• Last week saw a bit of extra good news for Ukraine with the announcement that Australia will donate 49 M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks that are being retired from service. An extra 10 Abrams will be available for spare parts, or they could be returned to a usable condition. No matter how you look at this, it’s a significant contribution because while the tanks are a bit long in the tooth they are still a formidable capability, particularly against the ageing junk that Russia is now forced to field. Also last week saw a bit of coverage of the latest US Congressional Research Service report into AUKUS Pillar One – and it identifies a number of failures in the Australian process. Related to this, we are spending billions of dollars in WA getting ready for the deployment of US and possibly UK nuclear-powered submarines with no one doing the analysis of whether we should simply increase the size of that force for the defence of Australia. Finally some words about the company Austal – how come they are all of a sudden in such a privileged position?

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