Recap - He goes on about ADF not spending all its money last year over confusion with the DSR, Money being pulled out of defence, About the 28 F-35's not ordered, nothing was done on the navy surface fleet, personnel leaving the army in droves, no Tomahawks for the Collins, Aukus being used as a publicity stunt and that both sides of politics had done nothing for a long long time.
My take - Without my self seeing the numbers on finances and personnel both in past spending/forward estimates and current retention/recruitment levels I will be taking that as an allegation.
Not doing anything for the surface fleet well that is both sides of politics going back till prior to WW1 which was the only time imo that we had a suitable sized force for our geopolitical situation.
Tomahawk's on collins... well that one was always going to be tricky so not surprised.
F-35's - Well those 28 not ordered have always been an option, By definition an option is not a sure thing, It means we had been thinking of replacing the original F-111's with the F-35 and had the F-35;s been in its present day capability and costing a decade ago likely would have exercised that option but time lines don't stay fixed, options don't stay fixed and geopolitics don't stay fixed. Took longer then intended so we ended up with an interim fighter which as a benefit justified acquiring and expanding our ISR/EW capabilities and for relatively low expenditure on continued operating expenses (Acquisition is already spent, that price is fixed no matter how many years you have it) we could safely operate them till 1. Production slots in the F-35 become available or B. one of the 6th gen options potentially becomes available. That's just logical.
Yes there are/was no firm order/option for the potential additional 28 x F-35A, agree, all true.
But....
That project wasn’t just a figment of someone’s imagination, there is actually a project with a budget allocation of up to $6.7b to be spent between 2026-2031.
Now before anything else, here’s a bit of ‘Budget 101’
Each year the Government fills the big Defence bucket with $XX billions, and inside that big bucket is lots and lots of smaller buckets, $1 billion here, $2 billion there, $5 billion somewhere else, etc, etc, all allocated to specific Defence projects.
In the forward estimates, for the following three years, there is planned overall future Defence budgets of $XX+ billions, and again a lot of smaller buckets.
This happens year in, year out.
So here’s the problem, projects are delayed, some cancelled, and some new ones too.
Which brings us to now, today, it has recently been reported that the F/A-18F fleet will continue through to approx 2035, eg, the 28 x F-35A won’t be proceeded with.
So what happens to that up to $6.7b?
Does it just disappear from the overall Defence budget? Or be allocated somewhere else within Defence, and specifically the RAAF budget? Who knows? Maybe it will disappear from Defence and end up in some other Green/Left project of the Governments choosing.
I have no idea, do you?
And that’s the problem with the 2023 Albo DSR, it was not accompanied with an update of the 2020 ScoMo Force Structure Plan.
The 2020 FSP listed Defence projects across the whole ADF, it listed start and end dates, it listed how many billions of dollars are planned to be allocated to each project, current and future out to around 2040 and beyond.
The problem isn’t so much that projects get delayed, deferred or deleted.
The problem is the Government hasn’t been transparent regarding those changes.
How many other projects are going to disappear that we don’t know about yet?
If a Government hides something, there’s usually a reason why, usually a not too good reason.
