US Plans to Locate Military Training Center in Australia

CNSNEWS.com ^ | 6/07/04 | Patrick Goodenough

[Rebelbase]

Nice map for geographical orientation. Is the south central portion of the continent (area north of the Bight) as sparsley populated?

I enjoy reading about Australian explorer's adventures in the 1800's. IIRC no one believed the first guy who crossed the Bight alone.

[KangarooJacqui]

Is the south central portion of the continent (area north of the Bight) as sparsley populated?

Well, that's where the British conducted nuclear testing in the 1950s and 60s, so yeah, not many people there. Unless you shift slightly east, and then you have the city of Adelaide area and surrounding population centres.

That's all I can tell you for now... sleeping pills are beginning to kick in at last... see you on my tomorrow, Freepers... :-)

[TADSLOS]

Strategy shift.

[RaceBannon]

Ya know, I bet the next war we go to is in the Philippines or Indonesia or Malaysia.

That would make Australia a good staging base, Guam is kind of tiny...

[rabidralph]

I was just joking. I'm sorry if I offended you.

[RaceBannon]

That map is funny!

"remote Australia"

"VERY remote Australia"...

[KangarooJacqui]

When you have a country almost the size of the mainland United States (300 million people) and only have 20 million people living here, well, lots of areas are remote.

Especially since the vast majority of Australians live in cities or urban areas near the coastline.

[Dundee]

Don't worry about it, just buy the next Aussie you meet a beer or two and we'll call it even.

[KangarooJacqui]

I was just joking. I'm sorry if I offended you.

Apology accepted. I wan't offended, really, just tired of repeating myself.

I get a little tired of having to constantly defend and explain my country's gun laws, explain that Crocodile Dundee is a crock of sh!t, and so on. There is much more the the USA than stereotypes, and the same goes for Australia.

[rabidralph]

I will gladly buy any right-thinking Aussie a beer or three.

[Dundee]

I'm actually planning a 4th of July get together for my boss and a couple of USN/USMC types that I work with. BBQ, beer, wine (Aussie of course), friendship, and plenty of less than PC comments about our enemies (Islamofacists, the French, the media, the left...) Last years was outstanding (as was the hangover the next day).

[Gritty]

The dirty little secret here is because of our draconian Environmental Laws, it would be almost impossible to open another training base of any consequence in the United States or our Territories.

The military bases we now have are constantly labored with silly restrictions and threatened with closure. The only thing that saves some of them is they are already there and have been for years. However, they aren't expanding any nor are new ones being built for today's changing needs. It would take many years and untold dollars to jump through all the environmental impact statements and comply with all the laws required, if that would even be possible, which it probably wouldn't.

Intensive and realistic military training requires a lot of room and flexibility. We no longer have that despite the fact we have lots of land and potential places. So, we now have to go all the way around the world to seek new training possibilities.

It will cost a ton of unneccessary money to send our troops 12,000 miles for a few weeks of good training, but that is peanuts compared to the prohibitive costs and time of establishing a new military training center in, say, Oregon or Nevada - despite the fact the Federal Government already owns the huge tracts of land and airspace. They just can't do anything with it except protect it (unless, of course, one is talking about the ongoing depredations of illegal aliens despoiling it).

[rabidralph]

I appreciate your hospitality toward our forces. I was on Diego Garcia in '92 and the HMAS Sydney stopped by for a visit. I got to visit the ship and I got a nifty polo shirt with the ship's name on it. In fact, I'm wearing it this minute :-)

[Dundee]

My first overseas port visit was to Guam (oh so many years ago) when I was a midshipman. I've never had more fun with my clothes on in my life (and there was a clothesless period there too. American ladies like the Aussie accent... oh to be young and single again!).

While we were there I drew the short straw and got duty as the Assistant Officer of the Day. A long and boring day of ship board duty was cut short when the CO needed a partner for a game of golf with some USN Admiral (CINCPAC something? The head guy for the area around Guam.)

Being the good junior officer I was, I played golf (badly), drank beer with the brass as we walked (then staggered) around the course, then helped the Admiral's Flag Lieutenant CARRY the Admiral to his car. My CO was able to walk but he was walking one hell of a zigzag plan.

I gotta get me to Texas! :)

[VaBthang4]

Ping to China.

[Dilbert56]

I believe Australia is purchasing some refurbished M1A1 (maybe refurb gets them to M1A2?).

It's like WWII all over again - we got to keep the LOCs from the US to Australia flowing & safe.

[RaceBannon]

I was in Perth in 1980 and 81, you guys were the best!

So were the gals, too...

[KangarooJacqui]

I was born in Perth (dad was working for NASA in Carnarvon, Western Australia at the time)... it always amuses me when I tell people that, and they say, "Oh, what was your favourite pub? ("bar" for our American FRiends...)" I smile and say, "Well, I left at eleven months of age and haven't been back since, so it's not like I got a chance to find one." By the way, Race, I missed you by seven years. ;-)

I think I ended up seeing more of the USA in the year or so I was there, than I have of my own country.

[KangarooJacqui]

Be thankful you didn't get a posting to the NAVCOMSTA Harrold E. Holt. It's about a 1000 miles north of Perth which in turn is about 1500 miles from the nearest major city (if you want to call Adelaide a major city).

That'd make it somewhere near Carnarvon, wouldn't it?

My parents lived there when Canarvon had a NASA tracking station (decommissioned sometime in the 1980's). They used to joke that it was such a small town, it had one police officer - and he had to be told what the "wild plants" growing around the perimeter of the tracking station, and elsewhere in town, were (they were marijuana... lol.)

[KangarooJacqui]

Ya know, I bet the next war we go to is in the Philippines or Indonesia or Malaysia.

That's what I'm afraid of. It makes my blood run cold to think, sixty years ago, we in Australia could have been overrun by the Japanese (look up "The Brisbane Line", if you don't know the story already.)

It chills me even more that, directly to our north, lies the biggest Islamic country on earth - Indonesia.