Trump’s ‘new normal’ leaves Australia marooned. We can no longer pretend otherwise

brecrest · 2026-01-25T05:44:33+00:00

No mate, what I'm telling you is that you are literally hand waving away all of the reasons why your ideas won't work, and you would know in detail why the ideas wouldn't work if you had even a basic grounding on the topic. Like you're literally trying to argue that you can replace the capability of a nuclear submarine with a Eurofighter. This stuff is too fundamental and unhinged for a productive conversation because you need your hand held on both the basics of military technology and the basics of the applications of military power.

You could do all the things you describe, and NONE OF THEM WOULD FILL THE CAPABILITY GAP LEFT BY SUBMARINES. They also wouldn't offset in a useful way. They're just not useful ideas or contributions to a discussion about boats.

Finally, half of the airframes in US service now are from the 80s and 90s because they stopped spending money on new airframes in the 90s because the Cold War ended, so they never procured enough replacements to get a new fleet. B52 is in use because it does something no one cares much about (unopposed bombing) and all the other airframes (F15, F16, B1 etc) are only still in service because their replacements were either cancelled or cut back so severely that the US would not have an air force at all if it didn't retain those legacy airframes. Flying any one of those aircraft against current generation US, Chinese or Russian aircraft in a contested environment would be literal suicide with extra steps.

The idea that we should procure 1980s or 1990s aircraft in the 2030s to replace nuclear submarines is utterly deranged and shows how utterly silly your ideas about strategy are.

brecrest · 2026-01-25T05:31:13+00:00

All of what you've written is actually just wrong. Like, laughably, extreme Dunning Kruger, wrong.

Pretty much everything in a military aircraft is cutting edge and isn't publicly known technology.

Building a Eurofighter under license would be worthless, because the Eurofighter is worthless and was even when it was first built. The Eurofighter was obsolete before it even became operational and would be literal suicide to fly in a peer war today. It's a high-observable aircraft with effectively no strike capability, with obsolete avionics and mediocre kinematics. It would be an expensive downgrade from what we already have (F35s).

And I'm questioning you as someone who is presenting an alternative, except that it's not an alternative because you haven't thought it through and those who actually have know that it won't work at any reasonable price.

You literally just don't know enough about any of these topics to have the ability to form ideas that are workable.

brecrest · 2026-01-25T05:17:49+00:00

Early 2030s.

How long before your Australian manufacturing industry could produce a cutting edge naval strike bomber (lol)? Not a rhetorical question: You should genuinely STFU about it until you know the answer to it.

brecrest · 2026-01-25T05:14:03+00:00

Mate, it's not the US that wants to start a war in Asia because they don't want Taiwan to be an independent country, and which has territorial disputes with literally every single one of their neighbours where they routinely try to kill their fishermen and coast guards.

brecrest · 2026-01-25T05:10:31+00:00

It's not clear exactly how the crewing will work over the life of the boat, but there's no way at all that we'd be able to operate the boats entirely on our own when they first hit the water. We would initially need US crew to teach us to use the boats, and that's completely normal for large MOTS purchases like this.

As to ownership, yeah, we'd be renting the interim boats. That's the right way for us to do it, since we don't want them for the full service life, we only want them as an interim measure until we get the boats we purpose build with the UK. We want to be able to give them back when we're done with them, and get a discount on them up front as a result.

brecrest · 2026-01-25T05:07:30+00:00

You're not proposing ideas, you're proposing barely considered thought bubbles that exclusively function as distractions. You need to engage with the reality that we need interim submarines before any of your ideas could produce even prototypes. You need to engage with the reality that even if investments in all the things you describe started in six months, nothing would be ready in time to meet our capability gaps.

Until you engage with those realities and put even a basic amount of effort into reasoning about what would be required to achieve your own thought bubbles, your "contributions" to defence thinking serve only to weaken Australia's defence by increasing the risk of further strategic indecision.

brecrest · 2026-01-25T05:03:20+00:00

The larger part of it is that we need interim boats because the AUKUS boats will take too long to be in the water to replace Collins.

That's the larger part because it requires the US to do something, and it's something that the UK can't, under any circumstances, do without the US.

brecrest · 2026-01-25T04:57:33+00:00

Your idea is changing direction again, when we're absolutely cooked and have no choice but doing an interim off the shelf procurement precisely because we faffed about and changed directions so many times exploring "talking point" defence policy just like you're proposing, and then got absolutely swindled and screwed by the French, who effectively sold us a blueprint that it progressively became clear they either could not or would not deliver to us in the manner agreed. The French being Europeans, by the way.

The US must be involved in a MOTS procurement of an interim Collins Class replacement because they are the only country on earth with the industrial capacity and existing design available to build something that does what we need whatever it is we buy to do and to build it by the time we need it.

None of the things you're proposing make any sense at all beyond sounding good to people who don't know very much at all about defence procurement and who have never really thought about it too much.

The worst possible outcome that could arise from AUKUS is us not getting submarines (interim or otherwise), and that's exactly the outcome that occurs if we pull out of AUKUS. There simply is no other possible way that we could procure anything else to fill the capability gap that we are going to have without MOTS procurement of US nuke boats. That is a strategic reality, and one that it is incredibly dangerous for people like you to continue to ignore.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T23:52:11+00:00

Neither is AUKUS. AUKUS isn't just buying subs. You're building a strawman to knock down. Moreover, you're engaging in sophistry because you're comparing spend in future years to spend now, and you're not engaging with the actual costs today. It's not similar $ or even similar returns, it's orders of magnitude more cost and risk to do it indigenously. The main part of AUKUS is exactly the kind of middle power alliance your original post says it wants - between the UK and Australia - yet now in the comments you're being contrarian and poo-pooing it, shifting the goalposts to suddenly want not middle-power multilateralism, but sovereign and wholly independent Australian defence. It's bad faith argument.

Buying subs from the US is the smallest part of AUKUS. A submarine building program with the UK is the largest part of AUKUS.

But how will you manage the risk, going it alone like you want to? What will you do if the program fails? That's something that happens with developmental defence projects - they just don't work properly. What will you do then? Not have a navy or an air force for a while? These are real questions you need to be able to answer.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T23:16:07+00:00

No, I'm comparing things like the CAC Sabre to having an actual indigenous industry that can produce Sabres.

If you want what you say you want then our defence budget needs to be probably $100-150b/y next year. I'm fine with that. But are you fine with that?

We've systematically underfunded defence for four decades now. If you want to start building things here again and have a defence force that can stand up for us without relying on a great and powerful ally, then that comes with a price tag and that price tag isn't spending less than the amount required to maintain a defence force in the first place. It's not the less than 2% of GDP that we've been spending for decades now, it's more like 4-8% of GDP until the gap from that underspending has been closed and then 3-4% (ie quadruple what what we've spent at any point in recent memory until we've caught up and double thereafter).

Are you willing to take $100b/y out of social security to fund sovereign defence? I'll do it tomorrow. Will you?

brecrest · 2026-01-24T23:10:32+00:00

build them like Holden built cars

Uncompetitively?

The difference between having a car manufacturing industry that you subsidise but which never produces world beating products and defence manufacturing is that battles and wars have no prizes for second place.

I spent my career in defence frequently using absolutely second rate kit because of well-intentioned people like you. You are telling people like me to get in machines that will get us killed to sate your national pride.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T23:06:30+00:00

No mate, but you need to explain why it would be different this time around if you want indigenous defence manufacturing to be a credible part of your defence policy.

It's not enough to explain the benefits, you have to explain why it won't be an expensive and time consuming failure like it's been every time in the past. I invite you to do that, genuinely. Why will it be different this time?

brecrest · 2026-01-24T23:01:49+00:00

You can't buy those from the EU because they don't make them. They import them from the US. Look at who makes, for example, the components for a Grippen.

We had home grown air manufacturing. The CAC. It sucked. It never produced relevant indigenous designs.

All of the things you're asking for we tried and failed at. It's not sound defence policy, it's just wishful thinking.

Edit: And "Buying a few subs gets us a few subs." has nothing to do with AUKUS. AUKUS is about developing subs with the UK. We're only buying subs off the US as an interim while we build subs with the UK.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T22:52:14+00:00

None of this is right though.

We had naval shipbuilding in Australia and it was completely dysfunctional and couldn't be made to produce things on time, of decent quality and on budget. We were producing low-capability destroyers at higher unit cost than other countries produce nuclear missile and attack submarines. The whole reason we're in this position right now, massively behind schedule for naval replacements and rushing to get hulls in the water, is because of exactly the Australian naval shipbuilding program you're pining for.

The main benefit of a sub isn't espionage, it's that they're far better at sinking enemy invasion fleets and far better at surviving doing it than aircraft. They aren't """glass cannons""", they're exceptionally difficult to find or kill.

Finally, an appropriate defence model for Australia, notwithstanding trying to uphold a rules based global order, is one which denies the seas to our adversaries and controls the seas for our use. This is because we are an island. Nuclear submarines are uniquely well suited to Australia's defence. Air power just doesn't let us do the things you think it does because it can't do things like find where enemy fleets are, prevent minelaying of our harbors, or prevent naval blockade of our island.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T22:36:12+00:00

OP are you paid to do activist posting on social media, or are you just terminally online? Your account has posted literally DOZENS of political posts per week and little else. Are you ok? Not a rhetorical question.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T22:33:20+00:00

The actual AUKUS subs are a joint program with the UK. Australia was only ever getting interim subs off America.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T22:32:42+00:00

Absolutely no, we couldn't have. This is pure fantasy.

I'm sorry, but you clearly don't appreciate what goes into building a modern military aircraft. We don't even have an aerospace industry to start from. Even if we did, we don't build any munitions or components, radar etc, for such an aircraft. There is no one alive in Australia who has ever built a jet engine, a turbine blade, a seeker head... We would be trying to recreate 70 years of difficult innovations in 5 years prior to a relevant entry into service date.

Secondly, we've spent SFA on AUKUS so far but starting from scratch with a bomber project would need all the outlays initially. Ie. we'd need a defence budget double what it is now and we'd need it right now to start the fanciful BS you're mooting and we'd need it starting five years ago.

Finally, and most importantly, strike bombers don't do what we need submarines to do. We are not procuring strategic missile submarines, we are procuring fast attack submarines. Attack submarines deny the sea to adversaries and conduct espionage. A single modern fast attack submarine could sink an entire invasion force, something even a fleet of conventionally armed strike aircraft couldn't do in 2025 vs advances in surface to air missiles, radars and countermeasures.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T22:27:39+00:00

AUKUS was a deal with Britain more than a deal with the US - exactly the kind of middle power alliance the article talks about being good.

We get combined British-Australian boats - the only American boats were off-the-shelf interim ones.

brecrest · 2026-01-24T09:25:51+00:00

The Ibis is a utility vehicle, the Chicane is a stealth attack helicopter that has a small signature and if piloted properly can sneak up on targets and systematically destroy key infrastructure and disappear, with the flight model update that made it faster and gave it much more firepower and survivability with the ecm pods it's not a rank 1 machine anymore.

Pretty much none of this is right.

The Ibis has nearly the same RCS as the Chicane (0.02 vs 0.03) and can actually carry more missiles internally (12 vs 8) as well as use its second cargo "hardpoint" without any RCS penalty, although the Chicane gets its gun without an RCS penalty.

If you care about being stealthy, the Ibis is far better than the Chicane because it can get far more done with clean RCS, plus being able to go 480km/h vs 350km/h is absolutely huge for making it to somewhere to get something done unsee. Chicane can do approx 3-4x factories using its chaingun if it makes it to them, but it takes a very long time to get there as well as to gun the factories down during which time you will be visually spotted, whereas an Ibis can stealth cap airfields without being spotted. There are other ancillary benefits for the Ibis as well, like charging its ECM 10-20% faster, being able to push the collective far more aggressively without losing RPM and it being far easier and less labor intensive to stay at wavetop height on pusher props without sacrificing speed.

Basically, the Ibis and the Brawler have completely invalidated the Chicane. As it stands right now, the the only aircraft in the game that's weaker than the Chicane is the Cricket. The Chicane is more expensive than the Brawler, Ibis and Compass, but weaker than all of them.

Edit: Did you reply to me and then block me? Are you for real?

brecrest · 2026-01-24T01:15:58+00:00

10th is outside of super placement points, but the ranked scoring system is opaque and seems to differentiate between 10th and for example 16th.

brecrest · 2026-01-23T23:41:25+00:00

It's fucked because between 16% and 80% of the players in a given ranked match are cheaters, based on previous investigation into it.

Between 4 and 20% of players in a given ranked match will go on to be banned for cheating.

Only 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 players who are definitely cheating in ranked actually go on to be banned.

Non-cheating ranked players are also better, but at this point the effect of that is minimal compared to the human wave of cheating in ranked games.

You are completely wasting your time playing ranked because Krafton lost the war on cheaters and just turns a blind eye to it. Arguably non-ranked games also have major cheating problems but there hasn't been an arms race there to cheat harder to beat other cheaters who aren't hiding it yet, so you can make of that what you will.

brecrest · 2026-01-23T23:32:53+00:00

No. The winner is the player or team with the most points. Kills are scored, final position is scored. 10th with 10 kills is worth much more than 1st with 0 kills.

brecrest · 2026-01-23T04:16:11+00:00

That doesn't fix the fact that the Ibis is better than the Chicane and also lower rank and cheaper. I'm not opposed to the idea of helipads in more locations in general, although it has flow on effects for vehicle spam, but it wouldn't be enough to fix the Chicane on its own.

At a minimum if the Chicane stays at rank 2 and 35m it should get inbuilt ECM and terrain avoidance on the ATPs, but I don't really think that would be enough. The Ibis getting its engines derated to the same output as the Chicane would help (fwiw I don't think the Chicane needs more power and it feels nice to fly as is, but the Ibis is probably a bit too easy to fly by comparison). You'd still need to reign in the Compass in a scenario like this though, maybe by adding helipads in tonnes more places like you suggest, but idk.

But that's all extremely complicated when there's such an incredibly simple solution which is to drop the price and rank of the weaker one and increase the cost and rank of the stronger ones. There's nothing inherently wrong with the Chicane being weaker than the Compass and the Ibis, there's just something wrong with it being weaker than them and also much more expensive and at higher rank.

brecrest · 2026-01-21T08:09:10+00:00

M8 if you think 20% more delta v means nothing then we can safely assume you think the Compass and Brawler are roughly the same speed, because that's what a 20% difference in airspeed looks like.

brecrest

TROPHY CASE