A personal view of Australian and International Politics
Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Donald Trump delivers an address to the United States about the Iran war. (Reuters: Alex Brandon)
In short:
Donald Trump's claims about regime change and Iran's nuclear threat have been called into question.
Former US special envoy to Iran Robert Malley described Mr Trump's address to the nation this week as "delusional".
He raised concerns the US would be committing war crimes if it followed through on Mr Trump's threats.
US
President Donald Trump is "delusional" and "seeking to deceive his
audience" when it comes to what he claims is the success of the Iran
war.
Those are the words of
Robert Malley, who in 2015, under the Obama administration, was one of
the lead negotiators on the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint
Comprehensive Action Plan.
Mr Trump also blamed the previous Biden administration for leaving the United States "dead and crippled".
Mr
Malley, who served under Mr Biden as special envoy for Iran, spoke to
7.30 in the wake of Mr Trump's comments on the war — a war that, despite
being successful in killing previous supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei and several regime leaders, has caused global economic pain.
Robert Malley says Donald Trump threatened to commit war crimes during his address to the US. (Getty Images: Riccardo De Luca/Anadolu Agency)
That
pain has been caused by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
choking the shipping, particularly of oil, through the Strait of Hormuz.
The
war was started under the premise of what Mr Trump and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was an imminent nuclear threat posed by
Iran.
A view of the Earth from NASA's Orion spacecraft. (AP: NASA )
In short:
The
four Artemis astronauts have successfully fired up their spacecraft's
engine to break away from Earth's orbit and zoom towards the moon.
The so-called trans-lunar ignition came 26 hours after lift-off.
The crew said the views as they left Earth on a 10-day flight around the moon, were "phenomenal".
The
Orion capsule carrying four astronauts in NASA's Artemis II mission
successfully fired its engines this morning, kicking the crew out of
Earth's orbit and on a path towards the moon.
The so-called trans-lunar ignition commits them to reaching the farthest distance humans have ever travelled in space.
The burn lasted less than six minutes.
The
crew members are now on a path to enter the moon's sphere of
gravitational influence, early next week, as they prepare to beat the
distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen told mission control some 10 minutes after the thruster firing:
"We are getting just a beautiful view of the dark side of the Earth lit by the moon right now. Phenomenal."
Since
launching 26 hours earlier from Florida, the astronauts spent their
first day in space testing cameras, steering their Orion spacecraft and
dealing with small toilet and email issues that were later fixed.
Commander
Reid Wiseman saw Earth as a shrinking sunlit globe, and said taking
photos from that distance made it difficult to adjust exposure settings.
As he snapped photos of his home planet with an iPhone, he told the Mission Control Center in Houston:
"It's
like walking out back at your house, trying to take a picture of the
moon. That's what it feels like right now trying to take a picture of
Earth."
To set
the mood for the day's main event, mission control woke up the crew with
John Legend's Green Light featuring Andre 3000 and a medley of NASA
teams cheering them.
The Earth (left), as seen from NASA's Orion spacecraft as it fired its engines heading towards the moon. (AP: NASA)
Astronauts use phones to document trip
The
four astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission, which launched from
Florida on Wednesday local time, have a few different devices on board
to take photos of space from inside their Orion capsule throughout the
flight.
They include a small
GoPro action camera and iPhones, as well as professional Nikon cameras
that have been used by NASA astronauts on the International Space
Station for years.
The decision
to equip the crew with iPhones was made under NASA administrator Jared
Isaacman, a billionaire astronaut who flew on two private SpaceX Dragon
missions and used the devices during his own flights, NASA officials
have said.
On day six, the
astronauts are expected to reach roughly 252,000 miles (406,000
kilometres) from Earth, the most distant point ever flown by humans,
when the planet will appear no larger than a basketball beyond the
moon's shadowed far side.
NASA's Artemis II moon rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center. (AP: Chris O'Meara)
Relief for astronauts as toilet fixed
Not
long after the successful launch, astronaut Christina Koch alerted
mission control in Houston to a red blinking light signalling a problem
with Orion's toilet, housed in a small compartment within the crew
cabin, itself only slightly larger than a mini-van's interior.
Mission engineers implemented a fix after a proximity operations test, NASA said.
Mission
control guided the astronauts through some plumbing tricks and they
finally got it going, but not before having to resort to using
contingency urine storage bags.
Controllers also managed to bump up the cabin temperature.
It was so cold earlier in the flight that the astronauts had to dig into their suitcases for long-sleeved clothes.
At
a time when the populist right is on the rise, progressives are
shooting blanks while history rushes headlong into an automated future
He regaled the prime minister, assorted elected officials and the tech sector’s glitterati with his pitch for good
AI that would transform the economy, before becoming the first to sign
up to the government’s new datacentre principles, conveniently released
just a week earlier. It was compelling shill and, to be fair, Amodei is
not the worst of the gods. He created Anthropic after leaving Open AI
when the company dispensed with its not-for-profit, “safety first”
mission. He regularly shares thoughtful essays on the path of technology
and has been open
about his fears for the impact of his own products. He broke with the
Trump administration over the limits to how his technology would be used
to spy on citizens and enable autonomous weapons, turning himself into
an enemy of the state.
But as Toby Walsh,
a scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of
New South Wales, reminds me: there is no “good AI” because AI is both
good and bad. It can unlock new connections and knowledge by
synthesising huge amounts of information, but it depends on the
extraction of huge amounts of energy to create tools that replace human
workers with machines. Like other models, Anthropic has been trained on
the stolen work of creators. Indeed the company settled a $US1.5bn claim by authors in the US. Amodei has blithely predicted his technology will see up to half of all white-collar entry level jobs destroyed, yet carries on regardless.
Anthopic chief executive Dario Amodei at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. Photograph: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images
It’s
been instructive to watch the reception Amodei has received from our
government, which has proclaimed itself to be all in on AI and its siren
song of a fast track to productivity, albeit based on
industry-sponsored modelling. This despite the concerns of its core
union constituents, the righteous outrage of artists and the well
founded concerns of parents. As the government wrestles with these
contradictions, the idea of a “progressive AI” appears manna from
heaven. The memorandum of understanding
struck with Anthropic ticks all the right boxes from “tracking frontier
AI progress and promoting safety” to “supporting a vibrant domestic
ecosystem”.
But watching from the cheap seats, I can’t help asking myself: is this really a progressive vision of progress?
I
have always seen myself as progressive. My dad was a river gauger and
honorary union leader, my first political memory is of the Dismissal,
I came of age at the ascension of Bob Hawke and found my way into
journalism and then the back rooms of progressive politics where I have
spent the last three decades. I’ve had the privilege of working across
most parts of the movement, unions, political parties, climate change,
First Nations and disability. I’ve struggled to find a cause that didn’t
excite my passion for progress.
But while I
wore the T-shirts, “progressive” was not a term that I spent the
intellectual energy to define. I was more driven by the conviction that
with enough momentum the world was moving to a fairer, more just future.
This reflects Hegel’s path to mutual recognition that would see society
settle in a state of balance; as Martin Luther King Jr famously
observed: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards
justice.” So long as we keep moving, we would get there.
I
believed social democratic government would be the driver of these
advances, responding to the pressure of mass movements for positive
change to laws, regulation and funding that would reflect this
heightened consciousness. Progressive governments would redistribute
wealth, fund the safety net, tax people based on their capacity to pay.
Where the private sector could not be trusted to deliver essential
services, the government would act in our interest. Where the nation
required moral leadership, government would reflect our unique values.
Three
things have happened in recent years that make me question what I
always regarded as self-evident. First, progressive cultural movements
got stuck in their own bubbles, at the same time progressive economics
got seduced by the right; and then technology shoved its vision of
progress down our throats. It is these waves of progress that are
driving the populist movements that threaten to upturn liberal democracy
both globally and here at home.
The rise of
One Nation has been turbo-charged by a backlash against so-called
identity politics. Their “Super Progressive Movie” shows that they see
the cultural agenda of the left as its achilles heel. Progressives have
long accepted as an act of faith that racism and sexism were sins and
that systemic injustice should be resisted as part of our collective
expression of humanity. But as the breadth of causes has expanded, these
movements have been portrayed by their opponents as exclusionary and
moralistic, and seen as undermining the collective at the expense of the
individual.
The broader consequence of a
politics dominated by individual identity is that the notion of class
has been erased. As union density declined in the last quarter of the
20th century, working-class battlers became disenfranchised from the
progressive movements which they had built. Working people established a
political party, won power, drove an Australian social contract that
shared the nation’s economic resources and provided stable industry.
Embedded in this settlement was a trade-off between growing and
distributing the pie, but with industry protection and centralised
industrial system it seemed possible for Australian workers to have
their cake and eat it too.
The conclusion of the cold war summoned Francis Fukuyama’s
The End of History, where the world would be united in a system of
global trade and cooperation underpinned by an international rules-based
order. In Australia, Paul Keating attempted to channel these global
winds of change, signing up to the global currency markets, the removal
of tariffs and the privatisation of government services. And despite the
pain of the early 1990s recession and the human cost of whole
industries being obliterated, the greater national wealth delivered on Robert Reich’s
promise in The Work of Nations where knowledge work would grow better
and smarter jobs. Economic progress was still progressive.
‘Rather than MOUs with tech lords, the only viable course I see right now is to do everything we can to slow the train down.’ Photograph: Getty Images
But
the new millennium has seen the concentration of that wealth, both
between nations and within them, that globalisation unleashed has
accelerated, while trust in the system has collapsed. The University of
Sydney’s Terry Flew identifies 2007 as an inflection point, the bailout
of banks that were deemed too big to fail in the wake of the financial
crisis they engineered proved the global financial system ran on power
rather than justice. The rise of corporate tech behemoths has resulted
in an intensification of these trends, with the global embrace of a
technology built on the idea of centralised power.
While
the internet seemed like a free resource that would drive a more
liberal world, the business models built around the extraction of our
attention has taken us on a journey from hope to despair. From “Yes we
can” to “Drain the swamp”.
Out
of this broken model has emerged a new accelerant to the concentration
of wealth and power. It is in this context I feel myself questioning my
instinctive progressivism. A business model based on user surveillance
and manipulation, structured to replace human thought with machine
outputs, powered by reckless commitment to move fast and break things is
not the path to mutual recognition Hegel imagined, nor the march to
justice MLK invoked.
The risk for the
government is that if AI does what the sticker says then it will
displace so many jobs and some entire industries; it will fill our
public spaces with cultural slop; it will be used to undermine faith in
democracy and expose not just children but anyone looking for
companionship to harm. And if this happens and a populist party seizes
on this as further proof that the system has stopped working for
ordinary people, the government will have no one to blame but itself.
While our leaders are itching to flick the switch on datacentres, the doyens of progressive America, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
are calling for a moratorium. In a very public education process,
Sanders has spent the past few months interviewing everyone from the
Nobel prize winner Geoffrey Hinton to a robotic version of Anthropic’s
Claude, doing the hard thinking that too many others have dodged. He is
not just canvassing the clear and present dangers but also asking the
more fundamental questions about where this is taking us. Why are we
being told we need to move so fast? Why is a technology that is so
rapacious and exploitative so inevitable? Is this really the road we
want to be on?
Because
here’s the truth: progress has always been conditional. The direction
of change, the velocity of change, the distribution of the costs and
benefits of change all determine its final impact. If I am still
progressive, it’s like the Luddites
were progressives, actively challenging the inevitability of
technology’s exploitative trajectory, breaking machines and threatening
the power structures that accelerated their ascent. Rather than
non-binding MOUs with tech lords, the only viable course I see right now
is to do everything we can to slow the train down by building the
guardrails and establishing the red lines that are our only tools in
pushing back. At least that would be progress.
Stargazers are hoping comet A1 MAPS defies the odds and becomes as spectacular as Comet Lovejoy, captured here from Queensland. (Wikimedia Commons: Naskies, CC-BY-SA-3.0)
Australians
could be treated to not one, but two, comets this month — but only if
the icy objects don't melt on their journey around the Sun.
The
first comet is about to hurtle past the Sun this weekend. If it makes
it to the other side, it could put on a spectacular show from April 7.
Even if this comet doesn't survive, there will be another comet in the evening skies later in the month.
Amateur
astronomer Michael Mattiazzo said there was a small chance both comets
could be visible at the same time, which would be an "extremely rare
event".
How to see the April comets
If
the first comet, known as C/2026 A1 MAPS, doesn't disintegrate this
weekend, it may be visible with the naked eye from April 7 for about a
fortnight.
Before
it got too close to the Sun in late March, Mr Mattiazzo was able to
snap some photos of comet A1 MAPS through a telescope. (Supplied: Michael Mattiazzo)
The second comet, C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS, will be visible from April 30 onwards, and is much more likely to survive but will be dimmer.
Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at the Australian National University, says it's unlikely we'll see both comets at once.
But, he says, the best time to catch a glimpse of each comet will be shortly after sunset, just above the western horizon.
"Look low to the horizon after the Sun's set," Dr Tucker advises.
"If you can see where the Sun sets, the comet's not going to be too far from that."
To get the best view, he advises trying to find somewhere away from large sources of artificial light and to bring binoculars.
You'll also need to be patient, as it may take a few days for each comet to become visible.
What are the chances Comet A1 MAPS will survive?
The first comet, C/2026 A1 MAPS, is travelling extremely close to the Sun — and that makes its fate unpredictable.
At
its closest point, called perihelion, the comet will be about 857,000
kilometres from the centre of the Sun, and 161,000km above its surface:
less than half the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
This proximity could cause the comet to heat up and break apart, as the ice inside its body turns to gas and becomes unstable.
Researchers
have examined comet A1 MAPS with the James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI
instrument, finding it was about 400m in diameter. (Supplied: NASA/ESA/CSA JWST MIRI, Qicheng Zhang et al., Melina Thevenot, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Mr Mattiazzo puts the comet's chances of survival at "less than 50 per cent".
But don't write it off just yet; comets like this have made for good viewing before.
Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3 Lovejoy), for example, put on a stunning show in December 2011.
"We
gave it no chance of surviving, but then it managed to survive just for
a few days after its approach to the Sun and ended up showing a
spectacular tail a week later," says Mr Mattiazzo.
Comet A1 MAPS was first detected in January this year, and is thought to belong to a group known as "Kreutz sungrazers".
Kreutz
sungrazers are particularly easy to see from the southern hemisphere
because of their orbital paths, such as this one which was drawn from
Tasmania in 1843. (Mary Morton Allport via Libraries Tasmania)
Kreutz sungrazers are named after a German astronomer who first detected a group of bright comets in the 1800s.
"Kreutz
proposed that they were all related, suggesting that they were
fragments of a single progenitor comet that was witnessed by the Greek
philosopher Aristotle in 371 BC," says Mr Mattiazzo who has discovered several comets.
These
comets include some of the greatest comets of all time, and follow a
similar orbit which sees them graze the Sun roughly every 800 years.
But there's a price to pay for coming so close to the Sun.
As Dr Tucker says: "these comets are a high-risk, high-reward game".
How bright could it get?
If the comet doesn't break up, its proximity to the Sun will make it very bright.
At its brightest, it could have an apparent magnitude of nearly -3, with better visibility than the sky's brightest stars.
But
Jonti Horner, an astrophysicist at the University of Southern
Queensland, says the comet's light has faltered in recent weeks, with it
failing to brighten to predicted levels.
"That
all suggests something has gone wrong — either the comet has run out of
volatile material, is falling apart, or otherwise dying," Professor
Horner says.
"We can't be sure — there is always a chance it will improve again. But I think it unlikely now."
How to check what's happening with the comet this weekend
You can check Comet A1 MAPS' passage past the Sun this weekend by looking at real-time images
from NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which orbits and monitors the Sun.
The comet
will pass through the satellite's field of view from about 5am AEDT
this Friday (April 3), through to 1pm AEST on Monday (April 6) — assuming it doesn't break up before.
If it's still clearly visible in SOHO's imagery after its closest point to the Sun on Sunday morning, Mr Mattiazzo says it will be time to "pop the champagne bottles".
The
SOHO satellite uploads real-time images from its instruments like this
to the internet. This picture, taken in 2011, catches comet Lovejoy in
frame. If it survives, comet A1 MAPS will look similar. (Supplied: ESA/NASA - SOHO/LASCO)
Late April comet headed for interstellar space
If Comet A1 MAPS doesn't make it through the weekend, the second comet, C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS is hot on its heels.
Comet R3 PanSTARRS will be much further from the Sun at its perihelion on 19 April, and is much more likely to survive its brush than the first comet, but it won't be as bright.
Comet
C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) will be 74 million km from the Sun at its
closest, which is about half the distance between the Sun and the Earth. (Flickr: Dimitrios Katevainis, CC BY-SA 4.0)
While it will probably peak at magnitude 5, which is visible to the naked eye, you'll get a better view with binoculars.
"On its way out, it's going to be perfectly located for southern hemisphere sky watchers," Mr Mattiazzo says.
Comet
R3 PanSTARRS, which was discovered last September by the Panoramic
Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) in Hawaii,
probably last visited the Sun about 170,000 years ago.
But according to Professor Horner, while it's expected to pass the Sun safely, this visit may be its last.
That's because it is travelling so fast it may get flung out of the Solar System.
"That's
actually not uncommon — the Solar System is shedding comets to space
like space dandruff and has been ever since it formed," Professor Horner
says.
But the gas and dust
ejected by the comet could still change its speed and knock it off
course, meaning it will continue to stay trapped in the Solar System.
Those
who had been hoping Donald Trump would his address to the nation to
reveal a path out of the Iran war would be disappointed. (Alex Brandon/Pool via Reuters)
Hello.
Matthew Doran here in Jerusalem. It's coming up to the end of the fifth
week of the war that has shaken this region and the world.
Here's what you need to know today:
Iran has promised "more crushing, broader and more destructive" attacks against the United States and Israel in the wake of Donald Trump's speech about the future of the war. The US president said his military would bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages, where they belong" in the coming weeks — rhetoric rejected as "nonsense" by a spokesman for the Iranian president.
The speaker of the Iranian parliament said in a post on social media that 7 million Iranians
had come forward to take up arms and defend the country — an assertion
to be met with some caution, given some anti-regime Iranians have told
the ABC that children and the elderly are being given weapons because no-one else is available.
US and Israeli strikes against Iran have continued, with Iranian authorities saying steel manufacturing facilities have been hit. Iranian retaliatory strikes
have continued as well. A missile barrage was fired towards Israel on
Thursday afternoon, local time, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps said it had started attacking an Amazon cloud facility in Bahrain.
In Lebanon,
the intensity of Israeli strikes against claimed Hezbollah targets, and
the number of rockets and drones fired by the Iranian militant group to
the north of Israel, has increased in the past 24 hours. The death toll
in the country is now more than 1,300, with Lebanese authorities saying
many are civilians — including women and children. The UN says 20 per
cent of the country's population has been displaced.
Lebanon's prime minister has issued a stark warning,
fearing Israel's current invasion of the south of his country will go
far beyond its stated intentions to occupy the entire area from the
Israel border to the Litani River, roughly 30 kilometres north. Israel's
defence minister said Hezbollah would pay a heavy price for firing on
his country during Passover, with communities in the north racing to shelters to seek refuge from rockets and drones.
Here's what all that means
Those who had been hoping the US president's speech
about the war with Iran would illuminate some path out of the mess
engulfing the Middle East would have been sorely disappointed.
While restating vague comments such as war goals were close being to met, and the end of fighting was a few weeks away, we didn't learn much. And the inflammatory rhetoric the US president is prone to wheeling out is unlikely to have helped his cause.
Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are adherents to the principle of "peace through strength". But while that might work against some adversaries, Iran is not just any foe.
The US president is threatening to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Age, where they belong"
in the next few weeks. In the competition to win friends and influence
people, and bring the Iranian population along with you, that may not be
the smartest language to use.
Of course, as with much the US president says, it's a type of commentary more rooted in style rather than substance.
The Iranian response, while also unsurprising, shows where the challenge remains. And why Gulf states will be disappointed with the remarks.
Iran, quick out of the blocks, continued its attacks across the region and promised even more intense strikes to come. The UAE revealed it had been forced to intercept 19 missiles and 26 drones in the past 24 hours alone.
The UN is already warning Middle Eastern nations may have lost almost $US200 billion ($289 billion) in the first month of the war.
That's
where the vague statements about ending the war come into contact with
reality for some of the US's closest regional partners. They're absolutely copping it in this war, caught in the middle of much bigger players engaged in a seemingly intractable fight.
And here's the impact on Australia
It's not just fuel:
It's crunch time for crops on many farms around the country. ABC 7.30
has looked at how the Strait of Hormuz stand-off is affecting how much we'll pay for food (▶️ 7m07s).
Analysts estimate about 850 US Tomahawk missiles have been fired during the Middle East war. (US Navy via AP)
In short:
The
US is estimated to be burning through high-end weapons at a rapid pace
in its war on Iran and stockpiles could take years to replenish.
Analysts say the weapons may not be available for use should other conflicts break out.
They say the duration and outcome of the war could be affected by which side runs out of critical weapons first.
The United States went into war with Iran with full force, unleashing some of its most advanced and expensive weapons.
In
the first 16 days of the conflict the US burnt through 11,294 munitions
at a cost of about $US26 billion ($38 billion), according to estimates
from the Payne Institute for Public Policy.
It estimated more than 5,000 were fired in the first 96 hours alone.
With
the war entering its fifth week and the possibility of a US ground
invasion not ruled out, American allies have raised concerns about
dwindling supplies.
On March 19
Armin Papperger, chief executive of major German arms manufacturer
Rheinmetall, warned global stocks of missile interceptors needed for air
defence systems were "nearly empty" as a result of the US-Israel war on
Iran.
A building that was damaged by an Iranian drone attack in Manama, Bahrain. (Reuters: Hamad I Mohammed)
Analysts
say weapons pressures could end up affecting the duration of conflict,
with sizeable holes already blown in high-end munitions stockpiles.
They
predict it could take years for some supplies to be replenished, making
US allies "nervous" about the West's military readiness for other
potential conflicts.
Neither side backing down
US President Donald Trump has given Iran several ultimatums, threatening to escalate attacks if a deal to end the war is not reached.
But Tehran has repeatedly rejected the proposals, saying the terms were "unrealistic" and issuing its own threats.
Amin
Saikal, emeritus professor of Middle Eastern studies at the Australian
National University, said the negotiating demands put forward by the US
and Iran were "worlds apart".
As it stands, the scene could be set for a much longer war.
"So far both sides have displayed the capacity to be able to confront each other," Dr Saikal said.
"At this point, neither is willing to really back down."
Amin Saikal does not think the war will be ending anytime soon. (ABC News)
He said if the war dragged on for several more weeks, the side that lost the most "hardware" could start pulling back.
"Whichever
side depletes its stocks of missiles and interceptors first could
signal a desire to end the fighting," Dr Saikal told the ABC.
US burns through crucial weapons
In early March Mr Trump boasted the US military had enough weapons stockpiled to fight wars "forever".
But recent estimates from the Payne Institute paint a different picture.
Analysts
from the research centre at the Colorado School of Mines have been
tracking daily weapons exchanges since about day five of the Middle East
conflict.
Based on available
data on prewar stocks, it assessed that the US had lost nearly 46 per
cent of its Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS).
The
surface-to-surface missiles have a range of up to 300 kilometres and
were designed to strike high-value targets such as missile sites.
The
institute estimated supplies of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) missile systems, used by the US and its partners in the region
to defend against Iranian missiles, were also dropping significantly.
Projections showed the THAAD interceptors could run out by mid-April.
Data
from the Payne Institute for Public Policy estimating the use of
critical weapons from March 24 and the dates of possible depletion. (ABC News Graphics/Payne Institute)
Jahara Matisek,a
command pilot in the US Air Force and senior fellow at the Payne
Institute, said only about 100 THAAD missiles were made a year.
"Our tracking system has tracked about 200 to 400 of those being used at this point, so how do you replace that?" he said on ABC Radio National Breakfast.
THAAD systems are being used extensively by the US and its partners to defend against Iranian missiles. (AP: US Air Force/Cory Payne)
Israel's Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors, used to take out Iran's powerful longer-range missiles, were also projected to be exhausted by the end of March.
Retired
Marine Colonel Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the US Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) defence department, said the
Payne Institute's data provided "a good estimate".
But
he said it was impossible to know exactly how many weapons were in each
side's stocks before the war broke out on February 28.
"If
Israel was really about at the end of their Arrow missile inventory, I
think we would be hearing reports that they wanted more Patriots [air
defence systems] or another THAAD deployed to Israel," Colonel Cancian
said.
"We haven't heard that."
Damage in a residential neighbourhood in southern Israel following a night of Iranian missile strikes. (Reuters: Ilan Rosenberg)
Tomahawks, Patriots in short supply
Colonel Cancian was not surprised that a modern conflict would burn up a lot of munitions in a relatively short time.
But he was shocked to see some critical weapons had been fired in such large numbers.
"Particularly Tomahawks and Patriots," Colonel Cancian told the ABC.
"These systems are a problem because they are in short supply and high demand."
Tomahawks have a range of about 1,600km and can be launched from land or sea.
The missiles are used to strike deep territory targets with precision, without sending pilots into dangerous airspace.
A Tomahawk is fired from a US vessel in the early days of the Middle East conflict. (US Navy — Wikimedia Commons)
Only a few hundred Tomahawks are manufactured a year and cost about $US3.6 million ($5.2 million) per shot.
The US fired about 850 in the first month of the war, more than in any other military campaign in history, the CSIS estimated.
Colonel Canician did not believe the Tomahawk stockpile would be completely depleted in the Middle East war, butthere were concerns about whether enough supplies would be left to protect other regions.
"What's making people very nervous is a potential conflict with China," he said.
"In the Western Pacific, a US ship can stay well away from China and still be able to launch this missile at Chinese forces."
Expensive US Patriot defence systems are being used to defend against cheap Iranian drones. (AP: Sebastian Apel/US Department of Defense)
It
was a similar situation with Patriot air defence systems, which the US
and Gulf states were using to intercept Iranian ballistic and cruise
missiles.
The Gulf states' Patriot interceptors in particular were at risk of running dangerously low, according to Payne Institute data.
Lieutenant
Colonel Matisek said there were also reports of "very wasteful
intercepts" using Patriot missiles, which cost about $US4 million to
shoot down $US50,000 ($72,000) drones.
"If
current munition burn rates keep occurring … it means you just run out
of everything and now you can't support Ukraine, you can't defend Taiwan
in a future crisis," he said.
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Kyiv would "definitely" face
shortages of Patriots because of the US war against Iran.
Lockheed Martin produces about 600 Patriot PAC-3 interceptors a year.
The Payne Institute estimated about 402 were fired in the first 16 days of the war on Iran.
Iran's missile capabilities had been "significantly diminished" but "certainly not obliterated", he added.
"Not to mention the thousands of drones Iran still has in its inventory," Mr Panikoff said.
Jonathan Panikoff says Iran could have plenty of firepower left. (Supplied)
Lieutenant
Colonel Matisek said Iranian drone and missile attacks had fallen by 80
to 90 per cent from their initial peak, but were still straining US and
Israeli defences across the region.
He said Iran's capabilities might have been underestimated.
"The
ability for the Iranians to sustain the fight likely reflects they had
way more [weapons] stockpiled," Lieutenant Colonel Matisek said.
"This
is really troubling … because the US interceptors, the missiles that
shoot down missiles and drones, those are running critically low."
"We
could go into a new phase where there's ground combat — not on the
mainland, but maybe on the islands," Colonel Cancian said.
"If
we go into that, it's possible there may be strains on parts of the
inventory, such as the Patriots, if the Iranians really let loose with
whatever they have left."
Lieutenant
Colonel Matisek said weapon production rates were already a major
concern and that the White House would be looking for an off-ramp.
He
said it could take at least five years to replenish 500 Tomahawk
missiles and that there were wider supply chain issues to consider.
China controls many of the rare earths and materials needed to make a wide range of weapons.
Patriot air defence missile systems can cost millions of dollars. (AP: Mindaugas Kulbis)
Lieutenant Colonel Matisek said the US was already receiving F-35 fighter jet parts with missing radar components.
"We suspect it's because of Chinese export controls over germanium and gallium," he said.
"We do not have the supply chain … to replace a lot of these munitions."
A limited supply of minerals was not an issue you could "just throw money at", he added.
