Because your second attempt to start a Why RAAF F-35? Thread got shut down I will respond to a few of your points here and suggest a way forward for you integrating into this community at the end of this post.
There was one aircraft we acquired, was pretty big in the 1960s and 1970s, almost something of an icon, designed for carrier operations....
I expect you are referring to the F-111C and maybe even the F-4E. Neither were carrier aircraft. Try to land one on a carrier and it will end badly. Sure they had design backgrounds and connections with famous carrier aircraft (F-111B, F4H) but neither were, are or could be.
I don't think it's entirely coincidental that since 1970, Australia has only purchased twin-engine fighter aircraft designed for carrier-operations by the US Navy. I was seeking, if possible, some insight into why that was the case if it was not entirely a coincidence (which, considering the issue of twin-engines, the fact that carrier aircraft are more rugged and so could cope more easily with bare basing etc) that there is some foundation.
Again you are drawing a very long bow in trying to make a RAAF loves carrier aircraft connection. The RAAF acquired the USAF’s latest and greatest tactical strike aircraft (F-111) and as a gap fill their then bog standard strike aircraft (F-4E). The US Navy and any design heritage of these aircraft had nothing to do with it. The cabinet papers for the F-111 are all online at the National Archive and there is nothing there about carriers. The reason we brought the F-111 was it was better and newer than the alternatives (TSR.2, A3J) and the Govt. wanted a fighter which would last beyond the end of the 1970 therefore wanting the bleeding edge technology.
The TSR.2 had a similar short field capability as the F-111 despite not being designed for carrier operation. The RAAF has never made use of any kind of rough field capability supposedly inherent in the F-111 thanks to its carrier design heritage (and neither as USAF). VG was something that both Boeing and GDFW would have designed into their F-111 bids even without the joint F-111B requirement. This comes down to designing an aircraft able to fly at low level with low gust response and still being able to take off from a runway less than 4km long.
In a world where money is not an unlimited resource, I think people actually do care about things like unrefuelled range, like payload... money, avgas and munitions are not unlimited resources, and sortie rates a total irrelevance, but I would tend to think that for those of us who live on earth in 2011, they actually do kind of matter.
Of course they matter which is why we are buying the F-35! A massive increase in flying endurance over the legacy F/A-18s. The point I was making was you claim that no one cares about these things is wrong. The F-35 has excellenet flight performance and meets the RAAF requirements for such. It will also significantly increase our ability to endure and reach on the battlefield.
Comparing its range/warlord to an F-111 flying a strike mission in 1973 is plain crazy. The F-111 needs all that fuel because it has to fly at low level to survive and needs to carry 12,000 lbs of bombs because it has to drop a spread to achieve target destruction. The F-35 can fly up high where the air is thing and burn far less fuel and be more survivable than a nap of earth F-111. It only needs to carry 4,000 lbs of bombs because they are precision guided munitions and will cause far more damage than the F-111’s spread of dumb bombs. This comparison is a false one because it doesn’t take into account the all important details. F-35 will fly further, safer and be more lethal than an old school F-111.
If only you could see yourself saying that from my perspective. I joined this board because I believe that there are both things I could learn, and perspectives I could offer.
Ahh yes your perspective. The power of the one. Well we have an established community here with years of discourse. You’ve just walked in the door and declared “listen to me fools!”. And you still think its all about you. If you want to join this community you could at least have the decency to start discussing this issue in one of the existing threads and maybe even read some of the existing discussion.
Maybe you're at the brigadier-general level in real life, in whatever field you're in, and you don't have to be polite to anyone anymore, and people just kiss your a**e and salute, but I think for the rest of us, we try to be friendly and polite, even when we strongly disagree with them.
Brigadier-General? That’s just some stupid way the system counts how many posts you’ve made. Around here a one star is actually a pretty low rank. But there you go being a dickhead. Its all about you isn’t it and you’ve got to antagonise anyone who doesn’t bow down and rush to agree with your “insight”.
So far you’ve failed to address the existing discussions, barged in and made a range of quite weak and unsupported claims. You’ve also pissed off just about everyone here including people with actual first hand knowledge of these programs and capabilities you seem so interested in. Now you can continue this path and be basically ignored and join in such riveting discussions as “help me write my crap novel” or “why isn’t Pakistan ruling the world” or you can go onto one of the exsisting RAAF or F-35 threads, read a bit and then start making a reasoned contribution.
