Do some Blog Posting

Need an article on the purchase of the Joint Strike fighter from Australia's perspective. What is the official cost of the program and when can we expect realistic delivery of air craft? (initial costs are $17.7 billion for 72 fighters, but does not include ongoing costs beyond the day dot purchase. Will this also change?) After 17 years of development ,We have already gotten delivery of 2 aircraft but they are both grounded due to technical difficulties. Apparently they can not fly due to risk of exploding mid fight during electrical activity. According to Senetor Ludlam of the Greens, in Jan this year the Pentagon's director of operational and testing evaluation Dr Michael Gilmore produced an annual report that discussed the deficiencies of the Joint Strike Fighter F-35 Lighting II. 276 critical deficiency's in combat performances as critical to correct were identified. Is Australia better suited to scrapping the project and replacing its ageing f-18 Fleet with the F/A-18 Super hornet variant? Boeing are also developing an "advanced" super hornet. While not a true stealth fighter it will have a reduced radar signature over the current super hornet as well as have an upgraded avionics, payload, performance and advanced cockpit amongst other upgrades. There are talks that the US Navy is looking to operate the new advanced super hornet in conjunction with the F-35 anyway. To further cloud the debat,e with Russia and China both developing their own variants of gen 5 stealth capable fighters, they will also develop counter measures and better detection systems to defeat stealth capabilities meaning that the one true advantage the F-35 does have over the super hornet may be redundant in the near future. I am well read on the topic however lack the technical ability to put my thoughts to paper on this topic. What would the cost savings look like for Australia should we just upgrade to the super hornet. Should we just wait for the "advanced" super hornet? Would we need to operate more of the "growler" electronic warfare variants" of the f-18 to complement our future fleet? What are realistically the greatest threats to our air craft in any operating theatre? Does the stealth technology justify the price or will it become redundant therefore we are better suited to purchasing a weapon system that our pilots are familiar with, that is battle tested and cheaper? How does the super hornet match up to other advanced fighters in the region? . Can or should we call to have the project re tendered (I believe Canada has called for this to happen)? What can we do with the potential cost savings should we decide not to go ahead with the JSF?