Australia's diminishing RAAF

"Critically, the performance of the Super Hornet means that it cannot realistically be expected to defeat well-flown Flankers in combat."

--Dr Andrew Davies is ASPI’s Operations and Capability Program Director, 'The generation gap: Australia and the Super Hornet', 13 February 2007--


In late 2006, the then Australian Defence Minister got the top government to sign off on purchasing 24 F-18 Super Hornets based on no credible analysis. His justification was that the F-35 was going to be late. Our current aircraft (F-111s and classic F-18s) would be at risk of not being able to do their job until the F-35 showed up.

The Super Hornet? The Australian Defence Minister didn't know what he didn't know and refused to look at it much further than a PowerPoint brief.

The uniformed services were stunned by the 2006 decision as they were not consulted about the Super Hornet and that other little part: that their advice was not taken seriously. Just weeks before, the RAAF boss, told our elected officials that F-35 delay could be handled by refurbishing our current aircraft.

The government funded think-tank ASPI put out a report in 2007 (PDF) which advised to at least delay the Super Hornet purchase decision.

That report spelled out solid reasons why there was a lot of risk tied up in the Super Hornet. The quote at the top of this post says it all: we could lose air battles.

ASPI's  recommendations:

A deferral of the decision to purchase Super Hornets would seem sensible.

This could be for 6-12 months, during which the government could:

• Gather availability, cost and capability data for the F-22, so that we understand the affordability and feasibility of moving quickly to a high-end fifth generation solution. Only if that proves unfeasible should we move to a fourth generation fallback.
• Evaluate the fourth generation options available in the world marketplace and choose the one most likely to provide us with high-end capability through the decade beginning 2020 should we need to go that way.

As for the F-22 history and Australia, this gives us an outline.

(click images to make larger)





Further background of how the entrenched defence bureaucracy looks at air power concepts can be seen here. Defence, in effect, had to create weak reasons to back up a poor decision by the Defence Minister.

So, before Australia jumped into the poor decision of the F-35, were any solutions provided to Australia to replace their existing aircraft?

Yes. (PDF)

“Effectively, the F-111 provides better than twice the combat effect of smaller aircraft like the JSF or the Super Hornet. For that reason, it might well be worth looking at how many years extra service we could get from them for part of the four billion dollars that the Super Hornets would cost. That might be a more cost-effective way of avoiding a capability gap."

--Dr Andrew Davies is ASPI’s Operations and Capability Program Director, 'The generation gap: Australia and the Super Hornet', 13 February 2007--

All of this leads back to the questions our elected official need to ask when judging the honesty from the Entrenched Defence Bureaucracy of what they have been told for years about the F-35 program.


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Our elected officials should reject the F-35, this is why

Australian F-35 industry participation not living the dream



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