There was something for most everyone when Defence Minister
Stephen Smith and Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare stood up in Perth in
mid-December last year to present a progress report on the review of air combat
capability.
Lockheed Martin was happy because the government remains
committed to the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and didn’t push planned acquisition
any further out. Boeing was happy because there were some very positive noises
about acquiring another 24 Super Hornets.
More importantly, Smith and Clare confirmed the reality that
Super Hornet was here to stay and the RAAF will eventually comprise a mixed
fleet of JSF and Super Hornets, some equipped with the Growler electronic
warfare suite.
This was quite contrary to what former coalition government
defence minister Brendan Nelson envisaged when he announced the RAAF would
acquire 24 Super Hornets back in March 2007.
“My strong view would be that the government of the day
should essentially on-sell Super Hornet back to the US around 2020 and acquire
the fourth squadron of JSF,” Dr Nelson told reporters on the tarmac at
Canberra’s RAAF base Fairbairn.
It now appears the RAAF may have only a single JSF squadron
by 2020 - assuming all goes well.
In May, Smith announced the Air Combat Transition Plan, an
assessment of the numerous moving parts in the RAAF’s future air combat force –
progress of JSF, the latest assessment of the life left in the classic Hornet
fleet and the prospect of a capability gap.
The government has never clearly defined a capability gap.
Presumably there is a classified document somewhere which sees that in terms of
capability to mount a reasonable range of missions falling below a particular
threshold.
That threshold would likely be defined by a rate of effort
needed to provide a response to a range of security scenarios, spelled out in
terms of availability of aircraft and aircrew and the ability to support and
sustain operations.
This would not be a problem if the classic Hornet fleet had
lots of remaining life. The classic
Hornet is now a very different airplane to what entered service from the
mid-1980s, with the upgrade program launched in 1998 delivering a range of
improvements, some technically challenging and requiring uniquely Australian
solutions, within budget and on schedule.
Hornet couldn’t mix it with F-22 or some of the advanced
Russian designs but this capability as a whole is well up to handling a wide
range of regional scenarios.
Australia has 71 F/A-18s left out of the original buy of 75,
though not all are frontline combat aircraft, with some used for training and
research. However, the classic Hornet is approaching the twilight years with
the fleet life of type to be reached in the period 2020-25. Initially the fleet
was set to reach life of type in 2010-15 and that’s been thrice extended as
understanding of F/A-18 airframe fatigue life has improved.
So, if F/A-18 is to head for retirement from 2020 and the
JSF initial operating capability isn’t achieved until around the same time,
there’s the prospect of a number of years in which there’s an insufficient
number of aircraft to do all that the government believes the RAAF should be
able to do.
Even with the 24 Super Hornets now in service, there’s
obviously enough of a doubt to leave Plan B open, in the form of more Super
Hornets. To that end, the government has sought a no-obligation quote from
Boeing for the latest information on price and availability of another 24 Super
Hornets.
It will make a decision later this year and as Australian
Strategic Policy Institute analyst Dr Andrew Davies has pointed out, it needn’t
be that expensive as we’ve already incurred the significant upfront costs for
support and training when we bought the first tranche of 24.
The minister finally dismissed any lingering thought that
Super Hornet was the transitional capability Dr Nelson envisaged. With the
government committing to buy the full Growler EW suite, it just wasn’t
conceivable that we’d want to sell them all back to Uncle Sam, even a decade
down the track.
“So we are now not just looking at Super Hornets as
transition, but looking at the longer-term potential of Super Hornets and
Growler and JSFs essentially as a mixed fleet,” Smith said.
So where does that leave JSF? The latest comes from the
Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) in its annual major projects report, a
review of the progress of defence’s top procurement projects for 2011-12 and
released just before Christmas. Overall, this isn’t especially happy reading
with the 29 projects reviewed running a combined 859 months late.
On the plus side, the overall cost has fallen more than $1
billion, mostly because of the advantageous exchange rate.
For JSF, the ANAO said Australia’s schedule compliance risk
assessment methodology (SCRAM) review concluded it could arrive in time to
avoid an air combat capability gap. ANAO said this was a large and complex
program and many challenges remained of which software development presents the
biggest risk, especially getting to the mature Block 3 software.
To that end, the ANAO gave the government a tick for its
budget decision to continue acquisition of the first two aircraft for delivery
in the US in April and May 2014, but to defer acquisition of the next 12 for
two years. That leaves Australia in step with the US which has deferred
acquisition of 179 aircraft.
“The decisions to delay the acquisition of JSF aircraft will
afford the program additional time to reduce and/or mitigate identified risks,”
ANAO said.
ANAO wasn’t able to shed much light on likely costs,
declaring “the cost maturity will remain immature” while the US maintains
annual contracting cycles. Lockheed Martin has repeatedly said pretty much the
same – when it gets multi-year orders for significant numbers of aircraft,
costs will become much clearer and also much lower.
