I'm afraid I don't follow. What has the Draken in RAAF service got to do with the Bullpup design?

 

Curious and confused.

The F-4 is a legend however the slatted F-4E wasn't available until the late 60's early 70's where as the F-105 and F-106 were available a decade earlier. Maybe a Phantom buy during the mid to late 70's to supplement the Darts and Thuds replacing the older airframes while the lower hour platforms were upgraded to serve into the 80's?

Dart and Thud for the 60'sthrough to the 80's being replaced with F-15C's, Phantom for the 70's through to the 90's being replaced with F-15E's.

b. Replace base flares and radio LoS telecommand with inertial guidance and am E/O pilot interfaced steering unit.

 

Quite. I just thought it curious that us owning Draken would force an American company to fix up a dud design. Martin could have done samd we gone with a Yank or Anglo-French plane as well.

 

I have often wondered why the decision to replace the Sabre could not have been put off for a few more years (the choice to go with the Miracle was made before many other options like F-4 came along) to encompass a wider variety of higher capability strike fighters, or indeed why, if not replace the Sabre in the timeframe that we did, opt for the F-100 Hun.

 

It seems that whilst historically we have opted for short-legged interceptors and longer ranging bombers, that we then decided on a paradigm shift post-Miracle IOC to halve the fleet of 116 and use the latter 50 as ground attack capable. Wwas this done when we already had the bomb trucking Cranberry in service with a view to replace same with the new fangled Pig? Why dilute the number of fighter/interceptors and ultimately have an overlap of three strike/bombers?

 

What value would having Miracle, cranberry and Pig all dropping iron at the same time achieve in a doctrinal sense?

 

Granted, the Cranberry was soon relegated to photo/survey mapping duties until about 1982ish, but it still seems like overkill.

 

However, if we had decided earlier on (around the Malayan/Korean confrontations) to replace the Sabre with a multirole fighter that was to be used in ground attack roles then surely the F-100 would have been a serious option. Rugged and reliable (as to the usual bug fixes) and not as complex as the other century Series. Capable of firing 4xAIM-9 as well as the usual A2G loads. The transitional timeline would have fitted with the Sabre replacement and we would have gotten a platform that allowed crews to become familiar with higher performances several years before we actually did once the Miracle came to be.

 

Food for thought.

 

b. Replace base flares and radio LoS telecommand with inertial guidance and am E/O pilot interfaced steering unit.

 

Probably because of the 26 Tu-16's, ten MiG-19's and twenty MiG-21's Indonesia ordered from the USSR in 1961. I know things changed radically in 1968 in Indonesia but we were not to know that in 1960. Maybe an early buy of F-106's in 1961 or 1962 could have allowed the Sabre to be retained as an attack type until the early 70's when a number of other options would have been available, say Phantom, Jaguar, A-4M, A-7, or even A-10.

 

During the late 60's / early 70's the RAAF had 5 fighter squadrons 3, 75, 76, 77 & 79 and 3 bomber squadrons 1, 2 & 6 for a total 8 squadrons. Say 2 or 3 squadrons of interceptors, 2 or 3 of attack aircraft and 2 or 3 of high performance fighter attack or dedicated strike aircraft; maintaining 3 different types would be quite feasable, especially if some level of systems commonality could be achieved between the types.