Australia goes with Fullbacks?

[Guest CW2. Wells]

Just my opinion, thats all

 

Well it doesn't make any sense. Who knows were we will be in 20 years. Hell Germany could be back to her old tricks again. Who knows. You can't let current opinions effect business. Iraq having F-16s is not a big deal.

 

I don't see what the big deal is over Australia thinking about picking up some Russian aircraft. The cold war is over. The Russians make fine aircraft, it would be silly for a country who's aircraft industry is not yet as evolved as some of the other countries, not to consider buying aircraft from them. Parts and maintenance are the only real issue here. Though the Russians are pretty good about making maintenance on their aircraft pretty straight forward.

 

I don't understand why other countries don't start looking towards Russia for it's aircraft needs. More specifically, helicopters. There just are not enough KA-50's around. I would love to see more.

[sparkomatic 7]

Uh...China stole the W-88 plans from Los Alamos (the most advanced American designed nuclear re-entry vehicle and one of our most closely guarded secrets, period)...during the Clinton Era of let's be friends with China...so while there is some merit to your point, not selling to Japan due to its proximity to China gives me pause.

 

So what if we sell them the F-22...the French had superior planes, tanks, and artillery to the Germans in every way (the Germans said so) and how did that go? Tactics are a factor also, and no one trains like the Americans.Not saying that others arent super cool and professional, because they are! But even if the JASDF built a 100 F-22J under license, they would pose no credible threat to us...not to mention this is a new age, the Global Economy is most likely the biggest reason China hasnt stepped across the Taiwan Straight yet, they certainly do not fear us because we out number them.

 

So what about the Patriot? It is a far bigger threat to us than an F-22J and how many people did we hawk it off to? What about that we are selling Turkey the newest AWACS and are buying less than zero for ourselves? And yes Turkey is in NATO, neat, hey what happened in 2003, boys?Hey, what happened a few weeks ago? Oops, we bombed a country that you are occupying...so Turkey is on the side of Turkey, period. And we just sold them 4 state of the art AWACS.Much to do about nothing, really...besides we need to off set the cost of the F-22 and foreign sales helps...heck foreign sales are practically all that is keeping the F-35 afloat at some points.

 

But back to the topic...

 

Hey, lets ask Jedi Master who has been building some of the US-launched rocket motors lately? They dont say Morton-Thiokol any more...we even buy Russian equipment these days

Edited January 18, 2008 by sparkomatic

[+drdoyo 2]

IMHO if Austrailia doesn't buy the F-15E, then the SU-34 is the only logical replacement for the F-111. It has the needed range. It has capabilities to defend itself against the capabilities of the SU-30s in the inventories of Austrailia's neighbors to the north. It's those capabilities and lack of needed range that has caused the Austrailian analysts to grow concerned with hornets and super hornets.

[echoco 0]

Uh...China stole the W-88 plans from Los Alamos (the most advanced American designed nuclear re-entry vehicle and one of our most closely guarded secrets, period)...during the Clinton Era of let's be friends with China...so while there is some merit to your point, not selling to Japan due to its proximity to China gives me pause.

 

how much easier would it be for China to steal W-88 if it was exported.

 

Just curious, does anyone know when Australia is going to make the decision?

Edited January 21, 2008 by echoco

[sparkomatic 7]

What? They already stole it...doesnt matter where we export to, they have penetrated some of our most secret places already...that doesnt mean post it on the Internet...it means our enemies are better than we like to give them credit.

[+Jug 99]

Well it doesn't make any sense. Who knows were we will be in 20 years. Hell Germany could be back to her old tricks again. Who knows. You can't let current opinions effect business. Iraq having F-16s is not a big deal.

 

I don't see what the big deal is over Australia thinking about picking up some Russian aircraft. The cold war is over. The Russians make fine aircraft, it would be silly for a country who's aircraft industry is not yet as evolved as some of the other countries, not to consider buying aircraft from them. Parts and maintenance are the only real issue here. Though the Russians are pretty good about making maintenance on their aircraft pretty straight forward.

 

I don't understand why other countries don't start looking towards Russia for it's aircraft needs. More specifically, helicopters. There just are not enough KA-50's around. I would love to see more.

 

In my opinion it is a good choice. What's the big deal? Ask Brazil about their spare parts deal with France to sustain a fleet of some 19 MirageIIEs in the later part of the last century. Spares are an issue, but you learn to cope. I, for one, would take a hard look at the Chinese offerings (if they are for sale). Lottsa countries making some nifty aircraft out there today. Russian aircraft have a reputation of being simple to maintain. I think Israel set the bar for procuring foreign made aircraft and becoming real good at adapting their industry to wean spare parts links that became politically untenable. Brings a bunch of bucks home in the balance of trade and presses hard your internal fledgling aeronautical industry.

 

I've even said and I say again, the US could use a couple of SU-27 Squadrons. After all, I could put three or four Su-27s into the fight for each F-22 I can afford. We could contract our own defense industry to do the spare parts thing. Might want to trade in the motors for a couple of good Pratt & Whitneys, and what would a good set of US avionics do for the capability of the Flanker? Makes me drool in my sleep.

[FastCargo 412]

I've even said and I say again, the US could use a couple of SU-27 Squadrons. After all, I could put three or four Su-27s into the fight for each F-22 I can afford. We could contract our own defense industry to do the spare parts thing. Might want to trade in the motors for a couple of good Pratt & Whitneys, and what would a good set of US avionics do for the capability of the Flanker? Makes me drool in my sleep.

 

If nothing else, it would be nice to have a real advesary squadron using actual advesary equipment. Why guess at capabilities when you can buy and use! We've done it on a limited basis (Constant Peg) but a full up dedicated squadron would be better...

 

FastCargo

[Guest CW2. Wells]

The Army has a few Russian helicopters it uses for training. I think the Air Force has a few Mig 29s they got from Western Germany after the wall came down. Come to think of it, I think that might be were we got our Russian whirly's from too.

[JediMaster 451]

We bought the MiG-29s from Moldova in the early 90s that they put on the market. No idea if they're still operable.

 

The problem with Russian military equipment has always been maintainability. Their stuff was built with a different philosophy than ours, with depot-level maintenance happening every 1000-2000 hrs I think? In the West that would be totally unacceptable, but over there they had a semi-disposable outlook on stuff. Use it and beat it up for a thousand hours or so, then send it to depot for repairs while you use the one that just came out of the depot.

 

Granted that outlook has changed in the last 10 years, but Russia has yet to fly anything designed in the last 10 years. Everything "new" is just a variant of a cold war-era design.

 

So while Russian planes would undoubtedly be cheaper to procure, I'm not sure what the maintenance costs and availability rates would be. Wouldn't help if only 60% of the fleet is active at any one time with the other 40% in varying states of maintenance!

[+Typhoid 231]

We bought the MiG-29s from Moldova in the early 90s that they put on the market. No idea if they're still operable.

 

we bought them to keep those particular ones off the market with no intention of making them operable. They are warehoused somewhere.

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

I don't see what the big deal is over Australia thinking about picking up some Russian aircraft. The cold war is over. The Russians make fine aircraft, it would be silly for a country who's aircraft industry is not yet as evolved as some of the other countries, not to consider buying aircraft from them.

 

Your problem is that you can think without drooling... so obviously you haven't dealt with the MoD here! I get more sense out of a class of 5yr olds and I don't have to rpeat myself as much. I'd be keen to see how things are going with this defense acquisition reassessment. I hope things will be done differenlty, but I wouldn't be shocked if the new government acted the same way as the last government but just slapped a new label on their process.

 

Back to the SU-34 I don't think its practical, even if RAAF fit them with Western avionics there's the matters of spare wheels, tyres, pylons, external fuel tanks, wires and cables.. etc that needs to be bought from a different source than the curent fleet. Assuming that RAAF SU-34 uses western engines, thats where I see the main logistic problem.

 

None of these would be a problem for any industrialised nation to produce. For one thing, when we were building the Mirage IIIOs in the 60s, a lot of components were produced in the country and were either locally designed substitutes or revised for local conditions (remembering that France and Oz are very different places environments!) or were incorporated into the design to suit the environmental, operational and economic needs of the licensee. The same was done in the 80s to a lesser degree with the Hornets and more comprehensively later when the MoD was denied tech transfers from the US. Not to mention the Tiger ARH as well. It’s done partly for whatever operational needs exist but also to develop a self sustaining defence industry here so as to free us from the dependency we had on other nations (US,UK) in the past. Defence industry reps like Tenix, BAe (both are one and the same now), LM, Boeing and even Qantas defence systems have been competing for these kinds of tenders for years (and were all pissy when it was revealed how little work they’d be competing for with the JSF).

 

I think if the Russian defence industry included incentives such as with India’s M-MRCA (where they’re helping to set up a Mig-29 refit and maintenance plant or is it a production plant?) along with the Su-34, then we’d take a much more serious look since defence contracts mean jobs, which in turn means votes. I think that Russia would be a little hesitant if only for our close ties to the US and potential leaking of critical systems information to a major competitor like the US. Look at how tense they got when the IAF Su-30 flew to the UK.

 

 

Also, the question about the Su-30 series using western avionics with Russian nav systems etc, I’m pretty sure both the single seat Su-30 and the regular 2 seat Su-30s in the Malaysian air force use Italian and French (maybe even British? Marconi MEC?) FCS, targeting and designation, stores and battle management systems with existing Russian nav and FBW systems. Although, I’m not 100% on that one.

[SayethWhaaaa 245]

Also, the question about the Su-30 series using western avionics with Russian nav systems etc, I’m pretty sure both the single seat Su-30 and the regular 2 seat Su-30s in the Malaysian air force use Italian and French (maybe even British? Marconi MEC?) FCS, targeting and designation, stores and battle management systems with existing Russian nav and FBW systems. Although, I’m not 100% on that one.

 

It's actually French, Russian and South African. Not Italian.

[sparkomatic 7]

Moldova? you made that up...just kidding

 

Remember "Have Donut" besides the bast program name ever?

[PigDriver 0]

I believe the inspiration for this "analysis" comes from this Russian newspaper article Australia chooses between Russian and American military jets and I can't believe this has been taken seriously. The amount of time Australian military planners would take to consider anything Russian is the same amount of time it takes to say "Russian". As you can see, amongst other things, it claims that the RAAF negotiated for "large numbers of SU-27s" and that we are no longer buying the F-35. Which I'm sure comes as a great shock to the RAAF.

Not to mention the political consequences of such a move, the fact is that you would be integrating an aircraft with a totally foreign (literally) supply and maintainence chains into an Air Force which has used Western aircraft and equipment since it's inception, not to mention getting spares out of the Russians (as the RMAF will attest, which is why it asked the US to sell it Super Bugs) can be like getting blood out of a stone and there's a reason why Sukhois are cheaper than their Western counterparts, the materials used are usually of a cheaper quality and they don't have to pay their workforce as much.

While the F-15E+ would have been a better replacement for the F-111, the more expensive unit price and familiarity of RAAF pilots with the Hornet and more advanced avionics made the SH the obvious choice. However, the introduction of longer ranged weapons such as JASSM and a 540KM powered JSOW-ER that DSTO is currently developing in partnership with the US means they can make up the range gap and the development of more powerful smaller warheads such as the SDB means you don't have to carry the payload of the F-111 anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the F-111, my study is a tribute to it, but it comes from a different time when you needed 24 Mk.84s to make sure you got a target. In the era of Network Centric Warfare, it's about "Effects Based Strategy" rather than deterrence, showing an enemy that you can carry out a comprehensive air campaign against them rather than just detterring them by sending F-111's into downtown Jakarta. (Although, given the current state of the TNI, this is still an adequate defence ).

I pity the fool who tries to take on the fully networked RAAF post-2010.

Edited February 18, 2008 by PigDriver

[+EricJ 4,245]

Of course it would be embarrassing when the Japanese fix the software glitches and make it better...

 

Plus it just looks cool to the Japanese anyways. If you've ever seen Red Dwarf the Japanese version, versus the Brit version, you'll see during the startup. Anyways, the Fullback is inherently more capable than the SH anyways, which would make it weird if the RAAF actally went ahead with it. Plus think about it, RAAF Su-34s wasting Malay Su-30MKMs or vice versa in a showdown. It's only a matter of time cats and dogs live together in eternal harmony as well On a serious note... it'd cost more for reintegrating weapons systems (and the Russians would LOVE it) and implementation than purchasing 24 SHs and integrating newer weaponry. Besides as PigDriver mentioned, it's saving money on training to a degree for pilots that have some familiarity for a type. Besides I'd fly the Apache before I think about the Werewolf, it just looks more vicious..

[S-70 Blackhawk 0]

Hey everybody,

Can we get another source on this one please?

IMHO, i think it would be stupid of the government to purchase Su-34's so soon after an election and putting the money towards the F-35 and F/A-18F. On top of that, although it may have a potent strike capability, it was designed for use with Russian weapons systems....therefore our ASRAAMS through to Mk82's might not work as well as they would on an American airframe without big expensive software updates.....which would need to be done anyways considering very few RAAF members can read Russian or use their systems. Additionally, the infrastructure is designed for NATO/US aircraft. Heck, even external power carts would need adapters for Russian fittings. Engines would need to be redone as Russian engines are obviously different to US engines (though they have the same concept...air in here, thrust out here)...

Just my 2 cents (which are worth a lot more due to a strong economy :p )

Blackhawk

[sparkomatic 7]

funny that this thread has continued so long...reminds me of the "Lone Gunmen"

[JediMaster 451]

Why would it? Their show only lasted 6 episodes I think!