Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
Cruisers or carriers? LOL! We might have a continent all to ourselves but most of it is pretty much uninhabitable. We only have 22 million or so people, and our defence spending is a fairly modest proportion of our GST.
It is unfortunate that Australia is an Asia-Pacific nation, what with the many billions of neighbors we have. Australia is a first-world nation with a very well developed economy and strong tech base but we are few in number, us Aussies. And we don't have the centuries of tradition demanding a strong military presence like the US does.
Personally I'd love to see Australia massively increase the size of its military but, at least in the short to medium terms, it's just not going to happen.
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Tradition plays a small part in this but our population is certainly one of the main factors (if not
the main factor). We simply cannot maintain a force the size of the UK let alone the USA because we do not have enough people as a tax base even before we start worrying about the percentage of the population available for military service.
And it should not be forgotten that in the past Australia has had a decent sized Fleet Air Arm with vessels to support it starting with seaplane carriers in the early part of the 20th century and during the Korean War era we actually had two aircraft carriers on strength (the carrier HMAS Sydney was the only non-UK, non-US carrier to be involved in the Korean War).