The overly self-important Williams Foundation has blessed us with a proclamation about what Australia should do about the faulty F-35 program. Procurement should be delayed.
The independent Australian airpower thinktank the Williams Foundation has called for Australia’s acquisition of the F-35 JSF to be delayed to allow the aircraft to mature, in light of recent news that IOC (initial operating capability) for the US Air Force may now be as late as 2018.
This is the first bit of common sense to come from this organization on the topic. Mostly what you hear from them are mountains of unsupportable claims of how great the aircraft will be for the RAAF, even if it will end up being obsolete against the threat.
The rest of their language is worrying. I don’t know how you can keep a classic Hornet “world-class” through and past 2020.
“In the Williams Foundation’s judgment, it would be sensible to wait and see what happens with the F-35, while simultaneously investigating the cost of capability issues involved in maintaining the classic Hornet beyond 2020,” the organisation says in a statement. “An interim force structure based on Vigilair, JORN, Wedgetail, MRTT, AP-3C, C-17, 24 Super Hornets, and up to 71 classic Hornets would still be world-class for the next decade.”
That is a lot of targets that will be lucky to defend themselves if we get into a real war.
The Williams Foundation drags up the bizarre history of how the F-111 was procured for Australia in hopes of giving the impression that things will work out. My thoughts on that are to break out the Ouija board.
I don’t think the organization’s name-sake would be happy to be used in such a way.
As for the “independence” of the Williams foundation, there was a time when their urge to show their rent-seeking colours was more obvious. They used to have a web page linked off of their site that showed their sponsors. One of them—surprise–was Lockheed Martin. The page is still there in a semi-stripped form, and if you mouse-over the white area of the page you can see links demonstrating what was once their original independence before they became today’s independence.
So, the Williams foundation has finally stated one thing about the F-35 procurement process that is right. Kinda. Plans to procure the F-35 for Australia shouldn’t be delayed. They should be cancelled. The only way to fix this mess is to start over with a clean sheet of paper.
Reading the unsupported statements part gave me a good laugh this morning. Really what can you say about the JSF program being one year, or six months behind schedule. What priceless and incompetent drivel, its at least 5 years behind, and if we use the original SDD as a reference its even further behind then that!
Could it be that Dr. Feelgood of the “Laughington Institute” has a winter home in Australia at the Williams Foundation? Or is the same dirty money funding the same distribution of disinformation on the F-35?. The Lockmart mind altering Kool-Aid cup of snake oil is never empty, and a new “sucker” is born every minute.
Absolutely Australia needs to delay purchasing the JSF (forever) taking into account the horrible track record of this program to date.
On using legacy Hornets beyond 2020, they might want to look at what will be sailing Australian waters in the future before committing to that….
http://alert5.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/25_128433_76c4f0752786e061.jpg
Crank up the Wirraways.
Sorry the F35, how did I get that wrong?