Australia to add two new battalions

Prime Minister John Howard has announced an extra 2,600 personnel for the army, saying Australia will face challenging situations in the next two decades.

The Prime Minister said two new battalions would be established in two stages, with one to be based in Adelaide and the other in southeast Queensland.

The cost to set up the battalions would be "something in the order" of $10 billion, the Prime Minister said, with the first battalion to be a mechanised unit and the other light infantry.

"This decision will ... as I understand it, take us back to a situation where we have the largest number of infantry battalions since 1973," he said.

"In anybody's language, it's a very significant boost to the Australian army and one that I think is needed, fully justified and will be widely supported by the Australian people."

Mr Howard said the first new battalion would be manned by 2008 and ready for overseas deployment by the end of 2010.

The new places are in addition to 1500 further personnel to be recruited under another army initative announced last year.

Australia has very interesting open debates about their defense needs and military decisions. A good discussion here on Ozzie reasoning.

In contrast to this my political blog caught the latest White House secrecy idiocy.

As long as I am making referrals to myself I posted a gaming post about a woman fantasy RPG in my general Notebook.