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Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] News, Discussions and Updates
weasel1962
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Aussie Digger
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We bought 37 Litening AT pods in the end. Apparently the deciding factor between the Litening AT, ATFLIR and Sniper XR.
The SH out of interest is to be as "low risk" as possible, hence everything ordered for it (to start with) is entirely "MOTS" and already integrated and developed at someone elses expense...
18x ATFLIR pods and 37x Litening AT pods, should see RAAF very well equipped with targetting pods for the forseeable future...
we actually have governance and protection rights for over 1/9th of the worlds major oceans and sea space.....
weasel1962
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Aussie Digger
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Paveway II/III series weapons and they can generate the necessary co-ordinates for "J" series GPS guided weapons.
Currently JDAM is (or is at least approaching) at IOC within RAAF and AGM-158 JASSM and AGM-154 JSOW have been ordered.
Regards
AD
Hi all!
I'm a new member here, looking to enlist in the RAAF - just wondering if anyone here would have any helpful tips or info for me...
FYI, I'm trying to go in as a pilot - I have a bachelors degree in science with honours and am confident I'll pass the medicals etc, but I'm not sure if there are any nice inside tracks to getting through.
Hope I've picked the right thread here - figured this might be better than starting a new one.
I'm a new member here, looking to enlist in the RAAF - just wondering if anyone here would have any helpful tips or info for me...
FYI, I'm trying to go in as a pilot - I have a bachelors degree in science with honours and am confident I'll pass the medicals etc, but I'm not sure if there are any nice inside tracks to getting through.
Hope I've picked the right thread here - figured this might be better than starting a new one.
weasel1962
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I'm pretty sure that there is only one left and its due for decomm this year (??) The internal RAAF Newspaper had an article on it in the last few weeks...
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The 707's last official sortie is on June 28, and the retirement ceremony is June 30. As sunderer said, the 'new' 33SQN stands up at Amberley at midnight on July 1, although there has been a detachment there for several months.
It appears Fitzgibbon and co are sitting on the final ACCR report and may not release it until the public version of the White Paper comes out just before Xmas. I doubt there'll be many surprises or changes of direction.
weasel1962
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Aussie Digger
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According to Defmin Houston, the report has been completed and submitted to the Minister for Defence.
It has also been presented to the National Security Committee and is awaiting a decision from the Prime Minister.
As Magoo suggests, it is a very real possibility we'll hear nothing more about it until the White Paper is released, despite a Labor promise that it would be released in early/mid May...
Sceptics can GUESS as to why...
A political solution needs to be found as to why the Government now thinks the F-22 is NOT a good idea for RAAF...
weasel1962
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Im not too sure about that.
1) Operating an extra aircraft type increases costs and reduces the total number of combat aircraft in the fleet for a set budget.
2) The extra purchase cost of the F-22 will reduce the total number of aircraft for a set.
3) The extra maintenance and associated lifetime costs of the F-22 may reduce the amount of money available for aquisition further reducing the total number of aircraft.
All three of these negatives for just a slight increase in A2A capability and redundancy. With most likely a overall reduction in capability due to significantly fewer aircraft.
If you increase the budget to allow for an F-22 squadron the same problems still exist. That same increased budget would be able to buy more F-35's so going with the F-22 will always result in fewer aircraft.
If the F-22 had something completely unique that was critical for our needs and the F-35 could not perform that mission, only then would the F-22 be on the table.
I think you'll find that AD was being sarcastic.
In the current political and fiscal climate this Govt is not going to be spending money on F-22's anyway.
We're getting cuts to capability - we're not going to buy an additional logistics burden
weasel1962
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Aussie Digger
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I disagree, but NOT for capability based reasons.
Anyhow, why worry about reality any longer? We're not going to do anything operational in terms of warfighting for the next 5-10 years after the "efforts" of the current Government anyway.
So, given this ideal world, sure, why not speculate?
Let's have a dozen F-22 squadrons for A2A and strike, a few F-35 squadrons to conduct their CAS and Battlefield Interdiction missions (afterall, that's all they're designed to do), let's buy all the B-1B's the USA has already retired, have Australian Flight Test Services (Pty Ltd) refurbish the lot of them and convert half of them to conduct the SEAD/DEAD/AMRAAM MISSILEERS role, whilst leaving the rest of them equipped to carry 100-200 SDB's each for every other mission.
Let's operate 17-20x 747-200 based air to air refuellers, 15-20x Wedgetail AWACS aircraft (because the ability to conduct concurrent operations are essential you know!) and AP-3C Orion aircraft fitted with JASSM's, so long as our tactics don't allow the AP-3C's to operate without A) an F-22 fighter escort or B) in an F-22 free environment where Russian fighters have "flooded" the region.
Let's cancel the Super Hornets and the AWD's, which will free up funding and allow for a capability increase, because as we all know, AEGIS class radar systems are limited by the curvature of the Earth and therefore cannot defend against supersonic Russian/Chinese/Indian missile systems, unlike S-300/400 SAM systems which can destroy anything (including very low observable subsonic Western standoff missiles) besides F-22's and F-111's at ranges of over 400 (or is it 500?) kilometres at any altitude.
Given their obvious great survivability, let's then keep the F-111's for another couple of years (just long enough to overmatch the region currently being "flooded" with Sukhois) and have the JDAM/JASSM/AMRAAM and HARM, plus a new radar system integrated on the 15x we still have. Then let us purchase another 40x F-111 airframes from AMARC and have Australian Flight Test Services (Pty Ltd) modify them to operate them at the same standard as our existing "C' model aircraft.
Let us convince the USAF with our excellent "ABCA" ally status and former political support (now that we've fulfilled our elected Government's promise and up and run and "pulled our troops out of Iraq", despite a 3rd AP-3C having been deployed in recent months, along with an additional 40 odd maintenance crew, the first time 3x AP-3C Orions have been deployed to Iraq EVER) to fund all the improvements that WE (but not the USAF) need to actually employ the F-22 aircraft.
These include the F-35's (developmental in the case of the F-35, but a risk free "off the shelf" modification if the system were to be put onto the F-22) EOTS system, additional EW and weapons capability.
Only then will we be truly safe from the "hordes" that wish us ill within our region, the one that extends from anywhere just South of East Timor all the way North to Moscow (depending on your personal view of what "region" means in Geographical terms).