Looming Defence Budget disaster – in this episode, we look at the analysis of the recent Defence Budget by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which it calls “The Big Squeeze”. The numbers don’t lie and for the next two to three years Defence will actually lose money – and the situation is even worse than it looks because of inflation. This will almost certainly see a further reduction in Australian industry content – completely the opposite of what the Federal government is telling us. We have a bit more to say on the ridiculous FMS purchase of SURTASS – and just for a bit of balance we also name and shame an industry miscreant. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we continue to look at the Defence Strategic Review, which is not at all the radical policy shift that many of its boosters claim. On the contrary, in many cases Australia is simply catching up with the rest of the world – for example with the belated planned acquisition of rocket artillery. Also the DSR authors seem to lack an understanding of how the U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system actually works. Australia might want to receive more U.S. systems and get them faster, but several production lines are already at maximum capacity and resupplying eastern Europe to deter Russia is likely to be a higher priority for Washington. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Defence is one of the most consequential activities for any government. Securing the future of the nation and the lives of its citizens is about as important as it gets. To that end, Australia spends about $50 billion per year on the Australian Defence Force which is about 2% of GDP. Despite that, it doesn’t get as much in depth coverage as it should and taxpayers are left largely in the dark about where their money is going and how well it is being spent. There is no reason for this veil of secrecy and APDR seeks better inform people about what is going on – the good, the bad and the ugly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are producing these podcasts as a way of shedding a bit more light on Defence decisions – particularly acquisitions – because the system has become secretive and taxpayers have a right to know what’s going on. But it’s even worse than that with Defence sometimes putting out information that is misleading and in some cases plain wrong. We discuss the Defence Strategic Review and debunk the claims that it is some sort of radical and positive move. No it is not. We also have a few words about the outrageous decision to purchase the SURTASS towed array sonar via FMS and preview the ANAO report into the Hunter class frigate program.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.