I found this article discussing the RAAF's involvement in red flag late last year. Might be of interest to fellow Ausies. It also discusses the RAAF's future force makeup. I hope we end up with the F-22 as well as F-35. Interestingly the article suggests we will need to expand the current fast jet numbers of the RAAF to 200+ combat aircraft..

http://aviationnews.com.au/Current_Issue/Email_Version/1204FullVersion(28p).pdf

my browser says it cant find it. do you have a link to the web sit itself? or is this it?

The story was moved to their archives, try this link.

http://aviationnews.com.au/Past_Issues/PastIssueGallery.htm

Click the links next to the December 2004/January 2005 issue to read the story.

quote:

Originally posted by RAAF_Viper:
I hope we end up with the F-22 as well as F-35. Interestingly the article suggests we will need to expand the current fast jet numbers of the RAAF to 200+ combat aircraft..

I highly doubt it. Everywhere defense budgets and strategical concepts are being put into question.Current fleet in RAAF was made from strategical concepts for the cold war. Right or wrong many people are saying the main threat is terrorism (I actualy think its global warming), and it cannot be fought with high tech multi million dollar war aircraft. Any goverment thats going to manifest intention on buying the F-22 is going to be ferociously contested. Politicians will think they have better afairs than subjecting themselves to that kind of unpopularity.

The F-35 is likely to be the only high speed aircraft to be part RAAF's fighter fleet, and it will be in much less numbers than those 200+.

There isnt much margin of manuever and if the politicians want to aquire the best plane for the least fuss and get away with it, they would probably choose the naval variant with greater range.