On March 2, 2009 the Australian Department of Defence released a 140-page white paper called Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific century: force 2030 (1), which announced $72 billion in new military spending for an island nation of barely 20 million inhabitants with no adversaries except those it chooses to make for itself.

By Rick Rozoff

The document details the Australian government's plans to acquire and expand a full spectrum - air, sea and land - arsenal of advanced weaponry in the nation's largest arms buildup since World War II. Canberra will replace six submarines with double that amount possessing greater range and longer mission capabilities, "hunter-killer submarines" [2], representing "a big new investment in anti-submarine warfare" [3] ; three new destroyers "specialising in air warfare" [4], which presumably be be Aegis class ones with missile killing capacity, and eight new frigates.

Read the entire Global Research article.