How will LM react to this? presumably missing out on a possible 50 F35 will not make them happy or do they know that we will probably end up buying the 100 f35 we wanted anyway just down the track a little further?
We have a completely operational backup plan. The superhornets we have now will do us until we start getting F-35's. If there is a huge delay (I can't see that happening) then we have a completely viable option, to almost instantly get the aircraft we need. Which means we can wait for the F-35 and we will. The only thing that would upset that would be if we went to war tomorrow and we needed something urgently to defend ourselves (Im not talking about international missions). We could sustain ourselves for a short while but our airframes would rack up hours very quickly. But we already have F-35 on order which I would imagine get here as fast as they can, and faster than any additional SH. There is no gap, we have that well covered.
How many F-35 is the real question. If costs spiral out of control I would imagine the 100 number would move south. If its as expected then I think we will try to go for 100. At which point we may or may not get rid of the SH depending on how valuable they are. If we did want to get rid of them, USN/USMC or several other nations would proberly love to jump into them (even the UK perhaps?), Malaysia, Spain, Canada, Japan.. Or we convert them to growlers (12?) and keep them with 84-100 F-35's. The final F-35 order could be sat on for a LONG time, which isn't a bad thing because it stops block obsolence issues, getting the best and greatest later builds etc. Ideally we would have 96 F-35's (4x24) and 12 Growlers. Growler conversion still has 9 hardpoints so is still a very capable aircraft for bombing or A2A. JSOW (and ER?) and ATFLIR can be carried.
Obviously the government is very concerned about being hammered over an "airgap". Its a concern because its gets a lot of publicity and becomes a big fear in anti immigration/imminent invasion heartland. Talking never hurt anyone, it costs very little and makes it seem like your strong on defence. Look at the F-22 talk. Very cheap way to seem strong on defence, even tho its a dead end even the US isn't buying F-22's. If it falls through you blame faceless Americans because *THEY* won't sell it to us... Thats how strong we are on defence, the americans won't even sell us the Nukes and spaceships we need and they sold tanks to Saddam and f14 to Iran!
Maybe not indefinitely. I saw that our two legacy Bugs that were in the US conducting testing on the various elements of the HUG, including JASSM live fires have returned home recently.
With a SH living there it gives us a presence in the US and a platform. Simply for development and training purposes it would be highly valuable to have atleast one in the US. However, if war broke out, it could be returned literially in a few hours, proberly carrying some wizbang US equipment slung underneath it etc. Im suprised we don't actually have more assets in the US more of the time.
I will imagine the SH will come home once we have F-35's in the US as that will be the new play thing and 2 will stay in the US.
RAAF will fight for the F-35s.