There has been much talk about cutting spending and engaging in thriftiness. Federal debt is hundreds of billions.
With that, the average public sees a complete disconnect in committing billions to the Joint Strike Failure. About 80 percent do anyway.
And there is no money set aside for the F-35 as the PM and DM have claimed.
This suggests that Tony Abbott believes there is a special savings account somewhere – almost like a piggy bank – into which successive governments have been dutifully depositing money for years. We just have to break it open to find the cash to buy our new fighters.
Abbott was happy to share the credit with Labor for such far-sighted thriftiness. “The way successive governments to their credit have tried to do these things is … to start putting the money aside now for the major purchases that you need in the future to keep your defence forces effective and operational.”
Alas this is not true. There is no piggy bank. Instead there is just a plan. Ever since 2000 the government has been planning to spend a lot of money on new fighters, but plans are not hard cash. The money itself will still have to be found in each budget as the bills for the F-35 come in, year by year, over the next decade.
And the "if it is expensive it is good" thinking of the entrenched defence bureaucracy and their puppets. The unproven Triton and P-8A are on the shopping list.
Also of interest, the previous government made snap-decisions to buy more C-17s, C-27s, Super Hornet G and some other things.
They also gave away perfectly good C-130Hs that could have been refurbished.
Both parties oversaw the $1.5B wasted on the Sea Sprite. Some of those are now in New Zealands hands for pennies on the dollar.
The government before that ordered Super Hornets for no reason. Later 12 of them were to be wired for G capability but this was later forgotten and 12 G aircraft were ordered by the next government.
Defence needs a trim in spending; not an increase.
The public disconnect--being told to cut spending in other areas--while buying dud defence gear, will at some point come back to bite the government.
Ignored by many? If the legacy Hornet is the baseline in operating costs, the Super Hornet costs twice as much per flight hour. The F-35 3-4x as much. And the F-35 has not been proven to work as a weapon system. For years.
The defence budget is a zero-sum game when you are hundreds of billions in debt. The other zero-sum game is combat. The F-35 will lose battles and maybe even lose a war.
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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today
-The F-35B design is leaking fuel
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