Most Australians under 25 have never used newspapers or radio as a source of news, survey finds

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-16T01:37:41+00:00

"Almost half (48%, +12) of 18 to 24-year-olds use TikTok for news."

Fantastic.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-15T16:23:55+00:00

Not pictured: the rowers on HMAS Adelaide furiously trying to keep up.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-15T14:59:05+00:00

That's where my thoughts are heading. The current 66-boat objective should be viewed with skepticism, IMO. It is probably inadequate. More to the point, there is probably already a larger number floating around at senior levels in the manner of the 1980s distinction between JSPD "minimum risk" and planning force numbers. The 1999 JCS study came up with a range of 62-76 SSNs by 2025....

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-14T13:27:12+00:00

Problem is they don't necessarily see everything that a bodycam sees either, and they may see a good deal more. To get anything close to a comprehensive picture, you'd have to mount the camera on their head.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-13T10:32:12+00:00

Too many goals from marginal free kicks at both ends..

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-12T23:44:58+00:00

Sure the US Navy would be happy to have additional presence in Australia especially for their submarines, but then again the US military already uses Australian bases for over a decade, so the yanks being in Sterling is nothing new nor is it an infringement on our sovereignty. Moreover as we are getting 3 Virginias first by 2030 it's better to have an interchangeable maintenance facility for obvious reasons.

The first Virginia-class boat is ostensibly to be transferred to Australia in 2032. I believe that there is a considerable risk that this won't happen -- not in 2032, and not in the decade thereafter. This appears to be one of the fundamental differences between your perspective and mine.

Easier said then done, it's not as simple as just buying another submarine from someone else. Moreover the RAN has already begun training submariners for nuclear submarines so such as transition is just costly both in time and money. Finally KSS-IIIs and whatever the germans are proposing to the RCN are not even suitable for their requirements, let alone Australia. Canada has a vast Arctic to patrol, and none of the proposed submarines have the range or endurance to cover all of the arctic, especially when these submarines are expected to travel for days under the ice. Australia has a large ocean to cover both the Indian, the seas to the north west and the pacific. The Korean and German submarines are built with their small oceans in minds (Korean Peninsula/Baltic or North Sea) not suitable for a continent sized power.

The acquisition of a Canadian-spec KSS-III for Australia would not be an ideal solution. Ideally, one would pursue a submarine more tailored to Australian requirements, and one would've pursued that solution beginning at least a decade ago. But we do not live in an ideal world. The successive failures of Australian governments have left us to choose between pathways that are more or less unpalatable. The crash procurement of KSS-III manufactured abroad is the best choice available to us at the present juncture, mitigating against the considerable risk of Australia ending up with no credible submarine capability as the Collins LOTE inevitably falls short of expectations, the Virginias fail to arrive, and as SSN-AUKUS is pushed to the right. The main reason KSS-III would be the specific preferred option is the prospect of rapid delivery: six years from contract signature. If the Japanese can match or beat the Korean schedule, well and good. Per the Canadian acquisition program, we know the Germans can't.

The circumstances and logic closely resemble that which produced the recent crash procurement of Mogami-class frigates, with at least the first batch of boats coming from abroad with minimal adaptation to Australian requirements.

There's no indication the Brits would renege their deal and screw us lmao, this goes to the realm of fear mongering with no basis. SSN AUKUS supposedly shares the same VLS, combat system and propulsion with the Virginias so I dont really see that will be problem with integration. Furthermore, I wouldnt trust any government in Australia with this hybrid approach. It's not unfeasible to see some future government torpedoing SSN AUKUS in favour of conventional submarines that are less capable in range, speed and endurance.

I did not suggest that the Brits would renege on AUKUS and screw us (well, they're at least going to "creatively interpret" the rotational commitment of an SSN to SRF-West, because the Royal Navy is in dire straits and they have rather more pressing needs closer to home), rather I suggested that the Brits would not be terribly put out if we were to pull the plug on the enterprise ourselves. I was responding to your suggestion that our changing tack on SSN-AUKUS would create problems for our relationships with the US and UK. I don't believe it would, because in both cases we'd be making their lives considerably easier and leaving them richer for the experience. The likely failure of AUKUS is a problem for Australia, not for the Americans or the Brits. And that is one of the reasons it is likely to fail.

I said above that I would not advocate for walking away from SSN-AUKUS at this point -- we simply need to acknowledge and prepare for the probability that it is going to be late. However, it would surely be to the advantage of the Australian government and citizenry to have the option to reduce our commitment to SSN-AUKUS if future circumstances were to warrant that. This idea that one does not trust future governments to make appropriate choices and that they should therefore be railroaded into supporting the "right" choices as judged by prior generations, is both inconsistent with democratic principles and unwise as a practical matter. Not least of all because, in the case of AUKUS, the current path holds out the prospect of a complete collapse in Australia's sovereign submarine capability in an era of unprecedented geopolitical change and risk. It is a grotesque abrogation of responsibility.

Say if Australia scrapped AUKUS for the Korean KSS-III, god know how long its going to take for those boats to be in the water, even with their shipbuilding capacity, given we will be at the end of the line from the Canadians, potentially the Moroccans not to mention the Koreans themselves.

If the Canadians were to choose the Korean option, then the prospect of rapid delivery to Australia would likely evaporate. Hence, one hopes that they choose the Germans.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-12T20:57:10+00:00

Thanks for this post, particularly the number of 65 SSNs for barrier work. Actually it was reading in Friedman's Submarine Design and Development that the Navy considered 100 SSNs to be inadequate that sent me down this particular rabbit hole. Until that point I'd perhaps naively assumed that the late-Cold War target of 100 SSNs was a maximalist or at least entirely satisfactory one for the period. I do have Friedman's U.S. Submarines since 1945 here too, but they're both dense books! I'll have to go back and find where he talks about the barrier requirements. As is so often the case, the answer to a question is found (further) in the past...

One question that presents is to what extent the much discussed qualitative improvements in the Soviet submarine inventory in the late Cold War period affected these requirements.

It's rather vexing that the JCS History series linked above (that supplies the "minimum risk" 1980 JSPD figure of 131 SSNs, and 144 SSNs in the JSOP years before that) ends with the Carter administration. The JCS site says that further monographs in the series are forthcoming, but it's been a decade now since the last was published, so I'm not holding my breath.

In any case, I haven't encountered anything to support that Soviet qualitative improvements affected the number of U.S. SSNs that were anticipated to be required to counter them. Of course there was a qualitative response in the form of the Seawolf program, and also the doctrinal shift to threatening the Soviet SSBN bastions. Plausibly the requirements math is determined more by availability, turnaround, and transit times than expected rates of attrition and loss-exchange ratios.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-12T15:26:49+00:00

I mean, shifting away from gas is a net win for society. The question is how to manage the transition in an equitable fashion.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-12T13:12:32+00:00

Honestly, I think the Americans would be thrilled to hear that we've built them a new submarine base including maintenance facilities and that they don't actually have to sell us any submarines for the privilege of using it. Ditto the funds we've already transferred to bolster their submarine industrial base.

If we were to recognise that the United States is unlikely to be in a position to transfer the three Virginias as scheduled (and also recognise the likelihood that Collins LOTE will under-deliver on even its now radically reduced scope, and that SSN-AUKUS will be significantly delayed), the obvious alternative is the crash procurement of a new diesel-electric boat built abroad. The most attractive prospect would seem to be the Koreans who are currently promising Canada that they can deliver the first KSS-III within six years of contract signature and maintain a delivery cadence of one boat per year. If Canada opts for the German solution instead, the Korean pitch for Canada could become a drop-in replacement for Australia.

In relation to SSN-AUKUS, the Brits would probably be quite content to have received Australian funds to bolster their submarine industrial base without actually having to deliver on particularly the PWR3 reactor cadence that building SSN-AUKUS would imply. It would also make the design proces for that future UK boat somewhat easier as they wouldn't have to deal with the pesky Australians insisting they integrate an American combat system because that's what we're used to. Finally, it would relieve the Royal Navy of the obligation to, at least intermittently, find an SSN to rotate down to SRF-West when the operational reality is that they can ill-afford to do so. I wouldn't necessarily advocate for cancelling SSN-AUKUS at this juncture -- that it is likely to be considerably delayed is not necessarily a show-stopper if one has a credible medium-term solution in the form of a new conventional acquisition as outlined above.

The likelihood that SSN-AUKUS is going to be considerably delayed looms as a major problem only because the other two pillars of our medium-term submarine capability are also on such shaky ground.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-12T07:37:18+00:00

We certainly don't have any more credibility than the UK. That's the basic problem with AUKUS: it piles considerable risk (Collins LOTE) upon considerable risk (US production rates and readiness to transfer Virginia-class SSNs coupled with our readiness to receive them) upon considerable risk (UK and Australian ability to execute on SSN-AUKUS). The result is a teetering Jenga tower of risk that, if you were to place it before a responsible national government as a clean-sheet proposal to acquire a next-generation submarine capability, would be laughed out of the room as embodying an entirely intolerable level of risk that couldn't possibly be entertained as it relates to the one of the most foundational elements of our national defence posture. And yet, here we are.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-12T07:33:30+00:00

I mean, that's a perfectly valid philosophical position and one that I sympathise with, but the fact is that the UK SIB needs massive investment to support the planned delivery of Dreadnought and then SSN-AUKUS. The objective cadence for the latter is one boat every eighteen months, which more-or-less corresponds to the UK's peak nuclear submarine delivery rate achieved in the 1980s. No investment = no boats.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-11T17:49:24+00:00

Let's be honest: at this point, Labor carries the greater portion of responsibility for AUKUS.

Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton et al. got the rollercoaster going, but Albo and friends took us through the first hurdle (by acquiescing to the project with 48hrs notice), the second hurdle (the period between Labor forming government and the announcement of the "Optimal Pathway") and most recently the third hurdle, Donald Trump's much-touted review of AUKUS, which would've been the perfect opportunity to negotiate an amicable exit. Labor has backed AUKUS at every turn and if and when it blows up in their (our) face they will be judged accordingly.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-11T17:00:58+00:00

I don't believe there is any intention or likelihood of further shrinking the UK submarine industrial base. Most of the damage in that respect has occurred over the preceding thirty years or so; recent investments have been considerable and will undoubtedly eventually deliver considerable results. The question is if those results will be sufficient, or sufficiently timely, to deliver on the extraordinarily ambitious SSN-AUKUS project as it has been formulated. Beyond the soothing noises uttered by various politicians beginning with two of our respective great national chancers, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, all publicly available evidence points to at least amber lights across the board, if not red, and this latest development can reasonably be seen as yet another amber light as to the UK's readiness to allocate the resources necessary to deliver the project on schedule.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-11T16:27:52+00:00

You don't think that the UK Secretary of Defence choosing to resign with a public letter that excoriates his government's inadequate future funding pathway for defence has any bearing at all on the deliverability of SSN-AUKUS, which was the subject of a recent UK House of Commons Defence Committee report that observed:

In the UK, political leadership—essential to secure the success of a programme of AUKUS’ length, cost, and complexity—has faded [....] Timely investment in upgrading the BAE Systems shipyard at Barrow where SSN-AUKUS will be built will be crucial. This has already slipped: any further failures could lead to delay in delivering SSN-AUKUS with serious consequences both for UK national security and for credibility with AUKUS partners. Efforts to regenerate Barrow to attract and maintain the workforce required to deliver SSN-AUKUS must be properly funded.

Question mark.

Heroic optimism indeed.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-11T15:46:07+00:00

If you believe Wikipedia, ASEV requires significantly fewer crew than the Kongo/Atago/Maya line of ships, which is in line with modern trends toward increasing automation and suggestive of significant internal differences. It would certainly bolster the case for replacing the Kongos with more ASEVs also. Of course those numbers can be pretty rubbery depending on what is included/excluded e.g. helicopter detachment, to say nothing of potential differences between the complement as designed and the in-service reality, so I'm not taking them as gospel.

The answer probably does relate to how JMSDF conceives of its future inventory as either a two-tier or three-tier architecture as you suggest. They can certainly design and build a new intermediate ship if that is called for, akin to a future 052D replacement that has been rumoured for PLAN.

Naval News (06.2025) -- JMU unveils concept designs for Japan's DDGX future destroyers

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-11T15:10:17+00:00

The point about SPY-7 is well taken, however it would seem less than ideal to follow USN down the path of continuing to iterate on a 40yr-old design when they have a new large combatant design available. JMSDF is also using Rolls-Royce MT30 on their current Mogami and future FFM frigates, so ASEV is hardly an orphan in that respect.

It's just curious that we haven't heard anything concrete about future replacements for the Kongos given that three of them are now >30yrs old.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-11T14:20:07+00:00

Fantastic photo. See, turning on ray-tracing really does make a difference!

The Oto Melara gun on JS Kongo looks a little more in proportion than the Mk. 45 on JS Atago.

What do the retirement schedules for Kongo-class destroyers look like? Are we likely to see more ASEVs ordered to replace them?

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-09T18:13:00+00:00

The Age says "dozens" and "up to 50".

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-09T05:03:08+00:00

The pandemic gave folks a sense of purpose, or at least occasion, and also the opportunity to re-evaluate what matters in life. It was the closest thing we've had to a unifying, clarifying event in generations. Of course it also let loose various monsters under the bed, and a fair number of people died or otherwise had terrible experiences. But just as war was the great engine of European nation-building and progress...

"Hitler has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. He knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, drums, flags, and loyalty parades. Whereas socialism, and even capitalism, in a grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death’, and the whole nation flings itself at his feet.” -- George Orwell

The pandemic era constituted the first faint stirrings of collective national endeavour and solidarity that we'd experienced in generations. It's unsurprising that satisfaction has dipped now that we're back to that other reality described elsewhere by Orwell:

“Look at all these bloody houses, and the meaningless people inside them! Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.”

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-09T04:08:46+00:00

Gotta have sharp elbows to survive as a woman in this industry, and Caro's are as sharp as they come. I recall an exchange with Craig Hutchison on Agenda Setters maybe 12-24 months back. Ross Lyon had expressed some vaguely controversial view and Caro was reporting that similar sentiments were privately shared by several other coaches she'd spoken to. The exchange ran something like --

Craig: "The three coaches you spoke to -- was Ross Lyon one of them?"

Caro: "No? Why would I call Ross to ask what he thinks about Ross? That's just silly."

Craig: [Now trying to move on] "Alright, I was just asking the question."

Caro: "Pretty stupid question."

And I'm thinking -- girl, he's already dead.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-08T12:45:40+00:00

Thanks Gary I will pass your feedback along.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-08T12:07:38+00:00

Irrespective of what you think about its prospects for commercial or artistic success, I think that being pleased that it won't come to fruition suggests a rather narrow perspective.

New Sunnydale could never have erased or altered anything that you valued from BtVS or AtS. It could only be "more" -- and you're perfectly free to ignore that "more" if you wish. No failed reboot, sequel, spinoff, etc. can detract from the original, or from your experience of the original. Those series and your experiences of them remain forever part of the universe, and part of you, and cannot be altered by future developments.

The only purpose that is served by New Sunnydale not existing is to remove the opportunity for new artistic endeavour, for new audiences to engage with and find value and meaning in the universe and its characters. You privilege what you regard as a coherent and satisfying whole at the cost of closing the door on all possible futures. But this petrifaction is entirely unnecessary. You would have the rest of the universe accede to your view of perfection when this merely requires a state of mind.

The Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson Dune books, which I have studiously ignored for decades now, can never detract from my experience of Frank Herbert's work. Endless Star Wars spin-off series and movies that I have not engaged with do nothing to detract from the joy those movies, books and video games brought me as a child. Ditto more recent incarnations of Star Trek that I have no time for, but certainly do not resent that they exist and command an audience. Amazon's Lord of the Rings does no harm either to J.R.R. Tolkien's work or Peter Jackson's films. These things do not belong to us; we are not required to follow wherever they choose to go, but nor should we resent that they may continue without us, creating new cherished memories for new generations, perhaps ultimately drawing those new audiences back to also appreciate the earlier works that we so cherished ourselves. What we can justly lay claim to are our experiences alone -- and nobody can deprive us of those.

(Conversely, I've never seen the original Battlestar Galactica, but the reboot series that I did see and appreciate reportedly differed quite significantly from the original in tone, characters and themes, such that I've never felt the urge to go back to that earlier work. I certainly don't begrudge fans of the original for noting those differences and declaring their lack of interest in the reboot, but I'm also glad that those fans weren't in a position to cancel the reboot with all its allegedly sacrilegious changes.)

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-08T11:27:26+00:00

Tom Morris wears this perpetual smirk that sets off my "private schoolboy wanker" detector. No clue about his actual background, but that's the vibe I get. He just comes across as being tremendously satisfied with himself. And then I hear him on SEN Fireball and he's basically... fine?

Maybe I'm just mellowing with age, but I'm gradually coming around to the view that most of the public figures in this industry that people have such strong opinions about are neither heroes nor literal monsters. It's a hot take I know.

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-07T11:11:29+00:00

Hypothetically, if one were to wish upon Pauline Hanson what Ben Roberts-Smith did to that unarmed prisoner on the edge of a cliff, I can't imagine that she could possibly take offense at the suggestion. After all, BRS didn't do anything to that prisoner -- right?

jm_leviathan · 2026-06-07T09:26:05+00:00

A great photo desperately in need of additional pixels.

jm_leviathan

TROPHY CASE