One of the reasons I left what is now called the Army Reserve many many years ago was the absolute inability of Defence to offer any form of Naval or Air support for us poor grunts.
Oh the Government said they had the gear all right - it was paraded to journalists frequently.
Take the Stinger missile for instance - designed to be carried and used by the average infantryman. But not in Australia! We had stocks - assigned to some sort of air defence unit which we knew would be deployed in a tight ring around Canberra if TSHTF.
Same with almost every other bit of kit - for example anti tank missiles. "No, you can't have some! But in the event of a conflict we will get supplies from America very quickly!" Yeah, sure.
The only people who took close air support seriously was the Fleet Air Arm with their little Skyhawks and look what happened to them. Close air support with a Mirage? you have to be joking!
When I talked to a certain person intimately involved in the Navy a few years ago about its CIWS capability and the lack of Phalanx systems on some ships, I was introduced to the term "Fitted for, but not with". Same as me in the infantry years ago.
When the Airforce got their Chinooks years ago, I remember one of the Airships saying to another: "Now we can move our tarmac vehicles from base to base" - no mention of the Army support role at all.
I was a guest on the HMAS ANZAC a few years ago and discovered that:
(a) It had a list of defects a mile long.
(b) It was decertified for helicopter operations because of perished rubber deck seals.
Then of course there was the HMAS Westralia fire - any competent mariner engineer could have told you that flexible injector lines were a disaster waiting to happen. The Sulzer original parts are double walled Steel, The outer casing has a pressure gauge attached so you know when the inner pipe has cracked, and you still have a working engine. So much for naval engineering.
So much for our "defence" forces today. The current staff are just sacrificial lambs, just like they were in 1939.
The F35? Fits in well with the "Koala" mentality. Jealosly protected and never outside Australia. People will make a career out of it and retire long before we ever see one. Civil servants and officers will gorge themselves on overseas postings, conferences and visits to America to "supervise" our acquisition. Some time around 2030, one will appear at an airshow for us to marvel at.
The press will get to video one dropping a teeny little bomb at Woomera. We will then announce a program to modify the aircraft for "Australian conditions" which will take a further twenty years.
Why the heck we don't buy a reasonably mature airframe with proven capabilities in quantity I don't know.
...Well actually I do know. It was explained to me that even if Indonesia has 500 aircraft and we have only Fifty we will still win because one Australian pilot will kill Four Indonesian aircraft a day. The the Indonesian aircraft will become unserviceable while we can fix ours, so that by day Four we will still have 35 aircraft but Indonesia will only have Three still flying so we have won... or that is what the civil servants say... my brain hurts. All I can think of is all those useless oxygen thieves poncing around the Russell Offices.