You wouldn't say it a "nice" feeling to see proof of what you've suspecting for nine years, but it does bring a sense of vindication.  Since 2005 I've worried that Adelaide was being turned into a U.S. Navy refurbishment facility.  Late last year the South Australian Governent hired a Nashville based PR firm in order for such a thing to happen.

Just over a week ago Palmer Gibb published on blogsite The Sunlight Foundation of how Adelaide spent (at the end of 2013) over two hundred thousand dollars on hiring PR firm Fletcher Rowley on its behalf.  The comany's brief is explained its mandatory US filings as a "Foreign Agent":

Specific tasks covered by this agreement will related broadly to the representation of the interests of Defence SA in the United States and specifically to the encouragement of the U.S. Navy to utilize Techport for voyage repairs.

Here's how I wrote of such ideas in 2006.  Ok the timespan was a bit short, but what do I know?

 It's 2016, a decade after the 6/6/06 commencement of The Armageddon Conflict.  Australia is at war.  Naval vessels, able to stay at sea and away from the Antichrist's terrorists  under technological stealth cloaks are occassionally forced, while trudging between the various global "fronts"  to sail into ports for replenishments, refurbishment of armamentaria and some time off for the sailors.   The boys and girls of Halliburton have every need in readiness to get the job done before there's time to become a missile target.:

As the ships approach the Port of Adelaide, the support system swings into action as Halliburton's program co-ordinates local activity into providing the ship with the quickest return to sea that is humanly possible to provide.  Old tanks are sent to the factory while refurbished vehicles, comlplete with fresh crew desert-ready from guarding the uranium mines, the Adelaide-Darwin railway and the Papua-Adelaide gas pipes are loaded on board, and local water, stored in the specially built sub-city aquifers (piped from the extraterrestrially-refilled Artesian Basin) [NB we didn't have a desal plant when this was written] and produce are speedily transferred to naval supplies Refurbished missiles and the extra-effective depleted uranium ammuntion are restocked, and when the sailors have replenished themselves in the local bars and brothels another nautical Death Star is back on  the high seas, ready to fight for God.

I'm especially interested to read that one of the Armed Services Committee contacted by the lobbyists, North Carolina Congressman Mike McIntyre was subsequently funded to the tune of $50 thousand, (purportedly the most expensive privately funded US Congressional visit to anywhere so far on record) to bring his wife for a week-long visit in the week around Valentine's Day.  McIntyre had just announced his impending retirement.  Perhaps Mike was thinking of following his military career with a gig working for Lockheed or BAE in Adelaide?

This all comes on top of couple of important local developments.. not that you'll read much about them in the Adelaide press.  One is the declaration in May that the Jindalee Over-horizon Radar Network had been successfully upgraded and was finally operational.  JORN can monitor pretty much anything that's going on in the South China Sea, and would be an asset in tracking (for example) Korean missile launches.

It's all well and good to be able to shout out when you see missiles, but not much help if you don't have anything to shoot them down with.  Last week's announcements will fix that.  Given that the AWD warships being built at Port Adelaide were already scheduled to be equipped with Aegis SM-1 missiles it won't be too hard to upgrade to SM-2s.  These "bad boys" have an extra stage capable of "exoatmospheric kill"  so can even knock out rockets above our atmosphere.  But such technology is prized.. you'd only get it for something like a US/Australian Asian Missile Shield program.  Lucky we got one in last week's Treaty, isn't it?

And by the way, doesn't confirmation that they will be given such capabilities make the place where the boats are being built much more of an attractive attack target?  Or what about the "nerve centre" for the radar that would co-ordinate the countermissile launches?  And if you put those two just a few miles apart in the north-west of Adelaide..?

Thanks, guys, I'll sleep sooo much more peacefully tonight knowing I've been pretty much right.  

What the hell has this city gotten itself into?

Meanwhile, the bloke who got us into it, former Halliburton Global Vice President for Infrastructure Andrew Fletcher is calling it a day, a recent announcement stating that when his contract ends in August it won't be renewed.  I'm not surprised that, after being the boss of SA Defence for so long, he's decided to head for greener pastures.