After all the trouble we\ve gone to, the whole plan's gone bung.   It turns out, as some folks were warning years ago, that Australia''s new tanks, part of a mullti-nation Coalition of the Willing fleet of M1A1 Abrams, are too heavy to ride the Halliburton railway to Darwin.

Freightlink, the consortium that Cheney set up to run the line for 50 years after KBR built it. has denied, according to today's Australian, that there's a problem, saying that they're working closely with defence on military transport issues.

The central Australian defence training scheme had included converting Adelaide's Mitsubishi car plant into a M1A1 refurbishment facility and a redesigning of the Army's Coultana training grounds into a simulated Middle East in which the vehicles could have a shakedown run, before being back to Adelaide and heading back to the war on Armoured Task Force divsion carriers.

Rumours of the railway's lack of this ability have been in circulation for two years.  At least,  that's how long ago I heard about the problem

That this plan could be preconceived ten years ahead and then bungled so badly further demonstrates the contempt with which Australian defence is being treated by some US Corporations.  As long as they get the contracts they don't appear to give a damn if the results don't do the job required.