What scum Della-Vedova is. His ‘brain fade’ story is complete bollocks too. Who realises they’ve accidentally failed to destroy the full set of rockets and then because they’re scared of being demoted doesn’t turn them in and instead sells them to someone in a bike gang.
Who forgets they have a boot full of rocket launchers? Heads should have rolled in the army for this lapse, but makes you wonder if weapons go missing all the time.
When your job means handling weapons all day, forgetting about a set is no more difficult than a tech worker forgetting about a pile of blade servers. It happens. Militaries implement systems for dealing with such things. For instance, red amnesty boxes are common at canadian bases. A rocket launcher may seem scary and horribly dangerous, but sleep beside them for a few months and they become very normal.
Headlines in Norway today: a high ranking police officer "forgetting" or forgetting to hand in some weapons he was supposed to turn in for a friend or something.
Seems like he might get away without a charge since he delivered them during an amnesty which - as far as I understand - means he legally cannot be punished for possession prior to handing them in.
Weapons do go missing all the time.
Or at least weapons with the same serial/registration numbers of destroyed weapons show up all the time, be it at crime scenes, terrorist orgs, or weapons collectors.
And we (aussies) all notice and read the Australian articles specifically. I may not have looked at this one if it was "San Fransisco Gang..." but since it was a Western Sydney gang -- I instantly opened it.
In my case it was because (not knowing the rocket launchers were comparatively tiny, and naively imagining missiles of some kind) I read the location in the title and thought "yikes, if they aim wrong they might hit my house, I should definitely read this." I was walking through Parramatta a couple hours ago, for reference.
Sort of, there's a lot of similarities to be said of Florida and Queensland though Australia mostly sits in line with Mexico latitude wise.
Hervey Bay is about the same latitude as Miami with the Great Barrier Reef aligning with the Caribbean.
Sydney is pretty close to Los Angeles latitude wise, while the most southerly major city, Hobart is about the same as Boston (or somewhere in-between SF and Portland).
This one seems a bit random, but there's been pretty good reasons for Australia to be relevant in the global tech news in the last few years. Our government is burning down as many freedoms as they can get away with in the tech space, and setting a dangerous precedent for other western countries to follow. It can't hurt to have everyone reminded of that every now and then.
Also, I'd guess Melbourne and Sydney are probably trending upwards in both startups and VC available, which would result in more visitors here from these parts.
> Our government is burning down as many freedoms as they can get away with in the tech space
Not just the tech space.
Australia has enjoyed a practically hardship-free society since it's inception, and as such people are increasingly and shockingly blasé about the dangerous potential of governments encroaching on various freedoms. I feel the government knows they can do whatever they want to follow the international community, because the general voter here either doesn't care, or doesn't know enough to form an educated opinion on [insert topical subject].
It seems to me that Australia is the first Western government imposing some authoritarian-style control on its population. I wonder what the common opinion about this is among people more familiar with the matter than me: Is the geographical proximity to China related to this? I can imagine that Australia might be slowly shifting from the USA's sphere of influence to China's sphere of influence, and as a result could be gradually adopting more Chinese-style governance measures.
I don't think it's that, at all. Right now, there's a _lot_ of anti-China rhetoric from the government and in the press, and insofar as China is attempting influence operations here they're targetting both sides - the opposition has been caught up in it too.
No, I think it's your regular Western right-wing conservatism, perhaps with the Overton window shifted a bit thanks to people like Trump making it easier for Australian hard conservatives.
No, China if anything is making us take a second look at this creeping authoritarianism and maybe push back on it. Their authoritarian influence on our politics and in other spheres (e.g. universities) is a hot-button politician topic currently.
The main cause, as far as I’m concerned, is the overwhelming apathy of the common voter. People simply don’t care. We’ve had it way too good for way too long, so as long as it isn’t an immediate threat to Barry’s ability to buy a case of booze and watch Friday night footy with the boys then he doesn’t care.
We avoided the GFC largely with minimal pain. Housing has been a sustained boom that has made generations really wealthy. Our economy has basically not undergone recession in 13 years, and has only twice in the last two decades. The social security nets we have in place, whilst being eroded, have yet to really show obvious signs of strain unless you actively look for them. It’s really hard to adequately describe just how easy Australia has had it in general for the last several decades.
As a result of all of this, both major parties have had to do little to continue these good times, so politics becomes very samey to most people. For the large majority of the population, it doesn’t really matter which party is in with respect to their day-to-day lives.
All this means that Joe Average voter has it really easy. They become apathetic as fuck, and unless an issue directly impacts them they basically do not even register it. Creeping erosion of free speech/privacy either slides under the table or becomes a “well I’ve got nothing to hide” argument.
I mean for god’s sake, our current government proposed the idea of using Webcams to facially recognise porn viewers to confirm their age. It sounds so ridiculous that most people just scoff at the idea rather than consider the attitude of ‘fuck your privacy’ behind it.
It’s really frustrating because it’s so wide-spread. The depressing part is that I don’t see that apathy changing before many of our hard-fought freedoms, or carefully-built systems that give us such high quality-of-life get destroyed. There will be a substantial lag time between them being ruined and it finally impacting the voting public enough that they actually stop, consider it, and maybe do something about it.
Is that apathy, or trust? The reason politics is quite samey is because our system is set up to generate more centrist politicians that the rest of the world. Mandatory voting and predictable seats gives a good idea of what the populace actually wants and cares about without having to beat down the voter's house to get voters to vote. The swing voters matter more and are a much smaller proportion, building a bunch of stability into the system.
When abbott and turnbull came to a political fight old-gold liberal voters turned against the party in a way that basically never happens. The voting population cares, blaming it on apathy is to interpret silence as a negative outcome when it is not.
Authoritarianism isn't a Chinese property. John Howard has said recently that authority going forward in the future is going to be one of the most important things. I think the rise of authority is particularly valuable to Australia precisely so we can maintain a sharp and effective boundary against the Chinese government's control. There is serious thought going in to policy leading up to the 2030's and the challenges it will bring. Australia has banned 5G as it is sourced from china and is looking seriously into making big military purchases and discussing alliances in the region.
The left/right split will become less relevant in a few decades as we lean into an up/down perspective, where a top down authority will maintain our values better than a liberal perspective.
It's the "grade" that makes the headline ridiculous for me. I can imagine military and non-military rocket launchers, but "military-grade rocket launchers" makes it sound like there's a QC stage at the end of the conveyor belt where someone says: "This one's a bit wonky. The army won't take it. We'll sell it to a motorcycle gang instead."
> makes it sound like there's a QC stage at the end of the conveyor belt
No, the QC stage is at design/purchase level. Different armies, different needs, different rockets. Some like the Palestinians are happy with utter crap, as long as it gets the job done (it's a common guerilla tactic, minimal expense to oneself, but great expense to the other side). Some only need to defend against car bombs meaning a "cheap" version is sufficient, some need to defend against old Russian made tanks and some need to defend against tanks with active armor. Some armies need, for different scenarios, all the variants - and cost-effective, which means it doesn't make economic sense to deploy ultra-modern tankbusters against terrorists in Toyota Hiluxes, just as it doesn't make sense to target US tanks with a WW2 panzerfaust.
In 2001, Shane Della-Vedova, a military captain in the army explosives team, was asked to dispose of ten M72 shoulder-fired rocket launchers from an Australian Defence Force base. On the 8th of June, Shane spent the day blowing up M1 rockets that the Defence Force claimed were unsafe or out of date. Apparently, he overlooked ten rocket launchers that were still in the car boot––driving away that day with them in the back of his car.
I don't exactly get it. He was tasked with destroying 10 rocket launchers, and claimed he forgot to destroy all 10 of them? Does he think this is believable at all?
The M72 is designed to be single shot disposable. It may be possible to reload it, but it is not intended and would be difficult. It would also be potentially dangerous as the construction is quite light.
This is story I actually know something about. I knew Shane personally and attended many BBQ's with him and the various other people that made up the explosives team.
I have for obvious reasons not had any contact with him since the incident.
I can even provide what I am very confident the reason for why he did it. He fully knew what he was doing, and indeed the reason was for money. However not for selfish reasons. A captain salary is not that fantastic in the army and his wife at the time, whom I suspect he is separated from now liked to live fancy. In fact I am 100% confident it is because of her that he did it. Probably without her being involved, but I cannot be sure of that. I do know she overextended their finances which would have been a good motivator.
Any claims he made to forget destroying them are a horrible attempt at deception to reduce his sentence.
For what its worth he was ostracised from the explosives community over this. It was a very small group of people, and Shane's appeals to have them speak on his behalf were ignored by them all. The group is very tight and for one of their own to betray was seen as a massive abuse of trust.
Honestly I was very sad to hear it. Selling out your country for the low amounts he did is such a sad thing. I don't think he needed to be in the super max prisons he spent his time in as I don't believe him to be a dangerous person. Certainly a very stupid mistake, but not a dangerous person. I suspect most of his being incarcerated in such was as a message. Personally I remember him as a fun person at a party enjoying a few beers and telling amusing stories of which there were many.
As for if other weapons are missing. That is possible. Shane was tasked with destroying them. Its much harder to steal from stores due to them being tracked quite well but those to be destroyed are much harder to keep track of. Usually there would be several people involved to help avoid this sort of incident.
And he should have found a legal way to make more money, and he also should have been in control of his wife's spending (easier said than done in the modern age though...).
Selling the weapons was dumb because there was almost no way they wouldn't be tracked back to him.
A captain in the Australian Army in 2018/19 earns between AUD$70,334 and AUD$130,704. Armed services salaries are tax-free, so that's not a terrible salary compared to the median in Australia of ~AUD$85k before tax or ~$65k after tax.
In Australia, only reservists get tax-free pay, and only when they're not on full-time duty. I think some of the additional military allowances are tax free for full-timers, but not base salary.
Have you not heard about the wildlife in Australia? From what I've read, every step you take outdoors, something is trying to kill you. I'm surprised every Australian school child isn't packing a rocket launcher.
Our armed forces deploy overseas on a variety of missions that include NATO support as well as peacekeeping. More generally, a standing army helps counterbalance the threat of land invasions in a way that a navy on its own could not. Thirdly, our armed forces are often used for humanitarian purposes such as supporting the country during our (not infrequent) natural disasters, e.g. flooding or bushfires.
The ADF are key to the Coalitions mission: when America wants something dirty done, that will not have the complication of civilian oversight should an investigation be necessary, they come to the Australian Defence Forces...
> Selling out your country for the low amounts he did is such a sad thing
Our politicians have sold out to Chinese influence for sub-100k bribes. It's par for course. I understand that most people have a price, but taking a year or two worth of salaried income for a move that risks ending your career just doesn't make sense no matter how I spin it.
> what would happen if they were fired into the CBD
This apparently refers to the Central Business District of Sydney [1]. I was trying to sort out what this had to do with Cannabidiol but it just didn't fit.
CBD is by no means Sydney-specific, just FYI, it’s a commonly used term in the English-speaking world. Due to the new-world situation of Australia’s cities, the CBD and downtown/city centre basically always overlap (I.e: there’s no ‘old town centre’ separate to the highrise district), so Aussies just refer to it all as ‘CBD’.
The term CBD isn’t used in the US, as far as I’ve ever heard. That’s probably why some commenters will be confused. I am only familiar with it because of a former coworker from Melbourne.
(Seattle is sort of similar in that there isn’t really an old town center, or rather it’s directly adjacent to the downtown highrises (Pioneer Square).)
It's not used in the UK either. Or rather, it's a technical term in human geography, probably used by geographers all over the world, but it's only in Australia that it's used in everyday language:
I never heard CBD until the first time I went to Sydney, but I understand it's common. I think in the US we tend to name our CBDs instead, like Chicago has "The Loop" and most places just say "downtown".
This seems like the sort of job you'd send two people on for security reasons. It's not as though the military typically has a lack of people. Giving one person that kind of responsibility just presents opportunities for corruption. I know if I needed someone to destroy a bunch of hard disks I'd make sure someone was watching so they don't just get sold off with our data.
I’d never heard of that but we used to make something similar as kids with an aerosol can, a metal drain and whatever you want to fire, arrange upright like a mortar and with a small fire at the bottom.
M72 LAW. I've actually shot a live one during my mandatory time at the military as a practice shot (We destroy our aging stock by making conscripts shoot them as a training exercise).
As a weapon it's the typical shaped charge warhead. It would be really dangerous against any normal non tank vehicle in short ranges. Against a tank it's useless nowadays. But the semi militarized armored cars used by some police forces would be disabled rather easily with one. Not blown up to smithereens, but a hit to the engine space would wreck that or a hit to the passenger compartment would kill some if not all inside.
Not that good against a building. A hand-grenade would do way more harm inside. So it's more of a trophy thing, or a really nasty surprise against SWAT truck assuming the culprit manages to hit with it.
The lax security Australia has towards these is rather hilarious.
Pretty dumb to use against the police...unless you're El Chapo and can buy them by the hundreds. And have thousands of ex-military men on payroll. In short, an army and the money to keep them armed.
In a country like Australia, what do they think it will happen once they blow a police car with one?
These would be great to kill people, criminal heads, politicians etc. That's all. Do it, collect the money and hope to stay out and alive.
First, lets be clear, I dont agree/support violence and this is an intellectual exercise.
But thinking about it it could be quite useful as an intimidation tactic.
If your rival biker clubhouse got hit by an RPG followed by the message 'we have a few more', it could really make people think about committing acts of attack on a group when another RPG is their likely reply.
That said, using against a police station like these guys considered seems stupid. Something like that would never make the police back off, and only throw ever more resource against these people.
The other use would be straight terrorism. One of those into a crowd or building would be horrific. And could be amplified if the group did one then said more are coming type thing.
Anyway, amazing the army didn't have greater control on these. At least fire them at their end of their shelf life for practice as these things cant be cheap. I imagine controls are significantly increased today.
That's right. You can never target just one of a police force. When you attack one of them, you're attacking all of them. So often overlooked by criminals.
I’m doubtful of the efficiency against crowds. The range is short and it is a shaped charge warhead, so not much of shrapnel flying around which is the major cause of death/damage in small explosions outdoors. It would be way less damage than usual hand thrown fragmentation grenade.
If you already are relatively close to a crowd you’re better off using some fully automatic weapons like actual assault rifles. Or grenade launchers.
Also not condoning violence. Just looking at the threat these things pose in hands of criminals/terrorists.
All of these were claimed to be "unsafe or out of date" in 2001, and probably weren't stored according to specs since, so would the launchers still work? The rocket's propulsion? The explosives inside the rocket?
Chances are it's like medications - the expiration date is just as long as they've tested them to last. Some explosives get more explosive as they age, too.
A few years ago in my city, a biker gang used a similar weapon (military RPG) against a rival group. There was a party at the rival group's clubhouse. A guy climbed up on an adjacent roof and fired the RPG at the building. It went through a brick wall (directly through a corner IIRC) and exploded in the main room of the clubhouse. I actually think only one or two people were killed (it was full), but the place was completely cratered inside.
Didn't an Italian ultras group (Juventus?) get their hands on an air-to-air missile recently? If I remember it wasn't some old Soviet stock but something made in Europe not all that long ago.
92 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 69.6 ms ] threadSeems like he might get away without a charge since he delivered them during an amnesty which - as far as I understand - means he legally cannot be punished for possession prior to handing them in.
But we do a lot of interesting things, often without the fanfare you see in the SV bubble that's worth talking about.
Hervey Bay is about the same latitude as Miami with the Great Barrier Reef aligning with the Caribbean. Sydney is pretty close to Los Angeles latitude wise, while the most southerly major city, Hobart is about the same as Boston (or somewhere in-between SF and Portland).
EDIT: http://www.bytemuse.com/post/interactive-equivalent-latitude...
Also, I'd guess Melbourne and Sydney are probably trending upwards in both startups and VC available, which would result in more visitors here from these parts.
Not just the tech space.
Australia has enjoyed a practically hardship-free society since it's inception, and as such people are increasingly and shockingly blasé about the dangerous potential of governments encroaching on various freedoms. I feel the government knows they can do whatever they want to follow the international community, because the general voter here either doesn't care, or doesn't know enough to form an educated opinion on [insert topical subject].
(The aboriginal didn't exactly have it hardship-free.)
No, I think it's your regular Western right-wing conservatism, perhaps with the Overton window shifted a bit thanks to people like Trump making it easier for Australian hard conservatives.
The main cause, as far as I’m concerned, is the overwhelming apathy of the common voter. People simply don’t care. We’ve had it way too good for way too long, so as long as it isn’t an immediate threat to Barry’s ability to buy a case of booze and watch Friday night footy with the boys then he doesn’t care.
We avoided the GFC largely with minimal pain. Housing has been a sustained boom that has made generations really wealthy. Our economy has basically not undergone recession in 13 years, and has only twice in the last two decades. The social security nets we have in place, whilst being eroded, have yet to really show obvious signs of strain unless you actively look for them. It’s really hard to adequately describe just how easy Australia has had it in general for the last several decades.
As a result of all of this, both major parties have had to do little to continue these good times, so politics becomes very samey to most people. For the large majority of the population, it doesn’t really matter which party is in with respect to their day-to-day lives.
All this means that Joe Average voter has it really easy. They become apathetic as fuck, and unless an issue directly impacts them they basically do not even register it. Creeping erosion of free speech/privacy either slides under the table or becomes a “well I’ve got nothing to hide” argument.
I mean for god’s sake, our current government proposed the idea of using Webcams to facially recognise porn viewers to confirm their age. It sounds so ridiculous that most people just scoff at the idea rather than consider the attitude of ‘fuck your privacy’ behind it.
It’s really frustrating because it’s so wide-spread. The depressing part is that I don’t see that apathy changing before many of our hard-fought freedoms, or carefully-built systems that give us such high quality-of-life get destroyed. There will be a substantial lag time between them being ruined and it finally impacting the voting public enough that they actually stop, consider it, and maybe do something about it.
When abbott and turnbull came to a political fight old-gold liberal voters turned against the party in a way that basically never happens. The voting population cares, blaming it on apathy is to interpret silence as a negative outcome when it is not.
The left/right split will become less relevant in a few decades as we lean into an up/down perspective, where a top down authority will maintain our values better than a liberal perspective.
What does this even mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_thrower
No, the QC stage is at design/purchase level. Different armies, different needs, different rockets. Some like the Palestinians are happy with utter crap, as long as it gets the job done (it's a common guerilla tactic, minimal expense to oneself, but great expense to the other side). Some only need to defend against car bombs meaning a "cheap" version is sufficient, some need to defend against old Russian made tanks and some need to defend against tanks with active armor. Some armies need, for different scenarios, all the variants - and cost-effective, which means it doesn't make economic sense to deploy ultra-modern tankbusters against terrorists in Toyota Hiluxes, just as it doesn't make sense to target US tanks with a WW2 panzerfaust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket
https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/crime/dissidents-...
I don't exactly get it. He was tasked with destroying 10 rocket launchers, and claimed he forgot to destroy all 10 of them? Does he think this is believable at all?
This is story I actually know something about. I knew Shane personally and attended many BBQ's with him and the various other people that made up the explosives team.
I have for obvious reasons not had any contact with him since the incident.
I can even provide what I am very confident the reason for why he did it. He fully knew what he was doing, and indeed the reason was for money. However not for selfish reasons. A captain salary is not that fantastic in the army and his wife at the time, whom I suspect he is separated from now liked to live fancy. In fact I am 100% confident it is because of her that he did it. Probably without her being involved, but I cannot be sure of that. I do know she overextended their finances which would have been a good motivator.
Any claims he made to forget destroying them are a horrible attempt at deception to reduce his sentence.
For what its worth he was ostracised from the explosives community over this. It was a very small group of people, and Shane's appeals to have them speak on his behalf were ignored by them all. The group is very tight and for one of their own to betray was seen as a massive abuse of trust.
Honestly I was very sad to hear it. Selling out your country for the low amounts he did is such a sad thing. I don't think he needed to be in the super max prisons he spent his time in as I don't believe him to be a dangerous person. Certainly a very stupid mistake, but not a dangerous person. I suspect most of his being incarcerated in such was as a message. Personally I remember him as a fun person at a party enjoying a few beers and telling amusing stories of which there were many.
As for if other weapons are missing. That is possible. Shane was tasked with destroying them. Its much harder to steal from stores due to them being tracked quite well but those to be destroyed are much harder to keep track of. Usually there would be several people involved to help avoid this sort of incident.
yeah he def should have sold his country out for a lot more.. 0.o
And he should have found a legal way to make more money, and he also should have been in control of his wife's spending (easier said than done in the modern age though...).
Selling the weapons was dumb because there was almost no way they wouldn't be tracked back to him.
https://www.defence.gov.au/payandconditions/ADF/Resources/WR...
https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6302.0
In Australia, only reservists get tax-free pay, and only when they're not on full-time duty. I think some of the additional military allowances are tax free for full-timers, but not base salary.
Or, you know, divorced her.
But seriously though, this isn't about pay. The guy was a fucking idiot.
Our politicians have sold out to Chinese influence for sub-100k bribes. It's par for course. I understand that most people have a price, but taking a year or two worth of salaried income for a move that risks ending your career just doesn't make sense no matter how I spin it.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/12/sam-d...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-12/alp-invoice-reveals-e...
I'm not at all surprised that he has been shunned. What he did was treacherous and could have caused terribly casualties.
This apparently refers to the Central Business District of Sydney [1]. I was trying to sort out what this had to do with Cannabidiol but it just didn't fit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_central_business_distri...
(Seattle is sort of similar in that there isn’t really an old town center, or rather it’s directly adjacent to the downtown highrises (Pioneer Square).)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_business_district
> Shane personally and attended many BBQ's
Checks out.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=le+patator
It may even be considered in closer relation to a mortar than rocket launcher.
As a weapon it's the typical shaped charge warhead. It would be really dangerous against any normal non tank vehicle in short ranges. Against a tank it's useless nowadays. But the semi militarized armored cars used by some police forces would be disabled rather easily with one. Not blown up to smithereens, but a hit to the engine space would wreck that or a hit to the passenger compartment would kill some if not all inside.
Not that good against a building. A hand-grenade would do way more harm inside. So it's more of a trophy thing, or a really nasty surprise against SWAT truck assuming the culprit manages to hit with it.
The lax security Australia has towards these is rather hilarious.
In a country like Australia, what do they think it will happen once they blow a police car with one?
These would be great to kill people, criminal heads, politicians etc. That's all. Do it, collect the money and hope to stay out and alive.
Otherwise quite useless.
But thinking about it it could be quite useful as an intimidation tactic.
If your rival biker clubhouse got hit by an RPG followed by the message 'we have a few more', it could really make people think about committing acts of attack on a group when another RPG is their likely reply.
That said, using against a police station like these guys considered seems stupid. Something like that would never make the police back off, and only throw ever more resource against these people.
The other use would be straight terrorism. One of those into a crowd or building would be horrific. And could be amplified if the group did one then said more are coming type thing.
Anyway, amazing the army didn't have greater control on these. At least fire them at their end of their shelf life for practice as these things cant be cheap. I imagine controls are significantly increased today.
If you already are relatively close to a crowd you’re better off using some fully automatic weapons like actual assault rifles. Or grenade launchers.
Also not condoning violence. Just looking at the threat these things pose in hands of criminals/terrorists.
Bombs were used and police found some really unusual weapons, including an anti aircraft gun at one club that they raided.
Straya!
Not very effective, but it really sends a message.