JSF

[Rorschach]

Fighters strike the right note on national security
GREG SHERIDAN THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 24, 2014 12:00AM

IF I believed in reincarnation, I think I’d like to come back as a Joint Strike Fighter. Lean, sinuous, sleek, intimidating, the best in my class. Ah ...

But we shouldn’t be frivolous. The Abbott government has made the right decision in announcing the purchase of 58 more JSFs. This will provide ultimately a fleet of 72 of the most formidable fighter jets the world has seen. Bill Shorten deserves credit for backing this decision. His instincts on geostrategic issues are all sound, which is good for the Labor Party, and for Australia. The JSF acquisition speaks to the character of the Abbott government and settles several theological questions about its approach to defence.

The Abbott government is clearly serious about security. It wants the Australian Defence Force to have a high-end war- fighting capability, not to be a glori fied police force. Although the $12.4 billion set aside for the 58 JSFs does not involve new money, the Abbott government’s commitment to significant capability in defence, in a time of straitened budgetary circumstances, is profoundly in the ­national interest.

Australia, a rich country with a vast land mass and tiny population, has had as doctrine the maintenance of a technological edge. This is possible because we are rich and we are US allies. Ten other US friends and allies have committed to the JSF. Japan and South Korea will buy JSFs, and Singapore is very likely to.

The JSF is a fifth-generation stealth fighter. The alternatives available to us, such as a larger fleet of F18 Super Hornets, are fourth-generation planes. The epochal importance of the JSF decision is illustrated this way. If we had made any other decision, we would have been deliberately choosing, for the first time in our modern history, to abandon any serious effort to maintain a technological edge in defence. We would have ceded technological supremacy not only to our friends and allies such as Japan and South Korea, but also to China and Russia, who are both working hard on fifth-generation fighters, and in due course to their allies and customers.

This decision also almost certainly means the Abbott government will proceed to some significant defence budget increase before the end of its first term. There won’t be a big increase in this coming budget, although I believe defence will be well treated and there might be some limited increase.

The JSF decision reflects well on Defence Minister David Johnston, but there is no doubt Abbott himself is invested in both the JSF and the Coalition’s commitment to increase the def ence budget within a decade to 2 per cent of GDP. This is a profoundly important commitment. Typic ally in Australian history, there have been two drivers of increased defence expenditure — sustained economic growth or deep security challenges.

Abbott is committed to remediating the absolute mess Labor made of the defence budget even though growth is subdued and the budget is challenged. Perhaps only an Abbott prime ministership could possibly deliver this. You have to conclude that, while ever Abbott is PM, Australia will remain on the track of a serious defence capability.

The JSF decision also means a lot for our allies. It not only gives us guaranteed air superiority in our own approaches, but also is a plane superbly equipped for interoperability with the Americans, and with other US allies. But even more than that, it means that in any US-led coalition operation anywhere in the world, and at any level of intensity, Australia will be well equipped to take part. This is in striking contrast to the inability to deploy our planes — F111s or F18s — in Iraq because of inferior electronic warfare capabilities.

Between the Americans and their allies there will ultimately be 3000 or more JSFs operating in the world (the vast majority in the US force, of course). That means that, without any additional res earch and development on our part, our planes will be on a path of continuous upgrade, especially to their software. In effect, our air- combat capabilities are future- proofed. It is vanishingly unlikely the Chinese or Russians will ever catch the Americans in this technology, but if they do it will not be for decades to come. This is the best investment we could possibly make in our own security.

And Abbott made it plain yesterday that he is sympathetic to the idea that ultimately we might buy more than 72 JSFs. Later squadrons could be unmanned aircraft or even a mixture of manned and unmanned.

Don’t be deterred by controversies about costs and capabilities. The birth of every aircraft type is accompanied by much screaming and a lot of extra bills. The unit costs of the JSFs are heading down. All the nonsense spoken yesterday about superiority of the F22 Raptor ignores key facts: the Raptor ceased production in 2011 and will not be revived; the US would never export it; and it doesn’t do some of the things we need, such as maritime attack. The JSF is in any event moving past the Raptor. Soon enough, they will be retro-fitting JSF radar on to the Raptor.

Of course, being an Australian story, there are some peculiar inefficiencies. We will have our first operational squadron of JSFs by 2020. That gives us a lot of comfort, as it is several years after the first US Marine JSF squadron comes into operation in 2015 or 2016. Because we panicked a bit and bought Super Hornets and then Growlers, due to JSF delays, we will for a time operate simultaneously four different types of fast jets — classic Hornets, Super Hornets, Growlers and JSFs.

Yet one of the very key points of the JSF is that it is a multi-task fighter. It can do all the roles we want and therefore offers immense economies by having just one logistics, loading, pilot training, etc, system across all your planes. Instead, with our small air force and small defence budget, the usual cockamamie defence procurement buggers’ muddle will result in our simultaneously operating four different types of plane all to do the same job.

But we are on the right track now, committed to the best. Our security requires no less.

[DaS Energy]

The ute neither a car nor a truck and not as good as either.

[DaS Energy]

This blokes a joke!
GREG SHERIDAN THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 24, 2014 12:00AM
The JSF decision also means a lot for our allies. It not only gives us guaranteed air superiority in our own approaches.

[DaS Energy]

The Joint Strike Fighter is not designed to perform air superiority roles, unlike the larger F-22A, and is not well adapted to performing the penetrating long range strike role filled by the F-111 until 2010.

The F-35 JSF aircraft designs will not meet specification nor the operational requirements laid down in the JSF JORD (Joint Operational Requirements Document) by significant degrees, noting that these operational requirements and resulting specifications, themselves, were predicated on the capabilities of reference threats from an era past and subsequently subjected to the illogical and deeply flawed process known as CAIV (Cost As and Independent Variable).

In essence, the unethical Thana Marketing strategy used to sell the JSF, along with the acquisition malpractice of concurrency in not only development, production and testing but the actual designs of the JSF variants, themselves, have resulted in the JSF marketeers writing cheques that the aircraft designs and JSF Program cannot honour.

A more detailed summary of these points is available in Hansard, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, 07/02/2012, Inquiry into the Department of Defence annual report 2010-11 and associated Submissions by Air Power Australia. Further technical discussion can be found in the OSD DOT&E FY2012 Annual Report.

#2 - Joint Strike Fighter Survivability and Lethality Failure

The JSF program is almost unique historically in the extent to which its intended survivability and lethality are mismatched against the operational environment in which the aircraft is intended to be used.

#3 - Joint Strike Fighter Governance Failure
The JSF program introduced an unprecedented governance scheme in which the customer became a defacto marketing entity acting on behalf of the supplier, and in which concurrent development and production were planned for..

#4 - Joint Strike Fighter Operational Supportability Failure
The JSF program has produced a design which will be unusually challenging to operate in established operational environments, requiring unprecedented changes to the operating environment rather than design.

The Joint Strike Fighter best compares in its roles and missions, sizing and relative capabilities to the Republic F-105D Thunderchief, the workhorse of the US bombing effort during the Vietnam conflict. What is remarkable is the extent to which a similar roles/missions requirement, defined almost four decades later, produced a combat aircraft of nearly identical size and weight. Like the F-105, the JSF is not designed to be a top end air superiority fighter, but is designed with was intended to be a robust self defence capability.

[Rorschach]

bump non das