Saturday 20th of April 2024

Tanks- For the Memory

Fresh on the heels of the warship deal comes the announcement of the announcement of Adelaide's intention to become Australia's armoured vehicle factory.

 Twelve months ago the S.A. Government proposed the conversion of one of the Mitsubishi plants to refurbish our newly acquired M-1 Abrahams tanks.  At the time it looked like a year's worth of work (55 tanks, one tank per week).  The dredging of the harbour to a depth allowing for  the arrival of U.S. Armored Division Task Force Carriers adds a new possible line of work for the local economy... vehicles in need of repair could be "dropped off" at Port Adelaide, freshly rejuvenated tanks can be picked up.

There's been nothing in print about it for a year (excepting a letter from some whacko conspiracy theorist)  but I expect we'll be reading more about it this week.

Let\s make a "prediction" based on a U.K. precedent.  When troops are moved to Adelaide, and need new facility's built, Halliburton will get the job.  How many other Australian Defence construction and maintenance jobs will go to "Cheney's Men" ?

Watching the unrolling of these announcements and announcements of announcements evokes similar emotions as watching a dog eating its own vomit.  It's repulsive yet fascinating.

 

Fighting for desert Fudge...

from an unamed source The Media Archives In Virilio's chronology, Desert Shield and Desert Storm were followed up by Desert Screen. The same strategic developments that helped visualize the Gulf War in the Arabian Desert are also occurring in the public sector. Just as generals can direct field campaigns without ever leaving their bunkers, so the viewers can do their jobs without leaving their homes. All information converges on, and radiates from, the screen, the pole of inertia. Distant viewing - yesterday's television - has been replaced by distant action, today's and tomorrow's teleperformance; from teleshopping and home banking to telepresence and teletourism in virtual reality. Only, as Virilio adds in "L'écran du Désert" ("Desert Screen"), his war chronicle, we now know what the communication weapons are after. Who is seen will no longer have to die; rather, it is the observer who will be struck blind. Whereas, time and again, Virilio has described the history of control over the external world as an acceleration and refinement of observation techniques and their logistics, with data transmission acquiring the speed of light total fascination turns out to converge with absolute disbelief. What's left of information when it reaches journalists and the public simultaneously, without there remaining a second for verification, analysis, or double-checks? The news that reaches us as information through the media communication weapons can always be disinformation. If information is a weapon, disinformation is the shield. The viewers can no longer believe their eyes. But if they cannot, the world as we know it will disappear, as Virilio has warned us for years. Distrust of the media means the end of the world. The central and final question in "L'écran du Désert" is thus: "Can omnipresence and instantaneity be democratized; that is to say, can inertia be democratized?"

Lest We Remember the Skylight etc

Sadly, many Adolf's little helpers will be able to twist this kind of images into a successful story ... Good news from Iraq: skylights installed in Fallujah schools! Jozef Virtual Reference

Otherwise Weep

It's sad humour but appeals to my warped sense of humour. Disgraceful though it is this if life today.  If we don't manage to find some humour to create a smile or  a bit of a giggle and if we are really fortunate a good belly laugh we will shrivel and die. Thank you Jozef.

not a woke joke...

 

This from 2015 (Veröffentlicht am 13.10.2015)

 

German armaments companies are suffocating under red tape, the head of a corporation complains. The rules for VDU workstations also apply inside the tank. And then there's the matter of pregnant women.

 

Frank Haun has big plans.

The 56-year-old boss of the tank manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) wants to bring the traditional German private company into a joint venture with the French state-owned tank manufacturer Nexter. Against this background, he takes a closer look at the strengths and weaknesses of armaments production in Germany. And recently complained in Berlin about a nonsensical set of rules for domestic production.

 

The KMW boss warned: "We can no longer sell our products". The reason is the “military package regulations”, which indicate “what we have to take into account”. There is a tangle of bureaucracy and red tape. If there are restrictions on exports and the state does not pay for any new developments as well, "in ten years the defense technology industry in Germany will no longer exist".

 

Haun mentioned, for example, the workplace ordinance or the specifications for VDU workstations, which also have to be met inside tanks. Bundeswehr vehicles would be shut down abroad "because an ASU badge has expired," the KMW boss claimed at a symposium in the "Handelsblatt”.

 

Other countries make fun of it

If too many civilian standards for weapons of war were required, the products would become more expensive. They would then “no longer be sold” and other countries would “make fun of it”. Haun therefore called for the same European specifications and standards — and emissions regulations for vehicles based on the motto "kill in front and green at the back”.

 

Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann (KMW) has been complaining for a long time about the specifications of the armaments procurers from the Ministry of Defense. When delays and cost increases in the new Puma infantry fighting vehicle built with Rheinmetall became public again in the spring, KMW partly justified this with the questionable specifications.

 

One of the more than 100 "regulation documents" for the development contract for the armored personnel carrier states that the technical rules for hazardous substances must also be observed. According to this, the carbon monoxide content must not exceed a limit value, because otherwise there is a risk of a “damaging effect on amniotic fluid” in pregnant servicewomen. The air inside the Puma must therefore be so clean that even pregnant women can ride safely.

 

What does the authority say?

But the Bundeswehr procurement authority unequivocally rejects the KMW boss's criticism of impractical requirements. As the "Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Use of the Bundeswehr", BAIINBw for short, informed the "Welt" on request, Haun's statements are not correct: "Tanks are not workplaces within the meaning of the workplace ordinance."

The assertion that the shot gas concentration in the Puma's combat area must be so low that damage to the amniotic fluid is impossible is also not correct. "The Puma infantry fighting vehicle is not designed for the transport of pregnant women," the statement said.

 

 

Read more:

Sind deutsche Panzer-Vorschriften wirklich so absurd?

 

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

SEE ALSO (this from January 2022):

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/article/australia-were-getting-new-tanks-but-do-we-really-need-them/i0oa1sgpn

  

Amid a pandemic, where immediate concerns centre on strained hospital systems and a shortage of rapid antigen tests, some Australians had questions when the federal government announced a $3.5 billion defence spend in early January. 

 

 

 

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