Australia's Air Force Is Not Even Remotely Ready To Face China In Any Conflict

RAAF F/A-18s and F-35s. Royal Australian Air Force

Forbes: The Australian Air Force Can Send Just Two Fighters Into Battle With China

With China’s armed forces growing bigger and more sophisticated by the year, Western and allied militaries are scrambling to keep up.

The Australian military, for one, has a plan for taking the fight to China. As part of a $400 billion defense-wide plan stretching out to 2030, the Royal Australian Air Force intends to arm its growing fleet of American-made fighters with long-range cruise missiles.

Farther in the future, additional support planes could further bolster the fighters.

But the tyranny of distance—Australia lies more than a thousand miles from any likely battle zone—imposes hard limits on Canberra’s ability to wage aerial warfare against a distant enemy. Every mile an air package must travel in order to reach the fight decreases its endurance in battle and increases its reliance on tankers and early-warning planes.

And those support planes are in short supply.

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WNU Editor:  That is the problem with the F-35A. It's operational range is limited.

Retired Royal Australian Air Force Wing Commander Warns That The F-35 Will Not Be Able To Defend Australia

F-35 and F-22. Photo from Military Photos And Photoshops

War Is Boring: Australian Wing Commander: Sell Us New F-22s

Chris Mills wants America to export Raptors.

Retired Royal Australian Air Force wing commander Chris Mills doesn’t like the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that Canberra is buying from the United States. Noting the new plane’s sluggishness and poor results in simulated air combat against the latest Russian fighters, Mills has called for Australia to lobby the United States for F-22 Raptors.

It’s a problematic suggestion. The U.S. Congress banned export of the Raptor and would have to reverse its legislation in order to sell the plane abroad. Lockheed Martin shuttered the F-22 assembly line in Georgia in 2012, although the company did preserve the tooling. As recently as mid-January, U.S. Air Force secretary Deborah Lee James called another round of Raptor production “pretty much a non-starter” owing to the high cost — as much as $17 billion for 75 fresh aircraft.

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WNU Editor: The decision to end the production line for the F-22 is not going to be reversed .... it is going to be the F-35 or bust.

Some Australians Are Not Sold On The F-35

The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) in flight during testing. Source: News Limited

JSF 'No Match' For Latest Russian Fighters Or Chinese Radar -- The Australian

THE stealth qualities of the futuristic F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on order for the Royal Australian Air Force are overrated and the plane's combat performance greatly exaggerated, a defence lobby group has claimed.

The complaints by Air Power Australia, longtime critics of the $16 billion JSF acquisition, were made last night before a public hearing of parliament's defence sub-committee.

Latest-generation Russian fighters such as the Sukhoi T-50 would easily defeat the F-35 in air-to-air combat, Air Power's Peter Goon said, referring to recent modelling tests by his organisation.

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Update: Aussies’ modest proposal: Sell us F-22s, mate -- DoD Buzz

My Comment: Air Power Australia's website is here. One of my favorite websites that I regularly read on the F-35 program is a transplanted American who now lives in Australia. His website (and a must read everyday) is here.

Aussie Air Force Wants 100 F-35s

From Military.com:

This story first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is stepping up its lobbying efforts for a full order of 100 F-35 Lightning IIs, a number that has been officially endorsed but could easily be trimmed in a defense white paper due next year.

The chief of the air force, Air Marshal Mark Binskin, strongly defends the choice of Lockheed Martin's F-35 as its next fighter, arguing that it will be part of an integrated airpower system and the country could not hope to find better.

He also endorses the Boeing 737 Airborne Early Warning & Control Wedgetail and Airbus A330 tankers -- both on order for Australia but running late -- as the best equipment available.

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My Comment: They are willing to spend the money.