Anyway it’s Talisman Sabre 2025 and we have 19 nations participating with Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, and the United Kingdom, and even have Malaysian/Vietnamese observers present. But what’s got me excited is finally seeing Australian HIMARS in action, a long range mobile artillery system is something that we’ve been needing for a very long time now and it’s cool to see so many in the same place.
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/gallery/2025/7/14/australia-hosts-largest-ever-military-war-games

>>63990118 (OP)
I’ll post two more pics of the AusHimars

>>63990408
Another good picture of a line up of ‘em

>>63990118 (OP)
The other nice thing is we'll get these 'finally' some big gun SPG's locally called the Huntsman

>>63990408
>>63990411
https://www.pacom.mil/Media/NEWS/News-Article-View/Article/4245222/first-multinational-himars-launch-on-australian-soil-highlights-regional-unity/

>>63990458
Just a shame the order was cut, just like with the Redback

>>63990566
It's a shame, but there are other more important things to fund like subs, GP frigates and ASW frigates.
I'm still hopeful that the order will be increased before the line goes cold.

>>63990571
>subs, GP frigates and ASW frigates.
I wonder if we're ever actually going to get any of that before things start kicking off.

>>63990458
>>63990566
No wonder, for without shells they are useless

>>63990118 (OP)
Wonder if the bugs are watching again

>>63990571
>there are other more important things to fund
It's not an either/or question. We just don't spend enough on defence. We have spent over 2% GDP on Defence for 3 out of the last 30 years.

Picrel is the fucking reason why we "couldn't afford" even a tiny outlay on relevant equipment for the Army. Don't let the government fool you that we really had to pick between ships and IFVs. That's a false dichotomy that they spin to avoid the hard questions about why they spend more than $300b per year on the NDIS and welfare combined, but couldn't stretch from $52b per year to, like, $53b (ie an extra $1b per year for each year in forward estimates on top of what is now scheduled) per year that would be needed to fund the SPGs and IFVs etc.

>>63990752
C'mon mate. Tax cuts to the corporate and rich, and allowing the 200 biggest corporations to pay little to no tax for years on end, is a far far bigger cost to government than social security.
Thinking that social security and welfare is sapping money from defence is for simpletons. It's the tax dodging corporations that are withholding billions in funds that could be spent on defence.

>>63990949
Your own graph doesn't show that, you illiterate. Your own graph shows $80b peak revenue for that industry, when the budget for social security and the NDIS is about $320b per year. Our entire GDP is only $1.6t - ie we spend nearly 20% of our TOTAL GDP (not revenue) on federal social security. The difference between total government revenue and social security spending, both as percentages of GDP, is much smaller than the difference between our government revenue and Norway's as a percentage of GDP (our federal revenue: 30% of GDP, their's 40% of GDP, our welfare spending 17.5% of GDP). Our extraction sector is also just less valuable as a proportion of GDP than their's.

And ENTIRELY ASIDE from that, I never said we had a revenue or a spending problem like you want to argue about. What we have is a "Not spending on defence" problem.

>>63990979
You're the one that's illiterate. My graph was just an example of how much the government is missing out on. That's just one sector!

>What we have is a "Not spending on defence" problem.
Yeah, because we give away hundreds of billions to corporations and the wealthy, through endless tax breaks, tax cuts and tax dodges. Our money is finite. If those income streams were corrected and people and corporations paid what they owed, we'd have substantially more money to splash around.

But nah, let's just blame disabled people.

>>63991014
>because we give away hundreds of billions to corporations and the wealthy, through endless tax breaks, tax cuts and tax dodges.
No mate, it's just because we don't spend enough on defence. It's not some fucking mystery. We spend nearly 7 times as much, year in year out on welfare as we do on defence. It's not because we don't tax X or Y enough. It's unrelated. It's that we value every other thing more than defence. It's not complicated at all, and your attempts at complicating it to blame fucking tax policy of all things, don't stand up to any level of scrutiny or maths.

>>63991100
this troglodyte doesn't realise that when you have more revenue, you can afford to fund more things, like both welfare and defence at the same time

>>63990532
Based, iirc we are also supposed to get those new PrSM missiles for the HIMARS as well.

>>63991100
>It's that we value every other thing more than defence
Oh wow, a Western country not at war values more things than defence spending! Who would've thought that.

>>63991126
I know, these people always blame shit like going to the doctor or having a rebate for getting a wheelchair or a nurse coming to your house to dress your chronic wound, instead of the real money issue which is the eye-watering dole that the wealthy corporates get. More revenue, less the public will be worried to bring GDP on defence up.