pr00ne
Maybe, just maybe, that's why we have one of the largest defence budgets on the planet?
And maybe it’s insufficient to meet our national aspirations?
You can’t compare budgets on an absolute basis when all other areas of comparison are relative. It’s all well and good having the fifth largest budget, but when your national aspirations are up there with those of the largest budget holder, but your resource base is a fraction of the size, then you are going to end up where we are now: constant cuts, struggling to keep up and able only to commit to an extended albeit arguably unsuccessful policing action. And as if any more evidence was needed, what are the definitions these days of a large, medium and small scale deployment? I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure they have all shifted along so what was once a small scale deployment is now medium scale etc
Incidentally, did anybody else notice when it was that the Govt quietly stopped trumpeting our defence budget being the fourth largest in the world as it slipped a place in the tables?