Defence Budget Cuts Australia – All The Tanks To Defend Our Continent

Posted on Fri 08/03/2012 by

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By Andrew Bolt ~

Want proof of how the Australian defence budget has been slashed to ribbons, leaving Australia almost defenceless?

What you see in the image below in this Gladstone paddock is every tank we have that’s ready for action – and not in mothballs, maintenance or training. One big bomb, and they’re all gone.

Reader Ian says here:

It shows no less than 29 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks of the Army’s 1st Armoured Regiment awaiting transport back to Darwin following the conclusion last month of Exercise Hamel in Shoalwater Bay, Queensland.

If ever there was an image that captures the paltry state of the Australian Army’s much-anguished over heavy armoured capability in this Rudd/Gillard era of defence neglect, this is it.

We bought a total of 59 Abrams tanks from the US in 2005/06, with first deliveries in 2007. Of those 59 tanks, only 41 are actually available for operations – the remainder being set aside for training and attrition stocks. In time of conflict, 41 tanks is all we would have available to send on operations.

Those 41 tanks are operated by 1st Armoured Regiment in Darwin, which is our only tank unit.

Now comes the Govt intention, announced during the May Budget, to ‘mothball’ a squadron of tanks, bearing in mind there are 14 tanks in a squadron. Therefore, 41 minus 14 = 27 tanks left.

So in fact the photo you see shows 2 tanks too many! The actual number will be 27 tanks.

Retired Major General Jim Molan confirms that this would indeed be our entire tank regiment in the field, and says no defence cut is more serious than those which have shredded our armored division.

“The centre of the army is firepower, and the firepower of the army centres on the tanks.”

For comparison, when Molan was chief of operations of all coalition forces in Iraq, fighting an insurgency, he had 400 tanks at his disposal, most of them US.

In Afghanistan, Australia had not one of its own.

Look again at the picture. Think also that we’re lucky to be able to deploy just two submarines at any one time, and that our fighter aircraft are rapidly aging, but their replacements have just been delayed for budget reasons.

How defenceless do we now look?

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

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Posted in: Australia, Blundering Bureaucrats, Leftists (In the USA aka as Liberals-Progressives), Military, Politics, Public Opinion