F-111's until 2020

[south]

ahh yeah sorry GF.

The platforms we designed are more of a very permanent modular scaffolding allowing access to all parts of the airframe and internals in a variety of configurations (e.g. wings removed, tailplane removed, wings on etc).

Definately not a jig/rotissarie for the CBR work, more for stripping down the airframe for deep level maintenance/preparing for CBR.

Not sure if you have seen the work platforms in the P3 Orion Hangars at Edinburgh or Herc Hangars at Richmond?

 

[410Cougar]

as recently as 1999 we had F-111's grumbled up to go to jakarta if the Indonesians had escalated the ET situation. Hornets (esp without adequate AAR) would have been useless to send the same message.[/LIST]

So, for arguments sake, wouldn't Australia have been better off to purchase the Tornado's when they knew that the B variant wasn't even going to be utilised by the US? To go through all the testing and the trials and the avionics/weapons upgrades (which still confuses me - how can you upgrade from a nuclear capable aircraft?) would, in my mind, be political suicide as all of it was massively unproven at the time..?

Attila

 

[south]

1) Tornado's werent around at the time the order was placed.
2) F-111 still has longer legs than Tornado.
3) At the time the order was placed the B model was alive.
4) JSF is unproven?

Sea Toby - The 707's used at present wont turn the Hornets into a long range striker. At present they are somewhat unreliable, and I'm lead to believe that there are only 1-2 of the 4 that are still used for tanking for various reasons.

The A330 will be great when it comes online though.

 

[bigmax]

just a comment from a newcomer

Good evening all my name is Bill and I am ex RAAF.Although I left the service in 1970 and am in my 60th year ,it does'nt mean that I ,like WgCdr Cottee ,as I new him in my day, are any less interested in whats going on,or more to the point,whats not going on in the current RAAF.I am quite sure that
Mr Cottee ,myself and any number of "old raafians" are very interested in the
state of our nations' defense capability and accordingly,although our experience base may be outdated our interest in current information is often not.Keep up the good work and discuss the h--- out of our defense situation ,as I have read some damn good critique, the majority of which shows the same concern as I have for our political lack of expertise in the
area of DEFENSE and obtaining the best possible results given our finances.
regards to all.Bill

 

[Aussie Digger]

Good evening all my name is Bill and I am ex RAAF.Although I left the service in 1970 and am in my 60th year ,it does'nt mean that I ,like WgCdr Cottee ,as I new him in my day, are any less interested in whats going on,or more to the point,whats not going on in the current RAAF.I am quite sure that
Mr Cottee ,myself and any number of "old raafians" are very interested in the
state of our nations' defense capability and accordingly,although our experience base may be outdated our interest in current information is often not.Keep up the good work and discuss the h--- out of our defense situation ,as I have read some damn good critique, the majority of which shows the same concern as I have for our political lack of expertise in the
area of DEFENSE and obtaining the best possible results given our finances.
regards to all.Bill

G'day mate, welcome aboard. Seems the debate has died down a bit for the moment with regard to the F-111 issue. I'd expect it to flare up again as the decision on the JSF gets a bit closer.

Though I've also received some information that Government and RAAF might be looking a bit more closely at an "interim" aircraft purchase, which would not be good news for the F-111, whatever decision is taken on the JSF...

Look forward to your input...

AD

 

[chargerRT]

Though I've also received some information that Government and RAAF might be looking a bit more closely at an "interim" aircraft purchase, which would not be good news for the F-111, whatever decision is taken on the JSF...

you're such a tease AD! so are you goin 2 spill the beans,or just let us sweat for awhile...?

 

[Aussie Digger]

you're such a tease AD! so are you goin 2 spill the beans,or just let us sweat for awhile...?

The info I received will become public knowledge in a week or 2. You'll just have to wait I'm afraid. If I reveal my hand too much any future tips may not be passed on to me... A certain person who posts here may be interested in revealing the info himself, but maybe not. It may have commercial implications if he did...

There has been no decision made anyway AFAIK and Defmin Nelson himself has publicly commented on his call for RAAF to present a "fallback option" should the JSF be delayed or otherwise not meet the standards we require.

 

[swerve]

The info I received will become public knowledge in a week or 2. You'll just have to wait I'm afraid. If I reveal my hand too much any future tips may not be passed on to me... A certain person who posts here may be interested in revealing the info himself, but maybe not. It may have commercial implications if he did...

There has been no decision made anyway AFAIK and Defmin Nelson himself has publicly commented on his call for RAAF to present a "fallback option" should the JSF be delayed or otherwise not meet the standards we require.

Well I'm going to speculate. A fallback option for an "interim" F-111 (only) replacement sounds like some F-15E variants. If it really is interim, perhaps some USAF surplus - if there are any. No other Western aircraft comes anywhere near the range/payload performance of the F-111, & I can't see the Su-34 being bought, although it would be an ideal F-111 replacement.

That could mean a reduced F-35 buy.

A full fallback option for the F-35 would mean that Typhoon & Rafale could be considered.

 

[Sea Toby]

Considering the price of the Super Hornet compared to a F-15E, the Super Hornet has the closest price to the original expected price of the JSF, $45 million or so in US dollars. While the Super Hornet isn't the fastest fighter available, she'll carry all of the sensors and weapon systems of the JSF. What's best, the Super Hornet is in full production currently for the US Navy. There's a good chance Australia could get early deliveries from the US Navy production, instead of waiting three to five years for delivery.

 

[scraw]

Considering the price of the Super Hornet compared to a F-15E, the Super Hornet has the closest price to the original expected price of the JSF, $45 million or so in US dollars. While the Super Hornet isn't the fastest fighter available, she'll carry all of the sensors and weapon systems of the JSF. What's best, the Super Hornet is in full production currently for the US Navy. There's a good chance Australia could get early deliveries from the US Navy production, instead of waiting three to five years for delivery.

I would think F-15E and Super Bug are the only options. Of those I'd probably put my money on the 18 depending on how they weighted range in the assessment.

 

[Aussie Digger]

I would think F-15E and Super Bug are the only options. Of those I'd probably put my money on the 18 depending on how they weighted range in the assessment.

Boeing is also approximately 6 aircraft ahead of schedule for the USN F/A-18E/F build program.

As I said nothing's been decided but if an interim aircraft were to be chosen I'd back the SH in on the ability to get it into RAAF service quickly above anything else...

 

[Todjaeger]

Regarding RAAF Strike capability, the US is looking into a replacement bomber program.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com...ew-bomber-doesnt-know-what-kind-yet/index.php
One possible candidate, is an FB-22 or FB-23 type aircraft, to fill the vacated role of the FB-111.

If the US started work on a bomber of this type, would Australia be interested, assuming it was available for sale and at a "reasonable" price?

I'm not certain if the RAAF has decided that standoff missles are a sufficient strike package, or if the issue is more that there is at present no existing replacement for the F-111.

 

[rjmaz1]

The US will not be making the FB-22 that is 50% larger than the current F-22. They have no money.

The US cannot even fund the F-22 and JSF let alone a third manned fighter.

Congress also stated that a certain percentage of the bomber/strike force most be unmanned in a few years.

The interesting question is why would the YF-23 airframe be coming out of retirement when they cannot afford another manned aircraft?

The only possible option is using the F-23 to make an unmanned bomber. UCAV's always travel further than a similar sized manned fighter as the cockpit and associated support for the pilot takes up a lot of space and weight. Not to mention the Manned fighters need reserve fuel reducing its radius. By Striping the F-23 of the cockpit etc filling it up with fuel you'll get an F-23 with around a 50% greater combat radius than the current F-22.

Theres your regional bomber its the only solution i can think of which involves the F-23 being restored.

The F-23 UCAV would be able to enter service very quickly as UCAV's only have to go through a fraction of the testing that a manned fighter must do, plus the F-23 airframe has already been tested. The F-23 is more suited to become a UCAV bomber than the F-22 as it has no thrust vectoring, lower IR and radar signatures, bigger easily and expandable bomb bay etc.

Australia doesn't need to keep the F-111 capability, we never used it and will never use it.

We should spend our money where its needed: Airlift and ground equipment for our thousands of troops we have oversea's. Peace keeping will be Australia's biggest role in the next 20 years, yet we dont even have the aircraft to send our troops into combat.

The C-17's purchase is the best decision Defence has made in recent years, in my opinion our order of C-17's should be doubled so that we no longer require ANY US airlift for our peace keeping missions.

People say we cant rely on US help us if we retire our F-111's. These people are ignorant of the fact we have already been relying on the US for decades for all our oversea's deployments.

It about time people got over the whole "What if Indonesia attacks Australia we need our F-111's to strike back" - its not gonna happen

I say retire the F-111's, loose their capability and spend the money where its needed.

 

[Aussie Digger]

Australia doesn't need to keep the F-111 capability, we never used it and will never use it.

We should spend our money where its needed: Airlift and ground equipment for our thousands of troops we have oversea's. Peace keeping will be Australia's biggest role in the next 20 years, yet we dont even have the aircraft to send our troops into combat.

The C-17's purchase is the best decision Defence has made in recent years, in my opinion our order of C-17's should be doubled so that we no longer require ANY US airlift for our peace keeping missions.

People say we cant rely on US help us if we retire our F-111's. These people are ignorant of the fact we have already been relying on the US for decades for all our oversea's deployments.

It about time people got over the whole "What if Indonesia attacks Australia we need our F-111's to strike back" - its not gonna happen

I say retire the F-111's, loose their capability and spend the money where its needed.

I agree. There are too many capability gaps within our forces to be worried about maintaining such a separate niche capability. If Indonesia ever developed the capability to seriously threaten Australia we'll need the US's help anyway. Our war reserve stockpiling policy (based on funding issues alone) means that we have virtually zero warstocks of munitions in Australia as it is not Government policy to maintain a large warstock of munitions for our defence. (Because this would cost a lot of money).

As an example, at one point not too many years ago, the only stocks of Harpoon missiles in our entire Country were those equipping our FFG frigates.

If RAAF had needed Harpoon missiles to conduct a maritime shipping strike, the missiles would have had to be removed from the FFG's, converted to the air-launched configuration, shipped to which ever RAAF base the strike was to be launched from and loaded onto the aircraft, assuming someone could actually be found who was qualified to employ the weapon, as there were no training stocks...

To put this into perspective, the defence of our Country is based upon our ability to control our maritime approaches and yet we have no stocks of the primary weapon designed for this mission!!!

Another example of our weaknesses is the fact that we do not produce 155mm artillery ammunition in this Country at all and have to import every single round. Our Politicians and defence chiefs then in their wisdom allowed our ammunition stocks to run so low that we had to "break into" our "critical" warstock simply to maintain peacetime qualification levels on our primary artillery systems.

At one point there were Gunners within 8/12 Medium Regiment that had not fired 1 single round of ammunition from their M198 155mm guns in nearly 2 years.

And Carlo Kopp has nightmares that we might not have a combat aircraft up to the challenge of SU-27/30's! Ha! He'd probably have a nervous breakdown if he knew the REAL state of our "defence readiness"...

 

[Todjaeger]

I agree. There are too many capability gaps within our forces to be worried about maintaining such a separate niche capability. If Indonesia ever developed the capability to seriously threaten Australia we'll need the US's help anyway. Our war reserve stockpiling policy (based on funding issues alone) means that we have virtually zero warstocks of munitions in Australia as it is not Government policy to maintain a large warstock of munitions for our defence. (Because this would cost a lot of money).

As an example, at one point not too many years ago, the only stocks of Harpoon missiles in our entire Country were those equipping our FFG frigates.

If RAAF had needed Harpoon missiles to conduct a maritime shipping strike, the missiles would have had to be removed from the FFG's, converted to the air-launched configuration, shipped to which ever RAAF base the strike was to be launched from and loaded onto the aircraft, assuming someone could actually be found who was qualified to employ the weapon, as there were no training stocks...

To put this into perspective, the defence of our Country is based upon our ability to control our maritime approaches and yet we have no stocks of the primary weapon designed for this mission!!!

Another example of our weaknesses is the fact that we do not produce 155mm artillery ammunition in this Country at all and have to import every single round. Our Politicians and defence chiefs then in their wisdom allowed our ammunition stocks to run so low that we had to "break into" our "critical" warstock simply to maintain peacetime qualification levels on our primary artillery systems.

At one point there were Gunners within 8/12 Medium Regiment that had not fired 1 single round of ammunition from their M198 155mm guns in nearly 2 years.

And Carlo Kopp has nightmares that we might not have a combat aircraft up to the challenge of SU-27/30's! Ha! He'd probably have a nervous breakdown if he knew the REAL state of our "defence readiness"...

Wow, I didn't realise the situation re: warstocks of ammo was in that state...
With that as a given, the need for a strike component becomes much less important. Has anything been done on acquiring Harpoon stocks to use from current aircraft & also train with them?

 

[johngage]

Dear Aussie Digger,

I didn't realize that things were as bad as that. I have always had a tremendous respect for the Australian armed forces and frankly your post really shocked me. Has been any problems with regard to training? In the UK many of the soldiers have been complaining of overstretch due to Iraq and Afghanistan, is there anything similar on your side as well? Is there likely to be a solution to the logistics problem anytime soon?

 

[Magoo]

The interesting question is why would the YF-23 airframe be coming out of retirement when they cannot afford another manned aircraft?

Who said the YF-23 is "coming out of retirement"??? I was at Northrop Grumman's El Segundo plant last week and the YF-23 was sitting very forlornly in a corner of the parking lot rotting away. I've attached a pic I took last Tuesday.

It had been transferred to El Segundo only because the Western Museum of Flight (WMOF) at nearby Hawthorne had its lease terminated and is currently in search of a new home. Also at El Segundo were one of the YF-17s, an F-14 and an F-5, also all from the WMOF.

I asked the question of my hosts and was assured that there is no possibility of that or the other YF-23 (at Wright-Pat) ever flying again.

Magoo

 

[Aussie Digger]

Dear Aussie Digger,

I didn't realize that things were as bad as that. I have always had a tremendous respect for the Australian armed forces and frankly your post really shocked me. Has been any problems with regard to training? In the UK many of the soldiers have been complaining of overstretch due to Iraq and Afghanistan, is there anything similar on your side as well? Is there likely to be a solution to the logistics problem anytime soon?

Australia has a couple of projects now to replace it's reserve warstock and build up some sort of munitions reserve. How extensive it will be I don't know. Some other projects like the JDAM and JASSM acquisition projects are acquiring significant quantities of munitions from the start (2500 JDAM's and 260 JASSM's).

A good read in relation to Australia's problems in this area can be read here:

http://www.anao.gov.au/WebSite.nsf/Publications/B7F75D0AA24025B5CA257170007253F1

(To summarise the important points. In 2005 ADF held $2 billion worth of explosive ordnance warstock. It was found during the above audit that $1.04b worth of this warstock was not serviceable and could not be made serviceable!!!)

We also have a medium artillery (155mm) ammunition replacement project currently underway to acquire stocks of "new" generation 155mm munitions, including "precision" guided artillery rounds (Excalibur and Bonus). These 2 programs will help, but these examples are just some of the many problems we have. I could go on (ie: RAAF having to "purchase" ALL the 120 odd LGB's it dropped in GW2 from the USAF) but they serve to illustrate, my original point that if Australia were ever directly threatened by a Country with the capacity to conduct serious military strikes against Australia, then we'd need massive help from the US anyway.

Why then bother retaining a capability that is considered too expensive to actually use in anything other than a war of national survival (the reasons given for it not being deployed in GW1/2) when it won't be enough anyway???

The F-111 capability can be achieved through other means. As such I think the money is better off being put there...

 

[rjmaz1]

Aussie Digger i didn't realise that it was that bad. Awesome aircraft and no missile. We laugh at indonesia with their unarmed suhkois and we aren't much further ahead.

No JSF, no Super hornets, we should just keep the current hornets and pocket the money. If our current hornets in the near future could carry the Small Diamater Bomb then we could stockpile these as the SDB can take out the majority of targets. This is much simpler than keeping stock of a dozen different types of weapons.

Then when the Classic Hornets cannot fly no more, we can purchase ex demo or runout model JSF's for a good price.

Who said the YF-23 is "coming out of retirement"???

Just a rumour that the YF-23 was going to compete for the proposed regional bomber which started the whole FB-22 thing in the first place. Still possible that the YF-23 will be used, they wouldn't use the original airframes anyway as it would need to be modded for the UCAV or bomber role. Only guessing though.

Enough people mention the FB-22 that their must be something going on.

 

[Aussie Digger]

Aussie Digger i didn't realise that it was that bad. Awesome aircraft and no missile. We laugh at indonesia with their unarmed suhkois and we aren't much further ahead.

No JSF, no Super hornets, we should just keep the current hornets and pocket the money. If our current hornets in the near future could carry the Small Diamater Bomb then we could stockpile these as the SDB can take out the majority of targets. This is much simpler than keeping stock of a dozen different types of weapons.

Then when the Classic Hornets cannot fly no more, we can purchase ex demo or runout model JSF's for a good price.

True, though unlike Indonesia we DO have some munitions for our air combat force, just some of the more important ones were difficult to use quickly and we didn't have many of them and more than half of the warstock we DID have is un-serviceable...

The good thing I suppose about the JDAM purchase AND the ER wing kit is that we do (I believe) manufacture the Mk 80 series bombs here and also the ER wing kit will be made here (by Hawker De Havilland).

We only then need the JDAM guidance kits to create an indigenous standoff weapons capability, (and we are ordering a large number of these kits as I mentioned earlier) which is I presume what you are advocating SDB for?

The SDB can no doubt be integrated onto the F/A-18 but the Hornets now have the O19 flight control software which I understand allows amongst other things, dual carriage of Mk 80/BLU-109/110/111 series bombs and JDAM's on single hardpoints (Magoo might be able to correct this), which would go some way towards increasing the strike power of individual fighter aircraft, compared to present...

The problem with the "legacy" Hornets is that even with CBR's they won't be viable beyond 2016, no matter what weapons they're carrying. As such we need to get to at least IOC for the JSF's before the Hornets are completely shagged to allow a smooth transition...

Much of the reasoning behind retiring the F-111 in 2010 was to provide sufficient maintenance crews and pilots to start flying Australian F-35's from 2012 when they are expected (maybe) to be delivered.

The crews can't just stop working on the F-111 on Friday and start on the F-35 on Monday...