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Four Corners

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rhen

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Never have I felt the ABC to be apolitical, so tonight's show has the potential to deliver a coup de gras to the Coalition's hopes for success in the forthcoming election. Nelson has been made to look an impulsive gudgeon, possibly a puppet to a higher "power"... sacrificing our money, worse still, our security, for what? So is he? And has he?
 
Heres a link to what the story was about (didnt see it myself) and it will be repeated about 11.35 pm Tuesday 30 October; also on ABC2 at 9.30 pm Wednesday and 8 am Thursday.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s2070484.htm


But yes there is something seriously DODGY going on here, i remeber the interview with him regarding the JSF saying the "special" feature of the fighter that sealed the deal cant and wont be dislosed.

World is full of scandals and conspiracys and id love for someone to get to the bottom of this one ..
 
The new Australian Flag when we become the 51st state

13 equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white; there is a blue rectangle in the upper hoist-side corner bearing 50 small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars (top and bottom) alternating with rows of five stars; the 50 stars represent the 50 states, the 13 stripes represent the 13 original colonies; known as Old Glory; the design and colors have been the basis for a number of other flags, including Chile, Liberia, Malaysia, and Puerto Rico.
 
Wow!!!, if it is actually true that the team conducting the wing testing made a mistake, than it has turned into a 6.6 billon dollar c#@k up. But yes alot of questions have to be asked.

How the hell could the minister of Defence take it upon himself to make such a call. What is his qualification in this area. I don't think he has even served in any capacity in the defence force.

Why didn't the head of defence force Air Marshal Angus Houston stand up and say that it was wrong when the Nelison made his announcement behind closed doors to the national defence committee. (probably because he is just another politition in disguise, and scared of raffling feathers)

I wonder what Boeing did to win over Neilson ( a man with no expertise in this field).

Defence has such a poor record when it comes to procurement of big ticket items. It seems like there is always a lack of oversite.

Boeing must be giving themselves huge back handers with this coup that they have pulled off.

Apparently a similar thing happened with the replacement Combat System for the Collins Class Submarine. The Germans had a better System, but we went for the American System, after a few friendly words from Big Brother. Reminding us the need to be able to work closely with them.

It does sound like we would have been better of going with the Russian-made Sukhoi fighters. At least then we would know we can at least match our neigbours and with superior training actually out class them. But no it all came down to big business and dirty tricks......

Four Corners are generally pretty reliable when it comes to reporting so I was quite pissed off to hear about this.
I actually hope the opposition bring Nelison to account for this decision of his.
Oh well, once he loses his seat he probably will have a nice office awaiting him with a large aircraft manufacturer if he want its. But Australia will still be left with his legacy.

The Government might be saying how good the economy has been because of their good management, well just as well if they are going to waste billions of dollars through mismangement and poor decision making..........
 
I feel sorry for the electors of Australia who will have to pay the MASSIVE bill when the 100 **TOP SECRET** Joint Strike Fighters are finally delivered to Oz (possibly even as late as 2020, according to the US expert on Four Corners who claims the 2014 delivery date is at best, a "wet dream" by the Australian Defence Department AKA B. Nelson).

So far, in ashort space of time the cost has already escalated from $US40 Million PER fighter to $US80 Million! Read my lips - that's gonna be $US8 Billion and rising fast.... spew - what that figure will be in about 2015-2020 one can only gueass at. And that for a fighter with as yet unknown capability against the next couple of generations of Su's, which according to the 4 Corners experts apparently can already *FLOG* the 24 "Super Hornet" stand-in's (which apparently cost a snip at *only* $AU275 Million each?) in all aspects of flight performance -range, speed, service ceiling, turning radius etc, etc. That the Su's are also 50% cheaper than the Super Hornets might say a lot about the premium we are prepared to offer the US to maintain our Anzus Treaty, eh?

We better hope the US stays the predominant world economic and military "Superpower" for the next 20 years rather than China, or we might have thrown all our "chips" in with the "seconds" team....

We better hope we can PAY for those suckers when the bill becomes due .... roll on the economic good times!

AJ
 
For those who missed it, here's a link to the 4 corners broadband site for article...

I apologise in advance for all the wiki links...
Glad I managed to catch the article on 4 Corners! Dr. Brendan Nelson does it again! (Can anyone get rid of this guy?)

Superhornet? IMHO have never been a big fan of McDonnelDouglas' F18/ F/A18 AF/A18 even up to the E model, sure, it's got 2 powerplants and looks great at car racing events :drink:... It's only saving grace was that our brilliant defence industry got together and modded it to the max :auslike we do to nearly all our acquisitions).
Tsssk, tssk, shame we didn't get the F15 back then...

Yes the F-111 (Pig, Aardvark or whatever you call it) might have been disagreeable to many over the years, but buying a bunch of G models a few years back from Davis-Monthan or "off the shelf" for a song was a truly inspired bit of shopping! (Beazly....? awaiting correction...)

Why would anyone attempt to replace a Mach 2.5 plus, 1200 NMile combat radius F/B, with a mach 1.8+ (ferry range no ordnance) 1800NMile land based naval aircraft? Especially given the matchups against Su-30's and MiG29s which can both fly in excess of mach2.4??? ...Speed isn't everything, true, but it sure helps...
This article from S.M.H. refers to the aforementioned "Replacement to our strike capability" with the little gem discounting it's (Superhornet) lack of strike ability..."Evidently the underwing aero-acoustic environment and resulting vibrations are so violent that some weapons are being damaged in transit to the target on a single flight - dumb bombs are fine in that environment but not long-range missiles containing sophisticated and relatively delicate components." (Sounds promising for a supposedly advanced weapons delivery system doesn't it?)

@kitehigh; Given the U.S. are looking at deploying an anti missile (STAR wars) system around Russia in FORMER Warsaw pact terrritories, I wouldn't hold out too much hope of us getting hold of any particularly high quality Sukhoi or Mikoyan Gurevich aircraft until they do away with that idea... :horse:
Shame really, apparently the Luftwaffe had a few serious surprises (in capability terms) when they got to fly the Sukhois and MiGs the East German A.F. flew BEFORE the wall came down!

I could go on...
 
I too found the 4-corners fighter story particularly disturbing from a number of fronts, which have been raised in previous discussions above.

I am still trying to reconcile whether the bloke that made this decision (pretty much off his own bat from what I can gather) is extremely "stupid", or whether he received some form of "compensation" for his efforts.

We trust people in public office to act in Australia's best interests - hard to see this is the case.

Where is the accountability for these decisions ? If there is a change of govt, hopefully someone with some common sense can order an immediate review and assessment of the decision.
 
With all the wasted money, why don't we just develop our own? We've built aircraft before, we have some of the best engineers in world, if the French and Russians can do it, why not the Aussies? We build battleships, submarines, space craft, weapons etc.
 
We may do the actual metal bashing to build the submarines and ships, but the designs are all from overseas. Germany for the Collins sub and Spain for the new AWDs. As for weapons, there are no Australian designed weapons.

We just to some "Australianisation" to the defence equipment that is bought from overseas.
 

Exactly. From a strategic perspective it's dangerous putting all our eggs in the one basket... unless you think the US is invincible.

I seem to recall the french had a superiour helicopter too, but we went for that botch up with the US too.
 
Sorry peeps, will have to disagree a bit...
Kockums = Sveridge (Sweden, SAAB- nice planes, ABBA etc.- not bad for 8mill population?)
Were going to have German electronics/warfare systems (? await correction), but we ended up with U.S.- probably a hang over from our sonarbuoy invention/ development... (which revolutionised ASW from the air)
We used to own Dasault Mirages many years ago, Aeromacchi trainers and many other procurements were not necc. U.S.... Part of the reason we were involved in the JSF early on was the R&D in that our engineering/design are well regarded by past experience and it enables information and money generation.
Collaboration, the Europeans had to do it with the Tornado (originally tendered as the M.R.C.A. multi role combat aircraft, then the Eurofighter apart from the French and Swedes also the Eurocopter Tiger)

With further regard to aircraft development and who we buy from, there are only really Lockheed and Boeing in the US, where 30 years odd ago there were McDonnel, Douglas, Fairchild, Northrop, North American maybe I've got a few wrong and forgotten others, but hope you get the picture. In fact, one of the biggest companies wasn't listed because it was involved in "Black" projects like the U2, SR71 Blackbird, F117 Stealth fighter. Yes, "Skunk works" (great read if you can find it...).
In other words, we cannot afford to go it alone with aircraft development, we are better off buying off the shelf from our allies, assisting them in developing the avionics and other systems even license building...

Beware the dark side though...
Like the stupid Kaman Seasprites for the navy, anyone spell Merlin? :ald:
The AH64 won very quickly against Tiger and Rooivalk too. Superhornets, and exclusive JSF contracts rather than forcemix of F22 Raptor, JSF, F111, Wedgetail, KC tankers etc... I'm trying to get at nepotism and corruption here but not doing it too subtly...

What I would like to see is some real sense being used in our purchases and requirements with ideas being taken as ideas rather than political stunts and lawyer/politician like alliances along party lines.
 
I'm also led to believe that we won't be given the source code for the aircraft computer systems either, making customisation and modifications impossible without paying for it once again.

I think that you will find that costings for support and spare parts won't be made public either - ever seen what a mil spec half inch washer costs?
 

No doubt on the source code, it's Lockheed, the originators of the Skunkworks (which would have been in upper echelons of the Fortune 500 had they been official)...
So, we will have to fish around in there Roland, that's not too comforting from our allie is it?

12.7 mm, no, can't say I have but would be sure to be as surprised at the price of a hammer for NASA in 1989!
 
Watch really carefully from 55 seconds to 1.12, the flips inside the loop... Superhornet bah, Slappedhornet.
F/A-18E/F Super Hornet vs. Sukhoi Flanker

Though there are some "Not so politically correct" hypotheticals;Another link from the same site...

For Australia, the F-22A continues to represent the single best choice as a replacement new build combat aircraft for the RAAF, as it is the only type which will be strategically credible in the post 2015 PacRim environment.
Click to expand...
 
roland said:
I'm also led to believe that we won't be given the source code for the aircraft computer systems either, making customisation and modifications impossible without paying for it once again.
Click to expand...
Source code isn't a problem for the ADF - we regularly update CWS info for our front line kit without the "official" source code.
 
One problem that was quoted was our apparent liking for the Mk 48 ADCAPs to arm the Collins, which would have required some major tweaking to the Euro systems. We actually tried to implement a home grown fully integrated C3 system despite the yanks, Russians and Brits failing to do so as comprehensively as we were trying to do.

I spoke to a few involved with the project - apprently they were very unhappy with ASC from when Collins first went to sea aa many of the phone lines wouldn't work; the clock-watching subbies had cable tied phone lines & electricity supplies together in some sections of the sub!


FWIW we certainly do not have a fear of European equipment (adding to Scruba's comments) - we did select the Penguin ASM for the Seasprites.

Speaking of Seasprites, a cacophany of screwups anyone?
- One of the oldest helicopter airframes still in use in the world
- Originally acquired because more Seahawks may not have fit on the joint LPV we might have (and eventually didn't) develop with Malaysia
- Running 11+ years over schedule
- 200% over budget and growing
- Will be less capable & less versatile than the cheaper (and more logical option) of acquiring & refitting Seahawks
- Ongoing maintenance & training will be more expensive (need to replicate maintenance facilities instead of expanding HS816)
 
Mofra, I'm not surprised we tried for a home grown C3, reckon it would have been pretty good too. Our people have done well with numerous systems for our defence forces...

...the clock-watching subbies had cable tied phone lines & electricity supplies together in some sections of the sub!
Click to expand...
You did mean sub-contractors rather than sub-mariners didn't you?'

Oh, and by the way for those who don't know, the youtube in post 16 is an airshow video of the Sukhoi Su30 (what some of our neighbours are purchasing), try and imagine the moves they can pull out of the public eye...
 
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