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Very true. And it's not as if there were combat experienced tank crewmen coming back to Australia to help with the design. I don't imagine anyway.

The 1967 Australian Year Book says the Army had a permanent force as of 30 November 1966 of 36,806, excluding the Pacific Island Regiment. The annual intake of national servicemen was 8400 so about half of those might be undergoing training, and there'd obviously be more regulars under training...

Ok thanks for your input.

I guess it comes down to how you think of it, and what you're prepared to pay. If the idea is predominantly ASW then you can add aircraft like the F-35 to give limited capabilities in air defence and strike. If it's strike then I agree you need to step it up to a Queen Elizabeth. Cost? Works out...

Well yeah, true, but Dominic is talking about doing it gradually into the future. You are right though. There are certainly some not implausible PODs that could have seen a stronger ADF today.

You know I basically agree with almost every word. I mean, I do think if you're going to double the Navy then a carrier should be on the table, or at least a couple of ASW optimised helicopter carriers (like the Japanese have built), and I disagree about the Army, but otherwise pretty agreeable.

I know you like to constantly rant about historical politics and politicians but it's just getting tiresome frankly.

Doubled in size at the very least? Goodness grief Dominic. You'd scare the Kiwis. They'd start to wonder if those "Let's invade New Zealand" ads made for The Gruen Transfer were part of an elaborate maskirovka. I can't even imagine what that would look like. Ok, maybe I can try. But, Army...

Oh dear. I get that you’re very passionate. I feel for those poor American submariners who died back in WW2 too, really I do. But the relevance is lacking. You just keep missing the point that for all your thoughts on the Collins project it didn’t happen in a vacuum. You have shown you don’t...

Yep, a weak jab from the left who don’t really believe in investing in defence at all. ;)

As I said, you know about submarines. What I’ve seen of that work I appreciated. But the decisions that led to the Colllins - along with the not inconsiderable problems that plagues it - must be understood in the context of the politics. That’s where your thinking is lacking.

Really? So why do we have six Collins and before them six Oberons? I'm sorry, you might know about submarines, but you're not showing much knowledge of Australian defence thinking.

It's not massively implausible, but it would take a not insignificant political commitment across governments and it wouldn't be a big vote winner. Could be done. Then you have the challenge though of the opportunity cost - that is, you can't spend the money you'd need on something else. And the...

I don't think so really. We seem to have averaged about a dozen or so surface combatants. If we go back to, say, the mid '80s, you had the three Perth (Charles F Adams) class destroyers, four Adelaide (Oliver Hazard Perry) class frigates, and six home-built River class destroyer escorts (the...

If we had a shipbuilding industry of note from post or pre WW2, then you could imagine we would have seen some very different developments. What the government is trying to do now with a continuous build program to create and support a naval shipbuilding industry is good, but yeah it would have...

Can you explain what on Earth you're getting at and how this relates to the topic?

Your first sentence is accurate. The rest doesn’t make a lot of sense. The potential problem is what has occurred more recently. When you have young Chinese Australians - or at least Chinese citizens in Australia - publicly espousing CCP policy it is a little concerning.

Interesting one. I guess I've not seen anything to suggest that there are some who might commit acts - in time of conflict - like Soviet sleeper agents might have done in a Cold War gone hot scenario. But you'd think there might be. We have seen political agitators (generally Chinese uni...

No one in their right mind ever thought Australia was a great military power, or could be. Dibb didn't need to disprove that furphy you just made up. And nor did anyone need to carry on about punching. Dibb didn't make any of that clear. Have you actually read his report? He and his ilk wanted...

What do you mean?