anthonybaxter | (no subject)

From the ABC:

Reports today say Australia could join the US and Japan in building a shield aimed at neutralising the regional threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea.
The Greens oppose the shield and the Australian Democrats say it will antagonise Australia's neighbours.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland says he wants more details before judging the proposal.
"You would expect our defence officials and expertise to look at the technologies, you would expect them to look at the events - in particular events occurring in North Korea," he said.
"All this information we'd obviously like to be briefed on to find out the Government's reasoning here."

Aaarrghhh. Our non-Liberal parties are retarded. The correct answer is "It doesn't work. It can't work. It's a massive handout to defence contractors for a non-working solution to a non-problem. Once again, the government is pissing defence money against a wall."
I mean, I'd expect this sort of shit from Desperate Rodent, PM. He's losing, he knows it, so he's going to keep throwing money around at half-baked ideas hoping that one works. But, for fuck's sake. If you can't figure out how to knock this one down, you don't deserve to win.

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*headdesk*

Hmm. Was the cold war an escalation to a non-threat? You've said yourself that the regime in north Korean is run by a bunch of whacko's! Could be a "Just 'cause we're not invading doesn't mean that we've forgotten about you" ploy.

That said; non-conventinal missle defence system are wrought with problems. I forsee a defence budget black hole.

edit: NK sure have a cold war mentality even if the rest of the world has moved on!

North Korea is absolutely zero threat to Australia. Anyone who thinks that they are a threat to anyone but
a) the people of North Korea
b) South Korea
c) Japan
is trying to push some sort of nonsense.

They're not wrought with problems. They just don't work. Under the best of conditions (they put a big shiny transponder on the missile to make it easier to find) it failed. The solution was to cease their testing, and just declare that it works. In a real shooting war, it takes a trivial amount of money (just pack a bunch of foil strips into the top of the missile, for instance) to make it much much harder still.

What's even funnier is the fact that even if they manage to be able to bring down highly accurate american missiles, less developed missiles which - by virtue of their lack of sophistication - have more random trajectories, are much harder to hit.

Downer stated that North Korea is no threat at the moment.

If figure its a ploy to get a contract for Metal Storm.

http://www.metalstorm.com/

A Brisbane based company who make a ship based ati-missle defence system similar to the Phalanx.

http://www.digg.com/security/The_Phalanx_Gun_Anti_Ship_Missile_Defense_System