Australian Defence Force Reform and the RAAF

From 'Lost International Soldiers' photo collection. 

Debates about buying things for Defence to blow people up with tend to fall into two camps.  There is the “war is bad so we need to stop funding it, fighting for peace is like procreating for virginity, all wars are the fault if the West so if we spend more money on foreign aid we wouldn’t need a defence force because all the nice people over there wouldn’t come over here and invade” camp.  Then there is the “what the fig are smoking, international relations works by the law of the jungle, you only own what you can defend, there were lots of nice Germans in the 1930’s but WWII still happened, we need lots and lots of shiny new weapons to scare the bad guys with” camp.  Then there are lots of people who understand international relations and geo-strategic policy quite well but lack the technical knowledge to understand practical military things, such as why the Chinese J-20 stealth fighter/bomber/interceptor is a strategic game changer that eats the US Joint Strike Fighter for breakfast and has the Superhornet for desert.

Remember the Somme?  Lots of propaganda, lots of theory, not much empirical

analysis. There are a very small number of people who actually do real analysis – like Dr John Stillion of Rand Corp (at that time) who told them the truth about the Joint Strike Fighter – center piece of a defence ponzi scheme that is now threatening not just Western budgets, but Australia’s future existence as a nation.  The Australian Defence Force bureaucracy ignored him and every other analyst who didn’t sing along to the JSF song.  The fact is, if more people had understood what military technology meant for strategic policy WWII would not have happened.  The fact is, history is repeating. 

In subsequent posts I have added my submissions and correspondence and a number of opinion pieces based on research done over nearly a decade. See for example here:

http://findinghomebookspace.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/defence-force-pornography-meets-real.html

You will note that all my predictions have come to pass and none of the issues I raised were addressed. Read more analysis from ‘down under’ in the book and here:
 

http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com.au/

http://www.ausairpower.net/