In 1963 the Australian Government ordered the F111 at the then astronomical cost of $112 million with the final cost a decade later being 324 million. It has been the best bang for the buck purchase Australian has made in defence. Like all good deterrents it will be retired without being used in anger.

The JSF will replace the F18/F111 in Australia's armoury and is facing potential cost increases from about $47 million USD per unit to $60 million . We will face a capability gap with the early retirement of the F111, which has led some to promote the F22 over the JSF . We are not the only ones in this position, the USMC is running up airframe hours on their aircraft in Iraq and have no replacement until the JSF comes on-line.

Then there are those, like the Cato Institute, who advocate the JSF being the last manned aircraft and instead focusing on cheaper alternatives like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [UAVs]. But the American experience with UAVs is that they are more expensive than manned ones to operate. They carry the same infrastructure and maintenance costs - but with added labor costs.

Where a pilot comes back from a mission, rolls the manned-aircraft into a hanger, eats dinner and goes to bed; with a UAV the operators run in three shifts to keep the UAV in the air longer. Labor and maintenance costs make up a large chunk of the defence budget anyway and a UAV adds to that.

Big money, big tech ... it is going to be an expensive exercise no matter what.

And then you see really cool technology like this .

A pretty neat little citizen UAV flying over a local golf course in Canada. We commoditise technology so quickly now it removes the nation-state's traditional advantage of capital intensive technologies - especially in military areas. The 4th Edition of the Fundamentals of Australian Aerospace Power notes;

The potential for non-state actors to utilise aerospace assets in a provocative but effective military manner in the future was demonstrated by two associated events in the past.

The first was the flight of an Australian UAV across the Atlantic in 1998. The UAV ... was launched from a roof rack in Canada, and landed at its programmed site on the Benbecula Range in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. The crossing involved flying a distance of 3270 kilometres in a time of 26 hours and 45 minutes.

Satellite imagery for the period of the flight indicated that [it] was in moderate to heavy rain for 14-18 hours, or well over half the entire flight. In undertaking its mission, [it] used only six litres of fuel.

Some of the significant military factors of this achievement were the austere launch platform, the accuracy achieved in reaching the target landing site, and the fact that the aircraft had a five kilogram payload.

Commercial satellites are coming down in cost too, to the ten million dollars mark - well within the range of wealthy individuals and non-state actors.

x-posted at clubtroppo

More Reading on F111

• F111
• UAV
• Technology
• The Austral-Asian Strike Fighter
• Australian Power Projection
• Commoditising High Cost Technology
• F111s in the Tucson Boneyard
• 6 Sqn Australian Flying Corps to 6 Sqn RAAF