SON OF STAR WARS II: NEOCONS DOWN UNDER

"It’s
not Star Wars. It’s basically the capability to defeat ballistic
missiles whilst they are in the air after launch, during cruise or as
they reenter the atmosphere and that defensive capability has developed
enormously in the last few years. A year or so ago it was thought to be
decades away. Now the United States will in fact deploy the first part
of its defence shield next year. So it’s a rapidly advancing
technology."

"The need in a very unpredictable world is to be
able to defend ourselves, whether it’s troops on the ground or whether
it’s strategic assets and what we have is the opportunity to get into
this massive project at an early stage, to be able to invest in it, to
learn what capabilities might be suitable for us in the future and
basically to have that option, the option to be able to develop that
form of defence in the future."

"We think that in the science
and technology area we will make a contribution from the start. The
Americans have been out here looking at our capabilities. They have
been most impressed with JORN, for example, and new forms of radar and
sensors that are being developed here north of Adelaide. And they will
have the opportunity to promote and invest in their science through
this project. This is a massive project, a huge public expenditure by
the United States and it gives us the opportunity to get into the
project and to play our part and to get a benefit in terms of a more
secure Australia."

"We will choose the projects within the
massive program that we want to invest in and obviously we will do that
to the background of our successes to date, in terms of radars and
sensors and the like. And we will get benefit back from that investment
in terms of better capability for Australia."

"We have said the
Air Warfare System will basically be a US design but the US designers
are interested in Australian companies contributing complementary parts
of the system. That again will be an opportunity that our companies
have never had before at that level of sophistication."

Robert Hill December 5 2003

Now let's take the Tardis to December 6 2005

[extract from the Adelaide Advertiser]

Outlining
other strengths of the SA defence industry, Senator Hill said the
Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) - consisting of two
over-the-horizon radars - might be used as part of Australia's
contribution to the U.S.'s so-called Star Wars missile shield.

The
two over-the-horizon radars are jointly operated from the JORN
Coordination Centre at RAAF Base Edinburgh by the No. 1 Radar
Surveillance Unit.

Trials of the JORN last year for missile defence proved it was successful in detecting a target.

This involved detecting ballistic missiles during the "early boost phase", allowing earlier interception.

Two
days later Minister Hill revealed, while announcing the placement of
the AEGIS order, that unless Australia had taken this action
Lockheed-Martin would have need to shut down its AEGIS production line,
telling The Advertiser that

"Placing
the order . . . allows the U.S. to continue manufacturing without
halting its production line, bringing about greater efficiency and
achieving considerable savings," he said. "The purchase will also
maximise opportunity for Australian industry to provide sub-systems
such as communications, electronic warfare, sonar, electro-optical
sensors and other equipment."

It's good to know that, even though we don't have a final design for the ships yet, we know what we'll shoot from them.

Last Thursday the Pentagon extolled the success of it's Southern Hemispheric Missile Shield trial.

[extract from The Advertiser]

The
latest test in the Pacific was designed chiefly to evaluate the
performance of the interceptor missile's rocket motor system and
Raytheon Co-built "exoatmospheric kill vehicle", the bit designed to
smash into the target warhead and pulverise it in space, MDA said.

It also successfully tested, among other things, silo support equipment, the agency said.

Last February, a ground support arm in the silo malfunctioned because
of hinge corrosion caused by what MDA later said had been "salt air
fog" that entered the underground silo.

Boeing said in a statement that the interceptor will be flown against a live target in subsequent tests.

The flight test yesterday validated the system's ability to track,
acquire and provide the interceptor with the data for a "hit-to-kill"
intercept, Chicago-based Boeing said.

All told, the United
States is spending roughly $US9 billion ($11.95 billion) a year to
develop a layered missile shield, including components based at sea and
in space. The shield is designed to knock out the type of ocean-leaping
missile that could be tipped with a nuclear, chemical or germ warhead.

In
the dramatic public competition for the winning of the AWD contract...
two state governments toe-to-toe in the media, complete with
Adelaide-base journo-terrorists invading Melbourne to present the case
for South Australia. The Advertiser journalists were lead in the charge
by Craig Bildstien, former Liberal Member for Mildura and ex
press-secretary for Chris Gallus, the Parliamentary Secretary for
Foreign Affairs.

I had the privelege of hearing South Australian
Premier Mike Rann announcing the AWD cpmtract being awarded to
Adelaide, telling everyone how when his office received the news "We
all shook hands and said "mission accomplished' ". The implication to
the South Australian public was that it was the State's Labour
Government that had won the deal. Hill didn't have much to say at the
time.

Nowadays the relationship is a little more tense. When
Senator Hill announced on Thursday that Adelaide was to receive a new
1,200 battallion. Deputy Premier Foley was caught unawares, telling
Adelaide ABC's Matthew Abraham and David Bevin that the announcement,
though known to be due sometime in the future (nice to know somebody in
the Premier's Department has discoverd the internet) was not expected
at that time.

As South Australia gears up for an election next
March, the job creations Rann's Defence State are going to be loudly
proclaimed as a vote-getter. The question is exactly how much of the
acquisition of defence contracts is directly attributable to the
Federal Liberal Government, the State Labor Government, and the State's
former Liberal Government.

It obvious looking at Hill's
statements, at a time when Rann had only been in office for six months,
that planning for our involvement in the AEGIS program had been
developing for much longer than that. In fact, it's been years since
the US government requested three ships to participate in the missile
shield program.

Six months ago I wrote an open letter to Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, saying that,

I share your sense of having participated in a foregone conclusion.
Victoria tried hard to win the warships, but as long as the plans
created by the Bush Administration and relayed by multinational defence
and energy corporations to and through the Australian Federal
Government continue on a predetermined implementation schedule, the
whims of any State's comparitively tiny political muscle will only be
considered in the form of providing crumbs and scraps left over from
the main meal.

Nothing that's happened since then
has changed my mind. The one thing I was missing is that if i'm right,
a key issue in the next South Australian election consists of an
untrustworthy amount of grandstanding by an actor with a very small
part.

As long as the election result doesn't affect US Foreign
Policy, the Bush Regime wouldn't care who won. However, it's mystifying
that the SA Liberal party, surely able to see what's going on, aren't
opposing Rann's publicity campaign