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Post by ErrolC on Aug 24, 2016 23:02:00 GMT 12
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 25, 2016 0:08:03 GMT 12
Wow, so they will then be able to go under water? Since they carry torpedoes they'll make a great submarine force!
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Post by ErrolC on Aug 25, 2016 7:22:32 GMT 12
Presumably they expect a pretty quick turn-around on this. As the article says:
Remember, a nice new Boeing product paid us a visit not long ago...
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Post by 30sqnatc on Aug 25, 2016 9:30:02 GMT 12
I sense a conspiracy..... Great deal, buy the sensor suite now and we can provide a new airframe later.
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Post by ZacYates on Aug 25, 2016 9:54:15 GMT 12
I just really, really enjoy this remark:  |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 25, 2016 10:12:07 GMT 12
I thought Safe Air had ceased to be a New Zealand business, being sold to Airbus some time back?
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Post by 30sqnatc on Aug 25, 2016 10:52:26 GMT 12
I just really, really enjoy this remark: Now I know why I'm not the minister as I never realized that submarines had to be tracked underwater  . |
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Post by camtech on Aug 25, 2016 11:15:40 GMT 12
I just really, really enjoy this remark: Ah yes, but don't tell the submarines! |
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Post by ErrolC on Aug 25, 2016 12:52:13 GMT 12
I thought Safe Air had ceased to be a New Zealand business, being sold to Airbus some time back? It's not a NZ-owned business, but there is a major difference between only profits (plus spend on imported components) going offshore, and all of the spend going offshore. |
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Post by kiwiredley on Aug 25, 2016 18:54:45 GMT 12
Owned by Airbus Group Australasia, head office based in Brisbane. I worked for them formally Australian Aerospace which was under the Eurocopter branch of EADS. When we carried out the Kiwi P3 rewing in Sydney I remember a NZ MOD official stating that when Australia or NZ Defence tender for projects firms from either country are deemed local, something to do with the Closer Economic Relations agreement.
At least the work performed in country, by local workers mainly, I know Safe employs some contractors from ALG an Australian firm.
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Post by skyhawkdon on Aug 25, 2016 21:35:22 GMT 12
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 25, 2016 21:56:09 GMT 12
Dreams are free Don.They are wasting all the budget on more bloody ships.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Aug 25, 2016 22:14:26 GMT 12
There was an interesting article published in The Washington Post this week about the tensions between China and the USA and the dilemma this causes for Australia.
from The Washington Post....China's rise presents a dilemma for AustraliaBy DAVID IGNATIUS | 7:26PM EDT - Tuesday, August 23, 2016 Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney on August 10th. — Photograph: Mick Tsikas/European Pressphoto Agency.MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Australia has a split personality when it comes to China: Government officials stress the importance of their strategic alliance with the United States, even if it upsets Beijing. But business leaders argue that Australia must accommodate the reality of China's overwhelming economic power in Asia.
It's an awkward straddle for Australia, as its security and economic interests diverge. “It has often been noted that this is the first time in our history that our No.1 trading partner is not an ally,” notes Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in an interview here.
The Chinese “have raised scenarios where Australia could be forced to choose between the U.S. and China,” Bishop explains. “This is generally accompanied by warnings that Australia will need to choose its friends carefully, implying that economic partners may be more important than strategic allies.”
A visitor here encounters the debate about how to deal with China's growing power in almost every conversation. It's a painful dilemma: Australia has profited enormously from China's rise, posting 25 years of uninterrupted economic growth, fueled partly by its exports to China. But Australia also has a deep affinity for America and prides itself on an unblemished record of supporting the United States militarily, in good times and bad.
This balancing act became more prominent this month when the government decided to block, on national-security grounds, Chinese companies' proposed purchase of Ausgrid, the utility that provides power in the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney. The Chinese Embassy gave a tart statement to the newspaper The Australian saying that it was “highly concerned” that its investment had been rejected.
Many Australian business leaders are unhappy, too, about spurning the region's economic superpower. At a dinner here on Monday that included some prominent executives, there was near-universal criticism of the government's Ausgrid decision, which several argued was driven by needless fear among the intelligence establishment about Chinese ownership of part of Australia’s power grid.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull illustrates the twin pull: In his business career as a lawyer, he worked on many lucrative deals in China. But since taking over last September as leader of the governing Liberal Party (which is conservative, in U.S. terms), he has been a critic of Chinese actions in the South China Sea.
Turnbull argues that the prosperity-security split is a false dichotomy, because Australia can't have the former without the latter. “Our relationship with the United States is becoming more important, not less, as the center of global economic gravity shifts relentlessly towards Asia,” Turnbull said in a recent speech.
For officials across the Australian government, the potential danger from China is clear. They see a China that, under President Xi Jinping, has increasingly sought regional hegemony. Despite a rejection of its claims in the South China Sea last month by an international arbitration panel, Beijing has essentially won its campaign to create potential military bases on reclaimed islands. Australian government officials fear that China wants to treat the Asia-Pacific region in the same arbitrary way it deals with its own people.
One Australian expert likens China's military rise to the issue of climate change. It's a gradual and probably unstoppable process; the question is whether to try to mitigate its effects, by taking tough measures, or simply adapt to the inevitable.
The Turnbull government's willingness to challenge China seems based on two important assumptions. First, Beijing's continued rise isn't as inexorable as it has seemed in recent years. Chinese economic growth is slowing, and leaders are having trouble implementing economic reforms and creating the consumer-driven economy Beijing says it wants. Second, other Asian nations are becoming powerhouses, too. The Indian economy is now growing faster than China's; Indonesia's per capita GDP has increased 50 percent in the past decade; and Japan is making a slow comeback.
“What we need to ensure is that the rise of China … [is] conducted in a manner that does not disturb the security and the relative harmony of the region upon which China's prosperity depends,” Turnbull said last year in his first major interview after becoming prime minister.
A poll released this year by the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank that organized my visit to Australia, showed the conflicting pulls on the country. Asked which relationship was more important, 43 percent named the United States, and 43 percent said China.
Australia's heart and its wallet are in different places. The split may be manageable, but only if the United States remains a strong and reliable ally — an issue that many Australians fear is up for grabs in our November presidential election.• David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washington Post and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.__________________________________________________________________________ Read more on this topic:
• David Ignatius: President Trump would hand the world to China
• The Washington Post's View: Dangerous rocks in the South China Sea
• David Ignatius: The U.S. is heading toward a dangerous showdown with China
• George F. Will: China's deeply flawed ascent
• Joshua Kurlantzick: Let China win. It's good for America.www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chinas-rise-presents-a-dillemma-for-australia/2016/08/23/38d8027c-6942-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html |
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Post by shorty on Aug 26, 2016 13:52:00 GMT 12
Then, just to add to the mix, Australia's nearest neighbor has the worlds largest Muslim population, luckily we have the big moat around us but that wouldn't be insurmountable for determined fanatical groups.
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Post by pepe on Sept 2, 2016 10:31:11 GMT 12
I discovered this link (on another forum) which provides a little more technical detail in regards to the ASW update for the P-3K. thediplomat.com/2016/08/new-zealand-to-upgrade-anti-submarine-warfare-capability/The way I read it is that the acoustic processing system is receiving a fairly significant upgrade to near P-8 standard (as quoted). There is no reference to any improvements to the existing MAD system, so I am assuming that this system will remain obsolete and largely redundant. |
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sluf7
Squadron Leader
Posts: 106
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Post by sluf7 on Sept 9, 2016 22:31:39 GMT 12
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Post by phil on Sept 11, 2016 21:54:55 GMT 12
Dreams are free Don.They are wasting all the budget on more bloody ships. Because what use are ships to an island nation? |
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Post by thelensofhistory on Sept 13, 2016 18:10:53 GMT 12
Dreams are free Don.They are wasting all the budget on more bloody ships. In short a combination of daft political decisions and a lack of public in Air and Sea Power is at work. I think Dave's statement has hit upon something very important. Air Power 101 tell us ships don't fare well without air cover. Coming back to the topic. The upgrades to the P-3 Orion's is a small win for the RNZAF.  |
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Post by thelensofhistory on Sept 13, 2016 18:15:28 GMT 12
Finally a NZ politician stating that Helen Clark's "benign strategic environment" no longer exists... but I have news for you Gerry, it never existed! Does that mean we get our Air Combat Force back? Nicely said. I couldn't agree more. All I can say is at times like I find NZ political leaders to be embarrassing. |
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