Show Notes
A ceasefire deal has been announced in the Middle East, but it's too early to know if it will be permanent. On the AUKUS front, the UK Defence Secretary John Healey resigned last week in the middle of a visit by his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles. Whoops! While his resignation was not directly over AUKUS, it is connected to it because Mr Healey does not believe the UK is spending nearly enough on defence capabilities - and those include nuclear powered submarines.
The UK industrial base is in such poor shape that - once again - no Astute class SSNs can go to sea because they are awaiting maintenance. One of those is HMS Anson, which made a visit to Australia in February that was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Anson started experiencing problems - possibly with reactor piping issues - and is now out of service for an unknown period of time. You won't hear about that from the Australian government. The Royal Navy surface fleet is not in much better shape.
UK submarine construction happens at Barrow in Cumbria. Many Australian journalists have expressed an interest in visiting the yard, but all have been rejected for completely bogus security reasons. The real reason is because the town of Barrow is without any redeeming features, meaning the recruitment of an additional 10,000 workers to build SSN AUKUS looks like a pipe dream - and the main construction hall at the yard was probably badly damaged by a fire in 2024. Finally, Ukraine is scoring noticeable battlefield success against Russia. The Australian government needs to get off its backside and sign a security treaty with Kyiv - a process that has been stalled for at least a year due to the indifference of our politicians. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Asia Pacific Defence Reporter
Australian politicians and Defence planners - please note that the US betrayal of Ukraine is worsening. On top of an illegal decision to purchase Russian diesel fuel, other sanctions have been lifted and the absolutely vital Star Shield military grade internet service to Ukraine was curtailed. During that time, launches of Russian ballistic missiles went undetected, resulting in civilian deaths - and the outrage in the US has been so strong that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are now blaming each other.
We start with the latest ongoing US betrayal of Ukraine - and it's a shocker. Following a 90 minute phone call with his best friend Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump has announced that the US will now buy diesel fuel from Russia. This is a total breach of western sanctions and not only stabs Ukraine in the back but also undercuts support for Ukraine. The consequences could be profound and demonstrate again that the Trump administration will break any alliance agreements whenever it suits them.
We start with some words about delayed flights in Australia and how this is a metaphor for obscure Defence decision-making, especially on subjects like AUKUS. Nuclear-powered submarines are great for travelling long distances at high speed underwater but there has never been any analysis of how this benefits Australia - particularly for the gigantic amounts of money involved.
A lot has been happening on the international scene with Australia's PM Anthony Albanese at the United Nations in New York partly to lobby for one of the rotating seats on the Security Council. It's not clear how much support Australia will receive since we are in the process of converting ourselves into one giant US military base.
We begin with another Defence procurement farce. Two years ago Defence abandoned a project called JP 9102 for geostationary military communications satellites with Minister Richard Marles explaining that they were too vulnerable and of insufficient capability. In an extraordinary development, Defence has just issued a tender for a satellite very similar to the one they cancelled. The problem is that we have missed at least 3 years acquiring a vital capability - and Australian industry lost more than $300 million because of the ineptitude of Defence.