ADM Podcast 177 - South Korean exercise cancelled, balance of power impacts, and our ground based air defence

In this News Review episode, Grant McHerron and Ewen Levick discuss a couple of topical subjects and their implications for Australia.

With the Strait of Hormuz becoming a forever war, there's not much new to mention there so we start with a discussion about Donald Trump dramatically scaling back joint military exercises with South Korea and other countries, incuding Australia, due to cost and not wanting to appear hostile to North Korea. Meanwhile, North Korea is sending troops to Russia to help with Ukraine while Russia is sending them their latest military technology, disrupting the balance of power on the Korean peninsula. How does this development align with Australia's views of Korea and peace in the Asian region?

We also discuss President Trump's executive order telling the Pentagon to investigate going back to steam catapults for the new Ford class aircraft carriers and to also move the superstructure (aka "The Island") further forward to improve its looks. What implications could this have to the AUKUS program, SSN AUKUS, and US expectations of Australia's supply of funds to the US coffers.

Meanwhile, Australia appears to have recognised the need for Ground Based Air Defence systems that has been demonstrated in the Iran conflict. We discuss our current defensive capability against aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, then assess progress to date on the various projects to field Medium Range GBAD including 6502 and 6503 being folded into 6500 then defunded. We look at the reasons for the pause in 2024 and how current efforts reflect against those justifications.

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