Australia has signed onto the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program as a Level-3 partner ($150 million), which should get it a share of the work on all F-35s. The Australians will buy about 100 F-35s to replace the F-18s (first) and the F-111s (starting in 2006). Rather than buying all of the aircraft at one time, plans are to buy them in smaller batches as each block of improvements is added to the design.--Stephen V Cole
