I have to agree with others who've commented that Australian Defence spending will come under enormous pressure as the Gillard government attempts to fulfill its promise to come up with a balanced budget by 2013. (Another promise I don't think they'll achieve, but that's another matter and the pprune moderators won't allow discussion on that.)
Defence has always been more or less 'the caged canary in the mine' in economic hard times - i.e., the first area any government looks to to save some money, (and at the same time, [always a high priority for any government], offend a minimum number of voters), when times are tough.
Looking at what's currently happening in the UK should cause anyone in the ADF to pause and consider what effect cuts not even half as deep as the ones the Brits have just announced would have on all the grandiose plans Kevin Rudd announced just a few short years ago.
Simply put: they ain't gunna happen, or quite a few of them aren't, and if they do, they'll be greatly reduced in scope, and hourly operating costs of the surviving ones will play a huge part in how much use the ADF can make of them. (Tell me, what do the ~50 Tiger pilots the Army currently has actually do?)
Drifting off thread for one moment, but can anyone tell me why the Brits, after cutting into almost every Government Department to a truly punishing degree, exclude from their cuts what always seems to be 'the' most sacred of sacred cows - foreign aid? What is it about foreign aid that keeps it excluded from any cuts?
Oh, and UNCTIOUS:- superb post. Why don't you send that in to 'The Australian', if only to their online edition. They might actually print it.