(Edit - focus on issues rather than other commenters please)

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-130308-1.html

Properly managed, this plan would see Australia with the best and most effective “Air Dominance’ air combat capability for about half the dollars that senior officials in the Defence/DMO bureaucracy would have us tax payers fund. A large portion of these dollars would be spent in Australia on engaging Australian Industry (Peter always capitalises ‘Industry’, just like Defence and DMO) with far more, high value work for Industry than the current plans of Defence/DMO could ever hope to generate - both for Australia’s and for export.

(edit)

Air Power Australia is only one of a large number of such activities, all of which have been, and continue to be, privately funded by people who care about Australia.

cheers,

Linda V

1. There doesn’t seem to be any suitable manned aircraft that we can buy. Nobody seems to want the JSF. The Americans won’t sell us the F22. There was a suggestion that we might look to other suppliers, but that suggestion seems to have been (ahem) shot down by Stilgherrian.

2. There are weaknesses with unmanned craft (as per Linda).

3. There might or might not be a possibility to manufacture unmanned aircraft locally.

Linda, you said that “UCAVs will be required” but you also imply that they aren’t yet combat ready. What do you suggest that we do, given the seeming lack of options?

LindaV. Sorry I just do not accept any of those arguments. Defeatist and not reality-based, despite all the claims of “expert”. Those who actually create the future — in Silicon Valley etc — never think like that. Which is why our good people are mostly Californians (Ausra, and Trouson for Stem Cells, Zhongren in China with the world’s biggest solar company). Spend our money on-shore and insist the supported industries achieve the impossible.

hi Michael,

Pls allow me to reply for Peter as he is otherwise occupied. I am very familiar with his APA work through many hours of debate/argument, etc.

Firstly, I assure you Peter has no reason to be embarrassed.

What you may call ‘unsupported opinion’ is still expert opinion and, besides, the reference to ‘the air combat continuum’ should have given you a hint.

IMHO, it will be UCAVs (unmanned combat air vehicles) that will be required to do the roles of manned fighters.

For all the reasons that should be obvious to you (i.e. data link vulnerabilities, spectrum limits, etc), these would have to be autonomous to be effective. Now, even the AI gurus cannot agree this side of 2025 when their technologies will be up to far more simple tasks. Then there are the issues of ROE and the various treaties to which we are all signatories. Then there is the matter of the aviation regulations and associated authorities.

However, putting this aside, how would you and you wife/girlfriend/friend feel about having an autonomous AI controlled machine flying over top of you, your kids, your house, etc. on a training sortie carrying several tonnes of high explosive?

I must admit I found the bulk of Mungo’s article an interesting read but the pre-amble, once again, shows what Peter said in relation to history and learning - Mungo (and your good self) seem to have misplaced WWII et al.

As for your insight into all things to our North, the following link is well worth a read as is the extract below -

http://www.defpro.com/news/details/10979/

“Only power could protect peace,” the 59-year-old air force commander said in an interview with Xinhua, 10 days ahead of 60th anniversary of the founding of the PLA air force.

Superiority in space and in air would mean, to a certain extent, superiority over the land and the oceans, Xu said.

“As the air force of a peace-loving country, we must forge our swords and shields in order to protect peace,” he said.

cheers,

Linda V

I’m not sure what you mean by “such fighter aircraft”.

I think everyone here thinks we ‘need’ something that is better than what our neighbours have? Perhaps ‘need’ is too strong, but certainly, I haven’t seen anyone here arguing that we shouldn’t try to have something better than what we think they have. (Always accepting that we may be under/over estimating their actual capacity, and also acknowledging that there can be short/long term tradeoffs.)

And I don’t see anyone here defending a JSF purchase.

The unresolved debate that I see is what should we do instead. Manned? Unmanned? And in either case, from where?

Those who are sceptics about UAVs (and perhaps future technologies that fall outside that descriptor) fall back on “they were trying to do it 50 years ago” are standing naked before us all in their embarassment. (eg. Peter Goon (31 Oct09, 12:50 pm) simply gives an unsupported opinion in his first para.) I have absolutely no doubt that if we put a fraction of these absurd fighter budgets into developing unmanned options that they would represent the greatest deterrent imaginable. (But no, we will spend even more on buying off-the-shelf drones etc from the Americans and end up even more dependent than ever.) And of course, something even the supporting blogs do not mention, but one of my main points (also in the alt.energy field) is that we could develop these things ourselves, and possibly better than the Americans (whose obsession with bigness is a liability).

The justification of the need for such a defence is very shaky. In today’s Crikey, Mungo says: “The fact that the Australian mainland has never been invaded and is never likely to be….”. Just another opinion but one which many analysts would agree with. That doesn’t mean we have to ignore defence but it does mean we can afford to think creatively and independently of the Americans etc. We have the luxury of remoteness that gives us a certain protection against the more extreme scenarios. Indonesia, Malaysia, China if you are a reds-under-the-bed type are at least 20 years away from anyposition to begin any hyper-aggressive scenario so let’s use that time wisely to develop our own much cheaper defences and build our own capabilities/economy/hi-tech workforce at the same time.

What has changed is that their second best stuff used to be good enough.

Precisely my point, the JSF will not give us that “edge”, we will be back to a numbers game, and don’t like our chances playing our population against our northern threats. I assume there are threats!!!!

So the Raptor, will that do the job?, from what I see from here and other research YES it will. So Uncle Sam we have been there for you so time to show some non-self-obsessed loyalty to a true partner.

If not then let’s maintain our edge with technology that does not involve humans in the cockpit.

Gee maybe all that tax money we bleed for the fat pay of US gun runners could be used to develop our own technology we COULD EXPORT.

In previous times (Sabre, Mirage, F-18) there’s been a variety of fighters from allied nations we could choose from to fit RAAF requirements. The current case is unique in that *there is no alternative to the JSF* if we want even a pseudo-5th-generation fighter from an allied nations - the only alternatives are from Russia and China. We could have JSFs up against Russian/Chinese full 5th generation fighters and goodbye doctrine of “Air Domination”.

Which begs a very important and far-reaching question. If (a) we need the F-22 to maintain air domination over our neighbours (b) but the US, for their own reason, won’t supply them to us (or anyone else) (c) and we thus have to make do with the USA’s second-stringer which will be inferior to potential enemy aircraft (which doesn’t matter to the US because they’ve got the F-22 to gain air superiority) and hence unable to maintain air domination should we be having another look at the US alliance? Because frankly if the alliance is holding us back in the fundamental task of being able to provide for our own air defence, we should be having a look at it.

I don’t have any solutions to this. My ideal would be a Swedish-style home-grown effort, but that’s completely pie-in-the-sky, particularly for 5th generation. None of the Western-European equivalents is 5th generation, and they don’t have the range we need anyway.

Stillgherrian - your comments from your intelligence officer friend are noted - when I went to work with British Aerospace in the early ‘80’s it was, shall we say, interesting how much detailed information they had on potential enemy systems that in the open literature had virtually nothing known about them. However, Peter Goon’s point remains - the information is useless without the ability to analyse it competently. It basically comes down to your faith in the current culture of the Defence.

Robert White - when I wore the uniform of the RAAF, my bosses told us that our job was to be so capable and so well prepared that the other guy didn’t even think about taking us on. That is the fundamental reason why peace loving nations like Australia have a Defence Force. I fear those who are now floating on the top of the ADF pond, cutting off the sunlight and the oxygen, thus forcing out many good people who are sick of/from the stagnantcy and toxicity, have forgotten this simple fact.

With respect to the Air Power state known as ‘Air Dominance’, the aim is ‘to be so capable and so well prepared’ that the other guy’s pilots don’t even bother strapping on their aircraft in anger.

Despite what some have said in this forum and others, the fact that we have rarely had to strap on our aircraft in anger is testament to the foresight and wisdom of those who chose Australia’s air combat capabilities - up until now!

Stillgherrian - Being more than three times more capable than that being claimed the JSF might be is a tad more involved than you may think. Explaining this is beyond the scope of this post, however, you are cordially invited to peruse the information, analyses and papers on the Air Power Australia website and on-line journals ( http://www.ausairpower.net).

In the meantime, you might want to consider the following question. Is the JSF really a Fifth Generation Fighter as is being claimed?

One way of determining the answer to this question would be to ‘Peer Review’ the capabilities of the JSF, as marketed, with those aircraft that are being claimed to be its contemporaries; that is, other Fifth Generation Fighters such as the F-22A, the Russian T-50 PAK_FA and the Chiness J-12/J-XX aircraft.

As for your “former defence intelligence officer ’ friend, he is right in saying that it is more complicated - a lot more.

His comments about ‘open source’ information demonstrates this fact, since they bely the importance placed on such information and its applications by the international intelligence community and suggest a somewhat limited understanding of such things, as do his comments in relation to the Collins Class Submarine debacle.

As for his claim of those making the decisions having the ‘real information’, again this is far more complicated than he would have you believe.

Firstly, it assumes that those with what he calls the ‘real information’ have the expertise to understand the ‘real information’. Being in a position to know each and everyone of these individuals professionally, I can assure you their expertise lies elsewhere. Those with the requisite expertise have now gone silent because their colleagues who did speak up in the interests of what is right andwhat is best for Australia have either been silenced or were asked to leave.

Secondly, in recent times, have you ever seen or heard of the DMO or Defence making a decision or, moreover, accept responsibility for a decision. Since around 1999, it has all been about getting the Govt to make the decisions, then (almost immediately) saying it is a Govt decision and DMO/Defence are not responsible. More can be said about this but I think you will get the drift.

Finally, and in addition to the above, the DMO/Defence agenda has, since 2001, always been to buy the JSF, come what may. One does not have to read much of the DMO/Defence evidence to Parliament in Hansard or the Media Statements to realise this has always been their aim, despite the many declarations about “watching briefs” and that the Govt has still to make a decision, etc.

Makes you wonder, really. However, I hope this helps.

That something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t happen.

It doesn’t even mean that it shouldn’t have happened.

The line then was that manned aircraft were going to become superseded by guided missiles. This view made it to the highest levels of governments, notably with the infamous 1957 White Paper on defence in the UK which poleaxed British military aircraft development.

It was also a line used extensively with the F111 project in its early days, back when it was called the TFX. It was seriously said then that the TFX would be the last ever US manned combat aircraft program!

It’s not just about the shiny new jets. It’s about the whole package. Logistics, maintenance, software, training etc — not to mention how it integrates with existing equipment and systems and that of our allies. They’re straightforward issues if you’re buying assault rifles, but a big deal if you’re talking about an air defence system.

“We learned the hard way with the Collins SSGs [submarines] that it isn’t easy to alter a complex weapon system from its ‘off the shelf’ configuration,” he says. “The Malaysians, as MiG-29 operators, have learned the hard way that Russian after-sales service ain’t what it should be.”

He’s fairly scathing of what he calls “open source punditry”.

“Those making the decisions have real information about Sukhois, or what have you, in big red folders marked with interesting code words. And they’re faced with real restrictions, obstacles and trade-offs at every stage of the acquisition process.”

Noting that fighter pilots run the air force, he says, “Biggles won’t willingly vacate his cockpit and he hates doing stuff with the Army. That, in a nutshell, is why some blue-suiters here and abroad are so blindly enthusiastic about the F-22.”

So we stooge around with a starting point of “must” have a fighter-aircraft. Exactly what threat is it mitigating. By the time anything actually gets into service the UAV technology will be so far past the ability of any air-breathing target that we will look foolish.

But should we be shocked, RAAF officers on this project are almost all navigators (whatever the hell that means these days - name change doesn’t disguise it) or fighter pilots. While project managers have spent years gaining experience in the cut-throat gun-runner contract the RAAF promotes some type A in a zoom bag, waves some fairy dust and abra cadabra a multi-billion dollar project lead. But the shallow closed shop gene pool is for another day.

Doesn’t matter though. All the usual suspects will have left town well before the f#ck-up is complete.

If you check the link in the second message (http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jfadt/adfair/subs/sub22.pdf) one part deals with the potential insecurity of NCW (Network Centric Warfare). Seems to me that if comms links are potentially vulnerable, so are control links to UAVs.

Can’t see how a pilot can be jammed…

As for forward planning, the only thing our military and politicians are capable of is to want the expensive toys the chief arms sellers are touting. In the early 90s if it was obvious to me, it must have been obvious to a lot of people (except the military/pollies) that un-manned electronic smart weapons were the future. This was way before we first saw those drones on primetime tv. The thing is that unlike massive fighter jets, this is something a smaller nation like us could do. Certainly for the kind of budgets we spend on expensive imported stuff from America. The development needs are mostly in the software and communications. Most of the physical stuff (jet engines, avionics etc) is off-the-shelf from plenty of suppliers around the world. And just think of the incredible boost to local hi-tech it would be. That is of course exactly what the bloated american military budget is to their electronics and civil aviation industry. And it is bound to be vastly more effective than a limited number of fighter jets with their fragile human pilots.
So yes, I would rehabilitate the F-111s as a stopgap, pay the half billion for the two trial JSF’s (diplomatically smart and no big cost really) and hope that smart people like Faulkner, Lindsay Tanner and Rudd might rethink the whole thing. It is not too late.

1. the Americans won’t export it, not even to Japan, Israel or the UK

2. they’re stopping production of it anyway.

That rules it out of any practical contention.

A US Senate committee has just recommended developing an export version of the F-22 partly to keep the line open (http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5896JU20090910) but that’s a long way from getting it as policy. An export F-22 would obviously have to have some features removed, and until we knew just what we don’t know how much it would compromise its capabilities.

The Dutch, Danish and British examples have the difference that they don’t have our range requirements and hence can look at the Eurofighter, Grippen etc.

If the F35 isn’t up to scratch, and we can’t get the F-22, what options do we have? More Super Hornets? Or do we blow the US alliance to pieces by buying Sukhois? Basically we’re screwed.

PS: Mirage IIIO- Mach 2.2. F-18 - Mach 1.8. F-35 - Mach 1.7. Will the follow-on to the F35 be subsonic?

I served at the same unit (Aircraft Research and Development Unit) in the 1960s, and developed the highest respect for his personal qualities, though I was employed on different duties.

He is an ex- Chief Test Pilot of the RAAF.

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jfadt/adfair/subs/sub22.pdf

D J Ward
RAAF
(Retd)

Even if true, for some value of “true”, I’m not sure how this translates into a need for fewer aircraft if we got the F-22. Surely an aircraft can only be in one place at any one time, and the proportion of aircraft in serviceable state is going to be around the same? What am I missing? That fewer will be shot down?

Just wanting to bring some rigour to the discussion of a multi-billion-dollar purchase…