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Newbie Joined: Feb 18, 2007 Posts: 8 Status: Offline

The Aussies aren't waiting around for the 35... If you think that they'll replace their new F-18's with a 1:1 ratio of 35's, nope.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/swi ... 97765.html

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Newbie Joined: Feb 18, 2007 Posts: 8 Status: Offline

Oh, and more news on the 2 engine deal:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/n ... BF88D3B%7D

This has been talked about for a year now. However, it is now that they made it official. Basically the Aussies didn't want to wait until 2012 (earliest) to get their F-35s. The F-111s had to go and the F-18s are putting up a lot of down time due to age. The argument was whether they should simply accept an air defense gap between 2008 and 2012 as they simply wait for the F-35. This will allow them to buy more F-35s and hence have a better fleet down the road. To wait and apply band-aid life extensions to the F-111 and all their F-18s will cost about $1 billion, and they'll still have to accept reduced force levels due to a high level of service and overhaul time. To buy 24 F-18Es will cost about 1.6 billion (approx 24 x $66 million) . Everything else in the $4~6 billion tab is not for aircrafts per say but rather weapons, training, spares, support equipment, infrastructure additions, service contracts, etc. A good portion of these expenditures are applicable whether they buy new aircrafts or not.

Getting the 24 Superhornets will allow the Australians to mitigate the urgency with which they need to induct the F-35. They are still planning to acquire 80~120 F-35s but they will no longer have to worry about whether the first Aussie F-35 aircraft can be delivered in 2012, at what rate L-M can fill their orders subsequent to that and how to maintain air defense prowess between 2008 and 2012.

After they transition to an F-35 fleet, the F-18Es while inferior in every way will still be a credible, modern and useful aircraft. The procurement of 24 F-18Es now will probably cost them a dozen or so F-35s down the road at most. Maybe not even that since defense spendings are usually a yearly affair and just because the paliament doesn't approve $6 billion now does not mean that they will approve an additional $6 billion down the road. It doesn't really work that way. What is more likely to happen is that the money will spent of something else and not on combat aircrafts, period.

The Aussies made a mistake getting old crappy F-18s, they should try to wrestle some blk 30s from the u.s. to fill the gap. F-18s have a nice weapons package but aren't reliable, they just old crap, even old F-16s are better than old F-18s, just my feelings. The U.S. may get their butt bitten by slow leaking this JSF and have most the other countries fall off the wagon.

I don't think the F-35 is being "slow leaked". Right now there are no funding related slow downs to the program. The biggest delay was the 2-year long redesign to yield a more mass efficient airframe (2003~2005). Without it, the F-35 AA-1 (the prototype currently flying) will more or less be production representative and IOC will be 2008~2009 instead of 20010~11 as is currently expected. As it stands, the first redesigned F-35 (AF/BF/CF series) will fly in 2008. But we get a slightly better performing jet with slightly better aerodynamics, slightly improved intakes, smaller vertical tails, more mass efficient construction and other tweaks. I am not sure if it is worth 2-years of work, but it is definitely a better product.

Whatever buying decision on the F-35 will not directly impact production rates in the first few years (ramping up to 100~150 airframes per year circa 2015). In fact, if the US reduces US procurement in the first couple of years it actually makes it easier for the UK, Australia and others to get early delivery slots on the fighter.

fireball wrote:

The Aussies made a mistake getting old crappy F-18s, they should try to wrestle some blk 30s from the u.s. to fill the gap. F-18s have a nice weapons package but aren't reliable, they just old crap, even old F-16s are better than old F-18s, just my feelings. The U.S. may get their butt bitten by slow leaking this JSF and have most the other countries fall off the wagon.

Now granted i work on block 30's and they are the best thing since sliced bread, but the F-18's they are talking about are not A/B/C/D models. The super hornet is a brand new aircraft and will be straight from the factory vs. a 20 year old 5000 hour block 30. It has a brand new radar, 11 weapon stations, and the safety of 2 engines for australia's huge area of responsibility over water. They already have F/A-18A and B models which makes for easy transition to the super hornet. Plus the super hornet office has alot more in common with the F-35 then any block of the F-16 save the E model. In my view, it is sound decision. As much as i love the F-16, to say that the Aussies should get some instead of the Super Hornet is just folly.

F-16.net Editor Joined: Sep 23, 2003 Posts: 2848

New jets with great avionics a new car smell and ............ well lets not mention raw performance or anything. Laughing

fireball wrote:

The Aussies made a mistake getting old crappy F-18s, they should try to wrestle some blk 30s from the u.s. to fill the gap. F-18s have a nice weapons package but aren't reliable, they just old crap, even old F-16s are better than old F-18s, just my feelings. The U.S. may get their butt bitten by slow leaking this JSF and have most the other countries fall off the wagon.

I think they got a good deal for their mission, these are new airframes with the latest radar and weapons systems which will still be credible platforms after the JSF enters service.

fireball wrote:

The Aussies made a mistake getting old crappy F-18s, they should try to wrestle some blk 30s from the u.s. to fill the gap. F-18s have a nice weapons package but aren't reliable, they just old crap, even old F-16s are better than old F-18s, just my feelings. The U.S. may get their butt bitten by slow leaking this JSF and have most the other countries fall off the wagon.

We aren't going to have enough block 30s for ourselves, much less enough to sell them off.

My bad boys I thought the Aussies were getting OLD not the new old F-18. It's still not as reliable as an F-16. Hopefully the F-35 will come on-line with few production problems, should be a great jet.

F-16.net Editor Joined: Sep 23, 2003 Posts: 2848

Reliable? Super Hornet maintenance in our fleet is supposed to be really really good.

elp wrote:

Reliable? Super Hornet maintenance in our fleet is supposed to be really really good.

I think he meant that old F-18s of the A/B vintage are more maintenance intensive and less reliable than old F-16s of the A/B vintage. This is not surprising given that the statistics probably includes USN F-18s which had taken over twenty years of arrested landing poundings and have been breathing marine air for decades.

Nonetheless the F-18s will also tend to have roughly twice the engine related downtime (because it has twice as many engines) and earlier models had vertical stabilizer cracking problems. The latter was mitigated somewhat by the addition of a pair of fences above the strakes to shift the vortex distintegration point further aft. But, even these aircraft required six externally visible reinforcement brackets on the vertical tails to attain acceptable vertical stablizer structural life.

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