The "new" Australia/Japan/US Missile Shield pact came out of Tokyo just in time for Downer and Rice's tete a tete. Downer followed up by saying that Australia was going to help but wouldn't be directly involved. Aha, that must be why we need the three ships.

So why have we been pretending to still be debating which warships to buy? Australian defence procurement are recommending the Spanish ones (one less helipad, less firepower, but four instead of the Gibbs'n'Cox three) but we've only ordered three Aegis systems anyway, and the paperwork for that was only finalised last year. The Japs have bought the SM-3 missiles required to be integral, while we're pretending to be only keeping it as an option. The factory-fitted SM-2's would be of little use to us anyway... you have to be in a 40km proximity and fire within 45 seconds of an enemy launch or they run out air to manouevre in. The Threes, however, will work quite nicely in space.

Do you really think that Raytheon are going to give us their patents? Remember this?

Oh well, at least we can stop pretending that the JORN radar network, also headquarted here in Adelaide is only for stopping fishing boat and refugees. Missile shield launchers and enemy detection system... Adelaide's beginning to look fairly attractive target. I hope the good citizens of Mayo remember this feat of Alex's, as he harps on about Korean missile attacks, at election time.

There was a delightful little freudian slip a coup of hours after the press conference, when the two amigos were inspecting the troops at Camp Pendleton. The army journo conducting the interview asked a question of Prime Minister Downer. Alex is not reported to have bothered to make a correction.