What I cannot get my head around is that people say that thousands will die if we cur aid to countries like India but India os spending huge amounts on defence and space programmes. Shouldn’t they be looking after their own rather than relying on others. IF they can build and launch satalites they can afford £250M to feed its own population.

The money should go to nations that really need it not allow countries to avoid looking after their own people. The same goes for China, Brazil and other high growth nations.

There’ll always be people making arguments like ‘XXX is poor, why spend anything at all on defence/space/technology when you can spend on feeding them?’ It kinda applies to the wealthy nations as well to some extent. That said in India’s case the defence budget is necessary(and as as much as is spent, insufficient) to replace the block obsolescent equipment of the world’s fourth largest military. With two nuclear-armed neighbours and constantly hostile borders it can’t afford not to spend money on that, poverty or no poverty.

The Indian government does spend money on poverty alleviation programmes; more than it spends on defence and space put together; but it simply isn’t enough, even without factoring in factors like corruption.

To SteVO: that’s a flawed analogy. You can’t time-travel Typhoon’s from different time periods to keep an operational squadron. 3 Typhoons lost is 3 Typhoons lost.

250 millions aren’t paltry in time of budget cuts at home. But if tou want to spend them to help poor people, do NOT give them to India. India has by far an economic power and budget that can surely take care of its own population. I remind you their massive arms race and their space program for a fast example.

Money given to Pakistan makes already more sense because it has a strategical importance in ensuring Pakistan support in the Afghanistan effort. And it is meant to make the Pakistan government capable to get back in force in the currently uncontrollable area at the borders with Afghanistan.
Money given to India seems to be far less effective for helping british interests, and coupled to the might of India itself… They don’t need that money. The british overstretched budget would bless it.

How old are you? You’re seriously deluded if you think military might and defence budgets have any bearing on the economic well-being of a nation’s people.

And determining a multi-billion political bribe as more important than a quarter-billion of poverty aid further shows how illogical your idea of money well-spent is. Hack 250 million of the UK defence budget and at most the RAF will lose 3 Eurofighters. Hack 250 million off Pakistan’s large economic and military aid and it’ll make no great difference to their economy. Withhold all the aid you’re giving to India and thousands at least will die. The Indian government isn’t immediately going to substitute funds to the various programmes and NGOs affected. That’s how it is in the third world.

The risk is that Indonesia becomes a failed state: islamic militants running riot or a dictatorship.

Since when has Indonesia had a problem with Islamic extremism(at least on the same level as Pakistan or Afghanistan)? If that’s your excuse you might as well prepare to defend yourself against Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia as well, because those nations are about as likely to become ‘failed’ states.

And again, if this ridiculous hypothetical situation comes true, what are the odds of them deciding to launch a military invasion of Australia? And what are the odds of their military in its present state being able to carry out such an expedition, let alone do it successfully? Do they have PAK-FAs? LPDs? LACMs? Or even enough Flankers to make up a single operational squadron?

Now that Ukraine’s Nikolyav shipyard is part of the USC why can’t the Russians build LPDs there? They’ve got decades of experience building such ships from the Moskva helicopter carriers and the Kievs.

The ‘quality’ of private-sector shipyards was never in doubt: in the commercial shipbuilding sector they are constantly outbidding the state-owned yards for orders(that’s what led to HSL’s bankruptcy). The real problem was protests by the massive labour unions of the various state-owned shipyards to maintain their monopoly(with assorted delays and defects). Do you know that upgrading a Kilo submarine in Vizag costs twice as much and takes twice as much time as upgrading it in Russia? That should tell you what to expect from them for Project 75I.

It’s probably a vain hope so long as the Congress and their backward-thinking socialists remain in power, but when the Indian Navy decides to acquire mini-subs and DSRVs hopefully L & T will get its chance to shine.

Indonesia and China to name two.

All remaining boundary disputes with Indonesia were settled with the 1997 treaty. Besides this is nothing like India-Pakistan or the Falklands; the two nations aren’t hostile by any stretch of imagination. And even if they were, what exactly can the Indonesian military to Australia? And no, I don’t care about Carlo Kopp jumping up and down every time they buy a single Su-30.

And China?! They’re so far away that Australia doesn’t even figure in their strategic plans. You might as well include India as a threat(as the Defence White Paper did, idiotically enough). The more I hear about Australian defence policies the more I get the feeling they’re desperately looking for reasons to buy fancy new toys to feel good about.

Yup, that would be the Talwar class.

What? The mast structure is totally different from Talwar class, as is the placement of front VLS and Kashtan. Not to mention the main gun is an A-192 and not the A-190E with the 5p-10 Puma FCS.

Isn’t the SM-6 basically just the SM-2 Block III with the AMRAAM seeker?