me Nukes! I want some Nukes!