I wrote an essay a while back for Australian Foreign Affairs about the ADF’s $200B+ upgrade. They set it to free this week, for anyone interested.
Dehjawz-e Hasenzay is a small village in Uruzgan Province, south-central Afghanistan, a dusty mudbrick maze on the dry plains of the largely mountainous region. Late in the evening of 9 July 2006, a seven-vehicle convoy carrying a Quick Reaction Force of Australian commandos rolled into a firestorm to cover the extraction of Canadian special forces from the village. The Canadians had volunteered to be the spear point for a raid targeting Osami Bari, a local Taliban war chief.
Bari was killed in the opening minutes of the fight, cut down as he tried to get off a rocket-propelled grenade shot at the raiders. The mission, to reduce the Taliban’s war-fighting capacity, was successful. A little too successful, really.
Wile reading it and knowing it was by JB, I realised I was waiting for something. A profanity, some funny gratuitous remark, then nope, understood it was not coming and that this was serious shit. Enjoyed it all the same. I guess my first thought on the LHDs was not always force projection or even police keeping/disaster assistance but if/when Australia was invaded by forces unknown, we can land a decent force behind or flanking them up North.
Wile reading it and knowing it was by JB, I realised I was waiting for something. A profanity, some funny gratuitous remark, then nope, understood it was not coming and that this was serious shit. Enjoyed it all the same. I guess my first thought on the LHDs was not always force projection or even police keeping/disaster assistance but if/when Australia was invaded by forces unknown, we can land a decent force behind or flanking them up North.
Nice article, JB. if I may, how long did the research take on that?