We are "committed" to "new" F35 (shades of the F111) which are still on the drawing board basically. Their delivery will create a vacuum in our continental defense when the F111's and the F18's are phased out....at the time when our neighbours are buying Russian Sukhoi's which are superior in everyway to anything we've got.
Everyone....Defense, Defense Procurement, Defense Association, RSL, retired RAAF commanders are saying forget the F35's (which the Yanks are cancelling themselves in their armed services thus making them dearer for us) and buy the Raptor which gives us back air superiority coupled our naval superiority close inshore. (If you can't fly here or land here, you can't invade!)
Yet we are now stuck with a plane that isn't being produced yet! And we are banned....remember us?.... the US's good ol' boys and the Pacific's deputy sherrif and all round best mates.....Man of Steel....won't sell us the Raptor.
Why? What back room deals have been done by the Rodent,Nelson and co? It stinks.
Nelson buys clapped out tanks to replace unused tanks. Buys Vietnam era Choppers for the Navy that have cost us $1bil and now have to thrown out bcause they're f*****. And defense disaster after disaster and it seems that Defense has a bottomless pit of money whilst pensioners wait 5 years for Dental treatment.
Best non-nuclear stealth subs in the world. According to a friend of mine who is a Captain in the RAN and also from the USN.
With all this money Defense is wasting why don't we spend the $$$ making our own Aero industry. It is not as if we are an uneducated, ignorant, unscientific nation of dickheads.
So who's wasting money; the United States DefenSe Department or the Australian DefenCe Department ?
Nah, on a serious note, it's not good. But the Federal Government is looking at extending Medicare cover to include basic dental care, so hopefully that'll fix (or at least ease) the situation of pensioners having to wait 5 years for dental care! As to whether we could create our own aero industry and build our own fighter jets, the answer is for a country of this size is: no. You've only got to look at how much the French government had to sink into Airbus to make it competitive with Boeing (or was it the US government sinking money into Boeing to make it competitive with Airbus? I may have got it the wrong way around) to acknowledge that getting an aero industry off the ground (excuse the pun!) requires phenomenal money that we don't have. We're talking literally billions of dollars. First mover advantage in defence production means everything.
jimmyc1985 wrote:So who's wasting money; the United States DefenSe Department or the Australian DefenCe Department ?
Nah, on a serious note, it's not good. But the Federal Government is looking at extending Medicare cover to include basic dental care, so hopefully that'll fix (or at least ease) the situation of pensioners having to wait 5 years for dental care! As to whether we could create our own aero industry and build our own fighter jets, the answer is for a country of this size is: no. You've only got to look at how much the French government had to sink into Airbus to make it competitive with Boeing (or was it the US government sinking money into Boeing to make it competitive with Airbus? I may have got it the wrong way around) to acknowledge that getting an aero industry off the ground (excuse the pun!) requires phenomenal money that we don't have. We're talking literally billions of dollars. First mover advantage in defence production means everything.
But Jimmy we are talking $AUD20bil for the J35 already!!
There was no ASC until the Collins Class was built and now it is building those Air Warfare Destroyers and is up for privatisation!!
If we keep getting ripped of by our "good mates", may as well start somewhere!! Or at least consider it!
jimmyc1985 wrote:So who's wasting money; the United States DefenSe Department or the Australian DefenCe Department ?
Nah, on a serious note, it's not good. But the Federal Government is looking at extending Medicare cover to include basic dental care, so hopefully that'll fix (or at least ease) the situation of pensioners having to wait 5 years for dental care! As to whether we could create our own aero industry and build our own fighter jets, the answer is for a country of this size is: no. You've only got to look at how much the French government had to sink into Airbus to make it competitive with Boeing (or was it the US government sinking money into Boeing to make it competitive with Airbus? I may have got it the wrong way around) to acknowledge that getting an aero industry off the ground (excuse the pun!) requires phenomenal money that we don't have. We're talking literally billions of dollars. First mover advantage in defence production means everything.
But Jimmy we are talking $AUD20bil for the J35 already!!
There was no ASC until the Collins Class was built and now it is building those Air Warfare Destroyers and is up for privatisation!!
If we keep getting ripped of by our "good mates", may as well start somewhere!! Or at least consider it!
Yes, but ASC only started out with 25% government ownership - 75% of the funds to start it up came from the private sphere. The government eventually bought it ought in 2000 but they really only played a small part in getting things off the ground; they relied on private funding for 75% of the start-up capital required.
So, in relation to Australia starting up its own military air force contractor, the government would either have to source a huge amount funds to get things going from the private sphere or put in an inordinate amount of money themselves. In the absence of private investors not putting in their dollars, it's not tenable. And as to the current project costing us $20B already, there's a distinction to be made between sunk costs and expenditure used to gain new equipment. To build our own air force contractor in the absence of private funding, we might have to sink $20B, and that's before we've even built a single aircraft.
Given we run a $1Trillion economy and we are thinking about spending $20bil (?????) on 100 F35's...maybe to be delivered in 2012, wouldn't it be better to invest that $20billion in starting our industry so that we are not beholden to overseas suppliers again?
Not to mention the thousands of extra high tech jobs it would take and maybe attract back the many thousands of our finest minds from overseas where they are working and building up foreign economy's.
If the bloody Swedes can do it and remain neutral in 2 world wars, we can do it. The journey of 1000 miles starts with one step.
Given we run a $1Trillion economy and we are thinking about spending $20bil (?????) on 100 F35's...maybe to be delivered in 2012, wouldn't it be better to invest that $20billion in starting our industry so that we are not beholden to overseas suppliers again?
Not to mention the thousands of extra high tech jobs it would take and maybe attract back the many thousands of our finest minds from overseas where they are working and building up foreign economy's.
If the bloody Swedes can do it and remain neutral in 2 world wars, we can do it. The journey of 1000 miles starts with one step.
I have to agree with Jim, the issue is not whether there is the talent in Australia to build an independent aerospace industry but more whether this makes economic and political sense.
On the economic side:
The UK and France have economies three times the size of Australia and they can barely do it (in Military space); Germany and Japan 4 and 5x he economic size of Australia don't have much of an independent Aerospace industry but Germany is part of the pan-european EADS and Japan is subcontractor to the US. That leaves the Swedes -less than half the economic weight of Australia - but I gather Saab is a rather small company ($2.5 B turnover) that does not have the ambitions of creating a world class fighter jet, but much more niche products.
On the political side, once you have developed a fancy aircraft to the tune of $40B you need to recoup the investment by selling the stuff, so you start selling to Switzerland and New Zealand, then to both China and Taiwan, then to the middle east, then to all kinds of dictatorships - that's called losing you soul.
So bad idea, rather negotiate with your vendor that in exchange for overpriced stuff they must create 50K sustained R&D jobs in Australia.
Bastard Spikefan! I was going to come up with more or less the same thing and you beat me to the punch!
Filthy, like Spikefan said, it's a nice idea in theory to build our own jet fighters, but economically impractical. Firstly, whilst our GDP is roughly $1 trillion, our government's annual expenditure is only about 20% of that. If we want the government to build jet fighters on our behalf, and we use what i'd say is a conservative cost estimate of $15B over 5 years to establish the requisite facilities to build jet fighters, we're churning an extra 1.5% of total government expenditure for 5 years. That's completely sunk costs by the way, before we've even built a wheel of a jet fighter.
Secondly, as was also pointed out by Spikefan, then we have to worry about starting to sell the jets to make a return on our investment. Our domestic demand for fighter jets is such that we would have to make a very good job of exporting them if the entire venture were to be even close to breakeven. Once you start trying to export to other countries, you get put in competition with other more advanced, better researched, longer established, wealthier and bigger players in the industry, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and so on. Again, if we're talking in economic practicalities, it doesn't make any sense.
EDIT: I just looked up how much it actually cost Lockheed Martin to develop the F-22 and i was a little too conservative in saying it'd cost only $15B to build anything - it cost US$28B in sunk development costs and took about 15 years to build one stinking jet fighter!
Also, this is from Wikipedia: Like many past tactical fighters for a long period, the opportunity for export is currently non-existent because the export sale of the F-22 is barred by federal law. There was a time in the 1970s when the then-new F-16 had many restrictions also. However, regardless of restrictions, very few allies would even be considered for export sale because it is such a sensitive and expensive system. Most current customers for US fighters are either acquiring earlier designs like the F-15 or F-16 or are waiting to acquire the F-35, which contains much of the F-22's technology but is designed to be cheaper and more flexible.
More recently Japan reportedly showed some interest in buying F-22As in its Replacement-Fighter program for its Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF).[10] In such an event, it would most likely involve a "watered-down" export variant while still retaining most of its advanced avionics and stealth characteristics. However, such a proposal would still need approval from the Pentagon, State Department and Congress.
Some Australian defense commentators have proposed that Australia purchase F-22 aircraft instead of the F-35.[11] This proposal is supported by the Australian Labor Party, which is Australia's main opposition party, on the grounds that the F-22 is a proven and highly capable aircraft while the F-35 is still under development.[12] The Australian Government, however, has ruled out seeking the purchase of F-22s on the grounds that it is unlikely to be released for export and does not meet Australia's requirements for a strike aircraft.[13] This assessment is supported by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which is a non-partisan government-funded think-tank, which argues that the F-22 "has insufficient multi-role capability at too high a price" for Australia.[14]
In a joint conference between the US House of Representatives and the Senate on September 27, 2006, the ban on F-22 Raptor foreign sales was upheld.[15]
So it looks as though the US aren't just a'holes to us about selling their latest and greatest flying machines - they have a blanket policy of not giving out their technology for a long period of time to anyone.
Last edited by jimmyc1985 on Wed Feb 14, 2007 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
It seems this alliance is a one way street. We give, they take and give nothing back and we just bend over the barrel and say "thank you very much can I have some more!!"
As the Press Club yesterday, the US Ambassador said he had never read the ANZUS treaty. Fill you with confidence?
According to a friend of mine who is a Captain in the RAN and also from the USN.
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