As Senator Jim Molan points out, if you’re fighting with an infantry, you need tanks to protect them. When a true army sets its sights on Australia and decides to ‘play for keeps’, the first thing to roll out are the tanks. Australia is starting from behind, so whatever we buy now has to count. These are one of the hardest things to put out of action, which is why America wants us to have lots of them. If the naysayer commentators came nose-to-nose with a shiny new M1A2 Abrams tank they may think differently about their effectiveness in ground warfare. There have been accusations that lives were lost unnecessarily because of our reluctance to drag existing assets onto the front-line, preferring instead to let them rot in a shed out in Woop Woop. It has been noted by those on the ground during recent insurgencies that even though Australia did not deploy tanks, we certainly made use of America’s. We were fighting terrorists and a hodgepodge of mercenaries in the desert – not a disciplined army intent on capturing home soil. Australia has spent recent decades embroiled in foreign conflicts and proxy wars as a collection of specialist units. These are easy things to moan about from the comfort of an armchair, but their assessment of tank warfare is wrong. ‘We haven’t deployed tanks in anger since Vietnam!’ ‘Who uses tanks anymore?’ Went the predictable outrage. Australia splashed out $3.5 billion on 120 specially re-enforced US military tanks and armoured vehicles, causing prominent political reporters to immediately groan and call it ‘a waste’.
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