Personally Burger, I think your sitting on your brain yet again. There is nothing wrong with the Raf, nor the Super Etendards, and those Saders did well to last as long as they did!
IIRC the hornet had problems operating from Foch due to the short take off area! The hornet was lucky to have a second chance at life via the USN/USMC
pros: Low rcs, good range, cheap to operate, very cheap to make, bubble canopy, enemy cannot detect it’s radar.. I mean good gosh, it is the ultimate aircraft.
Burger if you are looking for a good plane to match these requirements, why not go back to the Sopwith Camel? They’d be far cheeper again 😛
Currently Australia has 19 P-3C/AP-3C’s and three TAP-3C plus two instructional airframes permanantly grounded. When these are replaced the new MMA, which ever one is chosen, will not be replacing all of them with one new type, thus a reduced order for this role.
The RAAF will be buying RQ-4 Globalhawks in 2006 as well as having the Wedgtails which will have a ground control capability (though not as complex as the E-8’s nor the ASTORS). The current amount of MMA’s that we’re looking at to buy is around 14 toreplace the 24 Orions that we currently have, at that’s not slotted in untill 2015 at least!
Mate it’s in Darwin, tucked up with a few nice things in there, as you can see there is one of our old Wessex 32B’s there and a really nicely painted MU-2!
Good news indeed, Is there a clause that states that they have an option to buy during or after contract termination? If they decided to buy them will they buy more or will they opt for something else after the lease period is over?
Personally I can’t think of anything cheaper that conforms to NATO standards.
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