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Otto Kreisher - Government Executive - 28/07/2009 - Defense review sees no growth in budgets, troops

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The centrepiece of the Canberra bureaucracy's arguments against the F-22 is a claim that the aircraft is not an effective bomber, despite the F-22 being the planned replacement for the F-117A Nighthawk bomber since 1999, and the primary element of the planned US Global Strike Task Force. The F-22 now carries the GBU-32 JDAM and is being fitted to carry the latest GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb (above). Like most other claims made by the Canberra bureaucracy to justify the Joint Strike Fighter, Super Hornet and early F-111 retirement, the claim that the F-22 is not viable as a bomber is simply fiction (US Air Force image).


F-22A Raptors of the 1st FW deployed to Kadena, Okinawa (Japan), in February, 2007. There is a strong  US national interest case that Pacrim allies such as Australia should be operating the F-22A rather than less capable or older fighter types (US Air Force image).

The F-111 is Australia's 'equivalent' to the US B-52 bomber, providing heavy punch for a variety of strike roles. Despite the size disparity, the F-111 typically carries around half the 500 lb bomb payload of the B-52H, albeit to a lesser distance. The US Air Force is likely to still be flying 1961 built B-52H aircraft in 2037, but Canberra bureaucrats intend to retire the F-111 in 2010, despite its youth relative to the B-52H. In 2003 the bureaucracy argued that the cost of running the F-111 would blow out in coming years. When this was proven to be wrong they argued it was non-viable due to the absence of networking and modern digital weapons. When this argument was proven wrong by RAAF/Boeing engineers who integrated JDAM and JTIDS networking using an internal shoestring budget, the bureaucrats are now arguing unknown structural risks, despite the success of the second wing fatigue life extension testing by DSTO, the Cold Proof Load Testing capability in Australia, extensive wing refurbishment, the ongoing "safety by inspection program", the available wing refurbishment capability at Amberley and the very low cost of new build replacement wings as a fallback option. All of these capabilities exist today; are assuring the airworthiness of the F-111 fleet; and, come at a tiny fraction of the cost of the six billion dollar Super Hornet gap filler. Not a single argument for F-111 retirement is anything but non-sequitur speculation by the bureaucracy. Australia's F-111 fleet accounts for 40-60% of Australia's punch and its loss produces a self induced but very real capability gap of unprecedented proportions (US DoD image).