It’s taken some two decades but finally the US is recognising that the Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, is a failure. The aircraft also ordered by Australia can perform limited roles but the dream of the JSF leading western world air defence is in tatters.
Accordingly the US Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability office now recommends that the future US fleet of F-35s should be reduced from 1763 to 1050. That’s a way of adjusting for a failure but not officially announcing it.
By contrast Christopher Miller, who was acting US secretary of defence from November 9 2020 to January 20 2021, pulled no punches and declared the JSF/F-35 “a piece of shit”. I am grateful to David Archibald writing in the Wentworth magazine for the above information.
My long-suffering readers know that I have been writing about the problems of the Joint Strike Fighter for more than 15 years. I am very sad to have been proved right.
Not being an aircraft expert I have relied on the incredible research work of Air Power Australia and its leaders Peter Goon and Carlo Kopp. They analysed the Joint Strike Fighter situation so much better than defence officials and ministers, enabling me to alert the nation to the truth.
The JSF/F-35 disaster is far more serious the we realise. The reason why we got the JSF so wrong is that our military equipment purchasing systems are simply not working. It’s true the JSF F-35 can be used for activities like launching cruise missiles. It also has very good software that can detect an approaching enemy and no doubt there are functions that have been withheld for security reasons.
The purchase decisions made in the early part of 2000 - under which Australia is eventually expected to get 72 JSFs - were on the basis that the JSF would maintain Australian air superiority in the region. But in 2021 any country in the region which is using Russian or Chinese top aircraft and is buttoned into their systems will have air superiority over Australia. The list of countries moving in that situation includes Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Countries in the region now simply can’t rely on Australia providing the air defence of previous decades. Australia has to hope that the Biden administration gets its equipment act together and stands with us. Without the US, in any future conflict with our neighbours using the top Chinese and Russian aircraft, Australian JSF pilots will not return.
Sadly we also know the JSF/F-35 is not an isolated mistake and we have made a series of other blunders, led by the tragic $220 billion plus submarine adventure. At least with the JSF America was in favour of the aircraft, but on the submarine issue they think we are mad.
How on earth did we get into this mess? Back in the post-World War II 20th century, we had a superb defence equipment operation.
Then, in 1999, the then secretary of defence Paul Barratt and his defence equipment chief Gary Jones fell out with the then defence minister John Moore. It appears Barratt was an enthusiast for the Collins class submarine whereas Moore saw its failure as a political tool to attack former defence minister Kim Beazley. Barratt and Jones were sacked but they were right --- the Collins class submarine had some early problems but ended up being a superb submarine.
The sacking of two of Australia’s best public servants over such an issue sent a chilling message through the whole defence establishment. Future defence ministers now had far more power but in the 20 years that followed we have had 10 defence ministers. The superb team that Barratt built up scattered. Many of those who made later equipment decisions had good battle experience but not were not project engineers and were easily misled. And once they made a decision they would never retreat even when it was clear they were wrong.
I remember first talking to Air Power around 2014. Earlier, with the help of an arm of Lockheed Martin (not the arm that was in favour of the JSF), they had put to Defence a brilliant plan for Australian air defence.
Australia would update its F-111 aircraft and make an appeal to the US to buy the brilliant F-22. Had we asked the US, it would almost certainly have agreed. But we went with the JSF, with tragic consequences.
Almost from day one of the JSF the defence misinformation and half-truths started. For example, Defence hoped to have the aircraft by 2010. Air Power explained to Defence that was not possible and that 2020 was more likely. .And then came the long lists of faults and problems with the aircraft. That list is still long and the cost of JSF operation is so high that its flying is minimised.
In the submarine project we rejected the advice from our naval board of advice and entered into an arrangement where the US provides the combat system and the French design the submarine, but the two groups don’t trust each other. The great French promises have not been honoured.
I suspect that there are other equipment blunders to be revealed.
More Coverage
Australian businesses ‘need policy support to take on US’
Wesfarmers chief executive Rob Scott has warned Australia must lift its performance in the face of competitive pressure from the new pro-business Trump administration.
AI’s making waves, but jobs at home just a trickle
More than 1000 advertised artificial intelligence-related roles have disappeared from jobs boards over the past two years, a fall of 35 per cent.