| I was over in WA last year and saw the Hawk trainers operating around RAAF Pearce near Perth, as well as driving by RAAF Learmonth, the bare base near Exmouth which doubles as the local airport. It occurred to me that it seems a bit strange that the RAAF locates an introductory bascic and fast jet flight training facility so close to the bare bases where they would most likely have to deploy frontline fighters during a defence of Australia scenario, but operates three quarters of its frontline fighter fleet out of Williamstown in New South Wales. I know we aren't expecting an attack anytime soon, but it seems to me that it would be smarter to swap the two facilities around to improve the speed of deployment?The big issue that springs to mind is that fighter deployment from Williamstown to Curtain or Learmonth would ikely involves at least one stop or alternatively support from the RAAF tankers, which might be required on operational missions at the time that the fighters are being deployed. |
