F-35Bs Establishing potential of Australian aircraft carrier

[weasel1962]

Won't stop the calls. Even if Australia buys 100 F-35As, doesn't mean it can't buy a few more Bs....

[marsavian]

If this happens it will probably been done in the Canberra class MLU when all the F-35A have been bought and any extra F-35B will be seen as additive rather than subtractive to the F-35 fleet by the Air Force. The case for having a skeleton squadron of about 6 just for surface ship fleet defence is pretty strong despite any cost. How much more costly would it be if ships got sink and men got lost and what about CAS for embarked soldiers ? At the moment these Canberras will rely on either home F-35A cover or NATO air cover on foreign missions. It does restrict their ubiquitous nature in some way.

[optimist]

OMG! - an oldie but goldie from FARLEY from the not so distant past FEB 2017. Good grief: where will this debate END?!

Room for Maneuver in Australia's Naval Aviation Plans? [Read it all at the URL - 'optimists' are mentioned]
08 Feb 2017 Robert Farley

"Australia’s longstanding procurement plans may merit reconsideration.
How deeply are Australia’s naval aviation acquisition plans set in stone? With the F-35A on the verge of appearing at the Avalon Air Show [Feb 2017 - this year also soon], debate over the appropriate version of the Joint Strike Fighter continues.

Australia is purchasing the F-35, and Australia has already acquired two aircraft carriers [Wait WUT?! Nope LHDs] capable (with modifications) of operating the F-35B. Two years ago, the government conducted a study to examine the potential for purchasing the F-35B and modifying the two Canberra-class amphibs (built in Spain to the same design as the Juan Carlos I), but eventually rejected the proposal as too costly, and too detrimental to other naval objectives.

But the debate continues, and as Australia’s strategic situation seems to be in flux... longstanding procurement plans may merit reconsideration.

The pro-F-35B case rests on several prongs. First, the Canberra-class can, with the appropriate modifications, operate the F-35B. This would give the RAN some capabilities that it has not possessed since the 1980s. Moreover, the F-35B is, because of its sensor and communications capabilities, uniquely appropriate for operating off light carriers [LHDs boyo] such as the Canberra. Finally, with its ability to operate from small and unprepared airfields, the F-35B potentially offers more operational flexibility than its cousin (although this depends on the ability of the RAAF to manage the logistical difficulties of the complex, sophisticated aircraft).

The case against the F-35B boils down to a few points; it is more technologically complex, has a shorter range, can carry less payload, and is more expensive than the F-35A. A corollary to this is that, if Australia purchases the F-35A, people will stop proposing converting the Canberra-class amphibs into light carriers, [hmmmm] which would substantially detract from their original purpose as amphibious warfare vessels...."

Source: https://thediplomat.com/2017/02/room-fo ... ion-plans/

That's better, copy paste every blogger you can find. What are the Kopp, Goon and Co think tanks saying? There are a few of them. They should provide fodder for years to come.

It's just not a good idea to use the 2014 Abbott brain fart, as some sort of justification. The ADF response to it and the rejection from inclusion in the white paper. Shows that the ADF and gov had finished with it.

[spazsinbad]

I'm pleased at your response - at least you read stuff and that is my intention to 'read stuff' and decide for myself. Then...

Looking Back at the RAAF and its F-35 Turning Point: The Perspective of Air Marshal (Retired) Geoff Brown
15 Feb 2019 Robbin Laird

"...[AM Brown (rtd)] “Transitioning to a fifth generation fighter will challenge us to step outside our comfort zones and question past habits [providing Fleet Air Defence?]. The RAAF will partner and work closely not only with our sister services – the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Army – but also with the USAF, USN, and USMC to learn, leverage and exploit those intrinsic 5th generation opportunities.”...

…Question: Revisiting the strategic decision point about moving on from Super Hornet to F-35, 9what was your thinking?
Air Marshal (Retired) Brown: If you don’t have the best fighter as a foundational element for your force to maintain air superiority, it calls into question your overall capabilities as an Air Force. “To ensure air superiority you are then going to have to rely on someone else, and if they don’t show up, you don’t have it. “You self select to be a secondary player. “And as I look back at the history of the RAAF that has happened in our history and it has not been a pleasant national experience...."

Source: https://defense.info/featured-story/201 ... off-brown/

[spazsinbad]

OH NOES! More 'ancient history' - WHEN WILL IT END?! More AGITPROP eh. BEST READ ALL at URL.

The F-35 at sea—not quite déjà vu
28 Feb 2019 Sam Fairall-Lee

"The recent revisiting on The Strategist of the arguments around taking the F-35 to sea cast my mind back to the bitter carrier debate of the 1970s and early 1980s. The current discussion certainly doesn’t appear to bring with it the same level of interservice acrimony, political manoeuvring or sheer dirty-trickery that took place back then. Nevertheless, the isolated and zero-sum nature of some of the arguments and counterarguments seems familiar, and it occurs to me that—despite the great strides we’ve made in jointery—the one-dimensional character of our strategic capability planning really hasn’t changed all that much.

The back and forth over combat ranges, weapons loads, sortie rates and the many other comparisons between the different F-35 variants really misses the point. Unless we know what we’ll need our military to do, and precisely what kind of environment it will need to do it in, a comparison of these indicators is pretty academic.

If all we’ll ever want the LHDs to do are flag-waving exercises or moving an amphibious force around within about 400 miles of an established airbase, or in a permissive environment with established sea control, then modifying the LHDs and procuring some F-35B short take-off and vertical landing variants in place of some F-35As probably isn’t worth it. But I don’t know anyone with that level of strategic certainty....

…Rather than maintaining a pair of amphibious ships that are good for a very limited number of wartime tasks, we should look to maximise their potential and give future decision-makers a range of options for a variety of circumstances—not to mention helping to complicate the operational environment for any adversary.

Using the ships for a different purpose would of course affect their ability to simultaneously achieve their core amphibious role, but that isn’t a reason to deny ourselves the option. A flexible platform capable of configuration for local air defence, trade protection, strike, close air support, extended ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance), massed airborne anti-submarine warfare, and/or amphibious operations is surely better than the one-trick pony we have.

The ability to mix and balance the operational potential of the platforms—limited though they may be—to meet the needs of the day, in a decreasingly predictable environment, would give us an exponentially stronger and more flexible capability over the long term. But despite having (or being about to have) almost all the component parts, or variants thereof, this is not the capability we’ve ended up with. Not even close.

So how did we get here? Despite the procurement of two large and complex LHDs, joint strike fighters and a whole host of other potential force multipliers over the years, we somehow managed to avoid bringing them together in anything resembling a deliberately coordinated capability. It’s tempting to imagine a reality in which our armed reconnaissance helicopters were marinised for LHD operations, our multirole helicopters equipped with automatic folding rotor blades, our tanks capable of being embarked without sinking their landing craft, our new fighters capable of being launched and recovered, and a flight deck with the necessary heat resistance[?]. But, alas, we have none of those things....

...In the passive regional strategic environment of recent years, we’ve had the luxury of being able to fall back on warning time, the ‘core force’, ‘for but not with’ and other resource-saving measures, and we’ve been able to accommodate this lack of integrated capability. The flip side of that approach, obviously, is that a changed environment requires a more integrated, larger and more potent maritime force.

We should start by examining the force we have, and making the changes needed to transform an assortment of existing but largely disparate systems into the potent power-projection capabilities they should be. And at the capability-planning level, it’s time to step up, set a clear direction and pull some pegs out of the wall [? perhaps explained earlier?]."

Source: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-f ... e-deja-vu/

[weasel1962]

'ricnunes' said: "...note that the Australian Navy is already having a hard time to crew/man its existing ships/ fleet...". Do you have a recent article claiming this 'fact'? Thanks.

Sometimes it takes a while to provide a decent response.

RAN has been struggling with manpower.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/ ... s/11183870

Full report can be downloaded from the executive summary here (see page 58/59).
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cost-def ... -2019-2020

Navy personnel numbers actually dropped 2 years in a row (~3%) before recovering but still lower than 3 years back.

[Corsair1963]

Forget about a dedicated Aircraft Carrier for the RAN. Seems just acquiring some F-35B's for the Canberra Class would be a stretch....

[spazsinbad]

Thanks for info - sadly I'm unable to upload graphics so this text quote from page numbered 58 will have to do:

"...Recruitment challenges Navy [June 2019]
Last year, we argued that the Navy was the service that was having the greatest difficulty in achieving its White Paper targets. Not only was it not growing to meet its target, but it had gone backwards two years in a row. The good news is that in 2018-19 the Navy has managed to grow by over 300 (Table 4.4). That still leaves it around 540 people (around 3.7%) short of where it should be, but it is heading in the right direction...." https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com ... 9-2020.pdf (4.5Mb)

The ADF have some dumb recruiting videos at moment. The RAN needs more advertisements like this recent RN one:

Louise's Story Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Helicopter AirCrewMan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRypCYXDKO4

[spazsinbad]

Bees & LHDs nearby but not mated sadly. This headline is over the top but hey ABC! Spyships are with us always (sky sat?).

How our military is preparing for a possible superpower showdown in our region

TALISMAN SABRE 2019 video: https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/how-our-mil ... e/11343938

OOPs I see there is a video transcript - some comedy gold therein.

"...[retorter question] you do this training and hope not to use it?
LANCE CORPORAL LEATHLY: I definitely hope not to use it, but always to be ready..." [Oz ARMY]

[spazsinbad]

Above video now on UbendYouBoob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z44HgWJAGV8