SYDNEY: Australia will invest A$7 billion ($5.2 billion) to develop and buy high-tech US drones for joint military operations and to monitor waters including the South China Sea, it said Tuesday.
Canberra has been embarking on its largest peacetime naval investment through a massive shipbuilding strategy that includes new submarines, offshore patrol vessels and frigates to shore up its defense capabilities.
As part of this, the government will spend A$1.4 billion to buy the first of six MQ-4C Triton maritime surveillance drones, with the aircraft to enter service from mid-2023, complementing seven P-8A Poseidon planes currently in use.
“Together these aircraft will significantly enhance our anti-submarine warfare and maritime strike capability, as well as our search and rescue capability,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a statement.
“This investment will protect our borders and make our region more secure.”
The drones — high-altitude, long endurance aircraft that can support missions for up to 24 hours and provide a 360-degree view of their surroundings for over 2,000 nautical miles — will replace the AP-3C Orion spy plane.
“It gives us enormous capabilities in surveillance and reconnaissance,” Defense Industry Minister Christopher Pyne told Sky News, adding that the total cost was about A$7 billion.
“Australia’s responsible for about 10 percent of the world’s surface into the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, down to Antarctica up into the South China Sea.”
Pyne added that the drones would be used to monitor who was in Australian waters, other countries’ naval vessels, for people-smuggling and illegal fishing.
The unmanned systems would also continue Australia’s surveillance of the South China Sea, he added.
“Australia insists on its rights to be able to travel through the South China Sea, in international waters as we have always done, whether it is with surface ships or aircraft,” Pyne said.
China claims sovereignty over virtually all the resource-endowed South China Sea, despite rival claims from its Southeast Asian neighbors.
The Australian navy has already conducted joint exercises in the South China Sea with other nations, including the US.
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Australia buys high-tech drones to monitor South China Sea, Pacific
Australia buys high-tech drones to monitor South China Sea, Pacific
Zimbabwe opposition says constitutional ‘coup’ under way
- The accusations came after the cabinet approved amendments that would allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to extend his term in office
HARARE: Leading Zimbabwe opposition figures accused the government Wednesday of a constitutional “coup” after the cabinet approved amendments that would allow President Emmerson Mnangagwa to extend his term in office.
Sweeping changes to the constitution accepted by the cabinet Tuesday include extending the presidential term to seven years and follow a decision by the ruling Zanu-PF that Mnangagwa should stay in office beyond the end of his second term in 2028.
The amendments will be presented to parliament, which is weighted in favor of the Zanu-PF, but the opposition insists they also need to be put to a national referendum.
“The process that is currently happening in Zimbabwe is a coup by the incumbent to extend his term of office against the will of the people,” opposition politician and fierce government critic Job Sikhala told AFP.
“We have got an incumbent who wants to railroad himself, using the tyrannical and dictatorial tendencies of his rule, into another two years to 2030,” he said.
He said his National Democratic Working Group had asked the African Union to intervene.
Mnangagwa came to power in 2017 in a military-backed coup that ousted Robert Mugabe, who ruled the southern African country for 37 years.
He was elected to a five-year term in 2018 and again in 2023 but has been accused of allowing rampant corruption to the benefit of the Zanu-PF — which has been in power since independence in 1980 — while eroding democratic rights.
Sikhala, a former lawmaker with the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party, was arrested in South Africa last year for alleged possession of explosives. He says they were planted in his vehicle in an apparent assassination attempt.
“What is unfolding in Zimbabwe is not constitutional reform. It is a constitutional coup,” Jameson Timba, a CCC leader who has established a group called the Defend the Constitution Platform (DCP), said in a statement on X.
The president and his party are using “formal processes” such as cabinet decisions “to entrench power without the free and direct consent of the people,” he said.
Sweeping changes to the constitution accepted by the cabinet Tuesday include extending the presidential term to seven years and follow a decision by the ruling Zanu-PF that Mnangagwa should stay in office beyond the end of his second term in 2028.
The amendments will be presented to parliament, which is weighted in favor of the Zanu-PF, but the opposition insists they also need to be put to a national referendum.
“The process that is currently happening in Zimbabwe is a coup by the incumbent to extend his term of office against the will of the people,” opposition politician and fierce government critic Job Sikhala told AFP.
“We have got an incumbent who wants to railroad himself, using the tyrannical and dictatorial tendencies of his rule, into another two years to 2030,” he said.
He said his National Democratic Working Group had asked the African Union to intervene.
Mnangagwa came to power in 2017 in a military-backed coup that ousted Robert Mugabe, who ruled the southern African country for 37 years.
He was elected to a five-year term in 2018 and again in 2023 but has been accused of allowing rampant corruption to the benefit of the Zanu-PF — which has been in power since independence in 1980 — while eroding democratic rights.
Sikhala, a former lawmaker with the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party, was arrested in South Africa last year for alleged possession of explosives. He says they were planted in his vehicle in an apparent assassination attempt.
“What is unfolding in Zimbabwe is not constitutional reform. It is a constitutional coup,” Jameson Timba, a CCC leader who has established a group called the Defend the Constitution Platform (DCP), said in a statement on X.
The president and his party are using “formal processes” such as cabinet decisions “to entrench power without the free and direct consent of the people,” he said.
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