JSF second tranche plan may go into 2013

Australia's plans to buy a second tranche of 58 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft could be pushed out to 2013 or beyond.

The decision is not a major priority, against Defence Minister Stephen Smith's current focus on a potential gap in Australia's air combat capability after the retirement of the RAAF's 71 ageing F/A-18 Hornet aircraft.

"So in the course of this year, we will make a range of judgements ... about whether there's a risk of a capability gap and what steps we need to take," Mr Smith told the Australian Defence Magazine congress in Canberra.

Australia is presently committed to buying 14 advanced Lockheed Martin F-35 JSF aircraft and contractually obliged to take the first two in 2014.

The other 12 JSFs are scheduled for delivery between 2015 and 2017.

Mr Smith says the government has reached no conclusion about what to do if there is a capability gap between retirement of the F/A-18 Hornets and the delayed arrival of JSF.

However, adding more Super Hornets to the 24 now in service is an obvious option.

Mr Smith says the government needs to make a judgement about the timing of delivery of the next 12 JSF aircraft, but it is not a priority.

The Defence Capability Plan says approval for the next tranche of 58 aircraft was set for 2012.

Australia is planning to buy as many as 100 JSF aircraft to replace Hornet and F-111 aircraft and form the mainstay of the RAAF out to mid-century.

JSF has been criticised as likely to run late, cost too much and fail to deliver all the promised advanced capability.

The latest problem relates to what's termed concurrency, with the Pentagon's top procurement officer Frank Kendal declaring it a miscalculation to believe it possible to conduct aircraft production concurrent with the trials program.

That test program has highlighted a number of problems which could require expensive and time consuming design modifications. The US looks set to defer purchase of 179 aircraft.

Mr Smith says the US has devoted so much to this project that in the end it will be successful.

"The first risk from our perspective in my view has always been capability gap, by the scheduling. Secondly, of course there is a unit cost risk as well," he said.

Mr Smith says Australia has been sensible from the outset in opting only for the conventional landing and takeoff JSF variant.