Fed: Govenrment reportedly considering shelving F-111s

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Fed: Govenrment reportedly considering shelving F-111s

By Max Blenkin, Defence Correspondent

CANBERRA, Aug 5 AAP - Australia's controversial F-111 strike bombers are reaching theend of their life and a review of the Defence Capability Plan later this year may decidethey are too expensive to keep.

A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Robert Hill said the current Defence CapabilityPlan (DCP) called for the F-111s to remain in service to 2015-2020.

"Unless and until the government changes that plan, that still stands," she told AAP.

"We are doing a review of the DCP. We have said there may need to be some changes inlight of changes to the strategic environment.

"That has some months to run before it gets to cabinet. We wouldn't speculate on anysuggestions or options that may be coming from defence. But it would be a mistake to reachconclusions either way at this stage."

The Australian newspaper today reported the F-111s could be retired as early as 2006under a defence submission to the DCP review.

Australia ordered 24 F-111s off the drawing board in 1963 but the first did not arriveuntil June 1973. A further 15 surplus US aircraft were acquired in 1993 to make up losses.

Thirty-five remain in service.

No other aircraft on earth matches the F-111 for long range low level strike capabilityand they form a key part of Australia's order of battle.

But the F-111s are not stealthy by today's standards and they are becoming increasinglydifficult and expensive to maintain.

"I am confident that we can, given sufficient funding ... get the aircraft throughto the end of the decade," air force chief Air Marshal Angus Houston told a Senate estimatescommittee in June.

The RAAF's problem is that the service life of the F/A-18 Hornets expires about 2015.

But the proposed new Joint Strike Fighter won't be available until around the same time.

An interim solution would be to lease aircraft, as the RAAF did with a squadron ofF-4 Phantoms in the early 1970s following delays in arrival of the F-111s.

Dr Alan Stephens, of the RAAF Air Power Studies Centre, said the F-111 was likely tobe paid off sooner rather than later.

"It is being done for reasons of money," he said on ABC radio.

"The assessment that there is no external threat to the Australian continent for 15years is the context for it, tied into the perceived need to support the internationalwar against terrorism.

"There is just not enough money to go round. Something has go to give in the defence budget."

Dr Stephens said the F-111 was the single most important air capability the AustralianDefence Force ever possessed.

"For 30 years it has generated a unique deterrent effect in the Australian region," he said.

"The question has to be - can we forgo this deterrent effect at the expense of divertingmoney towards some kind of other capability."

AAP mb/sb/cd/jlw

KEYWORD: F111S DAYLEAD