For anyone interested in Australia's Air Defence for the 21st century, quite a good program on now on ABC

Enough Rope with Andrew Denton?

gold coast.... riggght!

looks like enough rope

:/ i guess i missed it as well, only got onto the end of it. Was Four Corners about the decision to axe F-111's for Super Hornets till the JSF's get in while Indonesia already has SU-30's.

Ah well maybe next time.

LOLOL brendan nelson is a total fukwit Why buy inferior plane with no long range capabilites we got sold a dud there and the joint strike fighter wont be here for 10 years minimum that suko (think that how ya spell it) is a sexy beast and hella quick too mach2.5 WHOA.

I cant see why they didnt at least look at the european products not necesarily russian equipment. Eurofighter is already available, rafale, grippen could be used too but not as long range.

We went with the Tiger and MRH-90 for our choppers why not the planes as well.

I like how those guys playing out the what-if scenarios used google earth with neat looking range overlays to represent the aircraft. NCIS, 24, Sea Patrol, now 4Corners get in on the eye candy.

ask iran, a 3rd world country how well their at the time state of the art f14's operated with no access to spares.

ask indo how their navy operates with no money for fuel

they have flash assets on paper, but a paper army is a lot different to an effective well maintained with excellent training, one.

my money would always be on the australians and their 'inferior' f18e's.

its like those african militias holding the gun out the front of themselves shooting blindly at someone 1km away compared to a soldier who knows how to aim.

that would be a likely comparison.

by the way, there is no way indonesia could a) mount an army big enough to invande australia, b) have enough ships to move them across the water and c) be able to properly supply an invasion force with their hodge podge excuse for a navy.

australia may well be under equipped for its size, but it would bat well above its weight against indonesia thats for sure. 100 harpoon missiles fired over the horizon would take out indonesias invasion force completely.

^ true.dat

we only use our weapons to blow up rocks and send overseas as a company or 2 to help USA.. the benifit of this is that if we are ever in trouble for our very megre funding we get the might of the US to back us.. even if just to save there pine gap installation

yes, i'll be running to pine gap if we do get invaded

It was 4 corners, talking about how our using of the Super Hornet as the gap fighter to tide us over until the JSF is available will leave an air superiority gap in the region, as indonesia and others take delivery of SU-30s at about the same time our Air Force "upgrades" to the super hornet.

A main thrust of the program was how seemingly the decision to purchase the super hornet was "rushed" and did not follow due process. Many military & aviation dudes came on the show talking about how the SH was a peice of trash, and made a compelling argument that if things did come to blows, the indonesians with their shiny new SUs would make mince meat out of our SHs.

They even ran a few "mock" air invasions, using retired air force bosses as admirals (for want of a better term), and each time it was SU v SH, the SU won, usually without the SHs even getting a shot off.

Interesting story but as with all journalism only one side of the argument was presented so to believe it is to trust that the journalist did investigate both sides but things were so one sided it was only worth televising the anti-government one.

yeah I think i saw this a while back.... where we the aussie taxpayers are buying new $20billion (i think)of average alrouder Jets when they aren't up there with the jets the russians have. Or something along those lines....

Second thoughts... think it was 60Minutes...

F-22 <3

too bad they aren't selling them, probably a good thing though

weird, the show is on again on ABC??

hehe this is good :D

howard government making a decision for a paper plane abandoning years of practice of carefully evaluating other aircraft

Yep, Hornets are gay. We would have been better off buying their old F-14s... <3 AIM-54

we'd need aircraft carriers for F-14's.... well not really there is a land variet, but not as many

pheonix's do rock though

funny enough I was thinking about exactly this issue the other night (janes ftw)...

I dont understand why the AU govt dont buy the SU's as a tide over, I mean it isnt as if there is anything to stop them and the Commies sure wont say no to cold hard cash

Only conclusion is a politically motivated purchase for an inferior product

Well what the program implied was that Brendan Nelson seemed to have gotten something very beneficial by dealing with Boeing in getting the Super Hornet. With the cost of the JSF gone from $40 mil per airfract to $80 mil estimated currently why dont they just get eurofighters and change the inventory from american to european

last edited by Le Infidel at 05:44:41 01/Nov/07

out of the three JSF's I dont think any of them are as fast as the euro fighter either?

Actually, found an interesting discussion on the issue http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-7824.html

last edited by Term at 10:26:36 01/Nov/07

its not just about speed either but a few things such as range that is very important for australia to maintain air supremacy ... jsf was a bad idea, ah wells

thats a pretty good thread too, seem to be a few people who seem to know what they are talking about unlike myself heh

last edited by Le Infidel at 12:24:11 01/Nov/07

The US contractor needs a hefty amount of 'special effects' to muddy the waters while spinning the delivery time blowouts with the JSF, as can be reasonably implied from the following image.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Transformersvehicles.jpg/800px-Transformersvehicles.jpg

haha that looks like a GTR

either way F-22 <3