Royal Australian Air Force [RAAF] News, Discussions and Updates

Stampede said:

12 would seem the traditional number, but if I recall the final call was based on one; cost, and two, that it was believed the final number chosen would provide sufficient flight hours for tasks demanded.......................................Which I think is political speak for cost.

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I think that the RAAF, and our Defence Force in general is way past "traditional". Indeed, I bet there are far fewer squadrons with 12 aircraft allocated than those *with* twelve. The numbers allocated will be those our politicians are told are required to meet the tasks the RAAF is asked to complete. Any extras, would be a bonus in an era where there are more anti-Defence spending cross benchers than those likely to support spending on anything, much less "extras".

Yes, it's cost. But politics is ever the art of the achievable and at the moment we have 10 C-27 after years of having no Caribous. Ten was achievable. Twelve without rock solid necessity? After years without any replacement and no obvious issues to make it blindingly obvious we need them? Not so much.

oldsig

oldsig127 said:

I think that the RAAF, and our Defence Force in general is way past "traditional". Indeed, I bet there are far fewer squadrons with 12 aircraft allocated than those *with* twelve. The numbers allocated will be those our politicians are told are required to meet the tasks the RAAF is asked to complete. Any extras, would be a bonus in an era where there are more anti-Defence spending cross benchers than those likely to support spending on anything, much less "extras".

Yes, it's cost. But politics is ever the art of the achievable and at the moment we have 10 C-27 after years of having no Caribous. Ten was achievable. Twelve without rock solid necessity? After years without any replacement and no obvious issues to make it blindingly obvious we need them? Not so much.

oldsig

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Yes ten is better than none which may of been the case if a decision was left to drag on any longer.
Luckily a Spartan sized air lifter was deemed necessary and we got something.
Good thing the something was the Spartan as its a good piece of kit.

As to squadron size, well yes the dozen figure is seemingly not the norm if you look at our current fleet.

Regards S

Stampede said:

Yes ten is better than none which may of been the case if a decision was left to drag on any longer.
Luckily a Spartan sized air lifter was deemed necessary and we got something.
Good thing the something was the Spartan as its a good piece of kit.

As to squadron size, well yes the dozen figure is seemingly not the norm if you look at our current fleet.

Regards S

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Sqn size is determined by many things other than 12 aircraft, which while a nice round WW2 fighter sqn number - is just that - a number.

Capability (what do we need it to do), cost (acquisition, sustainment, ongoing development, training), Manning (ie airforce manning cap) are some of the main drivers.

Australian, Canadian aircraft to head to Japan over 'illicit' North Korean ship transfers


A day after the meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea Andrew Greene is reporting on the ABC news website that Australia will be sending a P8 aircraft to the US airbase at Kadena in Japan to conduct surveillance of illicit ship to ship transfers of goods bound for North Korea in contravention of the UN sanctions.

Once there they will be joined by Canadian aircraft and the joint surveillance will be coordinated by the US.

There is no date as to when the deployment will take place and there is a quote from Malcolm Turnbull that states “"We do have a P8-A surveillance aircraft that is going to be working in the region to monitor compliance with sanctions and that is part of our collaboration with our partners in that exercise to enforce those UN sanctions,".

The RAAF Growler that got burnt out in the US, is it being repaired, replaced, or are we going to have a fleet of eleven? What is the situation?

Todjaeger said:

The issue during the Vietnam deployment was that France denied Australia permission and/or support to deploy the Mirage to Vietnam. One result of that is that when the Mirages came up for replacement, Australia looked elsewhere for a replacement fighter.

The US also has issue with a number of foreign nations/manufacturers having access to US defence IP, which can make systems integration even more problematic than it normally is, with France being one of the erstwhile allies that the US has issues with from a security and manufacturing perspective.

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WRT France/Mirage this has been largely disproved by a dump of defence files for the period the Sweden Carl Gustav issue is most relevant though that risk has long since been addressed.

Sitting over here in NZ, we are waiting to see if our new government will pony up for P-8s (supposedly the decision is due mid-year). I believe the last USN orders are for FY 2020 (approx 9 aircraft), so long-lead items will probably need to be ordered next year at the very latest. Any news on your side of the Tasman about the final 3 P-8s for the RAAF (you have ordered 12 I think of a proposed 15)? It seems prettty quiet. Hope you are not waiting for us to order. Like us in NZ, time must be running out.

A bit of RAAF history and quite an extraordinary feat of flying.

Fighting 5th Generation Airbases by WGCDR David Howard 30 May 2018
Air Power Development Centre 1 hour
Carriers Aren’t The Only Big Targets: The Challenges of Mobile Basing 08 Jun 2018 Robbin Laird

"..."...the United States Air Force, along with the Australian Air Force, has been working on a concept called Agile Combat Employment, which seeks to disperse the force, and make it difficult for the enemy to know where are you at, when are you going to be there, and how long are you are going to be there....

…RAAF Air Commodore Ken Robinson “We are having to reacquaint ourselves with some tasks and challenges which we parked to the side a bit while we were in the Middle East for so long. We did not have to worry so much about mobile basing to counter the principal threats in that theatre,” Robinson said. “The mindset is in transition now.” He underscored that this clearly is an army and air force challenge....

...Core capabilities such as providing fuel for air systems when operationalized for a mobile airbasing force on Australian territory are clearly different from supporting a fixed airbase....

...Whether to pursue mobile basing or build greater depth in Australian territorial defense is one of the core choices facing Australia as it continues its force modernization...." [BRING ON THE BUBBLE MACHINES - F-35Bs also on LHDs but 'that belong nuther thred'!] Carriers Aren’t The Only Big Targets: The Challenges of Mobile Basing

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That was a great presentation Spaz... i wonder if hardening our RAAF bases will also be on the cards? I have always thought in this day and age of cruise missiles and fix targets,airfields and bases should be hardened..

RAAF bases look like they have not had a major upgrade in years ..of course money is being spent to upgrade bases for F-35,but this is minor upgrade.

Id like to see hardened shelters for air craft hangers..fuel stations and the like.. Thoughts?

RAAF F-35 have completed a milestone of flying 1000 sorties at Luke Airforce base in Arizona..


I was lucky enough to see 2 Aussie JSF take of from Luke when i visited the Boneyard and Pima Air and space museum in Arizona this year

I’m not sure if hardened shelters would be worth the expense in an era on precision munitions. Probably better to have 50 unhardened structures that *may* have aircraft inside then to have 30 hardened structures that *will* have aircraft inside.

With JSF costing 80 to 100 million a pop i would hope the Commonwealth would be protecting F-35 with something more than 1mm of sheet metal...

Cheers

RAAF Curtin Googie Erf Overhead Aircraft Shelters - looks like a tin roof for the line up top with concrete? [maybe theys just tin bendy roof] shelters with earthen berms around that half circle. Second photo SOMEwhere Hornet

the road runner said:

With JSF costing 80 to 100 million a pop i would hope the Commonwealth would be protecting F-35 with something more than 1mm of sheet metal...

Cheers

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They will be - the other 99 JSF, JORN, Wedgetail, tankers, Growlers, an IADS, AWD etc. Those defences which also have the handy ability of being able to move to where ever the fight is, unlike a HAS.

If an aggressor has the ability to penetrate every layer of active defence and attack a RAAF airbase on mainland Australia, a couple of metres of concrete and dirt is unlikely to stop them. As SteveJH mentioned, dispersion is a better value for money proposition, with the billions of dollars saved invested in other active defences instead.

Raven22 said:

They will be - the other 99 JSF, JORN, Wedgetail, tankers, Growlers, an IADS, AWD etc. Those defences which also have the handy ability of being able to move to where ever the fight is, unlike a HAS.

If an aggressor has the ability to penetrate every layer of active defence and attack a RAAF airbase on mainland Australia, a couple of metres of concrete and dirt is unlikely to stop them. As SteveJH mentioned, dispersion is a better value for money proposition, with the billions of dollars saved invested in other active defences instead.

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I would think a little bit of shelter hardening would be in order, but more to provide some proof vs. accident or protection from some natural disasters. Having an aircraft hangar isolated and fire resistant/proofed to protect against a potential wildfire IMO is a sensible precaution for parts of Oz. Building enough hardened hangars which can resist bunker-busting penetrators to protect the RAAF aircraft inventory would be a enormous expense, and it would likely be easier for a potential attacker to develop a method of overcoming the hangar hardening than it would be to increase the hangar protection from penetrators.

Not to mention potential attackers could then just change what and how they neutralize the aircraft, by cratering the runways and taxiways, etc.

Raven22 said:

If an aggressor has the ability to penetrate every layer of active defence and attack a RAAF airbase on mainland Australia, a couple of metres of concrete and dirt is unlikely to stop them. As SteveJH mentioned, dispersion is a better value for money proposition, with the billions of dollars saved invested in other active defences instead.

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Hi Raven .. i was just reading an article by RAND regarding Air base attack and defence

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR900/RR968/RAND_RR968.pdf

Dispersion has benefits and in no was was i implying building 100 hardened shelters at every RAAF base in Australia..
The Builder in me ,was thinking of maybe 50-100 hardened shelters in total for our JSF fleet at bases such as Scherger,Darwin,Tindal,Townsville and Curtain.
20 odd shelters at each of these bases

I think you could build 100 odd shelters for around the 300 million mark...
Once built they could serve for 80 odd years or longer

But i do get the point of the costs of constructing shelters could be spent on other parts of the ADF

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It still seems like a waste of time (and money) to be honest. What is the threat? Where is the threat coming from? How much warning would there be about an incoming threat?

And when I ask how much warning, i'm not talking about the Radar detecting an inbound attack. I'm talking about the pre-positioning of tanker assets in the case of an attack from a land based force (where is it coming from by the way?) or by the knowledge of the general whereabouts of sea based assets. You cannot tell me that the ADF hasn't got a rough idea where (for example) Liaoning is at any one time.

As for them lasting 80 years, well that would depend on how big the shelters were, both in height and width. Do you build oversized shelters at massively increased cost just in case the next generation of aircraft are larger? or do you build F-35 sized ones and hope that they will be big enough down the track?

What about Wedgetail and other force multi-plying aircraft? Individually they cost more then an F-35, they are much more scarce and much more difficult to replace. I'd hate to think how much a shelter large enough for a single A330 or 767 would cost.

If the RAAF thought they needed hardened shelters, I'm sure they would have them.

The conventional missile threat to air bases is now publicly acknowledged by USAF and DoD officials. For example, then–Secretary of the Air Force Michael B. Donley testified before Congress that the USAF was pursuing programs to make USAF bases “resilient in a number of threat scenarios,” and Chief of Staff Gen Mark A. Welsh III added that hardened bases would be “mandatory” given the growing missile threat. Col Jordan Thomas (then director of the joint Air–Sea Battle Office) added that the USAF initiative would include additional hardened aircraft shelters and runway-repair capabilities, as well as “dispersal, concealment, and deception.”

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It was this quote from the Rand article that got me thinking of hardening RAAF bases..Dispersion was just part of the overall plan to protect bases and assets
Maybe i am reading to much into the above quote !

StevoJH said:

It still seems like a waste of time (and money) to be honest. What is the threat? Where is the threat coming from? How much warning would there be about an incoming threat?

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I was assuming a submarine or Naval cruise missiles attack.It seems that this tactic is used in the start of hostilities EG Syria,GulfWar

StevoJH said:

As for them lasting 80 years, well that would depend on how big the shelters were, both in height and width. Do you build oversized shelters at massively increased cost just in case the next generation of aircraft are larger? or do you build F-35 sized ones and hope that they will be big enough down the track?

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If Australia did go down the path of constructing shelters ,id hope they would future proof and build larger shelters

StevoJH said:

What about Wedgetail and other force multi-plying aircraft? Individually they cost more then an F-35, they are much more scarce and much more difficult to replace. I'd hate to think how much a shelter large enough for a single A330 or 767 would cost.

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Agreed.. the bigger the span ,the greater the cost

StevoJH said:

If the RAAF thought they needed hardened shelters, I'm sure they would have them.

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Agreed, in no way am i implying i am smarter than RAAF/ADF planners ,i was just asking a question

Cheers for the reply

SpazSinbad said:

RAAF Curtin Googie Erf Overhead Aircraft Shelters - looks like a tin roof for the line up top with concrete? [maybe theys just tin bendy roof] shelters with earthen berms around that half circle. Second photo SOMEwhere HornetView attachment 45976View attachment 45977

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The Hornet is at Tindal. The "bendy metal roof" is a much needed bit of shade in the "dry" and welcomed shelter in the "wet".