There are a number of considerations here:
Australia requires a long range, twin engine aircraft. The F35 is certainly inferior to the F-22 Raptor in every respect. Price difference will be negligible.
This purchase has been made for the narrow interests of a few beaurocrats and US defence contractors.
The FA-E/18 is not competitive with late model SU aircraft being purchased all around the region. A better so called interim aircraft would have been current model F15's, if required at all.
The manner in which the "Super Hornet" was chosen is absolutely scandalous. Brendan Nelson should be sacked for this decision.
Upgrading the F111 makes a lot of sense in technical terms, as well as in terms of enhancing the capabilities of our own aircraft industry. (see below) If the Swedes can build the Gripon why is Australia trading away our indigenous technical capability in this respect?
http://www.ausairpower.net/pig.html
Frankly, a combination of re engined F111's with state of the art avionics and F22's would give Australia air superiority in the region for quite some time to come.

Stoka

I certainly agree that the F-35 is inferior, Australia should drop its ambiguous commitment to it. By choosing the Super Hornet Australia may be expensively signalling that its prepared to stay along the F-18 development path and NOT become fully committed to the F-35.

By not going for the F-35 Australia will be delaying a major purchase from the US. This makes a partial - interim payment in terms of the Super Hornet necessary - a way for Australia to keep its scheduled payments/premiums on the ANZUS alliance.

Sad truth is we need to be interoperable (commonly equipped) with our (ANZUS nuclear) American allie. Our large land mass means US aircraft (including the F111) consistently fall into the range/speed/payload bracket that we need. Furthermore the low observability skill is not an option for our own aircraft industry (after the US perhaps only the Russians and French would come close).

Nelson (hopefully) chose the Super Hornet as part of a wise strategy to bide time (and keep America sweet) until the US begins to release the F-22 to its allies. The same US strategy of delayed release (for US political alliance gain) occurred with the F-15 and to a lesser extent the F-16 with other countries in times past.

So Australia can expect Super Hornets to start arriving 2011. If we play our cards right hopefully a mature fighter/attack version of the F-22 will come on stream to Australia in 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor

To further lever the US towards making F-22s (or F/A-22) available Australia can revisit the concept of upgrading the F-111 as, hopefully, we'll have a new (Labor) Government (which has already talked of a Hornet, upgraded F-lll, towards F-22 mix) after November this year .

A useful mix might actually be (talking 2016) -

- the 24 Super Hornets - a multirole fighter/bomber (2010 - 2030)

- F-lll upgraded 2009 long range (be Australian standards) bomber - for phaseout in 2020s

- incraseing number's of multirole F/A-22 (2015- 10 per year over 6 years (to 60 total) (2015 - 2045)

What do you think?

Pete

Plantagenet,

I'm in agreement with most of your points, however I think a better interim aircraft would have been the F15E with the most current avionics. Whether we needed to make this purchase for $6 billion to keep the US onside till they agree to sell us the F22 is apocryphal. In any event, after sending a bunch of detailed correspondence to Air marshal Houston, Brendan Nelson et al and getting no response, I doubt if the people who are really pulling the strings give a damn. The only person who responded to me was Joel Fitzgibbon, shadow minister for defence. I would have been happier to see money spent developing an upgraded prototype of the F111 with new engines and avionics, thereby enhancing our defence industry skills and giving us more technical independence. Eventually the US will need to sell us the F22, for strategic reasons as well as to allow them to purchase more for themselves.

I’m also of the opinion that the public domain and media are not necessarily getting the full picture of what is going on behind the scenes on this. What seems very clear is that the FA-E/18 is at a serious disadvantage to a well armed SU-30 Flanker in almost every performance criteria. (*See link below.)
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-060807-1.html

I would be happy to see some money spent buying more F-111 airframes from the US and developing an upgraded prototype of the F-111 with new engines and avionics, thereby enhancing our defence industry skills and giving us more technical independence. The F-111 is an aircraft uniquely suitable for Australia in terms of its speed, range and stike capability, and the comprehensively researched arguments presented by Carlo Kopp and Peter Goon in the ausairpower website make a compelling case.

I also believe developing advanced technical skills in the area of military aviation is pretty crucial to Australia’s future defence needs, and that constantly spending vast sums of money with overseas military contractors does not necessarily enhance such development.

http://www.ausairpower.net/pig.html

Where do people get this rubbish!

Facts:

F35 - most advanced multi-role fighter plane now in development. BETTER than F22 Raptor in many respects.

1. USA will not sell foreign nations F22 Raptor, and it's an air superiority fighter - ie, 2. Does not fulfill RAAF requirements.

SHOCK/HORROR - it's NOT as capable as the Lightening II

*Can people than please STOP introducing the word F22 Raptor even into the discussion! (You canNOT buy the thing!)

SuperHornet: 4.5 Generation Aircraft, with new generation weapons will sustain and enhance RAAF long-range strike capabilities. F111, great plane, will miss it, but it just can't keep going forever and management of the program is just requiring more and more, for less and less "return".

Think of the JSF this way:
You spend all that BIG $$$$ to develop the Raptor (I know, I used that word myself) you find what works, what doesn't, how to get similar results for less - you take all that knowledge, all those hours of blood, sweat and tears and package it up in the more capable, more advanced, more modern plane - JSF!

Can't see any Russian plane ever hanging around to take on the SuperHornet and JSF. Both planes simply take things to a new level.

JSF INFERIOR AND PART OF US's TWO BITES SALES STRATEGY

Robo

I agree with you about the Super Hornet's value to Australia but suspect you writeoff the F-22 too quickly. You haven’t put up arguments in what ways the JSF may be superior.

Compared to the F-22 the JSF is already inferior to the F-22 in terms of speed, range and carrying capacity. The attack/bombing capabilities of the F-22 are steadily being developed. The JSF’s single engine has already caused problems as there is unusually little scope in this aircraft to increase weight in order to increase capacity.

Comparative radar signatures are probably unassessable but probably similar.

What really seems to be enticing Australia interest in the JSF is that Lockheed (which significantly also builds the F-22) is offering significant industry offsets if Australia buys the JSF. Politicians traditionally see political benefits for defence industries in marginal seats. But if (as I suspect) the JSF doesn’t achieve the expected sales (in the US or overseas) – Australia will be stuck with lower volume offset factories and locked into the JSF with a price close to and perhaps higher than the F-22.

The JSF’s versatility (3 configurations) may be a virtue or a “can do a bit of everything but poorly” disadvantage. In any case Australia is only seriously looking at the CTOL version with carrier versions too far in the future and even then small in number.

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