Howard's straight out of the same paranoid stable as Bush and Blair. He's probably just looked at a map for the first time in his life and !!!! a brick at just how far away Australia is from the rest of the world.
And there's a helluva lot of those bloody muslims on his doorstep in Indonesia.
Maybe Tiger Airways and Jetstar, with their super-low fares to Asia and Indonesia, pose a new threat, which has been reflected in Howard's military spending?
Do you need F22s to take out an A320, or can you do it with Super Hornets?