F/A-22: To Fly High or Get its Wings Clipped

[Occum]

How come the Dutch get told the right gouge?

The cost panic is over-rated, none of us will know until the MOU is signed in 08, until then all of this is pure speculation and politicking. The SH is a viable alternative if needed, but we don't need to worry about it just yet

FYI, your 2008 is a good idea. Well done! But Lockheed Martin hopes to have the PFSD MOU signed by November this year. That's why Tom Burbage is flying in this week end and Chuck Davis has been down here this week.

If this is all pure speculation and politicking, then it is pretty expensive wanking!

Who IS doing the due diligence on behalf of the Australian tax payer?

See -

http://www.rekenkamer.nl/cgi-bin/as.cgi/0282000/c/start/file=/9282400/modulesf/h92kmucu

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/ned061011mc


The Dutch say they are currently planning on a procurement cost of about $US110 million per JSF aircraft, however they are also saying “but the figure might turn out to be higher”. Unlike Australia, they don't intend to buy early LRIP aircraft and have reduced their numbers from 114 to 85 platforms.

They also state, “The Netherlands would have to pay approximately EUR 317 million for the first three test aircraft.” Do the arithmetic.

By the way, how do you feel about being misled?

 

[rjmaz1]

The JSF, Eurofighter, Rafale and Super hornet are all around the same price. Really all of them are way too expensive to give us a one to one replacement, Australia would struggle to afford 100 Superhornets without taking alot of funds.

I always hear the same dribble "oh we want the best for our pilots we dont want them to die" yet most western airforces have a near flawless combat record. I dont see why a pilots life is more valuable than someone in the army. The armies around the world are loosing people left right and centre.

In the US case if they dumped an extra 100 billion dollars into the air force you'll probably reduce the deaths by half. So half of say 10 deaths will save 5 lives. If you put 100 billion dollars into the army that will buy you the best light weight wearable armour for everyone, the best vehicles, lighter weapons and even better training. If this reduced the death toll by only 10% thats hundreds of lives saved in the army. Money well spent!

I can already see Australia take money from where its really needed just to buy some fancy aircraft that wont even see proper combat.

Heck, we dont even have any harpoon missiles for our planes, so if we were attacked by sea the navy is our only line of defence. Yet we hyprocrtically laugh at the indonesian's who dont have any weapons for their suhkois

I reccon we could even buy 50 A-10 warthogs and modify them to carry harpoons. Atleast an A-10 like this would be usefull in the real world and not just look good on paper. The A-10's could do anti shipping well it has alot of endurance. The A-10 doesn't need to be quick look at the P-3 orion. Also any future war will most likely be middle east, the A-10's could provide close air support for our troops and would be at home in northen Australia. Atleast the A-10's would be doing something usefull unlike our Hornets that just fly around and do nothing except use up fuel and keep the tankers busy. The A-10's could take ground fire and the mechanics can just patch them up, she'll be right mate!

The A-10's are probably the only cheap option as their airframes are extremely overbuilt, have plenty of life left and the US has enough to spare. Possibly even a C-27J or C-130 gunship would be great for Australia.

You dont need a stealth, supersonic, agile fighter jet to combat terrorists and extremist groups. Thats the only enemy Australia will face in the next couple decades.

 

[RubiconNZ]

I always hear the same dribble "oh we want the best for our pilots we dont want them to die" yet most western airforces have a near flawless combat record. I dont see why a pilots life is more valuable than someone in the army. The armies around the world are loosing people left right and centre.

Pilots as a indvidual a very finite strategic resource, costing a good million dollars to train, a general infantry soldier is only of use in a section, in a platoon, and is rather more replaceable, for the RAF the greatest problem was the Pilots, there was more than enough airframe production but the pilot was the key, well I would never take away from the worth or conrtibution of any person serving in any service Pilots are woth more than weight in gold in terms of value to a nations overall fighting machine, just as the loss of a SASR trooper in terms of value would be much more than any other person of any other corp, I apologise if I have offended anyone but Im looking from a detached view.

 

[Occum]

Request for Information

more to the point are the comments made at the Joint Committee on the 10th Oct.

And what comments would those be? Could you please provide a link or a reference or a quote?

Are you sure you are not confusing this with what AVM John "JB" Blackburn had to say at the press conference for Brig Gen Charles "Slick" Davis on the 10th?

 

[Occum]

One Case When Not Being Curious Could Kill More Than the Cat

Now some of this I don't buy especially the advanced neighbour in our immediate area with nice planes no weapons or a couple of planes with no weapon kind of countries, however the wider strategic environment includes India, China and Pakistan, however to be honest I’m starting to be uncertain about the JSF buy, comments, article completely out field, one thing I don't understand is the bashing of the Super Hornet, is the article saying that the Super Bug leaves the US Navy drastically weak against advanced fighters until the intro of the JSF which will not even do the job? I suppose a lot of you are tired of it, but still I’m curious....

As am I and many other people. Though, am surprised by the silence of the newsgroup experts and admins who are claiming this has been done to death. Just when things are getting interesting, they find the ability to STFU or, rather, throw the 'OFF' button!

Clearly not everyone thinks this has been done to death if you can believe the article in the latest Australian Aviation by Andrew McGlaughlin called 'Mind the Gap'. This article raises more questions than it answers with some saying, "Right on and rightly so!"

For instance, on the issue of costs, Mr McGlaughlin writes -

Page 52 - "When asked how much the F-35 will cost, Lockheed Martin officials have consistently quoted an average unit <recurring flyaway> 2002 dollar cost for the CTOL F-35A of US$45m (A$59.5m) and US$55m (A$73m) for the more complex F-35B STOVL and F-35C carrier version <sic>. However, if the RAAF buys its first two tranches of F-35s from the fourth LRIP batch as expected, these aircraft are likely to cost far more than this, and possibly as much as A$115 million each according to some."

I wonder who these "some" are. Doubt Mr McGlaughlin is one of these because he goes on to say -

Page 55 - "In any discussion of fighter prices it is also worth noting that a 'flyaway price' usually only includes the airframe, engines, the current production standard avionics and radar, and perhaps an initial basic spares package."

The latter statement is unnecessary since the definition of 'flyaway price' (correct term is 'unit flyaway cost') does not include any considerations for spares nor technical documentation nor operational documentation nor a bunch of other things. However, the author goes on (and correctly so) to list some of the other items not included in the 'unit flyaway cost' and concludes with -

"These vital supplementary items can add as much as 100 per cent or more to an aircraft's "flyaway price". <sic> Note: He is not talking unit recurring flyaway cost here but unit flyaway cost.

Back on Page 52, the author states -

"Further block upgrades (for the F-35) are planned to occur every 20 to 24 months or so for the first decade as additional enhancements to expand the aircraft's capabilities and weapons options are released. Industry sources claim each block upgrade will cost up to $1 billion for a fleet the size of that being planned for the RAAF."

I wonder, are these AUDs or USDs? Don't suppose it really matters because either way, these are really big numbers and well outside the budget in the Defence Capability Plan (or, at least, that released to the Australian people).

However, the author is not alone in this view as can be seen by turning to Page 93 and reading Paul Caldwell's Defence Update called "A two tiered fighter force?" -

Page 93 - "This will occur over a period of about six years to the tune of $16 billion, an immense amount of money to fund in a relatively short period of time. And this amount doesn't include the block upgrade the F-35 is going to require soon after its introduction (about $1 billion), nor the estimated $1 billion it will cost to rebarrel up to 50 F/A-18s to keep them in service until the F-35's current planned IOC."

Now a quick tally on these data shows that we are talking about figures which are considerably more than the "A$115 million" mentioned earlier, which is looking like wishful thinking by the unnamed "some". More like ~A$190 million per, if you use Mr McGlaughlin's figuring, allowing 11% for non-recurring costs to get the 'unit flyaway cost' plus the usual 19 to 20 per cent factor on unit flyaway cost to get unit procurement cost, as well as adjusting the dollars, inflation wise, for when the RAAF plans to buy the aircraft (2012). However, this does not include the multiple billion dollar costs for the updates ($1 billion + $5 billion over first 10 years), nor the A$1+ billion for the centre barrels and the ~A$2 billion for the deeper level maintenance activities and the rest of the HUG that will be needed to get the F/A-18s to safely fly through to 2015, even though most of the time it looks like they will be on the ground in maintenance/update mode.

What's all that in US dollars?

Will be interested to see if this piques the curiosity of "some" as well as others . . . .


:shudder

ps.

Looks like I've lost the bet made back in 2002 when I reckoned it wouldn't bust the A$20 billion mark! Mind you, they could always cut the numbers back to, say, 65. Now there's a Fighting Force - NOT!

 

[gf0012-aust]

And what comments would those be? Could you please provide a link or a reference or a quote?

excellent to see that you're still committed to fighting the rearguard tantrum.

the fact that in the last 7-10 days the US has stated that the plane that you covet will not be made available for export to anyone seems to have passed a few people by.

it all seems rather academic when the pink slip owner deigns not to let anyone else buy in.

OTOH, I'm sure there is a new found malevolent platform conspiracy just lurking in the wings that has yet to reveal itself.

 

[Grand Danois]

As am I and many other people. Though, am surprised by the silence of the newsgroup experts and admins who are claiming this has been done to death. Just when things are getting interesting, they find the ability to STFU or, rather, throw the 'OFF' button!

I figured it is because it has been done all over so many times. Nonetheless there is no reason to close the thread on that basis.

Clearly not everyone thinks this has been done to death if you can believe the article in the latest Australian Aviation by Andrew McGlaughlin called 'Mind the Gap'. This article raises more questions than it answers with some saying, "Right on and rightly so!"

For instance, on the issue of costs, Mr McGlaughlin writes -

Read it briefly. I see no new figures. The M115A$ UFC is for the first blocks, which will not constitute the bulk of the Australian F-35 purchase. Hence the use of 'average' when quoting the M59.5A$ figure.

And violá B16A$ should be enough.

 

[icelord]

Heres a simple soloution, buy SU-27, that way, we can at least match our neighbours...LOL

 

[rjmaz1]

Looks like I've lost the bet made back in 2002 when I reckoned it wouldn't bust the A$20 billion mark! Mind you, they could always cut the numbers back to, say, 65. Now there's a Fighting Force - NOT!

If you have aircrafts A, B and C each that cost 200, 100 and 50 million each and only have 10 billion to spend, that will get you, 50, 100 and 200 aircraft respectively, excluding setup cost etc.

Now quantity has a quality of its own. If you go by the fact "Australia must have the best!!!!!!" then we will get 50 of aircraft A. Not enough aircraft to provide air defence, strike and close air support, deploying aircraft out of the country would be restricted.

However 100 of aircraft B would be much better solution, Australia has opted for the second or third best aircraft in the world and has greater numbers. The aircraft can be at more places at once, these aircraft would still be superior than the potential enemy.

200 of aircraft C would also be great, a loss of an aircraft would not be a significant loss to the country. You could do the dirty jobs with ground fire and not have to worry about scratching your precious 200 million dollar aircraft. These aircraft would be similar to the enemy, so in a one on one battle you will loose a few aircraft but still have 190 left.

The JSF is reaching the aircraft A price point.. too expensive for us, and we have to let it go and go with something cheaper. Aircraft B is now in the zone of the super bug, eurofighter. Aircraft C would be second hand aircraft or lighter aircraft like a new F-16.

I think a good option would be a high, low mix of aircraft. High level aircraft kept for a conventional war and low aircraft for the dirty work close air support. There are not many cheap aircraft that have a range anywhere near our requirements. Thats why i thought second hand A-10's would be good, it would bring the Australia aircraft number up to 100 aircraft relatively cheaply. Sure the A-10's aren't modern but they have similar range of a hornet and can blow shit up pretty well. It would be nearly as good at close air support as a super bug yet at quarter the price it would be a bargain. The cheaper price allows you then to buy more giving greater firepower than a single feelt of super bugs.

Most of the new cheap aircraft are small and lack range (Gripen, BAe Hawk), so the only cheap long range aircraft are second hand. A purchase of the low level aircraft now would allow us to wait for the JSF possibly without rebarreling our hornets.

Another question, what is happening to all the A model Saab Gripens that were built, half of them are being upgraded and half are being retired? They would surely have alot of airframe hours left, and are easily advanced enough for the "low" mix.

Possibly upgrading our hawks to carry Small diameter bombs?

Dozen Predator UAV's with missiles?

 

[Occum]

Viola or Voila - Nothing like a Fiddle, I say!

Read it briefly. I see no new figures. The M115A$ UFC is for the first blocks, which will not constitute the bulk of the Australian F-35 purchase. Hence the use of 'average' when quoting the M59.5A$ figure.

And violá B16A$ should be enough.

Suggest you might want to look again. Mr McGlaughlin has mined some very close to the bone information here.

Also, as Air Commodore John Harvey keeps saying repeatedly, the US$45 million (A$59.5 million) is the average unit recurring flyaway cost in Base Year (2002) dollars. There is a little thing called inflation and related economic factors to take into consideration. Also, the 'average' is on the currently advertised production numbers of the CTOL variant for the USAF (1,753 aircraft), not just the 100 aircraft the RAAF wants. Andrew McGlaughlin is quite right when he says the LRIP aircraft will be significantly more expensive than the full rate production birds. His 100 per cent factor on the unit flyaway cost (both recurring and non-recurring costs) to get the price is not far off what it will be. This was also alluded to by ADM Steve 'Smiley' Enewold just before he handed over the baton to Brig Gen Charles 'Slick' Davis.

Disappointingly, I must accept that I have lost the wager unless, of course, the whole thing gets thrown back into the melting pot.

 

[Magoo]

As am I and many other people. Though, am surprised by the silence of the newsgroup experts and admins who are claiming this has been done to death. Just when things are getting interesting, they find the ability to STFU or, rather, throw the 'OFF' button!

Maybe we're just 'over it'!?! I know I am!

Clearly not everyone thinks this has been done to death if you can believe the article in the latest Australian Aviation by Andrew McGlaughlin called 'Mind the Gap'. This article raises more questions than it answers with some saying, "Right on and rightly so!"

You couldn't have read it too closely - I also read Mr McLaughlin's article - overall found it overall pretty well balanced but I agree, it does ask more questions than it answers.

For instance, on the issue of costs, Mr McGlaughlin writes -
Page 52 - "When asked how much the F-35 will cost, Lockheed Martin officials have consistently quoted an average unit <recurring flyaway> 2002 dollar cost for the CTOL F-35A of US$45m (A$59.5m) and US$55m (A$73m) for the more complex F-35B STOVL and F-35C carrier version <sic>. However, if the RAAF buys its first two tranches of F-35s from the fourth LRIP batch as expected, these aircraft are likely to cost far more than this, and possibly as much as A$115 million each according to some."

I wonder who these "some" are. Doubt Mr McGlaughlin is one of these because he goes on to say -

Page 55 - "In any discussion of fighter prices it is also worth noting that a 'flyaway price' usually only includes the airframe, engines, the current production standard avionics and radar, and perhaps an initial basic spares package."

The latter statement is unnecessary since the definition of 'flyaway price' (correct term is 'unit flyaway cost') does not include any considerations for spares nor technical documentation nor operational documentation nor a bunch of other things.

It sounds like the $115m is a worst case scenario, and the "some" are probably the doomsayer commentators and industry commentators such as yourself and Dr Kopp/Mr Goon. Re the "unnecessary" explanation, it sounds to me like he's just catering for those of us out there who are not as well informed as yourself and who sometimes need to be reminded of such things.

Magoo

 

[Occum]

WartHogs Rule

I think a good option would be a high, low mix of aircraft. High level aircraft kept for a conventional war and low aircraft for the dirty work close air support. There are not many cheap aircraft that have a range anywhere near our requirements. Thats why i thought second hand A-10's would be good, it would bring the Australia aircraft number up to 100 aircraft relatively cheaply. Sure the A-10's aren't modern but they have similar range of a hornet and can blow shit up pretty well. It would be nearly as good at close air support as a super bug yet at quarter the price it would be a bargain. The cheaper price allows you then to buy more giving greater firepower than a single feelt of super bugs.

A few really good points in your last post.

I agree with you re the A-10 in terms of hardware, though I suggest you will find that the A-10C has significant advantage in range and endurance and bomb load (aka persistence) over the F/A-18 and even that which was intended in the JSF JORD. However, the Archilles Heel in the numbers argument resides in the warm ware - sufficient numbers of pilots and support people of sufficient calibre. The RAAF is having inordinate problems populating the current numbers of aircraft.

Good force structuring also needs to achieve balance. Solly.

 

[Occum]

Oh, Magoo - You've done it again!

Magoo. Maybe we're just 'over it'!?!

What, when the fun is just about to start?

You couldn't have read it too closely - I also read Mr McLaughlin's article - overall found it overall pretty well balanced but I agree, it does ask more questions than it answers.

Overall, never was very good with names, overall. My humblest to Mr Andrew McLaughlin.

It sounds like the $115m is a worst case scenario, and the "some" are probably the doomsayer commentators and industry commentators such as yourself and Dr Kopp/Mr Goon.

Doomsayer commentators?????

I happen to think wanting the best for our fighting men and women (as well as ourselves and our kids) is a positive thing, particularly if it is more cost effective than the second or third best and with a lot less risk. Anyway, I can assure you I have not spoken with Mr McLaughlin on this, so I ain't one of the "some".

FYI - If I had, it would have been USD, not AUD, 'cause that's where I reckon the little, tubby beastie is heading.

Re the "unnecessary" explanation, it sounds to me like he's just catering for those of us out there who are not as well informed as yourself and who sometimes need to be reminded of such things.

Was just being polite/diplomatic here. Better than saying this explanation is wrong. Obviously, too obtuse (which is also why 'imprecise' was not used instead of 'wrong'). The definition of Unit Flyaway Cost does not include any monies for spares - small number, initial or otherwise.

 

[Sea Toby]

I'm waiting for the precise price of the Liberator before I make a judgement. At A$ 100 million they are too expensive, at A $60-70 million they will be affordable to buy in numbers.

If the Liberator is too expensive, another option would be to acquire another new aircraft. I prefer the multi-role Super Hornet, which has a know price and can be recieved much earlier.

 

[alexsa]

Possibly upgrading our hawks to carry Small diameter bombs?

Dozen Predator UAV's with missiles?

The Hawks are designed for a secondary GA capability. Suggest you look at the price of Predators, they are not cheap either for what you get and don't carry much in the way of ordinace. Again a great UAV but not designed as a primary weapons carrier.

Seriously why bother with 'old' airframe in need of costly upgrades (i.e. second had A-10's) or second hand Grippens (which will again need upgrades as the older versons are being mothballed) if you can get the SH. At least much of the infrastructure in is place cutting the set up costs and type conversion is much simpler, given we operate F-18A/B, than the other options cutting introduction costs. You also remove the ongoing cost of operating an old type (A-10) or a type with a limited prodcution run (Grippen). Further It would allow the purchase of useful items like the F-18G and, better still, you get an aircraft that you could operate out to 25 years with a reasonable capability.

However, all this could be premature as (has been mentioned previoulsy) as it appears that option B is not yet considred necesary. Lets face it 16B is a lot of money and the purchase will be speread over a number of years. Given the current finacial sitauon I suspect additional fund could be tacked on the back if considered necessary.

Out of curiosity I wonder how our RAAF jocks wouel feel about tooling around in an A-10 if one of our neighbours got some missiles on their SU-27. Nervous I would suspect.

 

[Whiskyjack]

Out of curiosity I wonder how our RAAF jocks wouel feel about tooling around in an A-10 if one of our neighbours got some missiles on their SU-27. Nervous I would suspect.

The way I see it the A-10 would have to be bought (30-40) in addition to any more advanced aircraft.

But for ops in the mid-east or another East Timor type intervention, with F-18s (or what ever the replacement) flying cover, I would have to say that the A-10 providing CAS would have to be preferred, with the Tigers used as a Recon Force.

It may be old, but it is proving to be an outstanding aircraft.

Sorry off topic.

 

[rjmaz1]

Seriously why bother with 'old' airframe in need of costly upgrades

The "old" airframes dont need costly upgrades, they are meant to be the "low" aircraft so giving them an advanced radar, avionics and bigger engines would no longer make the aircraft a low tech cheap aircraft. In terms of airframe and engine life they are in air worthy condition.

Australia needs a cheap aircraft to make up numbers if it goes the JSF. All of the cheap new aircraft are very small and have short range. The only cheap alternative for an aircraft with long range is second hand aircraft.

When comparing in the close air support role the A-10 is just as good as our current hornets if not better. The fact they are less than half or even less than a quarter of the cost makes them excellent value for money. A good bang for your buck aircraft is needed to make up numbers if you want to go with a JSF.

Even if we go with superhornets instead of the JSF i still think their is room for an A-10 aircraft

Maintenance of the A-10 would be very good, it doesn't use composite materials and has very basic flight systems. We could keep them running cheaply for many years. Based on information available to me the with the F-111 the A-10 fleet would definitely require less maintenance.

How many A-10's have the US mothballed? If we requested 50 A-10 im pretty sure they would become available to us. Even if we bought the original version we can upgrade them to the more advanced C version down the track if we need. The original A-10 with poor avionics still performed excellent in both gulf wars. Indonesia and east timor would be a walk in the park in comparison, so their wouldn't be an urgent need for the C version.

An A-10 purchase would be a replacement of the short ranged missions provided by the F-111 and a close air support provided by our current hornets. This allows the current hornets to be used for Air/sea defence only until the JSF came online. Then if the price is deemed to great we can go for some super hornets instead of the JSF.

So 60 A-10 with either 40 JSF's or 60 super hornets. Providing between 100-120 aircraft, we have more than enough pilots and more than enough maintenance crew to operate a force like this right now.

I'd actually go as far as saying as we need a low aircraft or we will reduce our high level aircraft. Punching in some numbers, if we went with no low level aircraft we could afford 60 JSF's, not enough aircraft so we will be forced to go with 90 Super bugs. So we loose the medium range stealthy strike capability of the JSF. With the low end (A-10) option it allows us to go with 40 JSF's, and use the money from the 20 JSF's to buy 60 A-10's.

So we have the options of.

1) 60 JSF's.
2) 90 Super bugs.
3) 40 JSF and 60 A-10's.
4) 60 Superbugs and 60 A-10's.

Out of all of those i would prefer option 3 as it offers us everything from precision stealth strike down to flying 100 feet off the ground blowing up tanks.

 

[Whiskyjack]

So we have the options of.

1) 60 JSF's.
2) 90 Super bugs.
3) 40 JSF and 60 A-10's.
4) 60 Superbugs and 60 A-10's.

Out of all of those i would prefer option 3 as it offers us everything from precision stealth strike down to flying 100 feet off the ground blowing up tanks.

I think your ratio is to high.

The RAAF needs to aim at 4 squadrons of JSF (or whatever!) to cover for strike, air defence, maritime attack etc..

Would be happy to see some A-10s enter the mix, but not at the expense of a high level combat aircraft.

 

[rjmaz1]

I think your ratio is to high.

The RAAF needs to aim at 4 squadrons of JSF (or whatever!) to cover for strike, air defence, maritime attack etc..

Would be happy to see some A-10s enter the mix, but not at the expense of a high level combat aircraft.

Dont forget that a single JSF can perform strike, air defence and maritime attack all on the same mission. It could shoot down an indonesian SU-27 with an AMRAAM then proceed to sink a indonesia patrol boat with a Small diameter bomb and then drop a JDAM on its target. Its less vulnerable to enemy attack due to it being stealthy so requires less escorts allowing more targets to be hit with fewer aircraft.

Look at the small fleet of F117's during the Gulf War, they destroyed an entire country. Now the JSFs can self escort themselves with a pair of AMRAAMs. 40 JSF's would be plenty providing they perform strike and air defence only.

For a regional conflict, after the initial enemy defence is knocked down by the JSF's the A-10's can then take to the sky, flying through valleys taking out the targets hidden by tree's. The JSF and superbug cannot do this as well and they cost 3-5 times as much. Meanwhile the JSF's switch to air dominance role and strike now that the oceans and air is clear. A perfect combo for a regional conflict. Better than what we have now thats for sure.

On a world scale the US will always get the first hit knocking down the enemy. The US will be the ones that provide the high level combat aircraft. By the time our forces arrived the main air war would be won, so our JSF's would not have anything to do. So instead we'd deploy a squadron of our A-10's to fly close air support for our own troops. The initial air war will be over in the first week but as shown in Iraq the ground war can last years. That means we'd need atleast 2 squadrons of A-10's to be able to releave the deployed squadron, so ideally 3 squadrons or minimum of 40 A-10 aircraft.

As air and sea defence of Australia would be needed for a few weeks all JSF's could be operational at once. Much different to a 5 year ground war that requires us to ration our A-10 fleet, so we'd need more A-10's for the long term.

80 JSF and 30 A-10 would be the ratio needed if the JSF was the aircraft that would be deployed overseas as this allows two squadrons of JSF to be rotated overseas and the other two squadrons to remain in Australia for its defence. However if the JSF never left the country and the A-10 was used overseas then the 40 JSF 60 A-10 would be the correct ratio. Two squadrons of JSF to defend Australia, Two A-10 squadrons to be rotated overseas and one A-10 squadron in reserve for another "east timor" conflict.

Australia has always provided aircraft for most conflicts, they have always ran into problems as our hornets use the Navy inflight refueling setup while operating from land bases with USAF aircraft that use a different inflight refueling setup. We then have to bring our own tankers and bloat the overall coalition force. The Superbug would run into the same problem.

Not to mention the Navy will have 200 superbugs in theatre so what use could 20 Australian aircraft be? An additional 2000 troops on the other hand would be highly appreciated.

A few links about the A-10.

A-10 controversy
A-10 rescues ambushed ground troops

The A-10 needs to be the aircraft we deploy overseas not the Hornet or JSF.

 

[Whiskyjack]

Dont forget that a single JSF can perform strike, air defence and maritime attack all on the same mission. It could shoot down an indonesian SU-27 with an AMRAAM then proceed to sink a indonesia patrol boat with a Small diameter bomb and then drop a JDAM on its target. Its less vulnerable to enemy attack due to it being stealthy so requires less escorts allowing more targets to be hit with fewer aircraft.

For a regional conflict, after the initial enemy defence is knocked down by the JSF's the A-10's can then take to the sky, flying through valleys taking out the targets hidden by tree's. The JSF and superbug cannot do this as well and they cost 3-5 times as much. Meanwhile the JSF's switch to air dominance role and strike now that the oceans and air is clear. A perfect combo for a regional conflict. Better than what we have now thats for sure.

I think that that simplifies what is a major problem for the RAAF. For the 100 JSF they are looking at buying they will equip 4 front line squadrons with 12 aircraft each the other 52 aircraft will be used for conversion/maintenance/attrition. This comes from various statements from the RAAF. It also corresponds to how the RAF/USAF numbers tally in the frontline vs total ratio.

Using RAF 12 aircraft squadrons as a comparison you also get the following:

Of the 12 aircraft 10 will be deployable at any one time and of those 10, 8 will be available for day to day sorties.

So in a time of war the RAAF will have available on day one 40 aircraft for deployment.

As soon as you cut that number say to 60, you have only 24 aircraft available.

Another way to look at it is that to maintain a CAP you need approximately 8 aircraft cycling through (with some on standby to reinforce the CAP) . So immediately the RAAF will loose 25% of its deployable force, two continuous CAPs around two Wedgetails and 50% are being utilised for defensive patrols. With the vast distances around Australia this problem is further exasperated,.

So what would you have left to conduct offensive sorties?

If the A-10 proves cheap to maintain and operate there may be a place for them, but not at the expense of the fast movers.