Tuesday, September 23, 2008

New fighter jets not so good?

A Federal Opposition MP is demanding the Government's plans to buy joint strike fighters be put on hold, saying there are serious concerns about the aircraft.

Dennis Jensen says there are reports the fighter jets were soundly beaten by Russian jets in a United States exercise.
More.

Old news.

5 comments:

Minicapt said...

Well, the exercise was part of "Red Flag" and the Russian fighters were the Su-30s of the Indian Air Force. And the Indians were sorely tried during the exercise.

However, the F-35 JSF is still being tested and will not join the "Red Flag" exercises until after 2010 at the earliest.

Dr Jensen was, to put it very mildly, misinformed.

Cheers
JMH

kae said...

You know, Mini, I should go looking for a link for that.

steveH said...

In addition to the Red Flag exercises, there was a U.S./Indian exercise a while back pitting U.S. fighters against Russian-designed Indian-flown opponents.

The Indians did *very* well.

Which was expected, due to the rules of the exercise, where the U.S. was disallowed use of airborne early warning assets, restricted rules of missile engagement, and various restrictions on the number of players on each side per engagement.

In a real fight, the two sides would never have closed to visual range.

But it was good practice for all concerned.

kae said...

Hi Steve
I think I heard of the Indian exercise and the Russian planes - I don't think that the levelling of the playing field was spoken of in the news report...
Hmm, I've found this today:
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200809/s2371259.htm?tab=latest

Skeeter said...

According to some old air force buddies, the F-22 is the only one that will provide our defence, once the F-111 is gone.
The problem with the F-35 JSF is the "Strike" part. It will be effective in a strike role, but who among our politicians and commanders will ever order a (pre-emptive) strike on a potential enemy. What we need is air superiority in the region to prevent an attack on Australia.
Only the F-22 can do that over the vast airspaces involved.
Anyway, it's all becoming a bit academic because the last I heard was that President Obama wants to pull the plug on the whole F-22 project. It will then be a case of the enemies having air superiority and the West can stop worrying about defence.