by Chris Pocock
The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is preparing to receive its first squadron of 14 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning IIs in-country in late 2018. They will be preceded by a squadron of 12 Boeing EF-18G Growlers that will arrive next year.
Like other air arms receiving advanced combat aircraft from the U.S., the RAAF must make careful choices about weapons and software commonality, and training, if costs are to be restrained. Air Commodore Mike Kitcher, the RAAF’s director general capability planning, provided some insight into the issues for delegates attending The International Fighter Conference in London last November.
“I don’t think we could repeat our F-18 Classic experience on the F-35; a higher-complexity platform with multiple security layers,” Kitcher said. He was referring to the RAAF’s choice of some unique weapons to arm its F/A-18A/B Hornets, 75 of which were acquired and entered service in the 1980s. They were the MBDA ASRAAM (advanced short range air-to-air missile), the Lockheed Martin JASSM (joint air-to-surface standoff missile), and the extended-range (ER) version of the JDAM (joint direct attack munition). None of these weapons are in the U.S. Navy’s Classic Hornet inventory, and Australian engineers made “some startling discoveries” during the integration process, Kitcher added. And although the wide-open spaces of the Woomera range were available, “flight-testing 200- to 300-km-range weapons is a considerable challenge,” he noted.
The RAAF subsequently acquired 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets to replace a similar number of F-111s in 2010. Now come the EF-18s, and Kitcher said the RAAF is aiming for commonality of weapons on the Super Hornets, Growlers and the F-35s. The F-18 Classics will be retired at the rate of one squadron per year starting in 2019 as more F-35s enter service. In 2014, Australia confirmed it would buy another 58 F-35s, making a total of 72 for three squadrons plus an Operational Conversion Unit (OCU).
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