Brendan Nelson’s been on quite the trip. He’s been signing deals all over the place. A defence agreement with France, but more importantly he’s signed Australia up to the next phase of the Joint Strike Fighter project, the gee-whiz all-singing-all-dancing new combat aircraft that’s due to replace our 1980′s-era F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters, and the venerable 1960′s F-111 “Pig” – originally described as a fighter but, in actuality, a tactical bomber with a combat range unmatched by any contemporary combat aircraft short of the American or Russian big-arse bomber fleets.
I know, for some of you, your eyes are glazing over at this point, but there is a point to all this and it involves large amounts of taxpayers’ dosh. The JSF, or to give it its new official name, the F-35 Lightning II, is a horrendously complicated bit of gear. And, like Collins-class submarines, and indeed the F-111 back in the 1960s, it’s taking a long time to develop. And the odds of it being ready, and our bunch to come off the production line, before 2014 or so are pretty small. This comes, by the way, as absolutely no surprise to anybody paying the slightest attention to the issue. The schedule, however, poses a problem. The Air Force is set (many might claim hellbent) on retiring the F-111 by 2010. This would leave Australia with only the Hornets – fine aircraft, but with approximately the range of a Sopwith Camel – for a significant fraction of the next decade, in fact, possibly most of it by the time the RAAF gets fully up to speed in operating the F-35.
So, what’s a government to do? Well, according to the Courier-Mail, the government is considering a couple of contingency plans – the most likely being to buy a couple of dozen of an upgraded version of the Hornet – the imaginatively named Super Hornet. That should tide us over, right?
Except that this makes precisely no sense at all. The Super Hornet, while a longer-range aircraft than the original Hornet, has less range than the F-35, let alone the F-111 it would be purchased to replace. So it will struggle greatly to fulfill the roles of the F-111. Furthermore, once the F-35 comes on stream, the Super Hornets would be inferior in pretty much every way to them (with the possible exception of the specialised electronic warfare role). So, in 2018 or so, Australia could be left with a couple of dozen near-new, but obsolete aircraft that it have to find a buyer for – and that may well be difficult, as nobody but the Yanks operate the Super Hornet. But lets say it decides, despite their obsolescence, to keep operating the Super Hornet. If that were to happen, we’d be faced with the extra expense of keeping maintenance facilities, spares, and whatnot for a small squadron of obsolete aircraft. Funnily enough, this is what replacing the F-111 and Hornet with one aircraft was supposed to avoid.
So our government, supposed genius in all matters military in nature, is considering spending another lazy couple of billion dollars on aircraft that are at best marginally adequate for the role they’re taking, and will have a useful lifespan of at best a few years before we’re left with maintaining an obsolete orphan aircraft, or have to scratch around for somebody to take the damn things off our hands.
With speculating on defence stuff, there’s always the risk that there are other issues which have been kept secret or are simply not obvious to rank amateurs like myself. But on the face of it, the fighter plane procurement, like a lot of other recent defence acquisition programs, smells like a stuffup. Kruddy certainly thinks so.
And it’s always a bit of a problem when you buy a bit of kit off the plan, as we’ve done with the F35 (and had done previously with the F111). In fact, despite the early promise of the F111, the RAAF was the only air force outside the US to operate them. The RAF cancelled their orders.
It’s also worth remembering that the F111, which was plagued by cost over-runs and technical problems, was not delivered when due, and for a number of years the RAAF ran F4Phantoms in its place.
Which probably goes to explain why Condi Rice was looking the cat that ate the pigeon the other day. And it had nothing to do with Downer’s simpering performance in declaring himself her absolute best best first best friend.
For on that very day Australia and Britain signed contracts for the next phase of the F35. Yippee! Or not. Because there are apparently some fairly crucial questions about who owns/has access to what in terms of the intellectual property contained in the new aircraft.
But you’re right. It’s the F111 all over again.
Drain, I’d like you to meet billions of dollars.
Personally I don’t care for any of these so-called fifth generation fighters. They all look like the sort of shite you’d expect to come out of a GMH factory.
To be fair, Christine, the F111 has been a hell of an aircraft for Australia’s defence purposes for a very long time, to the point where it has been argued that it would have been a better strategy to rebuild the buggers with new engines and avionics rather than junk them.
The broader issues of the suitability of the F-35 are important too, but even accepting that it’s the right aircraft for Australia it seems to me that the planning for the transition was abysmal.
Don’t disagree with you re F111, Robert. I deleted my original sentence about ‘Nice Big F**k You Bombers’ for the sake of brevity.
As for transitional planning, yes on past experience the whole sorry mess was entirely predictable. I wonder if there was anyting in the contract to cover such contingencies?
A very simplistic negative analysis of a complex situation.
What you fail to include in your assessment is the impact that the purchase of various force multiplying assets has on both the existing Hornets and the potential Super Hornet. The combination of AWACS and in-flight refueling capability and more modern stand-off weapons and avionics upgrades significantly improves the combat calculus.
You provide plenty of criticisms that are mainly a synopsis of stories in the general and industry media. What positive solutions do you have? What do you think they should have done?
The F-111 is a long-range medium strike capability. Is this required? If yes, then how? A new manned aircraft, UAV or cruise missiles?
Cricisms of delays in advanced technicl projects such as the F-35 are old hat. The F-111 and Collins Class subs are typical examples – highly complex combat systems delivered late and over initial budget but once in service they are seen as dominant weapons in the region and the envy of many of the best defence forces in the world. I have no doubt the F-35 will be the same.
My proposed solutions – we should have bought Cruise Missiles ages ago, and we can buy them now off the shelf if needed. We also should have bougth the F-22 Raptor, as well as the F-35. We also should buy the VTOL F-35 and our new Amphib ships should be capable of operating them.
The final issue I have with your screed is that you appear to think you can buy defence on the cheap. This sort of attitude puts Australian service men and women’s lives at risk. It costs a lot to buy the best equipment. Get over it.
There are questions as to what we are actually buying here too. i.e. whether we are getting the same aircraft with all the bells and whistles that the yanks themselves are getting.
These questions go to the radar avoidance technology and whether the RAAF will own the source codes for the computer system.
Niether has been guaranteed by the US in my understanding.
Well the question of source codes is an interesting one. Britain only signed because it received assurances that the Pentagon would allow an unbroken chain of command once the planes were in service with the RAF.
According to Lord Drayson, Britain’s defence procurement minister, “it will not be a requirement, for example, to have US Air Force personnel on a British aircraft carrier to deliver our operational sovereignty.”
Where does Australia fit in? Is it an issue?
RM
Huh?
Razor
Double huh??
Apart from making one hell of noise at the start of the Melbourne Grand Prix and crashing into random bits of the Australian Outback what use has been the F111?
The answer is: no use.
It hasn’t contributed at all to any of Australia’s feats of arms since the debacle of Vietnam. Ownership of it has not changed at all the conduct of major or minor powers in Australia’s region.
The JSF will serve the same non-function. It is a ticket to the US strategic banquet, not as a guest but as fellator-in-chief to the host.
But some “middle powers” like that kind of thing. Trouble is Australian taxpayers are footing the bill.
As compensation the Defence hierarchy get to play with the most expensive boy-toys in the world.
Big deal.
Dearest Katz,
Defence of the Australian Mainland 101
1. You want to hurt the bad guys before they get to the Australian Mainland.
2. If a country to our North does something that deserves a good hard slap you need to be able to do that – whether that slap was a low-level photo-recon mission or a bomb.
The “Pig” was the best medium bomber in the world to do that and possibly still is.
If you don’t think the F-111 contributed to Australia’s defence then I suppose you don’t insure your house or car, let alone use private health insurance or life insurance.
Justaguy and Christine,
I am pretty sure the US have agreed to us having alll computer codes. That was sorted before we made our last commitment to the project.
Does NZ have F111s?
Were they invaded?
Razor’s arguments make sense to paranoid delusionals.
I tend to agree, but mostly because I’ve always found pilots really annoying, and they’re the one profession I would like to see replaced by robots. And getting even less serious, I think it’s time for another link to the DIY Kiwi Budget Cruise Missile.
When your insurance bill gets too high, you go to a broker and negotiate cheaper cover.
Buying JSF insurance is like being covered by HIH.
I was just reminded of this for some reason.
Toys for the boys.
Sad.
Liam, that is just a brilliant idea. Now if we could only combine the home made cruise missile with an army of ninjas …
Katz: I believe you are quite wrong on this point. While we have never used the F-111′s directly, they are a very big stick. A specific example: the Indonesians were spoiling for a fight during the height of the East Timor crisis. The F-111′s were put on alert. President Habibe was, reputedly, talked out of it by Wiranto because he knew the Indonesians would lose. That’s what weapons systems like the F-111 buy you.
Your, and Hannah’s implied argument, that we could do without an air combat force is in any case rather orthogonal to the point I was trying to make – because of what looks like bad planning we will spend a lot more money than the already large costs on planes that are marginal for the job they are apparently supposed to do. Whether you support the retention of the present level of combat aircraft capability or not, I presume you support the idea that our leaders should be spending their money effectively.
Christine, yes, the rights to the source code for the F-35 are an issue for Australia, but there’s enough material in that for a separate post. The actual situation is presently about as clear as mud. See this article in the independent. Australia’s ability to maintain and, particularly, modify the F-35 is a less significant issue than it is for Britain, because our own indigenous aircraft industry is a lot smaller. But it’s still of concern.
Razor: we have recently bought a cruise missile to strap on the Hornets, the JASSM. Maximum range maybe 400 kilometres or so. The F-111′s range advantage over the F-35, let alone the Super Hornet or Hornet, is far bigger than that. Aerial refuelling also has some severe limitations – essentially, you don’t want to do it in range of enemy fighters. See this ASPI paper. It has some rather handy pictures of the strike radii of all three.
Furthermore, Razor, the idea of “whatever it takes” for military equipment is a nonsense. Not even the United States takes that attitude. Not to mention that us buying extra capabilities may encourage others in the region to do the same, making us, ultimately, less safe than we were before.
As to your question of what we should be doing, my key point in this post was not to argue against the acquisition of the F-35, though the merits of that purchase are quite debatable. My point was that, as you have very accurately pointed out, complex weapons systems almost inevitably take longer to develop than hoped. However, the government seems to have gotten caught up in believing in miracles, when it was clear to all and sundry that schedule slippage would occur. And their apparent contingency plan is, on first glance, one that will leave us with a relatively small number of nearly-new but second rate aircraft in 12 years time or so.
As to what should be done, the need for the Super Hornet seems to relate primarily to the desire to retire the Pig as quickly as possible. I’d be looking real hard at what would be needed to keep the Pig a) going, and b) militarily useful, for a few more years. For a start, how hard would it be to hang cruise missiles off the Pig? And how much would a new radar and jamming gear cost?
I do have some ideas of my own about how a long-range strike capability like the F-111 could be maintained at a fraction of its present cost, but that is descending into Bigglesdom of the highest order and will save it for my own blog rather than inflict it on the readers of LP.
Hannah, take home message – government incompetence about to cost you several billion dollars which could otherwise be spent on education/health/the arts/puppies for all.
Robert,
I am aware of the JASSM purchase and thought that it was a good idea. However it isn’t in the same leaague as the Tomohawk.
As for the idea of budget constraints – Australia’s Defence budget needs to be significantly increased.
So was the US Pacific Fleet.
The Indos took more notice of that.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against strategic air power in the right circumstances. And those circumstances are to sink an aircraft carrier bent on attacking Australia.
At present, no power capable of being stopped has a carrier fleet worth sinking. When that happens, we will need a strategic air arm.
To employ JSF fighters in bombing terrorist bases is a huge waste of money and a stupid misapplication offorce.
Personally I’d be glad to have the Bigglesdom at LP. Someone commented once here that defence matters weren’t highlighted on political blogs and they should be. Obviously it’s something I myself have zero expertise in, but these are important decisions and debates and I’d love to learn from the debate between those who do have knowledge of them.
Well Mark: Tally ho, I say.
What was that cool but subtly still post-colonialist Sharpe of India with the stirring music and the homosocial relship with the Seargent thingo on the tele, Christine? Rather enjoyed that martial tale…
Jolly stuff and should be more of it Mark. Bunch of stout chaps doing the right thing for Empire while giving sundry cads and bounders a bit of what for and keeping local natives in check.
Best thing since that young Bomber Harris showed those ungrateful Mespotamian rebels what a few Vickers Venoms could do. Why don’t they make a series about that then, eh?
No pretty Indian princes and princesses to entice the eyes?
Duke of Wellington not involved? Actually modern era politicians descending in a direct lineage grasping with similar imperialist courses on which one must stay?
Of course. Heaving breasts. Lots of heaving breasts.
Yes there were breasts.
Plus they heaved on princess/damsel in distress to be saved both from her browner skinned co-freres and an English bounder of the most blackguardly nature!
And then there were the certain resonances with “It ain’t half hot, mum”.
Just sayin…
Rollicking good fun really and no political subtext… Really.
Just a general comment: some TNI hotheads were certainly spoiling for a fight, but would have got their arse roundly kicked, and knew it too. F-111s didnt come into it. TNI just didnt fancy themselves mano a mano with the ADF. Plus Clinton had Habibie face down in the diplomatic equivalent of a chokehold.
TNI is an internal security apparatus and corrupt business venture, and couldnt go two rounds with a revolving door. Too used to beating up civilians. And this is critical: if TNI started to look like a loser against a well-discipline smaller force, the whole eastern wing of the Javan Empire goes boom!! Plus they know their every time they fart in Timor its monitored in Darwin.
I never tire of mentioning: TNI were outfought for a good two years by the hopelessly outnumbered, but better trained and armed Africa vets among the Timorese in the former Portuguese colonial army. And this was before they turned to guerilla tactics and cells in the 80s.
The Portuguese “forgot” to take a rather well-stocked NATO arsenal with them with they split in 75, you see. Better than any equipment the Indos then had.
TNI never made much of an impact against Fretilin/ Falintil until the Yanks lent them some jungle-buster napalming planes, and other hi-tech gear, a few years later.
Don’t worry, Lefty. Mark and I have cracked the whole ADF thing. We know a couple of really good Irish cavalry officers who used to be with Wellington in India and …
Mark, at this point of time it’s pure, rank speculation rather than a fully-formed idea.
But the basic observation is that the reason it’s important to have the very best military planes, rather than ten times as many cheap ones, is that pilots are far too valuable to treat as an expendable commodity.
If there’s no pilot in a plane, that is no longer of any great concern. Therefore, massive swarms of cheap, largely expandable uncrewed aircraft might be a more sensible option than a few super-duper strike aircraft hewn from solid unobtanium.
Excellent post, Robert. Following on from the Vanguard post, you have evidently taken up the mantle of LP defence correspondent!
I suspect you are a bit too harsh on Defence, who have had a long time to plan for this circumstance (i.e. this is not one of those Howard government “impulse buys” a la the M-1 tank).
The fundamental problems are the aging of the F-111 airframe and the slippage of the F-35, between them creating a gap that Defence just may not be able to do anything about, other than its Super Hornet scheme (which I agree is problematic). I will be very interested to read on your blog what you suggest about extending the F-111.
Cruise missiles are an alternative, but one problem is that if the missiles can carry a >500kg payload over >300km, then they fall foul of an arms control regime: the MTCR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Regime
“Razor on 15 December 2006 at 4:27 pm
Justaguy and Christine,
I am pretty sure the US have agreed to us having alll computer codes. That was sorted before we made our last commitment to the project.”
My understanding is that there is no such commitment. Still if Lord Downer and Brendy have their mates’ nod and wink on the issue, she’ll be apples.
Putting it on paper seems so unnesessary. We’re “mates” and it’s only taxpayers’ money anyway.
Yes, Defence have had a long time to plan for this. Everything written publicly about the process, including the ASPI’s reports on the matter, have been predicting precisely this problem. The government and Defence have continually said “it’ll be right”. Well, guess what, it wasn’t right. And their contingency plan is rather sucky.
If you want to read voluminous material about extending the life of the F-111, might I suggest Carlo Kopp and Peter Goon’s Aus Air Power. They aren’t exactly dispassionate about the issue – however, it’s clearly possible to keep old aircraft in the air indefinitely – heck, the USAF plans to fly the B-52 until 2050, 95 years since the type entered service and roughly 90 years since the actual airframes in use were built. The question is, of course, at what cost, and whether they will still be militarily useful.
Robert, while you’re here, can you or anyone else explain what’s with the trend towards barely distinguishable grey insignia on military aircraft?
Stop panicking, the thing can take off and land already
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20936660-401,00.html?from=public_rss
That’s a big plus as far as planes go.
Christine,
MIL-STD-2161(AS) for USN and US Marines aircraft state it is a “color scheme to reduce visual detection comprised of shades of flat gray with exterior markings in a contrasting shade of gray”. Land camouflage scheme consists of “flat green, black and gray colors with exterior markings applied in a contrasting color”.
As a reality check for all those armchair field marshalls out there who think that weapons procurers and the dominant school of military strategy have the slightest grasp of military reality, read this Tomdispatch story about US retired General Paul van Riper.
It all begins with a 2002 Wargame called Millennium Challenge 02 (cost: US$250,000,000) designed to prove the invincibility of US weapons systems and Rumsfeldian strategy against Iraq.
Gen van Riper lead the “Red Team”. Result:
But Rumsfeld got his US$250,000,000 worth.
Millennium Challenge 02 was hailed as a vindication of Rumsfeld’s “Revolution in Military Affairs.”
I wouldn’t buy aluminum cladding from these guys. But Ratty wants dependent interoperability. Criminal recklessness.
I loved the quote on another thread:
“The US has proven itself to be an impotent enemy and a treacherous friend.”
Everyone:
Interesting postings so far ….. sorry I can’t respond to each of you in turn. Now where do I start? ……
Who let the RAAF/Defence wallahs out there in the big bad world of the armaments/defence market without their mummies but with their daddies’ signed cheque-[= check-]books in their hands? This is 2006 – and soon 2007 – so why are we being put in peril by buying what is essentially only renovated and fragile ‘Seventies gee-whiz technology when our defence needs scream out for entirely different and very robust technologies and for the strategies to go with them? Ones that would make any potential aggressor decide that attacking Australia and its friendly neighbours would be too costly to even think about.
Before committing us to the potential for easy defeat and ruin, did the aforementioned wallahs bother to get together a few focus groups from among our ex-”freedom-fighter” migrants and “undisciplined” teenagers and put the simple question “How would you destroy one of these lovely F-35 aircraft for less than a thousand dollars and get away alive?”? No? The answers would no doubt horrify RAAF brass – and you can bet our enemies have already got THEIR answers to the same basic question.
Once commited to make this foolish purchase, why on earth didn’t the RAAF and Defence send off everyone they could to be seen wandering around Russian, Chinese, E.U. ….and Belorus …. defence/air shows and appear deeply interested in buying the latest goodies. We would have got a better price if Yanks had seen that we were looking seriously at the competitors too. It’s all in Day 1 Week 1 of Elementary Marketing 1.001!! Instead, we have the farce of a monoply supplier selling dodgy goods to a captive buyer …. Hey, hang on; isn’t that what used to happen under Communism?
I have to say I’ve been loving Katz’s posts on this thread.
One of the most interesting themes of post-WW2 military history is the impotence of air power. [In fact, there's not necssarily a lot of evidence to suggest that air power was decisive in the second world war either - important yes, but hardly more important that 20 million Russians pouring over the Vistula and Oder.]
One of the best examples is the most recent – the utter failure of the Israeli Defence Force’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. After several years of digging in and careful preparation, the might of General Dan Halutz’ air force was of little use against the canny Hezbollaah guerillas. The bridges, roads and civil infrastructure of poor Lebanon were pulverised, but the aerial bombardment proved so ineffective the Israelis had to send in ground troops – straight into well-prepared Hezbollah ambushes.
One of the recent conflicts where air power was supposed to be decisive – the 1998 action against the Serbs – was in fact a triumph of diplomacy, as internal political pressure forced Milosevic to back down. In Lebanon, where Hezbollah actually gained political advantage from the bombing, air power was actually inimical to Israel’s cause.
Air power can be very useful against a conventionl army massed in numbers in conventional terrain, but time and again has been shown to be ineffective against guerrillas in cities.
None of which is to say that having a long-range sttrike capability won’t be useful in the infinitesimally small chance that a northern neighbour masses an invasion fleet. But Joint Strike Fighters, Super Hornets and F-111′s will be little more than expensive junk in the sort of “fourth generation warfare” the ADF is likely to face in the Pacific. Cable TV news makes it highly unpopular to bomb cities, and in the end, as the Americans are finding to their cost in Iraq, what matters is what happens on the ground.
Australia should be investing in more infantry (which we havve started to do), because the vast majority of our future conflicts will be low-intensity, dirty conflicts in our Pacific near-abroad. As Katz so amusingly points out, NZ abolished their air force, and no-one has invaded yet.
Ben, you’re quite right about the uselessness of planes against guerillas, particularly urban guerillas.
However, the assumption that Australia won’t ever fight against a conventional army immediately to its north is a little too pat for my liking. Historically, there have been a number of border incidents between PNG and Indonesia, and there are claims (the veracity of which I have no evidence for) that there are Australian troops on the border right now (see link at bottom of post, WP breaks URLs)). Even if this specific report is false, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where we might well want to deploy troops there (or East Timor) to encourage Indonesia to stay its side of the border.
The Indonesians have air support (crappy, but likely to improve as they intend to purchase more Su-30 fighters) available to them if it ever came to a shooting war. Without air support of our own to call on if the pooh hits the fan, it would be suicidal to risk Australian troops there, and thus we would have no ability to interfere with any incursions.
* http://www.fpcn-global.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=186
BenEltham:
Agree.
Furthermore, Australia’s most successful aircraft purchases in the past half century were the Hercules, the Caribou (even with it’s engine maintenence requirements); the UH-1D helicopter and the BlackHawk helicopter …. and, guess what, they are all sub-sonic mundane flying trucks. And Australia is still in a position to produce or resurrect very useful aircraft: AirTruk, AirVan, Stratos, Seabird Seeker, Slepcev’s Storch ….. all of which fly slower than a bullock-dray.
Then there are the two very nice bits of air defence technology we might have had as our own exclusive, to keep for ourselves or to sell to the rest of the world at outrageous prices – if it hadn’t been for dimwits in Defence who tried to get into the record books for the world’s worst commercial and defence decisions by failing to recognize winners even when they jumped up onto their laps!. (Bet they were paid “productivity bonuses” too).
A application of little bit of CDF by those in authority – after all, that’s what we pay them for! – and we wouldn’t need to buy any flying crown-jewels like the F-35.
There is no doubt that Australian troops in these circumstances require tactical air support. However, extraordinarily expensive, high-tech planes are inappropriate.
Let’s say there was confrontation in ET or WP with Indonesia.
Absent military support from the US, Australia could expect to make only symbolic resistence to a determined incursion.
A show of strategic air power and even the destruction of an armoured vehicle on the ground may be enough to cause an Indonesian backdown. But I doubt it.
Were the Indonesians to push on, very quickly it would appear that Australia’s F111s. Hornets, or JSFs are incapable of flying from an Australian base and maintain a credible threat.
The next phase would be to take out some important Indonesian infrastructure like port facilities or an Indonesian combat or support vessel. F111s are at present more than capable of doing this.
But what is Act III? After such a serious escalation, given the tiny size of any Australian expeditionary force, the ground warfare consequences would be very ugly indeed.
No, the reality is in ET and WP Australian forces serve overwhelmingly as a diplomatic tripwire. Strategic air power of the sort that Australia can afford would simply tempt politicians to take measures that weaken the diplomatic nature of our commitments without strengthening in any sustainable way the military nature of projection of force.
It was in Japan’s case.
The bomber will always get through!
In a really serious confrontation with Indonesia a ground force would hardly be necessary. As Indonesia is an archipelago the key would be the destruction of their navy (which would not be a big ask as it is the decrepit Cinderella of their armed forces) and their ability to move troops generally. That would be sufficient to destabilise their government and to cause them to call it quits.
The F111s are quite capable of flying over Java and back from an Australian base. That was what they were bought for in the first place.
Though God forbid that such a scenario would ever be realised.
Robert – I agree that in a conventional conflict, air power will be important.
It’s just that the sorts of conflicts that Australia will face in our neighbourhood are unlikely to be conventional. This is particularly true if Australia were to abandon its Howard-era adventurism and return to Hugh White/Paul Dibb style “Defence of Australia” strategic doctrine. Of course, General Staffs must plan for contingencies and a conventional war must be considered one of the possibilities the ADF should plan for. In this instance the JSF – not a true air superiority fighter but in fact a fighter-bomber designed for close support – will prove very useful, especially in conjunction with Australia’s new Wedgtail AWACS radar planes.
[In an interestig side-note, the next generation of Russian anti-radar missiles will render our new AWACS planes highly vulnerrable to surface-to-air attack).
However the vast majority of the missions the ADF will deploy for over the next 30 years will be police actions, of the sort we are already carrying out in the Solomons as part of RAMSI. Joint Strike Fighters will be less useful than a phalanx of pikemen in this kind of engamement; you can’t bomb a gang of toughs trying to loot the local convenience store (though the Americans would probably try).
Some of you may not know who Guilio Douhet was (and those who do will no doubt be suprised at his sudden appearance in cyberspace after years in the grave).
Douhet was an Italian war theorist and airpower enthusiast whose advocacy of air power proved hhighly prescient for the Second World War. In a similar way to Alfred Mahan’s theory of the primacy of sea power, Douhet argued that air power would render modern armies irrelevant. He developed his theory in response to the horrific stallemate of the First World War’s western front, where modern technologies like the machine gun and barbed wire rendered armies dug in and on the defensive almost impregnable.
Douhet theorised that airpower would be applied to the principlesof Total War and used as a weapon against enemy infrastructure – including cities. In his classic 1921 text The Command of the Air, he predicted that aerial bombardment would rapidly lead to a collapse in civilian morale: “The time would soon come when, to put an end to horror and suffering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war.”
World War 2 proved Douhet both right and wrong. Britain and America built huge fleets of bombers and openly set out to slaughter enemy civilians in cities – the raid on Dresden in 1945, at the time swollen with refugees, killed more than 100,000.
But strategic bombing did not lead to the collapse of Axis morale. As GregM alludes to, by 1945 the USAAF was razing Japanese cities in giant bombing raids – 70,000 died in one night after a raid on Tokyo in ealry 1945 – but with little impact of Japan’s war effort. In contrast, US control of Japan’s sea-lanes had almost entirely crippled Japan’s military industrial complex. It took the atomic bomb to convince the Emporer to call a halt to the slaughter (dropped from a bomber, I grant you).
Since 1945 air power has time and again proved a dangerous temptation for generals looking for a low-cost way to deploy military might. Vietnam is the most extensive modern example, but a more contemporary illustration is the US’s bungled opeation against Bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001.
With years of preparation, Bin laden’s extensive bunker complexes in the Tora Bora caves proved impervious to US bombers, and the small number of US troops on the ground were unable to prevent Bin laden’s escape.
One final point of interest: it was not actually Douhet who said “the bomber will always get through” but Stanley Baldwin, the British politician, in 1932. In fact, German fighters extracted heavy losses on US and British bomber fleets well in 1944.
Oh goody. Strategic bombing policy!
It’s an endlessly contentious debate, I know, but I’d argue that it was in fact the entry of Russia into the war combined with the year-long US bombing campaign, rather than the atomic bomb, that eventually convinced the Japanese Cabinet to accept the Allies surrender conditions.
Complicated politics and events, but basically the militarists in the cabinet felt that the atomic bomb was, well, just another bomb and reasoned that the US probably only had one or two anyway (fairly prescient as it turned out).
But once the Soviets rolled across the Manchurian border at around the same time and started pounding the Kwantung Army, the game was well and truly up (well it was really up at least 18 months earlier. But that Japanese war cabinet, they crazy).
But Ben Eltahm’s right, airpower alone has too often been seen as a cheap way to victory. Most recently we’ve seen the tentative debate about ‘pinpoint’ bombing Iran.
Yugoslavia has also been mentioned. Interesting to note how quickly NATO ran out of targets in Belgrade and moved south into Kosovo.
Also interesting to note how difficult it was locate the main targets – Yugoslav tanks. The former Communist state had had years of practice in camouflaging their tanks against just this sort of attack. Except they expected the attack to come from the Soviet Union.
“there’s not necssarily a lot of evidence to suggest that air power was decisive in the second world war either -
It was in Japan’s case.”
Effectively put Greg M in response to one the of the sillier statements this weekend.
Katz, Perhaps you should stick to other topics, your knowledge of Defence and the TNI in general is not your strong point.
“Absent military support from the US, Australia could expect to make only symbolic resistence to a determined incursion.”
In fact, if push came to shove, we could be expected to do very well. Whilst hugely numerically superior, the TNI (with the exception of a very few units) is plaqued with corruption, poor leadership and low morale.
Additionally, despite some glaring errors, Australia’s main advantage is there has been considerable effort in making the oz forces logistically supportable whereas the TNI procurement is heavily dependent on payoffs, whims and regional commander wishlists usually supported not by government coffers but TNI run business both legal and illegal with little regard for long term viablity or capability. This has resulted any number of unsupportable “one ofs” or technically unsuitable equipment.
Of course, this is not to mention that significant parts of the TNI are just too busy with internal issues to be used eleswhere.
This is not to say that any trouble would not be ugly but to say “symbolic resistence” displays an ignorance of history and current affairs.
If Oigal wants to argue with a straw man of his own creation, I’d thank her/him for not giving it the name “Katz”. Or is that too much to ask?
Everything I said about actual military conflict between Australia and Indonesia was consequent to and contingent upon aggressive use by Australia of its strategic bombing capabilities.
Oigal seems to assume that the Indonesians would be reluctant to change and perhaps incapable of changing their shambolic way of going about their business in the aftermath of such a direct insult to national pride.
Given that in the scenario I was talking about (note this scenario did not entail the much more achievable defence of the Australian mainland against attack and occupation) Australia would be compelled to maintain a military presence of a very small force in a remote and difficult terrain adjacent to where the TNI has bases and support structures (West Timor and West Papua). Under such conditions the fighting capabilities of any Australian ground force would be steadily eroded.
I make personal comments only in retaliation.
May I therefore return the compliment to Oigal by suggesting that s/he doesn’t attempt to make any comment until s/he actually demonstrates an ability to read for meaning.
_____________
I agree with GregM that it is absurd to say that air power has never been decisive in warfare. However, it is worth noting that, given the fact that US war aims entailed the unconditional surrender of Japan, the decisive use of air power against Japan entailed use of the A-Bomb. US military planners had previously estimated that an assault on the Japanese mainland would have cost the US a million men. These planners were imagining what the US later got in Vietnam and Iraq — an insurgent, decentralised guerrilla war.
That is one reason why at Yalta in January 1945 Roosevelt was so keen to have Stalin commit Soviet forces to the war against Japan. FDR believed firmly, and probably on very good grounds, that the job of defeating and occupying Japan to enforce unconditional surrender would be too big for the US alone.
Well the Showa Emperor, for one, would disagree with you and I think he knew more about the deliberations of the Japanese War Cabinet than any of us. He specifically mentioned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as being the reasons that Japan chose to accept the Allies’ terms in his surrender speech.
The Japanese War Faction had argued after the bombing of Hiroshima that America could only have one nuclear weapon, but they were disabused of that bit of wishful thinking by the dropping of the second bomb. It left the Japanese in the position of not knowing how many such bombs the Americans had but knowing that, however many they had, they were prepared to use them. That discredited the War Faction and gave the Peace Faction the upper hand in the War Cabinet.
That said, having the Red Army bearing down on the Kwantung Army could not have come as good news, especially as it presaged occupation of the Japanese home islands by both the Americans and the Soviets, both with murderous intent, if Japanese resistance continued.
It is indeed a contentious debate, but I agree with GregM: the atomic bombs were more decisive than the Soviet invasion (and the Nagasaki one more so than the Hiroshima one). Navy Minister Yonai described the bombs as a “gift from heaven”, because they gave the peace faction the necessary leverage to get the war faction to agree to an unconditional surrender.
BTW, the Dresden raid did not kill more than 100,000, as Ben Eltham suggests. Most historians now agree it’s somewhere around 30,000. David Irving is one of the few who still trots out the 100,000 figure.
An interesting sidelight on this is the nature of the US authorisation to use nuclear weapons.
Truman gave the authorisation to the US Army to use the A-bomb as they saw fit.
In other words, Truman did not dictate its use nor did he determine where is was to be used.
However, after Truman was given the best available information (which wasn’t much) about the extent of the damage done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki he withdrew authorisation for further use.
Of course the Japanese Cabinet were in no position to know this and by surrendering unconditionally acted with belated prudence.
If the Japanese had refused to surrender unconditionally Truman would have been faced with the difficult decision of whether and how to allow additional use of the A-bomb.
Paulus [4.47am 16th]
Yes ….but you’ve overlooked Australia’s undisputed leadership in breaching all sorts of international agreements and conventions whenever convenient. Don’t bother with the weapons system experts, just send in the lawyers! Seriously though, what we need is the best range of stand-off weapons (i.e.: cruise missiles replacements) we can buy – as well as completely different technologies that can be adapted readily and cheaply to become weapons systems.
Katz [5.18pm on 16th]… and Oigal too:
Okay, I’ll stick my neck out and ruin my chances of ever getting another visa to enter the United States by saying here what a lot of Australians have already whispered in private ….. America is seen as an UNRELIABLE ally. Anyone who develops a defence of Australia based on a naive belief in the unchanging kindness and generosity of the United States is a fool who puts us all in danger. By all means, work closely with the United States where our interests do coincide …. but the rest of the time, make sure the padlock on our cookie-jar is snapped shut.
Sorry Gre M, Katz, and Brett. My original formaulation of words re the bomb was pretty clumsy in hindsight. I was merely trying to point out that there were other factors involved other than the bomb alone which led to the decision to surrender.
However on going back over the dates, the Soviets invaded on August 8, so the war cabinet, meeting on August 9, could have had no idea of the scale of the attack (which was significant).
Hirohito had in fact made up his mind by June 22 when he advised the War Cabinet:
Robert Guillain, in I saw Tokyo burning: An eyewitness narrative from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima reports that it was the destruction wrought by the firebombing campaign, especially after the March raids on Tokyo, that confronted him the emporer with reality.
At the crucial cabinet meeting on August 9, nothing much had really changed. The war cabinet, in which decsisions were meant to be unanimous, was split down the middle and the militarists remained determined to fight on.
But it seems that Prime Minister Suzuki, through some adept bureucratic sleight of hand, managed to wangle the situation so that the cabinet would accept a majority vote. Hirohito stuck up his hand and, well, game over.
But it’s all probably nitpicking, anyway.
Sorry. Crucial cabinet meeting August 13. Meh.
Good points CK.
And to complicate matters further, the Japanese Cabinet had already agreed to concede defeat, but not to surrender unconditionally.
Before Hiroshima, some Cabinet Ministers point blank refused to surrender if that meant losing the Emperor, and those who were willing to allow the Emperor to go, of course could never say such a thing in Cabinet discussion.
Nevertheless, the Japanese asked Stalin to communicate to the US the Japanese desire to surrender on terms.
Stalin, wanting the Japanese to survive long enough (three months after the surrender of Germany, as agreed at Yalta) to enter the war against Japan, did not send on the Japanese message. (Chiang Kai-shek also wanted Japanese humiliation and added weight to Stalin’s reasoning.)
However, the US intercepted the Japanese message and there was discussion at Cabinet level in Washington about offering terms.
As it turned out, the Hawks, led by Secretary of State James Byrnes, won the day and the unconditional surrender demand remained, with world-altering effects.
Well to be fair, Katz, much of the debate about retaining the ‘emporer system’ also had much to do with the military retaining its power.
And for a country that went to war with the US on the basis that a settlement would be reached within 12 months, they had a pretty cockamamie idea of peace initiatives. Using the Russians as honest-brokers after they’d just crushed Germany and given the historical emnity between the two nations? What planet were these people living on?
If events in the bunker were weird, the behaviour of the Japanese government in 1944-45 just makes you shake your head in wonderment at the butt-headed lunacy of it all.
Katz, as I recall it Truman accepted to advice of the committee that he set up to examine the use of the bomb that it should be used on a Japanese industrial city with military facilities (which was just about all of them) without prior warning but, with one exception, left it to the military to decide which city and when, which is as you said. The one exception, at the insistence of Henry Stimson, the Secretary for War, was that Kyoto not be a target because of its cultural significance to the Japanese.
If Australia’s strategic requirements are merely to scare Indonesia by way of outspending that country with outlandishly priced weapons then the JSF is a brilliant idea. If it is to be a genuine piece of defence gear, say like the useful Sabres were, or the Mirages (both proven in battle) then JSF is not a terribly intelligent choice. There are many cheaper aircraft, available right now, which, with a mix of predators and predator-like aircraft would be far more useful.
A Saab Gripen, for example, can take off in 800 metres from an ordinary bit of blacktop. It requires minimum ground support, unlike the JSF and acts as its own AWAC. Australia could afford a couple of hundred of them, if not more, creating a real deterrent. It’s a multirole aircraft so it’s both a bomber and air defence plane. It could easily utilise makeshift bases on Christmas and Cocos if need be, so it need not have a big range to fly from Tindal (near Katherine, NT).
Then there is the Eurofighter.
The idea of dedicated bombers is long passe so the buzzword is multirole, especially for a country the size of Australia.
Of course if Australia really wanted to replace the pig with reasonably priced aircraft and wanted value for money as well as something that can fly to Jakarta from Adelaide and return, with a little toilet for the pilots and even a galley to cook up a bit of yummy borsch with pelmeny dumplings and sour cream while the thing navigates itself to target, it would buy a couple of dozen Sukhoi Su-32/34s. Now that would really scare the Indons.
Let’s face it, we are buying the JSF (and the ridiculously overspeced M1 Abrams main battle tank) for the same reason we are pretending to be in Iraq (with our boys quarantined against casualties), and why we went to Vietnam, and that is to jam our head as far up Uncle Sam’s botty as it will go. Because, the thinking goes, if someone threatens us, we get on the phone to the White House and say, help. In the meantime, we’ll do anything to get someone to answer that phone. You know I’m right…
Sure. It’s like this: They fire off the rocket – BANG! – It flies through the air – WHOOSH! – It hits the water – SPLASH! – It sinks to the bottom – BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE! – Along comes a great, big whale – GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE! See?
And don’t forget the gift of Hershy Bars after it was all over.
Everyone:
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has criticised waste and inefficiency in Defence but he stopped short of using the obvious word “Corruption”.
Corruption probably isn’t as widespread in Defence and the ADF as people seem to think. My opinion is that Gullibility and the Unwillingness To Abandon Cherished Beliefs are far more dangerous problems. The decision to go ahead with the F-35 fantasy is yet another dismal example of this. We taxpayers can stop this sort of idiocy by sacking all those associated with recruiting and appointing defence and ADF personnel – the Clone Seekers – and replacing them with recruiters who ensure that nobody gets into Defence and the ADF without passing a stiff test to exclude the gullibile and those easily bewitched by pretty toys.
Razor [3,10pm 15th]
Agree with much of what you said but not this
Yes, you can buy defence on the cheap, defence with very sharp teeth …. but to do so you need real leadership, a willingness to have a go and to try anything at all that might work. In fact, there is an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent on a particular weapons system and its overall effectiveness.
Robert Merkel:
Jet Jackson [on 17 December 2006 at 8:52 pm] seems to have answered your question pretty well.
The technology may be as old-fashioned as the F-35 but such weapons systems are a available now, have far fewer problems, give more pilots more flying time, are a more credible deterrent and cost a fraction of the price of any masturbatory Flying Maginot Line.
The F-35 old fashioned? It has the downgraded stealth capability from the F-22.
However the F-35 is the wrong purchase because it’s the wrong weapon system. The problem is that it’s designed for operating conditions that the US might expect – forward air bases, and significant top cover by air superiority fighters (F-22). In other words, in an environment in which it is fairly easy to establish battlespace dominance.
We do not have that luxury.
Many of our neighbors are buying high-capability Russian aircraft, against which (all other factors – like crew training – given equality) the F-35 cannot hope to compete (read; shot out of the sky).
Large numbers of low-capability aircraft can be struck out on another basis; crew levels. Personnel retention is already an issue in all defence branches. If we suddenly need twice as any fighter pilots what do we do? Massively increase the money on offer? Lower our standards?
I believe we should be buying smaller numbers of high-capability aircraft and wait the decade until pilotless drones of the necessary type are available to fulfill close-in strike functions. Even small frigates will find it possible to carry a reasonable payload of short and medium-range strike capability.
A hypothetical Australian expeditionary force in our region would be comprised of surface units deploying ground forces and launching unmanned strike capability (ground units themselves will also have some of this capability), with AWACs providing theatre-level battlespace sensors protected by high-capability air superiority fighters which also add significant recon and long range strike functions if necessary.
All defence wallahs seem to suffer from hardware fetishism. Also, it is a truism, military planners fight the last war. This was as true of WWI, as it was of WWII – Polish campaign, French, Brits early on and in first stages of African campaign, the Soviets until 1943, Brits under Percival in Singapore, Korea, Vietnam, and now Seppos in Iraq – what is it with those people?
There isn’t the space here to properly ventilate this subject but I urge those interested to check out this link:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid=147614
Our purchase of the F111 was to put the frighteners on the Indons. So the spin goes. But tactically it was pointless and pointlessly complicated for the task. Originally, we were going to buy the much better Brit TSR2 but the Yanks knobbled us, and by so doing pretty much killed off the Brit warplane industry until it got together with the Europeans in the 90s. The TSR2 would have been much cheaper and better.
The F111 was designed to get to its target by flying under enemy radar by flying very low and slow. It achieved this by having wings which swung out from the normally fully swept position that modern jets have and by using the then newfangled terrain-following radar connected to the control column. This was so it could hug the ground as much as possible but without running into church steeples, hillocks and tall buildings. It was designed to deliver a nuclear bomb across Eastern Europe into Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet Union. Once it dropped the big one, its wings would go back to swept position and it would piss off quick.
But when the medium range and therefore accurate nuclear tipped missiles were stationed in Turkey (to which the Soviets retaliated by stationing some of theirs in Cuba) the F111 rationale went out the window. Come in Mr Menzies, how lovely to see you, take a seat, have we got a deal for you!!!
To fly to Indonesia Ichabod and I would take off from Learmonth base in WA, specially created for that purpose (that’s why we in the profession called it “a strategic base”) and fly low over the ocean. No church steeples, no hillocks, no highrise. A Canberra bomber would have done just as well, or even a 1944 model Bankstown-made Mosquito.
We wonder who does the commonsense planning for defence purchses. Someone said the only explanation is corruption. Well, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before (Bofors, Lockheed, Boeing, IAI, etc. etc.) but when you think that the defence planners started their careers marching around a square for days on end and doing 20 pushups for not swinging their arms properly it sort of makes sense.
What is wrong with leasing the capability required to cover the gap, or is this not the done thing in military circles?
Aidan, there’s nothing at all wrong with leasing, in principle. The Italian air force apparently leases F-16s from the Yanks right now. We leased some F-4 Phantoms in the 1960s when the Yanks couldn’t deliver the F-111 on time.
The question is, of course, whether suitable aircraft for leasing are available, and how much they’ll cost. Other western air forces waiting on the F-35 will be in the same jam as us, so there may not be the aircraft to spare.
Jet Jackson, the Su-34 is a strange one. According to published data, its range is nowhere near that required to replace the F-111′s long-range strike capability. But if it’s such a relatively short-range jobbie, why the palatial cabin?
As to the suggestions of various cheaper options, there’s a big problem with those – Indonesia’s ongoing acquisition of Russian Sukhoi Su-30s, which (given proper support and half-decent pilots) will eat Gripens (and Hornets) for lunch and still leave room for some ground attack duties for afters.
Robert, after consulting the most accurate defence site on the web (wikipedia), I came up with this on the Su-34 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-34
It sounds terrific!
I am very thankful that none of the posters to this thread are likely to have any input into defence strategic policy or purchasing decisions either now or in the future.
Amen to that Razor. I can’t recall the word which means “stating a self-evident truth”
Now listen yous pair, we’ve all got our own armchairs here so if you’re going to barge in you’ll have to bring yez own.
That’s one of the known knowns.
There’s a long range version, as long a range as you could wish for (see the original SU 27B if you want to trawl through weaponry-porn sites). Malaysia has a few. Anyway, we wouldn’t be allowed to buy any. There were problems with us buying Eurocopter Tiger helicopters. For the benefit of the oh-so sharp-witted Razor out there, Americans generally make dud equipment that is overcomplicated, extremely expensive and fails to meet its advertising claims.
Its much-vaunted Apache attack helicopter is incredibly vulnerable to ground fire because it has external fuel tanks that don’t seem to seal. In a celebrated case an Iraqi farmer brought one down with a single shot from his 1898 Mauser rifle, see
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&art_id=qw1048562464551B262&click_id=2813&set_id=1
Let us not believe in the myth of expertise of the military. A few days ago we learned that a few dozen rocket launches and rockets have gone missing from “secure” warehouses.
How does the the Army explain that? It doesn’t it, it stonewalls and obfuscates and covers its arse.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20935649-31477,00.html
What do you say Ichabod, four legs good two legs in uniform with fruit salad on the hat bad?
I’d say that if I wasn’t the best flight engineer in 70 states, you’d never have made it back from that last recon run in Korea.
Excellent discussion points here guys, its great to see that members of the public are passionate about defence matters and what the goverment is doing with your money.
I happen to fly the Pig. Its a great jet and the way we have upgraded it I would have no fear in taking it to war, touch wood that doesn’t happen. However we can’t get stuck in the past, the F35 is definately the way forward but i guess only if everything that is said on paper actually comes out. Australia has not done itself any favours in the R&D world of late with some of its projects which gets me worried. Also have no doubt that we will never get the same kit that the yanks will (wouldn’t be smart for them), however it will be a hell of alot better than anyone else in the region.
As for buying the pig in the first place, not really my concern i just fly the thing. However, recently in Pitch black we launched from RAAF Curtin into Delamere in Tindal for alot of low level work with no tanker support. Something like that that would take a Hornet at least 5 trips to the tanker plus we carried up to 4 times the ordinance. That is something to take into account with Australia. We are a big county with a small airforce, we need jets that can be self relaint, one bomb on your tanker force and you are in trouble. We also need to go a long way, and then stay there for a long time with a useful warload.
To this end i suggest the F15E Strike Eagle. Not only a great strike platform (i personally beleive better than the Pig and that is tough to do) but one helluva an OCA platform (shooting planes down). Singapore and South Korea are getting new ones, maybe we could too. They are all decked out with the latest “network centric warfare” gear too. Now that would be a great replacement in the short term for both the Pig and the plastic fantastic hornet. And give us some time to evaluate the JSF.
Just some food for thought, thanks for the reading.
Pig
Did you hear that Ichabod? If we get the F15E as a replacement you’ll get to play with the APG-70 radar and send a 500 kilo lgb straight through the window of a Kopassus barracks at Cijantung while I fly the plane.
That’s PIGG with two Gs.
As in Biggles.
I’m thinking Pigg probably knows what s/he’s talking about, and I didn’t realise the Hornet had such short range in comparison with the F111. But it’s an interesting comment about the tanker, and I was wondering what sort of resources you’d have to use to defend the damned thing.
And Jet, I’m definitely with you on that trip to Cijantung. Much more fun than stealing a tank and driving it to St Kilda.
Ichabod, read the ASPI report on the range of the JSF, Hornet, and F/A-18.
Pigg, thanks very much for your insights. I’ve a got a whole bunch of further questions to ask, but I guess you can’t answer most of them…
This has been a great discussion Robert. Big ups to more defence posts.
Pig and Pigg:
Thanks a lot for your comments …. its always nice to get gentle breezes from out in the real world in discussions like this. Let’s hope we can get you and your colleagues some decent new aircraft …. and suborbital platforms. CAVOK (I hope).
Razor and SteveAtThePub:
There are a lot of honourable dedicated thoroughly-professional people in Defence and the ADF …. but are they the ones making the most important procurement decisions?
Hate to worry you but there are parallels in history for the F-35 folly: the Maginot Line of course …. but look up what happened to the Imperial Chinese Navy in the late Qing (Ch’ing) Dynasty, when the Dowager Empress and her mob decided that the money intended for the modernization of that woefully underequipped navy would be better spent on a glorious huge ornamental marble boat on Kunming Lake inside a palace grounds in Beijing. It was a decision that helped the Western powers and Japan carve up China like a melon and it helped Japan become an empire. The good news is that after more than half a century of humiliation, ruin and the deaths of millions of Chinese, the Chinese still had an ornamental boat to look at. The bad news for us is that after buying this dodgy aircraft, all we’ll have to look at are the smoking ruins of our cities. You can either learn from history or suffer from it.
Everyone:
I’m not an apologist for Indonesia …. but why all the obsession with Indonesia alone when it is obvious that there are at least six other countries (including a couple with whom we enjoy long-standing friendly relations) who would attack Australia when it became opportune to do so.
Many countries in the region have the capability of bombing Darwin and perhaps disrupting to some extent Australian trade routes. But both of those actions, by themselves, are stupid and counterproductive for any discernible foreign policy objective. To defend against such events is paranoid and would be enormously expensive.
The major threat from Indonesia isn’t an absurdly counterproductive raid on Darwin or an even more unlikely invasion of the Australian mainland. Rather it is low-level but fatiguing and expensive posturing and counter-posturing in ET and PNG. Indonesia is therefore far and away the major threat to Australian security interests.
Only major powers with a carrier fleet pose a direct and enduring threat to Australian security interests in the region. And such nations can be counted on the fingers of one hand. When and if China and Japan join that club Australia’s threat profile will change radically.
Point of order, Katz. You’re citing aircraft carrier fleets as the major offensive threat to Australia, yet simultaneously you’ve downplayed their usefulness to the US in the future (while you may not admit to reading the War Nerd, I certainly do).
Which is it? And where do my own favourite phallically symbolic anti-aircraft-carrier weapons come in—the very round, tubular, deep-diving and forward-thrusting Collins Class?
Ahem. Down periscope.
Thanks for reference to War Nerd Bat.
The apparent contradiction you refer to is readily resolved.
We live in a temporarily unipolar world. Soon enough another power with global reach will arise to challenge the US.
Aircraft carriers were very important in the game of geopolitical chess played between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They will resume that status again. Only the greatest economic powers can afford to run carrier fleets.
You are correct that van Riper made fools out of the Blue Team in Rumsfeld’s game. Stupidly, the Blue Team sailed its carriers into the Persian Gulf, an egregious self-inflicted wound.
However, it should be clear to everyone by now that, as potent as air power may be against conventional enemies, it is actually counterproductive against insurgency. So why do you need aircraft carriers to be involved at all in counter-insurgency warfare? The answer is: you don’t.
Now to Australia. The cheapest way to defeat an invasion of the country is to give everyone an AK-47 and a 1000 rounds of ammunition. However, this strategy has many drawbacks, as is being witnessed in Iraq today, and is therefore not recommended.
Therefore, more expensive options are indicated. Australia needs to convince any would-be invader that it has the capacity to sink one or two aircraft carriers. That would render the cost of invasion so high it would deter all but the biggest powers.
A combination of attack aircraft and attack submarines imposes a very expensive burden of defence on an invading carrier fleet.
So the short answer: carrier fleets are highly useful in geopolitical posturing between superpowers. this is a game that is far too expensive for Australia.
One of the subsidiary uses for carrier fleets is to support invasion, like the actual invasion of Iraq and the hypothetical invasion of Australia. They lose their usefulness when invasion turns into hostile occupation.
However, no country wants to face the trauma of fighting insurgent action against an occupying superpower. Better to deter invasion and failing that to fend off invasion.
In this regard, we are very lucky to be an island continent.
Katz, some of the Army do seem to be doing a fairly good job of the plan to universally issue weapons and ammunition. Perhaps it could in future be done simultaneously with vaccinations for rubella and HPV in year 8:
But what is the point of planning for a hypothetical invasion of Far North Queensland or Northern Australia anyway? That’s what I don’t get. In the absence of brainwashed Chi-Com hordes, nationalist Japanese fanatics, the odd Bonapartist frigate or the proverbial rampaging dominoes, who’d bother?
Graham, perhaps you could name names?
Surely this is why you have the armed forces in forward areas throughout the Pacific, and in proper peacekeeping missions. This is ultimately cheaper than the futile nonsense of just-pretend exercises at Puckapunyal or wherever, which only entrenches the very sort of officers who are useless (if not counterproductive) when it comes to actual war. Low-intensity missions give a better indication of future developments in tactics, grievances, and how personnel deal with actual problems than having expensive equipment and well-trained people sitting around.
Imagine how different Vietnam would have been if US and Australian forces had participated in UN peacekeeping in the Congo: look how much Australian troops learned about jungle warfare in Borneo and how long it took for the Americans to learn those lessons.
Just suggestin’.
Graham, if it quacks like a duck…
0 threat situation. Let’s eliminate first some countries that wouldn’t have the resources and/or reasons for invading or threatening Australia’s interests: New Zealand (except in rugby union and Bondi real estate), PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, Western Samoa, Nauru, Gilbert Islands, East Timor – so much for the arc of instability – the Philippines, North and South Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Singapore.
Barely credible threats:
1. Malaysia. Apart from the invective from that old incalcitrant loony Mahathir, Malaysia would not have territorial ambitions as far as Australia is concerned, apart from its own territory, namely Butterworth Air Force Base where RAAF still has minor presence. Malaysians of moderate prominence occasionally let fly with islamist invective but that is mainly smoke and mirrors. Australia’s presence in Malaysia is fairly small with 324CSS (combat support squadron) which is there on the basis of the regional support directive which is there to support exercises and deployments of RAAF and Army units should they be “needed” on the peninsula. In other words, it is them on the peninsula who have more to fear us than us them. But we are deputy sheriff, so a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do if the Chinese hordes come down.
2. India. This is a regional power that could, should it need to, enforce its will. Territorially it has no ambitions on Australia at this stage but it is not out of the realm of possibility that it would like to move over to WA for a bit of farming land. This is not a likely scenario in the next 30-50 years. An air and sea invasion would be too ambitious an enterprise for them to carry out unless we powdered and gave WA to them because we went to water under threat. India could demand base rights on Cocos Keeling for strategic requirements and I guess we wouldn’t defend them because the Yanks would tell us to give them up (it would have been decided for us between India and the US at a Washington cocktail party hosted by Henry Kissinger).
3. China. Malthusian ramifications of overpopulation as per India. Australia looks very tasty. Also it has lots of goodies underground including energy and metals resources which China wants. But China has already colonised Australia in a sense by taking over its manufacturing capabilities: we have lost such elementary process skills as pattern and toolmaking for example; and besides, we are a big client state better off alive and shelling out than dead so a hostile invasion would not make sense while we play ball with them. And we do. We do. We are shit scared of them and they know it. Okay for next 20-30 years.
4. The US. No problem here for the Seppos. We do what we are told and three bags full. They can have anything they want: our media, culture, biscuits, language, bases, cannon fodder for adventurism. As Henny Youngman used to say, “Now, take my wife. Please”.
That leaves Indonesia Graham. Thankfully, their armed forces aren’t capable of real warfare except against people armed with spears, bows and arrows and homemade zip guns. Oh, and its own citizens, preferably unarmed and in villages.
First of all, the Indon archipelago is a whole lot of different peoples with different languages and traditions and its nationalistic fervour is made up as the country is the final outcome of Dutch mercantilism.
So, the Indonesian “people” aren’t our enemy, her armed forces TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia) is. Its role is quite clearly a self-described dwifungsi or dual-function. In other words, apart from protecting the country from the outside (never been tested) it is to hold the synthetic nation’s multifarious elements together by force of arms.
The TNI and its precursor ABRI have murdered thousands upon thousands of people, the overwhelming majority of them inside Indonesia. The best way to get a handle on this organisation is to see it for what it is: a very large mafia family but without any meaningful external controls such as a RICO statute and FBI. It does what it wants. It shakes down businesses, and owns and runs business enterprises/rackets of its own and TNI’s various factions run local protection rackets. See http://www.angelfire.com/rock/hotburrito/tni/tni.html for more.
In 2002, members of TNI even shot, or arranged to have shot, two US schoolteachers working at a US gold mine in West Papua by way of showing the threat was “real” to up the the amount of protection money already being paid.
If Australia has anything to worry about it would not be an invasion of our mainland but an attack instigated by TNI on Christmas Island (to deny Australia possible missile base sites), incursion into PNG from West Papua most likely on the pretext of “hot pursuit” of West Papua independence guerillas, or even a limited invasion of PNG on the pretext of the latter’s instability being a security threat to Indonesia. Finally, a re-invasion of ET, for the same reason.
Australia would then be obliged, for a number of reasons, including political sensitivities of its own electorate, to defend ET and/or PNG.
Because of the threat posed by the gangster elements within TNI, Indonesia must be regarded as a rogue state in some respects and Australia must have, and does have, a response scenario in a drawer.
But why would such a response require hyper complex aircraft like F35s? P/O Pig might like to play in one but to do the job we’d be better off with spending our money on cruise missiles if we want a deterrent to turn Indonesia’s cities and infrastructure to rubble. But that’s not a good strategy and it kills innocent people en masse and the strategic outcome is not neccesarily the one we want: see recent Israeli use of F15s in Beirut. Did it free the kidnapped ADF chockos? No. Did it disarm the Hiz’b'Allah? No.
However, an in-theatre platform to respond to the needs of hot-inserted teams on the ground in what would essentially be skirmishes a la Malayan emergency is what we really need. This requires a “local cab rank” type of aircraft, (helicopters nowadays are too vulnerable to easily available shoulder-fired anti-aircraft rockets). Such aircraft should be able to be deployed locally to rough fields and be easily maintained and turned around. The typ of aircraft I mean is the Sukhoi-25: “The Russian Air Force prizes its Su-25s, since they are rugged, relatively economical to operate, and well-suited to the dirty little wars that are the fashion in the early 21st century.” See http://www.vectorsite.net/avsu25.html for more. We could and should build something like it ourselves.
Flying large platforms such as F111 or F15 long distances from bases in Australia is pointless. Such aircraft are only useful for destroying infrastructure according to targeting information worked out well beforehand. Missiles do it better. But we shouldn’t build our posture to destroy Jakarta but to deal as effectively as we can with thugs in uniform and to protect our defenceless neighbours.
While much has been said in this thread about the unlikleyness of a conventional attack by a state-based power it is important not to neglect the capabilities to deal with this sort of attack.
The 2006 US Quadrennial Defence Review was primarily shaped by two major but dissimilar strategic drivers: winning the ‘Long War’ and hedging against the re-emergence of a major state-based threat.[ASPI]
I think Australia should be looking to shape its defence policy around similar issues.
As to the F-35/Super Hornet issue, wouldn’t it be a more sensible idea to purchase a number of F-22s, which would be able to not only act as a stop gap measure untill the F-35s were operational, but also augment the F-35s capabilities once they are operational.
In addition, while the range of the F-22 is still shorter than that of the F-111, it is greater than that of the F-35 and the Super Hornet. As such, purchase of the F-22 would go some way to fulfilling the capabilities of the F-111.
Johnathan:
The F-22
can’t carry cruise missiles, and unlikely to gain that capability unless we paid through the nose for Lockheed-Martin to do the integration. Therefore, its extra range capabilities as a strike aircraft are somewhat negated. It also doesn’t have anti-shipping missiles, a primary concern for Australia.
Is a very expensive aircraft, though how much more expensive than the F-35 is not clear.
May not be on the menu for purchase in any case. The RAAF certainly claims that the Yanks won’t sell it.
As to low, slow-flying CAS aircraft, I gather that those aircraft are also highly vulnerable to missile attack. Not to mention being picked off by Su-30s unless we also have some fighter cover.
Robert, you wrote earlier: “As to the suggestions of various cheaper options, there’s a big problem with those – Indonesia’s ongoing acquisition of Russian Sukhoi Su-30s, which (given proper support and half-decent pilots) will eat Gripens (and Hornets) for lunch and still leave room for some ground attack duties for afters.”
I’m curious as to why you think that. The Su-30 is an attractive aircraft with good performance specifications. It is very agile, and can perform cute manoeuvres like the “Pugachev’s Cobra” to entertain the crowds at airshows.
But in modern air combat, victory surely depends on a combination of:
. electronics (radar, ECM, ECCM, stealth)
. missile technology
. pilot quality and
. support (including ground support, AWACS, GCI, tankers).
If you are superior in all or most of the above, you will prevail, whether you have F-16s or F-18s or Gripens or Rafales or whatever. The fact that the Su-30 can perform nice dogfight manoeuvres won’t help it very much in a BVR battle if the opponent detects it first and fires off AMRAAMs first.
So what would be wrong with taking the best of the last generation — Super Hornets, Gripens, or F-15Es as Pig suggested — and making sure they have the best electronics, missiles, crews and support? (The F-15E would be the best of the bunch given range considerations.)
One would only need worry if a regional power adopted the F-22 or a Russian equivalent thereof. But the Yanks won’t sell it to anyone in Asia apart from us, and the Russian equivalent will surely be a long time coming.
Robert: “claims (the veracity of which I have no evidence for) that there are Australian troops on the border right now.”
When I click on that link, it doesn’t seem to work! It could just be my computer playing up, but could you repost that link? Thanks.
Herr Paulus,
The Vympel R-74E, 77 and 78D series, sometimes referred to as AMRAAMSKIs will more than match the Yanks AMRAAM with their 60 degree plus off boresight capability. The agility of the aircraft doesn’t even matter.
Ultimately it also depends on tactics and pilot capability. When the Russkis started to guest-star in the MiG 15s in Korea the Seppos got a rude shock, whereas the Koreans were easy meat for the Americans.
Hey Jet. Was that you flying the last Tornado in this group? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IwplA7_4lU
Mmmm, yeah, the Russian gear sometimes has excellent technical specs but doesn’t perform so well in the field. We won’t know until the Amraamskis see a bit of action!
(Of course, sometimes the Russian stuff _has_ performed remarkably well, like the MiG-15s in Korea or the air defence system they set up for the Egyptians in 73. But in general I’d put my money on Western gear of comparable vintage.)
Very much agree about the importance of tactics and pilot capability.
ColonelBatGuano:
Good Lord! The last thing I expected on a quiet Tuesday night was to have http://www.eXile.ru leap out of link on a Lavatus Prodeo page. Well. there you go ….:-)
HerrDoktorMerkwuerdigliebe:
Naming names? Thought they would be obvious to all. Might mention them in private, after quaffing my second flagon of CRP, but would prefer to avoid giving myself visa problems by doing so in such a public place as here just yet; some countries are far touchier about their international reputations than others..
Paulus: link below (WP breaks HREFs for some reason…). I’ve also added the correct link to the original comment.
Interesting discussion everyone…definitely some more defence-related posts coming up (though silly season will probably intrude).
* http://www.fpcn-global.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=186
Paulus: there’s apparently not much wrong with the Su-30′s radar, and the R-77 appears to be (mechanically, at least) a reasonable match for the AMRAAM.
Furthermore, Gripens and Hornets can’t outrun an Su-30, both in ultimate speed and because of fuel capacity.
Maybe I exaggerate in claiming that the Sukhoi will “eat them for lunch”, but the margin of superiority over what we might go up against is looking potentially much, much narrower than it used to be if we stick with upgraded versions of what we’ve got.
Everyone:
WHAT WE NEED TO DO
1. Get more effective diplomacy – so that there is less need to use our gee-whiz war-toys – and that means less fooling ourselves with lovely “Scraps of Paper”(as Kaiser Bill once called them) and more opening of mundane consulates in more smelly provincial cities so that we get early warning of real trouble brewing. Prevention is a hell of a lot better than cure.
2. Corruption-busting (with full-on entrapment and other nasty tricks) to make sure anyone involved with defence procurement is too scared to let their own greediness put the lives of the Australian citizenry in peril. I’ve seen no proof of corruption in the F-35 stuff-up; I think all of the folly can be adequately explained by gullibility, group-think, flattery, incompetence, obsession and an unwillingness to accept change.
3. Shop around!!! Enter the INTERNATIONAL armaments market. Buying the French Mirage aircraft and the German Leopard tank weren’t anywhere near as bad as some of our downright silly purchases for our beloved monopoly supplier. When our people are in the United States looking for new gear, give them the freedom to wander around some of the smaller corporations that are producing outstanding new stuff – Yankee ingenuity isn’t dead by a long chalk but you won’t find too much of it in the lumbering sprawling conglomerates.
4. Start thinking of adapting existing technologies to our defence needs. Mr Mohammed Atta and his fellow Friends Of Satan showed us how they made a very effective low-cost adaption of existing technology. We can be equally inventive and effective without killing ourselves .For example: Aircraft carriers are hellishly expensive and complex – and vulnerable too – but crude (single-use?)floating platforms for launching our operational aircraft can be as cheap as chips.
Oh Icky Icky, do you read me loud and clear? We flew the Douglas “Skyrocket,” a dual-powered experimental aircraft having both a jet engine and a four-barrel rocket engine. Open your Secret Decoder Ring to find out more at
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046585/trivia
Nice on-the-deck flying by those Limeys. No wonder they took the most casualties in Gulf War 1 on their pavetack runs. Tally-ho.
The best flyers in the US are in the USN. Their motto? Flare to land – squat to piss. (Flaring to all you civillians out there is to lift the nose to maximise the ground effect, i.e. create a cushion of compressed air under the wings to make up for the jet’s brick-like low-speed flying capability).
Final word on Australian defence procurements: while we used to have full autonomy, this is all over now. Political considerations, in other words, arse-licking towards the US military industrial complex via Russell Hill via the office of PM & C is 75% of the deciding factor. Otherwise how can anyone explain the passive anal intercourse decision of buying refurbished Seasprites. See
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20776988-5002142,00.html when there were/are many excellent offerings from Europe. I mean why not just integrate the truly excellent and proven NFH90s with a specific mission profile for this role? It would simplify maintenance, spares and training. On this basis the F-35 decision does not fill me with me hope. I rest my case.
I like the independent analysis on this blog. Our current mob of military procurers are prone to spontaneous bouts, indeed, Pavlovian bursts of subservience when dealing with Uncle Sammy’s hardware shills, in the same way that the Ozi Oi brigade reflexly apes Seppo “culture”, and in the way that Joe Liebermann is uncontrollable if he’s unfettered and in the same room as his Decider-In-Chief.
Mr. Howard and Brendon The Brave say that if Australia “cuts and runs” ADF personel from their cocooned quarters in Iraq, then JI will become emboldened. Thank goodness the ADF in its wisdom has purchased those 50 M1A1 Abrams tanks to keep the swarming, cephalically threaded peril in the Javanese jungles where they belong. When Kruddy finally brings our soldiers home from a pre-emptive, undeclared war where an ADF body count was never going to be an option, this country needs to be fully prepared when JI go ballistic a la Johnny logic. They may even take out a couple of kangaroos on Cape York just to show us who’s boss.
At least Ming grovelled to majesty. In our name, Johnny abases himself before a certifiable imbecile so that, he tells us, we may remain forever clever and classless and free. And ever so well defended.
Any killing of anything on Cape York is an act of war, & should result in bombing of the parliament house (preferrably when in session) of the attacking nation.
Or in this case, if JI, then the Friday morning bombing of a few mosques in their heartland.
Assuming of course, Indonesia isn’t overcome by shame at an act of war being launched from their territory, & beast us to it to regain some face.
Jet Jackson:
USN pilots are probably among the best â¦. but landing flare isnât their exclusive property, others have been known to use it too from time-to-time
Australiaâs worst ever self-inflicted military/naval disaster was the disbanding the Fleet Air Arm; even worse than the sinking of HMAS Voyager and the 40 years of injustices committed against its surviving sailors and bereaved relatives of those who went down on it. Like the F-35 purchase where nobody will be held to account; nobody faced a court-martial over disbanding the Fleet Air Arm.
Everyone:
Why the shyness? Why are the words âOpportunity Costâ? missing from this discussion? But then, I probably have unrealistic expectations â¦. that term seems to have been outlawed in any discussion of âDefence”(???) in Australia.
Graham, the point is that the USN pilot don’t flare when landing. They just come in nose first and rely on the tail hook to slow them down. It takes conjones to do that at about 220 km/h.
For opportunity cost, ask professore dottore Harry Clarke, mine host of Kalimna blog http://kalimna.blogspot.com/ He loves that sort of dirty talk.
Fleet Air Arm is too expensive for us. Even the Frogs, Spaniards, Brits, India, and Russia find it hard to sustain more than a couple of ships each.
We don’t really need full on carriers. Unless they are defended with a cvarrier group, plus tankers and supply ships they make for easy targets.
We should have a couple of all-purpose helicopter decked utility ships, though, one for the Indian and one of the Pacific ocean. They are enough with which to throw our weight about. I think we have half of one already.
While Iâm as into sexy state-of-the- warplanes as much as the next airhead, Iâd agree with others here that their operational effectiveness depends on a whole bunch of factors from their avionics and weapons systems to training to how well theyâre plugged into C4I networks and logistics trains and supply chains.
The more you spend on the hotrods at the pointy end the less you have to spend on the rest â especially training which is an easy target for budget cuts.
Itâs worth noting here the Cope India 04 exercise where the Indian Air Force startled the yanks with their air combat performance – partly because the IAF had focused on incremental avionics and weapons improvements to sturdy old but very functional airframes like the MiG 21 and mainly because the Indians just flew a lot more under operational conditions.
And thatâs just the air superiority issue. Strike and deterrence capability is another kettle of cluster bombs again, especially for a country like Australia with unique strategic defence demands.
Any attempt at a conventional invasion will just expose very long supply lines to everything from the ADF to more irregular units like Norforce and well armed croc hunters in stealthy little boats and hyped-up jackaroos on dirt bikes.
Invasionwise weâre far more likely to face fourth generation warfare infiltration shit thatâs best dealt with by mobile and flexible ground forces enjoying good tactical intelligence and the support of the local population. The same approach goes for keeping the peace in the Pacific arc of instability. And for generally acting as good global citizens beyond our immediate neighborhood as itâs the kinda stuff weâre really good at.
Beyond that, I reckon our geo-political security requirements are some kind of strategic deterrence capability just in case and protecting long term and distant economic resources like fishing stocks and our Antarctica interests. For those two missions you need range, range, range and a punch at the end that can be quickly dialed up and down.
So for that I reckon you need a mix of manned and unmanned strike and patrol craft that can haul munitions and gather data. Global Hawks, next generation Orion types, a handful of hot rods with fast dash sea skimming capabilities and some lurking subs, all able to be quickly kitted out with short and long range guided wiz bangs.
Speaking of deterrence, and getting lateral here, why not conspicuously acquire a couple of nukes? When they are not being exhibited at Grand Finals, Mardi Gras or on the Defence Ministerâs coffee table, make it clear theyâre otherwise gaffer taped to a cruise missile or two stashed onboard a Collins out there somewhere where you canât find it. Sorta like a diet lite Trident.
Or we could keep reminding everyone Australiaâs staged the two most successful biowarfare campaigns ever (seen a rabbit lately?) and weâve got even better at the technology since then.
Also, will people stop dissing the Collins subs. Yes, they ran over budget and schedule but thatâs pretty much the way with any leading edge defence technology project. Remember JORN?
But now theyâre generally regarded as the best conventional subs in the world and at various Rimpacs have shown theyâre quite capable of matching the USN’s ASW capabilities and nukey boats.
And as for what have the Collins’s done for us lately? Well the very fact they exist and canât be easily found immediately closes off a whole bunch of options for any aggressor wanting to move material by sea or fuck around with our sea lanes. Not to mention that aside from sinking things, theyâre excellent intelligence gathering and small force infiltration platforms too.
And someone mentioned leasing frontline miltech. The argument against that often used in Australia is that by buying, customizing and assembling big ticket items at home (eg: F/A-18s, ANZAC frigates, Collins subs, AWDs etc), youâre spurring on technology transfer and creating jobs â although why the latter should be a factor in political decision-making I have no idea.
âAny killing of anything on Cape York is an act of war, & should result in bombing of the parliament house (preferably when in session) of the attacking nation.â?
Are you saying STAP that if some rogue TNI elements pot a croc on the Cape, we should lob a JDAM into the DPR? Obviously the silly season starts early in your neck of the woods.
And anyway not attack something important instead? You think that if the situation was reversed and someone took out our Parliament in session, Australia would just curl up and surrender? It may be the way things work in some remote fern bar run by a bellicose old fart but not in the real world.
Incidentally, can I recommend to all chocks away chaps here, ‘Biggles: The Authourised Biography ‘by John Pearson â which lovingly parodies Johnâs prose style while actually fleshing out the old cardboard aviator as a real human being from his lonely childhood in India to his rather bathetic twilight years.
Pearson also carried out a similar exercise with ‘James Bond: The Authourised Biography’ which ended with Bond heading off to Australia to check out the possibility of a risen Blofeld, bio/genetic warfare and mutant killer rabbits.
Hello? The Fleet Air Arm consisted of a second-hand carrier laid down in 1943 and flogged off to Mr Menzies (“Oh. Mr Menzies. So pleeeeased to see you. Doooooo come in”) and by 1982 what good did it serve? Off to the breakers yards and good riddance.
Unless you’re gonna make a serious committment to several fleets of A/Cs like the USN (still figting WW2? I dunno), forget it.
The Melbourne was flying what? Skyhawks? Just brilliant for short hops tooling around to protect the carrier, but pretty useless for anything else.
One carrier equals a whole bunch of fleet protection. So we could afford what? Maybe one? And our entire naval resources would be devoted to protecting it.
Heavens above.
To be fair CK, carriers serve a key role in the US’s self appointed task as global policeman.
And HMAS Melbourne did sink more ships than most of the RAN’s surface fleet ever did.
Also Skyhawks are so cute.
It also occurs that there’s a whole bunch of frustrated leftish armchair commanders (and the occasional practitioner, politics aside) lurking around this site who, like me are actually fascinated by the hardware, the history, and how these extraordinarily expensive and fascinating machines come to be built.
Despite my prevoius post, I’m not biblical about any of this. For me it’s more of a history question.
Well that and the sound of big mofo RR Merlins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RHL3o7ctZU
And that was a woman flying that Spit.
Well I’m not leftish and I’m perched on a swivel chair but I juz purely love aeroyplaneys. And if you like the sound of a Merlin snarling through silk, then enjoy.
Snap!
get a room kids
As a lefty I’m fascinated by the fetishisation of hardware by the Right.
The plain facts of the matter are that technological developments since WWI have favoured greatly the successful prosecution of people’s war.
Yet military strategists of the right have grown evermore fervent about how the next technological fix will finally return to battlefield to proper, paid, professional soldiers who do the job for a living and a pension.
Needless to say the next technological fix is evermore bizarre and expensive than the last one.
I find the denial very amusing.
We’d love to Laura. Got a million bucks you could donate to the LP Fantasy Fund?
VROOOOOOMMM!!!!!!!
“get a room kids”
Well I’m talking CK, Brett Holman and one or two others into an air minded blogging wizard bash early next year. BYO goggles.
Jet Jackson:
Right.
It was the loss of skills that was so disasterous in the abolition of the Fleet Air Arm. It is not a Fleet Air Arm that is too expensive for us, it is the overly complex post-’Thirties aircraft carriers and similarly complex aircraft to match them that we can’t afford. Step back to the original floating airstrips and the picture changes completely …. then step forward – bypassing the aircraft carrier – to what has become everyday technology in the first decade of the 21st century; put the two together and you will have an affordable and effective system.
Nabakov:
.
You’ve put in so much food for thought that I can’t get through it in one meal
I have to disagree with you when you said
the supply lines may indeed be thousands of Km long but that becomes only a matter of a few hours flying time …. and without updated ultra-high-altitude Strela or the like, anything we have on the ground hasn’t a hope of interdicting anything. Any aircraft we have or are likely to get are restricted to fragile-as-crystal aerodromes. We will never ever buy fly-off-a-dirt-road Russian or Swedish military aircract so then you can forget about interdicting any supply lines up in the sky.
“the supply lines may indeed be thousands of Km long but that becomes only a matter of a few hours flying time”
True, but
a) aside from the yanks, who else can mount an effective airbridge over thousands of ks to keep conventional invasion forces going on the ground? and
b) its landing that’s the bastard, especially when locals who know the terrain are lurking on the approach with RPGs, Stingers and Woomeras (bush mechanic improvised wiz bangs with guidence systems courtesy of Dick Smith and Toys ‘R’ Us. We’re seeing the havoc caused by IEDs in Iraq. Now imagine what Aussies what could do in such situation and with better access to much better off the shelf technology.) Killing ‘em as they land is also pyschologically powerful (those that get through have to look at the wrecks of those that didn’t) and very draining logistically.
I take your point though about fly-off-a-dirt road aircraft. But I’d like to think that between the bright boys and girls at Fisherman’s Bend, our high end and flexible short run auto industry and Gippsland Aeronautics and such like, we could whip up fast, cheap and barely in control handheld AA missiles and bush strike planes pretty quickly if the need arose.
I like your thinking, Nabakov and Graham. Let’s dump Raytheon and Boeing as defence suppliers of choice, and bring in the Hot Fours and Rotaries editorial board.
Might have to word them up about the concept of ‘hiding’ though: I can just imagine the fully-sick lowered M1A1 tank with an extra-wide body kit and spoilers, resprayed glittering purple and bright orange, with stripey decals and (naturally) big fluffy dice. Or the submarine with the rebored cylinders, straight-through exhaust and Holley carbs.
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=263981
The Malaysians are buying 18 SU30MK’s for US900mill. Do the math. That plane will kill the Super Hornet in any combat situation, is a lot faster, has a much longer range, and from what I gather with my calculator, we would be getting 90 of them for the price Brendan Nelson is paying for 24 inferior planes. The SU30 or the newly released SU 32 would have been a much better, if politically incorrect choice than the so called super hornet.
http://www.avionews.com/index.php?corpo=see_news_home.php&news_id=1074443&pagina_chiamante=corpo=index.php