Personally, I would fully agree with a decision to retire the F-111s
early. It currently costs over $300 million a year to maintain them.
This is clearly a huge chunk out of our Defence Budget and we do not
get value for money. Spending more to upgrade them to enable their
operation in high intensity theatres of combat - as someone like Carlo
Kopp may argue - would be a waste. F-111 supporters keep talking about
the range advantage conferred by the aircraft. But the reality is no
aircraft will become available now or in the next 20 years that will
confer a similar advantage. We might as well replace the F-111 now
with possibly 40-50 F/A-18E/Fs to equip two operational squadrons. We
could then cut the existing three F/A-18 squadrons back to two to
ensure that our fleet of that aircraft survive to the introduction of
the F-35. At the very least if we are to retire the F-111 early we
should acquire surplus early-model US F/A-18s to equip a fourth
operational squadron. Retiring the Pigs without at least a partial,
temporary replacement would be too much of a degrading of our
capabilities. Of course, another issue is that to make up for the
lesser range of new aircraft we will need more refuelling aircraft
than the 3-5 we are currently planning to buy. The replacement for the
C-130H should be a new aircraft with dual tanker / air lift
capabilities - Airbus may have the running on this one.