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From: The Expensive Dud
  • cam . # .
    Next- Gen Patrol Boats Not Pursued: From here ;

    The key criticism is that the smaller Seasprites were designed to be carried on new patrol boats that were never brought into service.

    The boats were proposed as a joint venture with Malaysia. But in October, 1997, Malaysia rejected the Australian proposal.

    Months earlier, in March, 1997, then defence minister Ian McLachlan told cabinet that defence force chief General John Baker wanted to suspend the patrol boat project.

    \"We were in a position of having to buy some vessels that were not appropriate for replacing either the Fremantle patrol boats or warships and we didn\'t want to do that,\" Mr McLachlan told The Age.

    and, from Aldo Borgu ( now with ASPI );

    A former defence official Aldo Borgu, an adviser to former ministers John Moore and Peter Reith, said the government did not think about the Seasprites when cabinet killed off the patrol boat plan.

    Mr Borgu, now a director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the two deals should have been linked. \"Once the (patrol boat project) didn\'t go ahead, the rationale for buying a smaller helicopter disappeared,\" he said. \"It\'s adding an additional helicopter platform to the ADF unnecessarily.\"

    cam