[link]

Moreover, historical precedent tells us that projects like the JSF have a funny way of gaining weight and losing projected performance numbers as development rolls on, whilst all the while the zeroes pile on the end of the final expense account. The F-15 is ready, proven and available, and takes care of any perceived gap in our air defences.

Put it this way - South Korea paid US$100 million per plane last year for 40 F-15Ks, an upgrade of the Strike Eagle with the latest available avionics, weapons and engine upgrades. Not exactly cheap, admittedly, but let’s put it in context. The per-unit cost for each Super Hornet worked out by The Locum (or Peacock and co, more like) worked out at a whopping A$121 million, excluding training and support over the projected life of the aircraft (10 years). At the contemporaneous exchange rate of A$0.76c to the dollar, we paid over $US92 million per plane - work it out at the current rate and it’s an even more depressing figure.

Truly, we got royally shafted every possible way on this deal.

integrating the reconnaisance elements of Armoured Corps into SAS…

I’m reminded here of Field Marshal Slim once saying there’s nothing special forces should be able to pull off that a well trained regular infantry platoon shouldn’t.

“…establishing independent local defence platoons.”

So why not boil down the core of the Australian Army into an SAS standard cadre for bespoke expenditary work, with an evolving and rotating corp of short timers and reservists for peace keeping duties but with the inhererent logistical ability to ramp it all up very quickly. Remember the most tactically and strategically successful special weapons and tactics irregular engagement ever fought by the Australian Army was waged by a bunch of barely trained militia teenagers in the mountains of PNG 64 years ago. The tech may have changed since then but inhospitable landscapes and keen young blokes won’t.

Then we could discuss replacing the quaint archaic ranks with a system more suited to our real-world needs

Dunno about that. Yes, every armed forces can always do with less bullshit and blanco but being ordered to kill people or run the risk of being killed yourself is a pretty uncommon and unnatural state to be in. At that point a traditional combat-tested hierarchy, with all it’s built-in faults, does provide some kinda framework for going through all the crap going down. Or as I heard a USN CPO once say “Even if I’m dead, those dingleberries will still be looking over their shoulders for me.”

“Shouldn’t this also be an argument over an appropriate structure for the Aust military?”

My oath it should.

We could talk about abolishing infantry battalions, integrating the reconnaisance elements of Armoured Corps into SAS, establishing independent local defence platoons. Then we could discuss replacing the quaint archaic ranks with a system more suited to our real-world needs. We could …. but you you would have on your conscience all those inflexible ADF wallahs who had attacks of apoplexy at the very thought of slack&idle civvies talking about such matters.

AUSTRALIANS: The Americans are ripping us off! Why won’t the greatest air force in the world sell us its top-of-the-line equipment?
AMERICANS: Uh… maybe so we can keep having the greatest air force in the world?

I dunno, it just doesn’t seem like much of a puzzler, that’un.

Can’t we do the same with Predator drones (or the like), cruise missiles and coastal patrol boats?

Tony D, the major obstacle to abolishing pilots isn’t engineering, it’s the MCTR, to which Australia’s a signatory. If we want to start getting into cruise technology serioulsy as a deterrent, we’d actually have to start engaging with our neighbours on an equal basis, ’cause if we get them, they will too.
Look, Australian defence planning based on supremacy in the air over other South East Asian countries has gone the same way as cigarette sponsorship and moustaches in cricket. I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing.

They are simply emulating the Dowager Empress of China and her marble boat built on Kunming Lake in Beijing which was a substitute for a modernized fleet for the Imperial Chinese Navy.

You mean this little beauty?

As for the fuel used by fighter planes, it sounds a lot in absolute terms. It’s a piddle in the ocean compared to what the nation spends driving the kids to school in Toyota Prados each day.

More generally, it’s good to keep in mind that out total defence outlay is only a couple of percentage points of GDP. I wouldn’t advocate this in a fit, but upping our spending to 6% of GDP would give a budget not that far off the UK’s, and they run a couple of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, a much bigger air force, and a large army. In terms of our living standards, it would be like sacrificing roughly a year’s economic growth. Clearly, we could maintain our current defence spending through a recession easily enough if we decide it’s worthwhile.

Now, there’s a perfectly good argument to suggest that we’re spending too much on defence, and spending it in the wrong areas. But having to shut it down because we’ll be spending all our dough on climate change and peak oil? I just don’t buy it.

Shouldn’t this also be an argument over an appropriate structure for the Aust military?

I mean, planes are cool. They go fast and carry big bombs. Very, very useful for hard power approaches. Best suited to stave-v-state conflicts though.

So… do we really need them at all?

Can’t we do the same with Predator drones (or the like), cruise missiles and coastal patrol boats? Spend the rest on a sizable infantry that’s trained for urban environments (police style). Add the SAS to be the scalpel.

Do we really want to get bogged down in the security dilemma? What about NTD approaches?

This may be pedantic but von C said something slightly different.

“War is … a continuation of political intercourse, with a mixture of other means�

Which has very different connotations from the common phrasing.

It’s kinda like the truism that the best defense is a good offense - it’s damn 1960s American pro-football jargon. How it entered up in the political lexicon and then used as a basis for policy making is a bit confusing.

Can’t say that it is Jack - never climbed that particular bridge, can’t get excited about the idea.

Though I do remember climbing an old silo in melb at some point. Damn that dog really didn’t want to come down.

Two more clues: drought and bushfires.

We don’t buy fighter aircraft for the purpose of putting out bushfires. But then we don’t build hospitals or pour money into public transport in order to alleviate drought or put out bushfires. By your logic (I’m being generous in using that word to describe what passes for your line of reasoning) we should not spend any money on them either for their lack of drought alleviation and bushfire fighting properties.

You aren’t studying for a social sciences degree by any chance, are you? If so you will do well.

As mentioned by Robert Merkel
“stoka: that’s a massive system integration job for a grand total of 35-odd aircraft, and integrating hot new stuff with old stuff is a problematic exercise - anyone remember the Seasprites?”
I agree, that is a major job, however, even if it proved to be unfeasable, at least such options could be explored technically, without huge expenditure.
I’m sure the Super Hornet is basically a done deal, so there is probably no likelihood of changing that. However, as far as I am aware, if the Labor party win government, they will be revisiting the availability of the F22 from the Americans. Certainly we are not at this point totally locked into purchasing the F35.
At the very least the decision to mothball the F111 by 2010 is starting to appear motivated by vested economic and political expediency than by judicious strategic wisdom and circumspection

Actually, Nabs, that’s very good.

David Bath:

Personally, apart from the corruption bit, I think that the Libs haven’t cared WHAT they spend money on, as long as they appear strong on security to the Australian people, who only look at how much is spent as a measure of strength, not assessing capability.

They are simply emulating the Dowager Empress of China and her marble boat built on Kunming Lake in Beijing which was a substitute for a modernized fleet for the Imperial Chinese Navy. They are not emulating North Viet-Nam at war nor Rhodesia and South Africa under sanctions and certainly not Israel at any time.

I’ll giv you one clue among many: Peak Oil.

Cheer up. Maybe we can emulate the Imperial Japanese in the last few months of the Second World War and supplement our oil supplies with whatever could be gleaned from local vegetation: they used pine oil; we could use eucalyptus oil.

It’s your choice: squeezing Mach 2.9 out of one of our brilliant defence purchases for 1.28 seconds - or - 500 sq.km. of koala habitat. No? L-O-L

Jacques Chester:

What you do instead is have a mix of more specialised platforms to meet various scenarios.

Do I detect a meeting of minds here?

Nabakov:
Do I take it you are not too keen on the Metal Storm board? Why?

As for the Metal Storm weapons system itself: failure to grab that swiftly was yet another example of the stupidity that passes for “Defence”[??] in Australia these days. Wonder if the same ditherers had anything to do with the Supper Hornet?

And this latest purchase is extremely dodgy, with a ‘no bid’ contract. And I believe Andrew Peacock was the head of Boeing when this was announced?

Six billion dollars of public money down the plughole yet again.

Dumber and Dumber and Dumber.

GregM, you are the gift that keeps on giving.

Two more clues: drought and bushfires. The jets will help with these too. Maybe they could be used as water bombers, but wait, there is no water . . . and they fly too fast and only carry tactical missiles.

Now you can’t be accused of being totally clueless, however hard you try.

Even if only as performance artists they deserve every tax-dollar we can give them. *Chortles*

When I was ADC to Bill Hayden I toured GAC with him and then-CAS Ray Funnell, fighter pilot extraordinaire and senior air power adviser in Oz. We were standing on a walkway over a 707 getting a refit and being a complete hosing tool I stage-chuckled: ‘Be kinda fun to roll out and line up on that in a Hornet, eh, sir?” He looked at me like I was a not-quite-pretty-enough groupie in a Rolling Stones mosh pit, and dismissed me with unadorned contempt: ‘Hah! I’ve done it, mate…”

That’s an Air Vice Marshall fighter god still feeling some teen need to wave his wanger about at a nobody Army pilot captain. Alpha-male narcissism still tends to prevail at senior levels in the world’s air forces and aviation corps. You get it in bucketheads and submariners, too. Big bits of expensive equipment seem oddly…mmmm…enhancing of masculine confidence. Fine, I chubby up (in my own small but defiantly proud way) reading Chickenhawk, too. Swallowing whole Tom Wolfe’s silly gonzo-tosh about military flying is mostly harmless, mostly fun, and good for esprit de corps and unit cohesion, so long as it’s confined to the back bar and the showers. But when military pilots grow into commanders and senior force managers they can too-easily translate the I-me-myself-alonery to areas where it’s disastrous, such as framing defence policy and deciding equipment purchases. Of all miltech specialists fast jet pilots tend to have the shakiest grasp of concepts like force integration, force symmetry, capital purchase prioritising and compromise, and especially realistic strategic threat analysis…anything that fails to recognise them as modern-day Knights in Kevlar whose job quest is to ride out and win the day on behalf of the entire nation in single combat then nip back home for a quick jacuzzi and rub down from Kelly MacGillis. Or they did a decade ago, anyway, when I still knew what I was talking about.

BTW, I’m likely to be outrageously bitter n’ biased, CK, having failed RAAF jet training early in my military flying career. (Couldn’t fly fast on instruments, what a weenie. My bro’ never lets me live it down, the little brat.) But everyone involved in military aircraft acquisition would IMHO do well at least to start the process assuming that the operating experts they go to for advice will proselytise a technical and defence policy worldview that’s shaped by little more substantial than the sort of teen-geek shit-hottery you’re (alas) seeing too much of on this thread, which should be much more grown-up than it is. ‘Cos everyone is smart and - scenario fantasies aside - seems technically to know what they’re on about. And we’ve all got big ones in cyberspace. Huge, even. So there’s no need to wave ‘em about, is there, boys.

You really are clueless GregM. Do you really have any idea how irrelevant these toys will be?

I’ll giv you one clue among many: Peak Oil.

adrian I’d never be one to look to you to go beyond the superficial, and think yourself intelligent in getting that far, but please, just this once, explain how peak oil is relevant in making fighter aircraft irrelevant.

If anything I would have thought that in order to protect a scarce resource it would have made them more relevant.

But go ahead. Share your searing insight with us.