Australia has no publicly stated intention of buying F-35Bs, just like it had no such intention of buying C-17s, Growlers, and M1A1.

Ah.. sorry wrong… 12 of the Super Hornets were ordered prewired to convert to Growlers. The intension was there from the start.

There was no intension on the C-17 but when the time came to go to Iraq and Afghanistan they realised hiring An-124s and IL76s all the time was costly.

The M1A1 weren’t a shock really as the army needed a new tank, so they bought those pieces of 2nd hand crap and have paid for it ever since.
(And the issues with those is numerous).

I understand they have/had a contract with the Navy to provide refueling. I used to see them quite often, a couple years ago, flying out of Oceana. Havent seen them in a year or so.

Omega were in Australia on a semi-regular basis while the new airbus tankers were still being built and tested.
I believe Omega bought 2 (?) ex RAAF 707 tankers…

The only re-engine job I could see possible for F-5 airframes is to pull a ‘Tigershark’ conversion to an F125-derived motor rather than an F404. The one engine could be more powerful than two J85-21’s. Then you would still want something like the Vixen 500E in the nose. Grifo is fine for its current task, so no need to change the current choice in the program. You could drop down to a single 20mm, which offhand I believe the current upgrade did. But heck, now we may want to increase the intakes, which then you have major body work. So you probably compromise with minimal changes to the body and end up less than idea airflow for the engine.
.

Or you could get those dusty F-20 plans out and start building all new airframes??? 😀
Other the Gripen there is no real small “fighter” out there other then dressed up jet trainers.

Hi All,
Berkut & 19kilo10 just found this link to the picture with a tiny bit of history about it :eagerness:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=227981

Those crazy Aussies again :highly_amused:

Geoff.:D

Well that photo is a new one, dunno if its faked or not… but

or this one…

I would say anything is possible.

Ill vote yes for the AN-22…..

but ill raise you all with an AN-225…..

This might be a stupid question, but were they by any chance able to use their nozzles to vector thrust to increase turn rate in given situations? In any case I guess it might affect relative wind, AoA and load factor a little bit.

It was said that it was used in the Argentine war…known as VIFFING

Vectoring nozzles can also be used for Vectoring In Forward Flight or “viffing”, e.g. a rapid braking allowing a chasing fighter jet to overtake thus bringing itself into the range of forward firing weapons. Viffing was used to great effect during the Anglo-Argentinian Falklands War, where 28 Royal Navy and 6 RAF jets did not incur any losses in dogfighting against a force of more than 200 Argentine Air Force jets. The Harrier Jump Jets in question were subsequently referred to as ‘The Black Death’ by the Argentinian pilots. Viffing also allowed a much tighter turn in combat manoeuvres, although there is little evidence to suggest that it was regularly taught to pilots, as the loss of airspeed could make the aircraft vulnerable to attack.

The Growlers are new build airframes… the government had aready made an expression of interest about 4 months ago to the US about 12more airframes.
There was a thread about this if you search back a bit.

Its a bit odd as we already have 12 prewired, why not convert those ones and get 12 more standard super hornets? Or woud it just cost too much to remove the gun etc??

The other sad bit (oh no dare i mention it because ill see the usual mornic replies from the usual suspects) is that they have committed themselves to keep buying the F35… oh lord