Re: Royal Australian Navy force enhancements
Aardvark Fury said:
I've often thought the Aus defence industry needs to be less insular and seek more export opportunities. I'd like to see more decisions like this from DoD.
Actually a lot of the problem has been a deliberate stance to not be seen as military weapons systems "benefiters" Otherwise we could have made a small sum of money from Wedgetail (as an example) as Aust ran lead on a lot of the esoteric development.
Aardvark Fury said:
Now, what about selling a few of those Bushmasters?
Thats a bit of a cluster. the problems being to date:
1) Platform was only kept alive due to last election when Bendigo was considered a fragile seat. The Govt was selectively committed to it.
2) ADI has a French shareholder. That has effected entry into the US market (who have been keen up unto a point. They are and have been looking at the Bushies in Iraq)
3) ADI gave China (amongst significant internal concern and protest) copies of the specs to build the platform under license. That immediately resulted in a dramatic decline in interest from the US. Apart from being a gross demonstration of commercial stupidity (as we've already seen the Chinese Govt do variations of the Hecate .50 cal sniper weapon, the Tasmanian fast patrol cat (which emerged as a 2208 missile patrol vessel) and some strong indications that they've cloned Su-27's ) compliments of Clintons equally moronic policy of getting State Dept to release the Cincinatti's to their aviation industry) - then the mind boggles at the absolute naivete of them.
I worked on the project where we sold modified S600's to Kuwait. So we have a good record in the ME - a clear customer base would be the ME if they chose to approach the more conservative and already pro-aust elements there. (Gulf States). On that basis, Bushmasters would be a good fit as a lot of the drivetrain already exists in some of those countries existing armoured fleets. It would cut their logisitics considerably and thus make a sale easier and more palatable.
I've spent over 25 years on various projects ranging from subs, ASW, minhunters, AP3C upgrades, Steyrs, Perenti's Ravens - not once have I seen any commercial nouse demonstrated - and the bulk of that has been idealogical - from both sides of the "house".
As a country we don't like being "seen" as weapons developers, which is absolutely ridiculous when you consider how much of our gear is used by other countries but buried from the public. We've run SCRAMJETS at 1/50th the cost that the US has poured into their prog, the US and 2 other navies use our acoustic warfare systems, we have ballistic detection systems used by the USDoD. Secret Service etc... we're regarded as the world leaders in electronic impulse kinetic weapons.
Idiots!
/rant off
