Brian Ross wrote
Tiger helicopter crash? Really? Funny, I can't find any reference to what would have been an obviously spectacular event in Google.
Oh hullo, Brian. So, you have finally responded to one of the two dozen posts I have directed at you? I know you have chucked a couple of sneery one liners at me but I usually don't respond to coward posts. Anyhoo, what did you do? Did you do a bit of checking and you could not find anything on Google about the Tiger crashing into Sydney Harbour during it's demonstration? So you thought you could get some mileage out of that without having to stick your neck out and actually say something?
Whatever. I know about the Tiger crashing because I did not even know Australia was even buying an attack helicopter until the Sydney Daily Telegraph informed it's readers that a test of some new European attack helicopter (which at the time I did not even knew existed) was scheduled for that day. It was all over the six O'Clock news on TV and in the next days edition when the damned thing crashed into Sydney harbour, right in front of the assembled dignataries..
I knew then that we were not going to buy the damned things, and that we would have to purchase something we knew already worked, like the Apache or the Cobra. Imagine my surprise when the stupid defence department bought the very helicopter which crashed right in front of them? I know that there is a lot of corruption in defence purchases and I wonder if Australian defence procurement officials have come into a lot of unexplained wealth lately? Anyhoo, here is a link to what a crummy aircraft we bought
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv2go0VYdso
Brian Ross wrote
As to the costs of various jet fighter aircraft one should be very careful. Australia, because of it's needs tends to purchase aircraft early in their production run and therefore, they often end up costing considerable more than aircraft later in their production run. The F/A-18 was offset because it was produced downunder, under license. The F-15 would have been similar but would still have cost appreciably more.
Brian, I was once very interested in our fighter defence purchase and I read everything about it at the time. The Australian Air Force wanted the F-15 as it was already in production. And it was a mach 3 aircraft with extremely long range, made even longer with fuselage conformal fuel pallets. The reason why it was not chosen was because at $18 million dollars each, it was declared too expensive. The defence procurement ratbags wanted the FA-18 because it was supposed to be a damn site cheaper than the F-15. But once again, like the F-111, Australia bought a aircraft that was still on the drawing board, which was supposed to have amazing performance. But when it was manufactured the performance of the FA-18 was so disappointing that the US Navy came very close to canning the whole project.
Another contender was the F-16, which was also in production and cheaper than the F-15. The US Air Force flew the F-16 against the F-18 and worked out that the F-16 was superior to the F-18. And that is what we bought, Brian, we got the inferior plane that was a lot more expensive than the better warplanes. You would think that after the F-111 fiasco that somebody in defence would figure out that buying warplanes that are only in the design stage is insanity.
Had we bought the F-15 we could have purchased F-15 D bomber version when we retired the F-111's, we would have had a 90% commonality in parts with our fighter planes. Another defence department fiasco. It has been suggested that the F-35 plans were deliberately leaked to China by the USA because the damned things became so ridiculously expensive after they were manufactured that the yanks wanted the Chinese to start building them as well so that China could go broke doing so.
Brian Ross wrote
The COLLINS class are still the most capable conventional submarines of their size in the world. They have had problems but as they were the first submarines that we have built, they have performed well. They have appreciably more range than their competitors and they are also appreciably quieter. The Germans failed to bid properly on their boats, the British just offered second hand UPHOLDER class boats and the Swedes were the only ones willing to fulfil the contractual requirements. The UPHOLDERS have proved to be a scandal ridden class in Canadian service with a far worse accident rate than the COLLINS class.
The Collins class subs were described by US sonarmen as sounding like an "underwater rock concert." The lead boat of the class was so full of defects it was permanently retired. I speculate that the reason why the Navy can not get crews to man the remaining five boats is because they are considered to be obsolete death traps by all naval personnel. But here in Australia, we buy submarines for environmental and political reasons, not for military ones. Germany manufactured 37 submarines every month during WW2 and they still lost the war. Our 12 Adelaide assembled submersible pork barrels are going to take twenty years for all of them to be delivered and by that time China will rule the South China Sea, and probably the Timor Straight and the Tasman Sea as well.
