Post by huntsgemein on Dec 30, 2017 3:44:06 GMT -5
Breaking news. Oz military (all 37 of them that aren't still hungover from Christmas BBQs & piss-ups that is) put on alert as Russian Tupolev long range heavy nuclear-capable bombers perform exercises off northern Australia!
Everybody head for the hills! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
What a ludicrous beat-up. 2 ageing, slow, easily intercepted PROPELLER!! driven Tu-95 strategic bombers are on a "visit" to their Indonesian allies, having refuelled en route from their Amur base in southern siberia. After another pitstop in Indonesia's Baik base off the NORTH coast of Papua, these geriatric warbirds spent another 8 hours cruising neutral international airspace, presumably before bumbling (slowly) back home to south eastern Siberia
It's just the same sort of crap media beat-up like the "secret" shipment of 20 container loads of hi-tech weaponry & advisers recently dispatched from Russia with love to Fiji. Yes, that's right, our highest current security risk seems to be from the "evil", potentially invasive kingdom of Fiji. With all due respect for that wonderful archipelago & its beautiful people, about the biggest risk this strategically insignificant island nation poses to Australia is to our reputation in international Rugby.
Mind you, it does beg the question what the fark they're (those sneaky Ruskies) doing here in the regional neighbourhood? Our own backyard, strategically speaking. Arms sales to their strategic asia-pacific partners are escalating. Both India & Indonesia are updating their tactical fighters with all-new Sukhoi Su-57 "backfire??", stealth interceptors, supplementing their (Indonesia's) Su-27 & 30 "flanker" (or is that "wanker") squadron. These are to eventually to replace their ageing General Dynamics F16 fleet. As a 5th generation stealth fighter, its generally (so I'm told by somebody who knows) pretty second hand/outdated technology. Nevertheless, the latest Su-xx fighters have pretty extraordinary slow-speed manoevrability capabilities to supposedly make up for their rather mediocre stealth capabilities.
Arms sales are big bucks, & the newly cashed-up tiger economies of Southern & Eastern asia are conducting their own arms races, with extravangance in high-tech military hardware & ordnance. Shifting startegic alliances mean that former "friends" & clients may not remain so. The enemy of my enemy is my friend etc. Pakistan buys US & Chinese hardware, so India buys Russian. Malaysia/Singapore/Vietnam move closer to the US orbit, so China & North Korea develop their own (occasionally stolen, sometimes "borrowed") strategic weapons capabilities. It must piss the US arms merchants something fierce that their former clients are buying cut-price Russian ordnance rather than their own super-expensive alternatives.
So no great strategic or even tactical threat to Australia's current & future planned arsenal of interceptor aircraft one would think.... Not necessarily so. Our planned purchase of Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman/BaE JSF F35s are so bullshit-expensive, so poorly designed, potentially ineffective, fatally flawed & compromised as to be as near as dammit to ineffective in any air combat scenario. Pentagon planners have run battle scenarios through their Cray supercomputers & found disturbing results such as 80%+ combat losses, inability to stop massed aerial combat forces, and terminally flawed performances. The F35s are slower (single engine) have a lower combat ceiling, much shorter range (useless in the Asia Pacific region, let alone continental Australia) ineffective armour & armamaents (carried inside to aid stealth capabilities) than these new gen Russian Sukhois, & planned MiG-41 stealth fighters & Beriev airborne Laser weapon. Plus there's the issue of severely compromised manoevravbility due in part to US Naval requirements of STOVL (short takeoff, vertical landing) design for carrier operations that are redundant for most clients (Norway, Denmark, Israel, Singapore, Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, Canada, Japan & of course Australia) that unlike the US & Britain lack a carrier fleet.
Even the Pentagon don't want them. Some clients have halved! their standing orders, with Norway, Canada, Australia & the USAF dramatically lowering theirs. Norway did some long term sums on their proposed fleet: each fighter was going to cost a conservatively estimated US $800 million to operate over 20 years. Each friggin' plane! For Oz, with our initial order for 100 (now 70), that's a lifetime cost of over AU $100 billion! One hundred & seven billion to be precise, assuming the (notoriously, if not ludicrously optimistically low) running costs are accurate. They never are: double, quadruple or more are more the norm these days. Given that "strategic partners" are more usually corporate entities than governments these days, lying, deceit & bribery are just standard, almost accepted if not expected behaviour in the international arms trade.
To date the whole program is over $200 billion over budget & 7 years+ behind schedule!
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT??
Everybody head for the hills! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
What a ludicrous beat-up. 2 ageing, slow, easily intercepted PROPELLER!! driven Tu-95 strategic bombers are on a "visit" to their Indonesian allies, having refuelled en route from their Amur base in southern siberia. After another pitstop in Indonesia's Baik base off the NORTH coast of Papua, these geriatric warbirds spent another 8 hours cruising neutral international airspace, presumably before bumbling (slowly) back home to south eastern Siberia
It's just the same sort of crap media beat-up like the "secret" shipment of 20 container loads of hi-tech weaponry & advisers recently dispatched from Russia with love to Fiji. Yes, that's right, our highest current security risk seems to be from the "evil", potentially invasive kingdom of Fiji. With all due respect for that wonderful archipelago & its beautiful people, about the biggest risk this strategically insignificant island nation poses to Australia is to our reputation in international Rugby.
Mind you, it does beg the question what the fark they're (those sneaky Ruskies) doing here in the regional neighbourhood? Our own backyard, strategically speaking. Arms sales to their strategic asia-pacific partners are escalating. Both India & Indonesia are updating their tactical fighters with all-new Sukhoi Su-57 "backfire??", stealth interceptors, supplementing their (Indonesia's) Su-27 & 30 "flanker" (or is that "wanker") squadron. These are to eventually to replace their ageing General Dynamics F16 fleet. As a 5th generation stealth fighter, its generally (so I'm told by somebody who knows) pretty second hand/outdated technology. Nevertheless, the latest Su-xx fighters have pretty extraordinary slow-speed manoevrability capabilities to supposedly make up for their rather mediocre stealth capabilities.
Arms sales are big bucks, & the newly cashed-up tiger economies of Southern & Eastern asia are conducting their own arms races, with extravangance in high-tech military hardware & ordnance. Shifting startegic alliances mean that former "friends" & clients may not remain so. The enemy of my enemy is my friend etc. Pakistan buys US & Chinese hardware, so India buys Russian. Malaysia/Singapore/Vietnam move closer to the US orbit, so China & North Korea develop their own (occasionally stolen, sometimes "borrowed") strategic weapons capabilities. It must piss the US arms merchants something fierce that their former clients are buying cut-price Russian ordnance rather than their own super-expensive alternatives.
So no great strategic or even tactical threat to Australia's current & future planned arsenal of interceptor aircraft one would think.... Not necessarily so. Our planned purchase of Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman/BaE JSF F35s are so bullshit-expensive, so poorly designed, potentially ineffective, fatally flawed & compromised as to be as near as dammit to ineffective in any air combat scenario. Pentagon planners have run battle scenarios through their Cray supercomputers & found disturbing results such as 80%+ combat losses, inability to stop massed aerial combat forces, and terminally flawed performances. The F35s are slower (single engine) have a lower combat ceiling, much shorter range (useless in the Asia Pacific region, let alone continental Australia) ineffective armour & armamaents (carried inside to aid stealth capabilities) than these new gen Russian Sukhois, & planned MiG-41 stealth fighters & Beriev airborne Laser weapon. Plus there's the issue of severely compromised manoevravbility due in part to US Naval requirements of STOVL (short takeoff, vertical landing) design for carrier operations that are redundant for most clients (Norway, Denmark, Israel, Singapore, Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, Canada, Japan & of course Australia) that unlike the US & Britain lack a carrier fleet.
Even the Pentagon don't want them. Some clients have halved! their standing orders, with Norway, Canada, Australia & the USAF dramatically lowering theirs. Norway did some long term sums on their proposed fleet: each fighter was going to cost a conservatively estimated US $800 million to operate over 20 years. Each friggin' plane! For Oz, with our initial order for 100 (now 70), that's a lifetime cost of over AU $100 billion! One hundred & seven billion to be precise, assuming the (notoriously, if not ludicrously optimistically low) running costs are accurate. They never are: double, quadruple or more are more the norm these days. Given that "strategic partners" are more usually corporate entities than governments these days, lying, deceit & bribery are just standard, almost accepted if not expected behaviour in the international arms trade.
To date the whole program is over $200 billion over budget & 7 years+ behind schedule!
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT??