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The Australian Tactical Fighter Force
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Australia is about to embark on the procurement of a new tactical fighter force (TFF). The purchase will be the largest single defence procurement program in Australia’s history; Its ultimate cost is likely to be more than $2 billion. The choice is of far-reaching and fundamental importance.
The ramifications of the enormous claim on defence resources will be quite widespread. The characteristics of the aircraft finally selected to replace the Mirage will affect, most immediately, the operating structure of the RAAF indeed, it will substantially determine that structure. But it will also have a considerable impact on Australia’s defence posture as a whole. Whether we acquire a relatively large number of “low” technology aircraft or a smaller number of more advanced technology; or the specific fighter mission which is optimised in the selected aircraft (almost certainly high altitude air-to-air combat) and the particular secondary mis- sions chosen (such as interdiction, ground attack and support, etc) the answers to these will critically affect the very strategy which governs Australia’s defence.
In addition to its intrinsic importance, the TFF decision is probably also the most complex weapons system procurement and force structure decision to have faced Australia’s defence planners and decision-makers. For one thing, there were originally more than 20 potential contenders for the TFF, each with their own particular design philosophies, and each optimised for one or more of a variety of different missions, enormously complicating the decisional act. There is the difficulty of specifying either a particular threat to Australia or the nature of any conflict in which we might ultimately be embroiled. There are the new strategic considerations involved in Australia’s basic national security policy which itself, while clearly being a retreat from “forward defence” towards the “defence of Australia”, remains somewhat undefined and inchoate. There is a revolution currently underway in the technology of conventional weaponry, much of which is directly applicable to issues of tactical air power but the implications of which are yet to become fully clear. And there is an escalation in the costs of front-line fighter platforms and their avionics and weapons systems which casts severe doubt on the future affordability of tactical air forces.
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