Just 10 Hornets to get $11m new lease of lifeAugust 30, 2008
ONLY 10 of the RAAF's ageing Hornet fighter-bombers will be rebuilt, with all 71 retired by 2018, a parliamentary committee has been told.
The Defence Department initially considered, based on the understanding of Hornet fatigue life, rebuilding as many as 49 aircraft, the head of aerospace systems within the Defence Materiel Organisation said.
The upgrade, which involves replacing the aircraft's entire fatigue-prone centre body section, known as the centre barrel, will be conducted in Canada rather than at RAAF Williamtown, NSW, where most Hornets are based.
"We are waiting on a report at the moment but we are looking at something not much more than, if any more than, 10 centre barrels," Air Vice-Marshal Clive Rosser told parliament's joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade.
The rebuild will cost about $11 million for each aircraft because they need to be stripped down in Australia and air-freighted to Canada.
The RAAF presently operates 71 F/A-18 Hornets, which began entering service in the mid-1980s. Operational aircraft have been upgraded progressively with new weapons, sensors and mission systems.
The RAAF intends retiring its elderly F-111 strike bombers from 2010 before new Lockheed F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighters start entering service about 2015.
To ensure there's no capability gap between retirement of the F-111s and arrivals of JSF, Australia will acquire 24 Boeing Super Hornet aircraft with the first arriving in 2010.
Before this decision, it had been planned to upgrade the first 10 Hornets overseas and then establish the capability to perform this work in Australia, Air Vice-Marshal Rosser said.
That would have involved a joint project by Boeing and BAE Systems with significant investment in technology and skilled workers.
"We collectively determined that we could not do it without significant risk and we weren't prepared to take that risk on when there was a viable alternative," he said.
It might have made sense to do this work in Australia for 49 aircraft, but not now for only 10.
Source
http://www.theage.com.au/national/just-10-hornets-to-get-11m-new-lease-of-life-20080829-45ri.html
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