Comments on: Wedgetail plucked: defence planning project fail?

By: Ben Sandilands

Ben Sandilands — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:21:49 +0000

In lay terms the Wedgetail was to be the gate keeper of the killing fields. It was to know where the enemy was in a conflict, what it was using, how fast it was travelling and inform a precision response. It was, or maybe will yet be, a very versatile, sophisticated, battle management tool, and one applicable to finding and wrecking hostile incursions. There is a very strong argument that the capability is needed, but this is also arguably rather late in the day to find out that the chosen solution might not work as effectively as promised, or at all.

By: mort888

mort888 — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:55:48 +0000

So the project is over five years late and “Australia will not save money by cancelling the Wedgetail, but will be forced to find an urgent replacement” why, what capability is it that the Air Force needs so urgently, what platform is doing the job now?.
As Robert Gates (US Defense Secretary) tells the US military to get with the program and get past the peer one-on-one enemy and focus on real threats from assymetric tactics.
Australia’s chiefs still look to large platforms full of personnel drilling holes in the sky. DSurveillance of any real value, that is permanent is impossible with wedgetail, so what’s the Wedgetail for, controlling dog fights!! Why? Because cold-war conflict is easy. Counter-insurgency is hard and Air Power struggles to be relevant, it can be relevant but spending most of your defence budget on something that counters no real threat to the nation is not the way.

James Wenton
Brisbane

By: Ian Nicolson

Ian Nicolson — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:53:46 +0000

The previous administration’s version of the ‘cash splash’? Only we don’t even get to ‘fritter it all away’ on foreign high-tech gadgets ourselves?

BEn , would you care to hazard a figure for the actual and/or probable losses incurred due to suspended, deferred, cancelled, iffy or unfulfillable orders (including delay-bridging contracts to purchase previously rejected options)? Including the additional maintenance costs for airframe lifetime extension works or retrofitted avionics/weapons systems upgrades due to delayed replacements since, say, 1990?

At least we should be able to blame any forthcoming expensive delays on South Australian-built conventional subs on our own cock-ups and cock-uppers without having to go looking overseas for wide and echoing gaps between promise and delivery.

Might trim the hideous cost of recruiting and retaining submariners though, I guess …