Episode 138

To follow on from last week, we start with some thoughts about Mogami frigates and why none of them will ever be built in Australia. The simple fact is that WA companies do not have the necessary experience - and building some landing craft for the Army will not get them there. Secondly, in an outrageous oversight during the bidding process, no one was asked by Defence to provide a single line of costings on how the ships will be constructed in Australia.

Then some history of the Crimean War and the inability of British commander Lord Raglan to understand that the world had changed and that the enemy was different from what he was used to. This is appropriate remembering that just a fortnight ago, the retiring head of INDOPACOM USN Admiral Sam Paparo told Congress that the industrial base was not producing SSNs fast enough.

All sorts of fissures are occurring in the Middle East with formerly close ally Saudi Arabia denying the US access to military bases for the short lived Project Freedom. One wonders if at some point the US and Israel might also experience a rupture.

In our region, North Asia is nervously waiting for the Trump-Xi summit next week. No one knows what might happen - and this is the world we now inhabit.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(150)

Episode 145

Uncertainty continues in the Middle East with no one in the Trump administration having a clue about what they are doing; the government of Israel is out of control - and Iranian hardliners are in cha...

30 Jun 19min

Episode 144

Chaos continues in the Middle East with the status of peace talks between the US and Iran fluctuating wildly in response to continuing threats from President Donald Trump. The critical Strait of Hormu...

23 Jun 18min

Episode 143

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...

16 Jun 18min

Episode 142

There has been more news about AUKUS Pillar One and the developing story that Australia will no longer receive two second hand and one new Virginia class submarine from the US - as had been previously...

10 Jun 19min

Episode 141

What was going to be a philosophical podcast largely about uncrewed systems has been completely upended by a major change to AUKUS Pillar One. The plan from the get go has been for the US to sell us t...

2 Jun 19min

Episode 140

There's a great deal to unpack, starting with the Strait of Hormuz - and no one knows the exact state of negotiations between the US and Iran. Neither are particularly trustworthy and the situation se...

26 Mai 20min

Episode 139

There were two major events last week - Donald Trump's visit to China and the Federal budget - and from a national security perspective both were something of an anticlimax, which is probably not a ba...

19 Mai 19min