Harzit, SA? Mate do you know Dr Rudi?

Street Fighter up the top there is actually the former RAN vessel HMAS Jervis Bay ARK-45

We also had two Bay class Inshore Mine Hunters as mentioned above:

HMAS Rushcutter (MHI-80)

HMAS Shoalwater (MHI-81)

These ships differed slightly in their design and their mission packages were stored in containers on the upper aft deck, at the time (early 80’s) they used the latest in mine hunting remote robotics, sadly this proved unreliable and with the ships being top heavy they weren’t good in rough swells. They have now both been retired and sold off to private industry (both becoming passenger ferries).

I was reading an old book “Australia’s Armed Forces of the Eighties” and in it it has a spiel about these vessels including the reserved names and numbers should the project have proven a positive one, they were going to be; Westernport MHI-03, Discovery MHI-04, Esperance MHI-05 and Melville MHI-06

The Thai carrier hasn’t put to sea in a long time and has only once had the Harriers aboard, and that was on the delivery voyage. We passed it in the Indian Ocean on it’s way home and I remember the skipper asking what the hell the Spanish were doing here and why they had shrunk their carrier. Then we saw the Harriers and thought something was up because they weren’t in typical Spanish markings. After putting into Mombassa did we learn they i was the Thai carrier and we were one of the few to actually see the harriers flying.

Well that is the same gripe I’ve heard, the engines are very lacking but yes I have heard about the role rates and how good they are. What if the RoCAF bought EJ-200’s or even redundant RB-199’s? Would that help? I don’t know if the EJ-200’s would be sold to them, but there are a number of RB-199’s about to hit the market.

What I would like to know is, with the experience gained from the Ching-Kuo, will AIDC be designing and building the next plane that will replace it and if so will the RoCAF accept it?

From all that I have read, the plane has basically been a flop in service but was a good excercise for the industry who had never done this before.

Australia hasn’t made any military aircraft in a long time mate, the last military plane it made was the N-22 and N-24 Nomads/ Searchmasters! All planes since then have been kits supplied from over seas companies.