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The lessons of the F-111 are pertinent to the F-35 acquisition debate. defence
Back to the future
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F-35 channels its inner F-111
No aircraft operated by the Royal Australian Air Force since its establishment almost 100 years ago has been more technologically challenging or politically controversial than the F-111C.
In particular, repeated catastrophic failures of the wing carry-through box – the structural component on which the aircraft’s variable-geometry wings pivoted – saw the program delayed and the aircraft grounded in the United States for months at a time. In 1970, during the fifth such occurrence in five years, The New York Times described the F-111 as the “biggest white elephant in the Pentagon’s zoo of horrors”, and Melbourne’s The Age suggested the aircraft was unlikely ever to become airworthy and, even if it did, it would be of “dubious” strategic value.
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