Last week, the special envoy for defence and veterans’ affairs and Northern Australia, Luke Gosling, announced Thales as the contractor chosen to manufacture the Australian Combat Assault Rifles.

“These rifles are an excellent example of sovereign industrial defence capability and our ability to make high-quality manufactured export goods right here in Australia,” he said in a social media post.

Okay mate, now do the missiles, jets, submarines, and drones. Building a few guns and armoured vehicles is great, but its becoming abundantly clear that we’d get smoked in a modern conflict without unshakeable US support in these and many other areas. Least of which is the warfighting capability of the population en-masse.

The strategy of US reliance cannot go on, we can’t keep building a deeper reliance on another nation. Our survival dictates we diverge from near sole reliance to an ability to act as indepently operating allies.