Interview – Air Marshall David Evans

DE: Without an army an enemy with as little as company-sized forces could take-all our northern bases then sit there and exploit the situation. We would then have those dreadful lines of communication across the desert with one road up the centre and one across, and we would have a hell of job getting them out.

You have to have an effective army and navy so that the enemy realises that to lodge a force in Australia it is going to have a real fight on its hands against a highly trained force. The ratio of attackers to defenders is generally accepted as at least three to one.

Air force takes the initiative. If you cannot defend your bases against air attack then it is all worthless. Being a nation with limited money we cannot afford the luxury of specialist aircraft for air defence such as an F-15. We must have the most versatile vehicle we can get for our defence dollars. With the F-18 we have that – a very capable all-weather fighter, which is essential.

I believe that in the next 10 to 20 years, hostile bomber aircraft will carry missiles that they can launch at targets from 50 to 100 miles away-it will build which means we have to go out and get them before they can use those weapons.

This means we need a fighter with good radar and missiles. But we have to do more than that because we are spending an enormous amount of money. We have to stop aggressors getting here so we need anti-shipping missiles. Our fighter should have a good anti-shipping missile – the F-18 has a Harpoon with twice the range of the Exocet.

The F-111 is being modified to carry Harpoon and the third part of our combat triad is the Orion. When we looked at putting Harpoon on the Orion, which we bought as an ASW aircraft, we were worried about sending a big lumbering thing like that aginst modern warships. But in exercises we have used it against carriers- Melbourne and others – and it has proved to be outstanding.

The ships have only to transmit something like radar or radio and the Orion will pick them up by passive means at 200 miles and it will sit out there. Fleets of warships do not move that far in 10 or 12 hours and the Orion can nip in at night to identify what is there then nip out quickly. If it wants to make a missile attack with a Harpoon, it comes in low, it knows the position, it pulls up to 7000 feet at a range of 70 miles for about two sweeps of the radar then looses off a Harpoon.

He is only likely to encounter fleet fighter cover if they have a carrier and early warning-they cannot keep fighters up forever. Then he goes back downhill at 410 knots to the deck and out. Not only does the fleet carrier need fighter with lookdown shoot-down capability but he needs early warning to see an aircraft coming in low -so he really needs airborne early warning as the only practical way to do it. Nothing on the ship will do it.

JS: How can the Orion identify individual ship targets?

DE: He cannot, but does that matter?

We are trying to cause damage and attrition to an enemy. The Orion has established that it is an enemy ship or convoy. He would dearly like to get the capital ship but it does not matter. He will hit and sink a ship. If it was a big thing he would stay out there and call inF-111s to put in a concerted attack on ships and the Orion might control it from where he is.

JS: In the Falklands, the Argentinians hit all sorts of ships but they never got the carriers. If they had, the whole British effort would have ground to a halt.

DE: That was not because they did not know where it was because they were going visually. But they could not get out to the carrier.

JS: They launched an Exocet at a carrier that got the Atlantic Conveyor.

DE: That is right but a couple of things, we would think, were bad.

The Argentinians did not have the absolute Exocet with all the best things on it, the same as we would hope other people have not got around the place. We like to believe that we get from the Americans the ultimate weapon with all the best things on it, but yes, that is certainly a deficiency that is not yet resolved.

People are also working on engine noise or radar emissions to recognise ships. But it does not matter. If you are knocking ships off and sinking them, that is going to deter people. It will not do them the world of good. Eventually, if you are successful, you will work your way into the high-value unit because the others will be sunk anyhow.

People say that early warning will come from picket ships the navy puts out. What better target than to knock off a picket ship for starters and then a few hours later move in? Our combat triad has this capability.

If you think of a force of 75 F-18s and 20 Orions, each with four Harpoons, and 24 F-111s, all with an all-weather day/night capability – if you were fighting an invasion that is a tremendous force. The Argentines did not have anything like that. If you add in-flight refuelling you can go a long way if you need to -even with the F-18. That is what we see as our combat force and force structure for the defence of Australia. Additionally, it can do lots of other things. The F-18 can provide close support and interdiction and tactical reconnaissance. It can with in-flight refuelling be extended in range to supplement the F-111 strike force from some of the bases to our north.

The F-111 can do ocean surveillance and anti-shipping although its main role is land strike at night – low level to enemy bases through enemy territory. And it is magic, and hard to stop-200 feet at night with a range of weapons. We still need standoff weapons like the GBU-15. Pave Tack is great. If we get that with a standoff weapon it will be marvellous.

Anti-shipping missiles are coming along – the Russians have 300-mile missiles Kelp and Kennel. But against land targets there is a great deficiency. The GBU has been talked about for 10 years and it is only now coming on the market (refer page 29, June Australian Aviation). It only gives us a standoff capability of about 15 miles. We hope there will be a later version which will give us a bit more. But it is not here yet.

The F-111 can get up to Mach -II to identify aircraft. We should and will put Sidewinder on it. As it is it has nothing except a gun and we depend on it for night intrusion. We need something like Sidewinder to keep people honest. To support the army we have a range of transports – the C130 is great, supplemented by four 707s, it gives us a good strategic lift capability for the ADF. We have bases at Darwin, Learmonth, Derby and Tindal coming along to support our concept of operation.

Derby has started. Hopefully, it will be finished in ’87 or ’88. At Darwin, Tindal will go ahead and we will have a fighter squadron there in ’88. $170 million. It is 150 km south of Darwin – the idea being why stick it up on the coast where anyone can get a submarine with missiles, stand offshore and put all the force out? Cyclones do not hit Katherine and Derby. We would of course have aircraft on strip alert up in Darwin but the bulk of them would be back at Tindal. Eventually, I would like to move the control for the radar which will be at Darwin and the AEW aircraft, all into the Tindal base, which will be where people fan out from.

Then there is a gap around to Townsville. We looked at Gove and Weipa and Lockhart River. We need something there. Army favours Lockhart River. Weipais there and the company has a bitumen and concrete batching plant so it would be easy to do. The big disadvantage of course is that if anyone mines Torres Strait, to re-supply you would have to go around the long way, even though there is a port there. Lockhart, on the other side, does not have that disadvantage, but there is no port there – we would have to build one. There is currently a study going on defence on that.

Our deficiencies quite clearly are AEW aircraft. You can have the best tighter in the world but it is useless if you do not know what is going on.

I think I shock people by pointing out that we are spending $3. 5 billion on a new fighter which might make our air defence only marginally better than what we have now. It will be quite ineffective if we do not know what is going on. We cannot have CAP up all the time over all those places. Even that would be quite useless really totally useless against a low level intruder at night. We must have AEW.

People say Jindalee will do it and recently we are looking at an RAAF Hercules 300 km away from the Jindalee base at Alice Springs. But it is uncertain. The next day they might not get it. They have the dawn and dusk terminators where the ionosphere is shifting layers. They say they will overcome this by changing frequencies but we are not sure yet.

But Jindalee cannot pinpoint a target say it is in a certain box and they do not know at what height. Being an HF system it is easily jammed, which is a danger in itself. It is part of a system, bu thow else can beget early warning around Australian we would need 200 radars – radar is great to look at something at 40,000 feet at 250 miles, but if you get down on the deck 20 miles out the radar will not see a thing.

The obvious answer for us is AEW but even then we could not afford the number we need for a complete coverage. What Jindalee will do is tell us something is 1500 miles out and then we can put up an AEW aircraft to go out, pick it up and say what it is and relay everything to ground stations which will scramble fighters when necessary. The other thing that an AEW aircraft can do is see a 30 ft boat at 120 miles. But if we did have AEW aircraft and flew from Darwin to Learmonth each day and the other way to Cairns we would cover a swathe 240 miles wide that no boat would get through in that time.

We could use it for training air defence on the way. Within a month we could have a complete picture of what was happening to the north of Australia in the seas for 250 miles.

JS: What about people flying in illegally by air?

DE: We know civil airline pilots have reported contrails over Derby on two occasions- what can we do about it – send a ship around or send our mobile radar up there, but people would see it and they would stop doing it until it went away.

AEW aircraft can play a part in stopping that. It is like police radars for speeders – you put it up occasionally but no one knows where or when, so if anyone was going to fly illegally they would always have that worry. That is a great deficiency and until we get it we will not have a proper air defence system and it would also play a great part in law enforcement if that became Government policy. The other deficiency is the refuelling aircraft. We bought the last two for $7 million with a couple of years’ spares and it is going to cost us $50 million to convert two of them to both boom refuelling for the F-111 and probe and drogue for the F-18. I want to do that as quickly as possible.

It looks as if we will have at least one and possibly two done with probe and drogue for the F-18 by 1986 when the F-18s come in. The thought is in some people’s mind that this is a piece of cake and you can pick it up tomorrow, get it on, and pilots will learn how to do it in a couple of months. This is not true. We have no experience whatsoever in the operation and control of tankers.

You have to have tankers at the right place at the right time and an alternative if the place is covered in a great storm or the thing goes US or the first bloke knocks the boom off it -these are things we need command and control over and that takes years – you are not going to do it overnight. We try to keep a couple of people on exchange in America flying KC-135s but that is a drop in the bucket.

More emphasis has to go into EW (electronic warfare), we just have not had the money and resources to put into it. What we want is an EW ground range like the Americans have at Nellis and other places around the world. It has been in the program but not getting any money for 10 years. We send our F-111s to Nellis occasionally where they have on . the ground all likely enemy radars, anti-aircraft weapons and aggressor aircraft through which pilots must fly and attack targets.

But we have not got the money for such a range as this. We now have a much-reduced requirement which is much cheaper which will get us into the business but it is still several years away. We would like to get it up out at Woomera or somewhere like that. It would be helpful if we could talk someone else into using it and sharing costs, but people who are interested are too far away and have their own ranges. So we send the Mirages from Butterworth to the Philippines and F-111s all the way to Las Vegas to fly the range there.

JS: How confident do you feel about the standard of morale in the Air Force? You appear to be doing quite well in the acquisition of hardware but some people claim a lot of pilots want out of the air force because they are frustrated at conditions of service, reductions in flying time available and the type of flying.

The comment has been made to me for instance, that fighter pilots going back a few decades to Sabres, had a lot of varied hours whereas today the hours are down, pilots are specialising and some flying such as fleet support has little training value.

With that sort of thing in mind, what is the air force’s image of itself – does it feel it is being seen to be doing what it thinks it should be doing? Do you have misgivings in this area- am I painting too black a picture?

DE: I think you are. I travel around quite a lot and visit and inspect every base once a year or more. I fly myself and go into the crew room and talk to people.

I really have no evidence of the sort of problem you talk about. It is true that we are short of money for flying hours in most areas but look what we are getting – a brand new combat fighter with combat capability in a whole heap of roles, new P-3Cs, the best ASW aircraft in the world; we have good transports, we have 707s that we are going to convert into tankers. The air force we are building for the defence of Australia is really a most formidable air force by any standards in the world.

Our equipment is first class by any standards in the world and our personnel must match that. Their training is as good as anywhere in the world and they are known throughout air forces in the western world as being highly professional. That is our image – we are an elite force, and I keep telling people that.

We have got to be proud of that and I insist on drill and our standard of bearing demonstrating our pride in our service. We are improving uniforms and going back to rank on the sleeve. We have a new RAAF march, which is our owri and replaces the march of the Royal Air Force we have used in the past.

I believe you can judge by what people do in their work whether morale is good or bad and the work is excellent. People slave their guts out if necessary to get aeroplanes on the line on time. I would be surprised if morale is not very high. Conditions of service are improving slowly.

Our pilots, as officers, are expected to understand the things. If you are buying a new house or TV set, you cut down on going out for dinner or holidays. We are building an air force which is by far the best in this part of the world and is of world standard – and that is going to cost us.

JS: Perhaps I did not phrase that correctly. I was thinking not so much of morale at an operational level but of a background level of dissatisfaction and frustration.

DE: When I go out to the units I always come back feeling better. In here I get frustrated and everyone gets frustrated.

Out in the field they do not know any of this nonsense that goes on. They are flying and doing their job and I have found it is very good.

Qantas are, unfortunately, recruiting 120 pilots in the next two years and that will take people from us. In the past, Qantas have never got our best people. It has always been the malcontent – the bloke who feels he should have been promoted last year or was superseded. There is the odd one who is quite competent and just sees money or feels he is not going to make high rank.

The ones they get are the ones that feel they are not making it in the Air Force – and mostly they are right. There are first officers in Qantas who wish they had never left the Air Force.

JS: In selection for promotion and more opportunities for non-pilot officers, are you happy with criteria for selection of senior officers and those of air rank, and the career paths open?

DE: I am happy that people have reasonable opportunities for promotion – except for supply branch. We put these cadets through the Darling Downs Institute and they do a business administration course. Engineer officers have their specialisation.

The top of the supply branch is a one star- I do not think that is high enough, but there are several air commodores in both branches. The money they get- an air commodore gets about $50,000 – is quite reasonable compensation. They are not poorly paid and the status of an air commodore is pretty good in the service.

Everyone cannot expect to be CAS and it should not be in their expectations. But to get a well-paid satisfying job at a rank they can attain- there is nothing to put people off. We should not put the career prospects of individuals before the requirements of the service- which there is a tendency for the personnel branch to try to do. They took out specialised catering officers and I believe the standard of catering in the air force has gone off as a result and I am doing something about it. I find they have an equipment officer on catering for a couple of years, thenhe goes somewhere else into a warehouse. When I asked ‘Why have you takenthe specialist catering officer away’ they said ‘ There is no career for him. ‘

Well damn it, if you get a bloke who is going to be a good warrant officer caterer, he has been a cook or a steward who has done a few courses, make him an officer if he has got the personal qualities. He may not get beyond squadron leader. But to him, who was going to be a flight sergeant or warrant officer cook, it is a good career.

My concern is not that there is not a career for people, which is a consideration but that we are wasting outstanding talent that pops up everywhere.

You get outstanding people in the engineer branch – only one bloke can be a two-star and do a certain job, but there are probably six other jobs in the air force because he is an outstanding individual’ which he could do very well.

Why not have the flexibility to put them where their qualities can be used? In doing that you obviously open up more opportunities for people but the purpose is to get the best talent for the Air Force, as far as I am concerned.

JS: How possible is it for you to change this- is it one of the sacred cows?

DE: I can change it – this is what I am trying to tell people – CAS can do most things that he believes are important and that are within the service. That is the difference between command and management – an important distinction which is often misunderstood or not recognised in defence.

This does not mean you throw your weight around but it allows you to do things that should be done.

Like changing our P-3 crews, who were all officers for years. How many air forces have all officers on ASW aircraft? I asked about it and had studies done and it was resisted and resisted. I started this when I was CAFOPS before I went to defence as chief of joint operations.

My predecessor had said to go ahead with it and 12 months later when I took over nothing had happened. When I asked what had happened they said they had had and their look and did not think it was a good idea. I was beside myself with angerCAS had said to do something and they were not doing it.

So I said by next August the first course had to start- and it has started, and the first lot graduated a few weeks ago, apparently doing very well. We will get these specialists to fill the back of our aeroplanes as NCOs. They will have a career to warrant officer and the odd one will get a commission.

JS: You do not think that will mean in any way downgrading the skill level?

DE: Not at all. It opens up to a lot of people who had the skill to do a certain narrow job, who have not necessarily got officer qualities for leadership or going ahead but can do a job very well.

It is an opportunity for them to get into aircrew that they would never get. They put their heart into it and it is a great opportunity for them. This widens the spectrum of people we can draw from in an area where it is difficult to get people.

You cannot provide a career for all those people. They get to flight lieutenant and stay there for 10 years and become disillusioned and discontented with doing the same job but if they know when they go in that W10 is where they will get- but W/0 getting the same pay as a flight lieutenant, flying, and an interesting job – we keep them for 20 years then get some more.

JS: Did you think when you started off you might get to CAS? Would you have taken better care of yourself if you thought you would get this far?

DE: I joined during the war when I was 18. It never occurred to me that I would not join something. The air force appealed to me greatly and I joined the ATC before then and was counting the days until I came in.

I wanted to be a pilot and like most people on my course could not have cared whether it was as a LAC pilot, sergeant pilot or what rank. It did not enter into our thinking.

When the war ended I had just finished an operational conversion on to Beaufort torpedo bombers and was about to be posted when the war ended. We were told we would all be discharged within two weeks. I went to see the CO about staying in the air force but he pointed out that nearly 200,000 people had to go out now the war was over.

So I went AWOL – there was nothing happening anyhow – and got the train to Melbourne and walked into air force headquarters – a flight sergeant, 19 years old. I did not know where to go or who to see and wandered along corridors until I saw a thing with ‘postings’ on the door – flight lieutenant somebody. I went in and told him the story and tie said ‘What do you want to do?’ I said I wanted to stay and get a permanent commission. He said ‘Wouldn’t we all. ‘

So I wandered out and saw a door – ‘Squadron Leader Law-Smith – Discharges’ so I went in there. It was Bob LawSmith, later TAA chairman, as it so happens. He said he supposed they would like to man the air force with volunteers and if my discharge had not already gone out he would try t9 get me a posting. He was gone about 20 minutes then he came back and said ‘It was in the tray to go out. I’ve stopped that. How would you like to go and fly Dakotas?’

I said thanks very much and got the train back to Sale. Next day they were saying hand all your gear back and get cleared and I was saying ‘Well, I don’t think I will be going. ‘They said ‘Pon’ ridiculous, flight sergeant,’ sg I went throµgh all that business theii a posting came through to 38 squadrons at Archerfield, flying to New Guinea.

It was not until I was Chief of Air Force Operations here that I wrote to Bob LawSmith and told him I owed him a debt of gratitude for many years. So we had lunch and I have seen him a couple of times since. He is a rightful man and obviously was, to take so much time with a flight sergeant. ·

JS: It is intriguing that in this discussion about how to make the system work, at an early stage you stepped outside the system. One wonders if that is a telling point.

DE: What, by going AWOL?

JS: Not every flight sergeant would wander into air force headquarters in Melbourne. It might not be outside the system but it definitely was not going through channels.

DE: It was desperation, really.

JS: With new legislation like freedom of information affecting the service, what effect if any does the new sex equality legislation have on the RAAF, bearing in mind that some other air forces have had female pilots for many years?

DE: We resolved that with the Cabinet and the legislation. We are not providing aircrew training for females because it is all combat-related.

The argument was that we do not have to have people in combat- they can be instructors or fly transport aeroplanes. We pointed out that we are a very small air force and we need the flexibility for people to be transferred from helicopters to fighters – and that is why we train them all on fixed wing aircraft.

In combat we do fixed tours such as in Vietnam. We had all sorts of people flying Canberras and helicopters so that people did not do second tours. In Korea we took people off transport aircraft to do tours in Meteors. While we are a small air force we need that flexibility.

We also need to bring people back from operations to have a rest instructing and ideally, we would like instructors to have had tours on combat aircraft and been in combat. With females we cannot do that. You would have them in these non-combat jobs and the fellas doing all the fighting and not having their rest.

Also, which they would not accept, but is true, the average length of service for a woman is 3. 1 years as against men. In training pilot you spend an awful lot of money on them so you do not want to throw it away.

The Israelis have given it away and if ever anyone wants every bit of manpower or person power, or whatever you like to call it, it is the Israelis. They found it was not successful, even in battle. A girl would get shot and hurt and half a dozen fellas would go and help here whereas if it was a man they would just keep going and do theirjob.

JS: Talking of training, will you be taking your men straight off pilot courses to fly the F-18?

DE: Yes. It was proposed we do so and I asked if it had been considered properly.

We are now putting them off on to Mirages and F-111s – both of which are more difficult from the flying point of view than the F-18, which is a piece of cake really. .

The first lot for 18 months will be people who have done tours on Mirages. But then we will take people who graduate on Macchis. They will go and do the fighter introductory course on Macchis at Williamtown which is about 60 hours – and we will use them for fleet support too, to c:ut down on using the fully trained blokes.

When they get some more hours up on fighter combat instruction in Macchis, application gunnery and so forth, they will then go on to F-18s. We have a first class simulator that is visual and does everything including takeoffs and landings, radar attacks and so forth.

JS: So your men doing their wings course now will in about two years be in the seat of F-18s- boys of about 19 driving $40 million worth of aeroplane.

DE: Yes.

JS: Half their luck.

DE: Yes indeed. It is a real fact of life that if I could change with a flight lieutenant to get back into the flying business in a squadron I would do it like a shot – so would a lot of others!

JS: What are your relationships with civil operators to use civil resources available for uplift capability? Although there is a general agreement that the airlines can swing in and provide the backup, there are not many formalised procedures as far as I am aware and it would not take much for some stirrer-unionist or some such – to throw a spanner in the works.

DE: You are quite right.

We have an organisation where the director of movement and transport in defence central is on national shipping and transport boards where they discuss these things. But we do not have any formal legislation as the Americans do for them just to take over and use the civil airlines.

JS: The Falklands campaign must have provided a few lessons- whether the real lessons were on the surface or whether they were deeper-lying is hard to say. What effect did that have on your own thinking and also the attitude of the political circles to the defence forces? It was interesting to see politicians suddenly asking military people ‘What if . . . ?’

DE: I do not want to sound as if I am saying ‘I told you so’ but we looked at it as an air force, and thought it confirmed what we had been saying for a long time. It did not really show us anything particularly new.

It showed us the vulnerability of ships to land-based air with the stand-off missile, like Exocet, which is only half as good as Harpoon which we are getting.

It shows the essential need for aircraft with all-weather and day-night capability which the Argentinians did not have. It showed the essential need for in-flight refuelling to extend their range and as I said to the then PM, Mr Fraser, when he called the chiefs of staff to discuss it, with the force we are developing, a fleet such as the British used in the Falklands could not exist within 500 miles of our shores and probably further.

I am totally confident of that – it just could not. The British would have to admit it too. They were lucky that they could keep those carriers far enough away from the Argentine aircraft yet close enough to get their Harriers in. The Harriers shot down a lot of aircraft. Most of them were Daggers anc:l not Mirages – which is a less capable version of the Mirage – basically the Mirage V.

It was not the Harrier, it was the AIM-9L missile that was the winner. That was what was getting them. You could have put it on almost anything. The Argentine aircraft were loaded with bombs -they were not there to engage in aerial combat, they were there to drop bombs and they showed a lot of guts. When they dropped their bombs they had just enough fuel to get home, without a litre to spare. They did not have time to try to fight Harriers, otherwise, they would not have made it back. And the Harriers were sitting there with AIM-9Ls.

They were lucky that the Argentinians did not have a more sophisticated air force. When you think what the Argentinians did with visual sights, in daylight, with iron bombs – a lot of which did not go off, the navy was very lucky. The very best combination against naval ships coming here -and we had it during the odd Rimpac exercise – is a coordinated attack by submarine and aircraft.

You drive them out of their minds. They are so worried about the fact that a submarine is there that an air attack at the same time is too much. We have six submarines and I believe we should have more. If we coordinate our tactics against an enemy and can do so in practice, giving him both things to worry about, then he has real worries.

JS: Some RN sources were quite adamant that the Invincible survived the RAAF attacks during exercises off the Australian coast last year. They admit missiles were launched by Orions, but at such a range that they could not positively identify individual ship targets. They also said no simulated missile came within 12 nm of the ship without being dealt with by various means.

DE: I suppose the only way we are going to prove that is by having a battle but I would be totally confident. We would not put one aircraft on. We would put half a dozen on. It is certainly true we cannot identify the carrier or capital ship but as I said, we go out and sink ships and go out again, and eventually get the carrier. Eventually, it will be the only one left if you are unlucky enough not to get it earlier.

We would look to putting against that sort of force, half a dozen F-111s with two Harpoons each, and then perhaps the Orion controlling it with four Harpoons. That is putting up a major problem with an attack like that from different areas at the same time. We would and can do it. You may get another story from the navy but that is mine and I believe it fervently.

JS: Would an AEW&C aircraft help in that situation?

DE: It could-except we will never have enough of them. It would be looking at that fleet from 100 miles or more and directing easier aircraft. We now do it with timing, each aircraft has its position around a circle with a time to start the run-in and a time for missile launch. The AEW&C would make sure, putting everyone in the right position and give them the go via data link. It would ensure accuracy and timing and be of great assistance.

You may have seen these cameras we want to get for the Canberra replacement – when we get it -that take good pictures at 80 miles. We can pass that immediately to the strike force if we can get some quick resolution of the film. I believe probably, in the next ten years, there will be ways of identifying any transmissions of any description from a fleet. If they do not transmit and turn on their radar they will never know anyone is there. If they turn their radar on it can be picked up ·by an Orion at 250 or 300 miles with a bit of luck if he is high. They have a dilemma, haven’t they?

JS: Hasn’t everyone?

DE: We all have, yes. But if they say they are going to go silent, they will not know anyone is there. I speak frankly and with absolute confidence, but I guess unless we have a war, no one is going to know.

I would hate to go against something like the USS Enterprise – although we have done it successfully with F-111s off the west coast of Australia, and in an earlier exercise off the east coast. We get the odd aircraft in -we lost a lot of aircraft too. I would hate to go against that sort of target because I know we would lose a lot. Even with proper stand-off weapons. But that is a different sort of target to an Invincible class Ship