I was just blown away ( no pun intended) when I read this article.
Defence blows up $400m worth of missiles
PUBLISHED: 10 Oct 2014 00:05:55
Brian Toohey
The Australian Defence Force has disposed of almost 100 AGM-142 stand-off missiles, costing about $400 million, by blowing them up or, as Defence put it, they were “disposed of by explosive demolition”.
The F-111 strike fighters only operated the US-manufactured missiles for about a year before the big jets were retired in 2010.
The Israeli-designed AGM-142 missile was meant to give the F-111s a formidable new supersonic precision-guided weapon with a 350 kilogram warhead and a range of 78 kilometres.
Because of the severe difficulties Boeing experienced in Australia trying to integrate the missiles into the F111, they only became operational available nine years later than intended.
Defence says the total project cost for “approximately” 100 missiles and the integration process was $406 million.
The retirement of the 28 F-111s left the Australian Defence Force with almost 100 near-new missiles it didn’t consider suitable for use by the air force’s 24 new Super Hornet or 72 new F-35 fighter planes.
The Super Hornets cost $32,000 an hour to fly, more than double the cost for the RAAF’s 71 “classic” Hornets.
Read more of this incredible story here:
So somehow Defence managed to blow up what seems to be the cost of the first year of the new war in Iraq or the cost of 2-3 new Hospitals and so on.
One must really wonder why there were not some others who could extract value from these and work out how to usefully integrate them.
The parallel with the PCEHR seems rather obvious to me. Over $1.0B spent and to date it still has not been effectively integrated with the national health system, it is still hardly used almost 2.5 years later, and now seems to be at similar risk of just being ‘blown up’.
The ways Governments can get rid of our money for no real benefit or accountability is just astonishing!
David.
David,
ReplyDeleteThey weren't really worth $400Million. Just think of it as our donation to some Israeli armaments suppliers.
Neither is the PCEHR worth $1Billion. Just think of it as our donation to some … .
They could have aimed them at NEHTA and killed two birds with one stone! (kidding)
ReplyDeleteYes ...what a waste ...but at least it was capped ...unlike the continuing profligate waste funding NEHTA, the DOHA ehealth branch and the PCEHR.
ReplyDelete