RAAF F-35 costs being ignored, spun, by leadership

Our old classic Hornets will have to go out to the years beyond 2020 because the Just So Failed is very late.

That is the best-case scenario reported by The Australian.

They report that our 71 old, classic F-18 Hornets cost $170M per year to sustain. That is about $2.39M per aircraft per year. Well, they are old, obsolete and should have been retired by now.

The following is what The Australian didn't report:

So what would each new F-35 cost per year to sustain according to estimates in the U.S.? Using American dollars, each F-35 is expected to cost $35,500 per flying hour. Throwing some numbers around, the cost (USD) to sustain one F-35 for one year could look like this depending on how much it was flown:

180 hours per year = $6.4M
200 hours per year = $7.1M
220 hours per year = $7.8M

An Australian government set of figures for cost per flying hour from last year showed our old classic Hornets as as: $11,770 per flying hour. That is based on a fleet of 71 totalling 13,000 flying hours for a year (183 hours per airframe per year) for $2.15M per airframe per year in sustainment.

The Australian Supers were shown as $23,000 per flying hour. One would hope that would come down as learning curve grows on a new type.

So, the F-35 is not only very expensive to acquire, but very expensive to own and operate. It has significant faults. There is still no finished go-to-war design to evaluate. It won't be able to stand up to emerging Pacific Rim threats.

Yet the government says, “buy”.

With budget troubles of all kinds, the RAAF is expected to live within its mean. I am sure the RAAF/DMO/Defence cabal will find a way to apply an interesting spin to all this.

They always do.