Inside the RAAF: To the Super

‘‘I thought, under no circumstances am I going to tolerate or allow to be tolerated on my watch the prospect that we carry a gap in air combat capability. The obvious choice was the Super Hornet” – Dr Brendan Nelson

The final four Australian Super Hornets arrived at their new home at RAAF Base Amberley on October 21 2010 after a long trans-Pacific delivery flight from St Louis. The event was commemorated with a spectacular 20-ship formation flypast over Brisbane, whose residents turned out in their thousands to witness the unprecedented spectacle. The event marked the remarkably successful completion of Phase 1 of AIR 5439 – the acquisition of a Bridging Air Combat Capability (BACC) for the RAAF.

Remarkably, this program had delivered an entirely new, generation 4.5 modern combat capability to the RAAF’s Air Combat Group in just 36 months.