Glug,Why would you quote from an ill-informed and emotive...

Glug,

Why would you quote from an ill-informed and emotive description written by an academic and posted on the arts department website of a university. Surely you could find a better source of information regarding the actions of HMAS Adelaide in relation to that incident?

For the purposes of clarity, no Australian warship carries "cannon" (unless the Aus Steyr has been recently reclassified from an assault rifle to a cannon). The extract you quoted simply demonstrates the lack of understanding of the situation by the author, when he labels 5.56mm small arms ammunition as cannon.

The Adelaide class FFG (of which HMAS Adelaide was the first of class) carries a number of offensive weapons ranging from Harpoon and Standard SM1 missiles for anti-ship and anti-air purposes, a Phalanx CIWS located just above the HCO, a couple of triple tube torpedo launchers and a 75mm multi-purpose gun (not a cannon). It also has a number of .50cal machine guns that can be mounted port and starboard and can also carry a couple of helos for anti-sub operations. Given that fire-power, throwing a few rounds of small arms fire across the bow of a vessel suspected of illegally entering our sovereign territory, seems pretty restrained in comparison to how it may have been dealt with in other parts of the world.

When the operational activities of the Australian Defence Force undertaking interception of Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels at the direction of the lawful government of the day can be turned into the emotive and deceptive headlines used by the lefty/artsy element, is it any wonder that Scott Morrison does not want to keep feeding the chooks.

Cheers

Badfish