With Obama in charge of the world’s only Democratic superpower, someone has to.
The Australian government says it is to spend more than $72bn (£48bn) upgrading its military over the next two decades.
Key purchases include 100 fighter jets and 12 new submarines, replacing the current fleet of six.
Eight frigates and 24 combat helicopters are also on the list, set out in the country’s first defence white paper for 10 years.
The government says it will enable Australia to defend its interests in a changing Asia-Pacific region.
The white paper is entitled: “Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century; Force 2030”.
The 12 new hunter-killer submarines – which will be built in Australia – will double the size of the current fleet.
One hundred F-35 fighters will be purchased over the next decade, and funds will also be allocated to counter cyber and electronic warfare.
That sound you heard was the exploding of AussieHippie heads down under.
They’ll be sorry they bought the F-35. It is suffering from a bad case of too many engineers designing it and then “improving” the design, and it WILL turn out to be one of those aircraft that does nothing really well because it is all compromise between it’s customers’ engineers.
They would have been better off with some European design, or even with a Russian design like the SU-30.
Sounds like they don’t believe in hopenchange any more than we do. I wonder if they’ll have any better luck buying ammo for their new stuff?