Australia is in the market for a new fleet of fighter aircraft. Financially and strategically, this is a big deal.

Financially, it will be the most expensive purchase ever made by the Commonwealth. Even allowing for inflation, it will be bigger than any Defence deal in decades. On current estimates, our new fighters will cost each Australian an average of $800 or $3,200 for a family of four.

Strategically, the new fighters will profoundly affect Australia’s military strength. Their capabilities will be the single most important factor in determining our capacity to defend our continent from conventional threats, and they...

The 2000 Defence White Paper states that air combat is the most important single capability for the defence of Australia. Over the past two decades, the RAAF’s F/A-18 and F-111 aircraft have provided Australia with potent air combat and strike capabilities. However, the cost of keeping both fleets operating has risen substantially while their effectiveness in the twenty-first century regional threat environment has diminished.

To maintain Australian Defence Force (ADF) capability at a level consistent with government requirements, Project Air 6000 (since renamed the New Air Combat Capability Project, or NACC) was scheduled to deliver a new air combat capability...

When he announced the JSF decision, the Defence Minister stated that the government made the decision on the ‘basis of advice from the Air Force that they believe it will meet the capability requirements that we are seeking through their [Air] 6000 project’. The minister went on to say that the RAAF had advised government that there was really ‘no choice’, because the JSF is the only aircraft to meet ADF requirements.

At the time, the Chief of Air Force stated that the JSF was chosen on the basis of:

its status as a fifth generation aircraft, and therefore a...

The force structure of the ADF has traditionally been based on the broad capabilities of regional neighbours, rather than on any specific threat. The rationale for this has been that other nations’ intentions towards Australia can change relatively quickly, but significant changes in force structure take much longer, providing a reasonable amount of warning of any direct threat to Australia.

The government’s strategic intent is to maintain ADF air combat capability at a level at least qualitatively comparable to any in our region, and with a sufficient margin of superiority to make combat success probable. Because capability is relative, the...

The entry into service of Australia’s new air combat capability is based on the planned withdrawal from operational service of the F-111 (around 2010) and the F/A-18 (between 2012 and 2015).

Realising this new capability will depend on two factors. The first factor is whether the F/A-18 and F-111 will be able to reach their planned withdrawal dates, which depends on whether that’s technically possible and cost effective. The second factor is whether Australia’s intended replacement for these aircraft, the F-35 JSF, will be available to the RAAF in time (this question is dealt with in greater detail in the...

The US-developed JSF program is designed to develop a reasonably priced, new-generation, multi-role, tri-service (Air Force, Navy and Marines) family of tactical stealth aircraft.

The JSF is designed to replace a number of aircraft currently in service:

for the US Navy (USN), it will replace the F-14 Tomcat and A-6 Intruder

for the US Air Force (USAF), it will replace the F-16 Falcon and A-10 Thunderbolt, and perhaps the F-117A

for the US Marine Corps (USMC), it will replace both the AV-8B Harrier and the F/A-18C/D Hornet

for the United Kingdom, it would replace the Harrier and possibly the Tornado....

This section overviews the aerospace platforms that were candidates in the original Project Air 6000. The aim is not to conduct a detailed analysis of each type, but to identify some of the aspects of each and to try to understand why the government has nominated the JSF as the preferred solution.

During the June 2002 press conference announcing decision to participate in the JSF SDD phase, the Chief of Air Force suggested that a comparative analysis of all the candidate aircraft had been made and had led to the JSF being selected as the best aircraft to meet Australia’s...

If the F-35 JSF delivers everything that has been promised by Lockheed Martin and the Australian and US governments, the fighter will arguably prove to be the best available replacement aircraft for Australia’s F/A-18 and F-111 aircraft. The question that remains, however, is how much of what has been promised by the JSF—in terms of its stealth, sensors, cost, general capability, reliability, supportability and so on—might be lost in the delivery and to what degree this will erode the basis of the original effective decision to acquire the aircraft.

The government needs to recognise that there are substantial...