I'm proud to announce that I won a few beers today.

 

Rejoice rejoice, the muppets in the clown club have been publicly rejected. /dervish pirouette off

 

we will now see a flurry of howls from them as they desperately struggle to remain media viable ....

.... now all we need is for JASSM's to be integrated so that they can actually hit strategic targets like they are supposed to, a quarter of them to be fitted out as EF-18G's so that they can survive an attack by SU-XX's and another couple of Airbus tankers to be ordered to compensate for the fact that they are short legged. Chances of all that happening under this government? Sweet FA.

I love how the mindef has at every opportunity (ie. every sentence) tried to bad mouth the previous government.

How do you figure?

There are numerous fast jets which are capable of acting as primary strike aircraft and secondary air-air types in the market place at the moment.  This is not to mention other options for filling the long-range strike requirement, such as ship launched cruise missiles et al.

Ship launched cruise missiles aren't very good at ACM. Nor can they designate offboard to other A2A platforms. You can't reuse a ship based cruise missile for recon/surveillance.

Australia could have purchased any number of Su 30's, Su 34's, Tornado GR'4's, F15E's, F16 Block 60, Grippen, Typhoon Tranche 2, Rafaels etc.

Flankers are for third world Air Forces and have systems that are not overly compatable with Oz/USA centric support equipment.

 

Tornado GR.4's would need as much new support equipment to any other jet in your list. They are also almost as old as the Pig anyway.

 

F-15's are nearing the end of the production and don't offer much more than a SH in some respects and less in others.

 

Gripen is a lightweight and isn't in the same class as the F-15/Sh let alone a replacement for the Pig.

 

Rafale is French for yoghurt.

 

Typhoon is only just being able to lob bombs as we speak. SH has been doing it for years.

 

SH is ready NOW!

 

 

 

 

Meaning they won't be able to hit "strategic targets" with JSOW-C or anything else? Please. Even the most ardent critics of the aircraft recognise it is a superlative strike aircraft and JASSM at best will give us a mere 200k extra strike range, assuming we don't opt for JSOW-ER in coming years...

Any SU-XX fighters will be slaughtered before they get a chance to fire their weapons, whether they are facing our Super Hornets OR legacy Hornets and it has little to do with the aircraft itself, but rather our C4ISREW capabilities.

Actually the most ardent critic of the type that I have heard speak was Peter Criss, who called it the "Super Dog" and said that it isn't capable of surviving in this region against current threats. I disagree with the good AVM and merely think it is a mediocre airframe with a load of very snazzy avionics that will see it through untill the SU-XX get equally snazzy avionics. "Superlative" definately isn't a word that comes to mind for a 400nm, Mach 1.6 wonder that was bought by the USN as an economy measure to claim the "peace dividend" during the 90's

 

As for JSOW vs strategic targets, we've been through why it doesn't cut the mustard, but I suppose I could explain it to you again. It has a 500lb BROACH warhead, which is suitable for small hardened targets and small soft buildings. If you want to knock out a bunker with more than a 1.5 metre wall (i.e. any command bunker) or destroy a large building like the Iraqi intelligence service building destroyed in 1998 or the Somali chemical factory destroyed after the late 90's Al Quaeda strike, you need at least the 1000lb class warhead carried by a JASSM. Whats more, 130nm (200km+) extra range is a big deal if you are out of range of an important target, distinctly likely since we are operating 400nm radius wonders. It is also a big deal if you are facing SA-10's, which will outrange any current weapon but JASSM or SLAM-ER.

 

The really silly think about these planes not having JASSM integrated is that we are buying them and integrating them on our heritage Hornet fighter force. I would have thought that it was patently obvious that our premier strategic strike unit, the strike/recon force, should be equipped with our premier strategic strike weapon. What this means is that we have to tie up more tankers and a large part of our air to air fighter force on strategic strike, while leaving our strike/recon force at home during strategic strike missions. It also means that our fighter force has to worry about training for strike missions when they shouldn't have to. I'm sorry, but that is just stupid. The USN is not integrating the weapon because they have other strategic strike options , such as the USAF bombers and the TLAM. We don't have the luxury of using the SH in a purely tacticalrole, so we need our premier strike force to be able to do its job with the right weapons.

 

As for SU-XX being slaughtered, I agree so long as they don't get datalinks and AWAC's of their own. With some of the economical Russian and European packages being offered at the moment though, I'd rather have the certainty of some EF-18G's to give us the edge. Don't forget that it is going to be 6 to 7 years before the JSF comes into service. Our potential regional foes could easily become better equipped in that time, so it would be very unwise for us to be blaise about this.

 

what a waste of $7B!  worst decision the current govt has made to date.  seems a growing certainty that we will be getting considerably less than 100 JSFs...