Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] News, Discussions and Updates

[seaspear]

I'm pretty sure they were ridiculously expensive to keep in service by the end.

They required a huge number of maintenance hours per flight hour compared to pretty much any other aircraft. It would have been cost prohibitive to return them to service after any length of time even in fully climate controlled storage.

I agree that regular flights would of been expensive but I was thinking of a one time operation of a long range unmanned drone carrying more ordinance than Ghost Bat at more than twice the speed of , I would hope that future aircraft are not crushed and buried

China Converts Soviet MiG-19 J-6 Jets Into Drone Swarms - Telegraph.com

China is reviving thousands of Soviet-era J-6 fighters, converting them into pilotless drones built for swarm attacks that could overwhelm Taiwan’s defenses.

telegraph.com

 

[Todjaeger]

I agree that regular flights would of been expensive but I was thinking of a one time operation of a long range unmanned drone carrying more ordinance than Ghost Bat at more than twice the speed of , I would hope that future aircraft are not crushed and buried

China Converts Soviet MiG-19 J-6 Jets Into Drone Swarms - Telegraph.com

China is reviving thousands of Soviet-era J-6 fighters, converting them into pilotless drones built for swarm attacks that could overwhelm Taiwan’s defenses.

telegraph.com

I think you are fundamentally misjudging the likely costs and issues involved, particularly given the of potential retired aircraft fleet sizes available to Australia as well as the size of Australian aerospace industry.

Unless an aircraft was designed with an avionics, control systems and comms package allowing for either/or autonomous and remote operation, then such systems would need to be developed otherwise the retired aircraft, even if they could be returned to flightworthy condition, would remain stuck on the ground without someone in the pilot's seat.

Now the US and China have both taken fighter aircraft and developed remote control systems for them, but these were done for aircraft that had production runs numbering in the thousands of aircraft and both countries also had the aerospace industrial bases which produced the aircraft itself.

Doing some rough back of an envelope calculations, a roughly equivalent warhead weight to a fully-loaded F-111C could be matched by ~32 AGM-158B JASSM-ER with an acquisition cost of ~USD$56 mil. I tend to suspect that it would likely take at least as much, if not more, to both design and implement the sort of systems needed to turn a retired fighter/strike aircraft into a one-way smart munition. Further, given the LO characteristics of modern LACM's, they would be much less likely to get detected and intercepted before something as large as an ex-RAAF F-111 could get within actual striking distance.

 

[hauritz]

I agree that regular flights would of been expensive but I was thinking of a one time operation of a long range unmanned drone carrying more ordinance than Ghost Bat at more than twice the speed of , I would hope that future aircraft are not crushed and buried

China Converts Soviet MiG-19 J-6 Jets Into Drone Swarms - Telegraph.com

China is reviving thousands of Soviet-era J-6 fighters, converting them into pilotless drones built for swarm attacks that could overwhelm Taiwan’s defenses.

telegraph.com

The American's have an aircraft boneyard of course. If only Australia had huge areas of isolated, empty, flat desert.

 

[Todjaeger]

The American's have an aircraft boneyard of course. If only Australia had huge areas of isolated, empty, flat desert.

Australia has the space, but it has never had the sort aircraft production numbers that the US does. Further, apart from the size of the RAAF towards the end of WWII (~6,200+/- aircraft of various types) Australia has never maintained the sort of aircraft numbers where a large dedicated facility like Davis-Monthan would make sense to store retired aircraft for future re-use or as a source of spares and parts.

I would suggest people ask themselves what they think Australia should have spent to store ~40 F/A-18 A/B Hornets following their retirement from the RAAF, as well as what they think it would have likely cost to return those same retired aircraft back to some sort of useful Australian service.