When originally deployed into SEA during the tiff there, the loss rate in the first sorties flown was severe enough to get it withdrawn from the battle.
Thanks fdr.
This is from the top of my head from past material read and am happy to be out-googled by other armchair strategists. We can't go a page without the F111 being mentioned but these snippets a little unfair.
Yes, the trial deployment of F111's saw its withdrawal due wing-box failure and some unexplained crashes- possibly the radar used out of parameters on low level penetration missions into the North ( I trek and cave in the Laos/ Vietnam border region and anything below MSA must be terrifying ). Australia delayed its delivery too.
Before the RAAF took delivery in 1973, USAF F111's were flying with considerable success in the Christmas bombings and earlier Linebacker campaigns in 1972. They had losses but their missions were unescorted into an air defence area as sophisticated as Moscow's and with more anti-aircraft artillery batteries than Berlin 1945. In a murderous bombing campaign, perhaps they bombed a little more discriminantly too, than the carpet bombing by B52's and less specialized platforms.
I'm glad you presented Boyd. I wish more civilians in government knowledgable of his writings. Interestingly your comments about the development loop ring true with F35. In the RAAF's example we had a retiring AVM slamming governments wiring of the F18's for EW, stating it was a waste of money to have expensive jammers with a fleet of stealth aircraft. Now, there may well be evolving counters to the F35 whereby this Growler capability is necessary for its survival in some missions. The retiring AVM seems brash and simple on reflection, though his opinions could have left Australia considerably exposed. He was against the SH interim in total !
But the F111 may be the antithesis to Boyd. It's evolution and roles it played for the RAAF and USAF ( tank killing adaption in GW 1 for example) run counter to his thereoms. Even consider the F111 stand-in for the RAAF, the F4E, it required the RAAF to buy 48 F4E ( doubling the loaned fleet ) and a dozen out of production tankers to commit to the roles of the F111. So fundamental capabilities such as speed, new technology sensors and long range, were adapted quicker than say, the F4E capability of the day, or the F16's evolution toward a all weather multi-role from a simple day fighter.
As a maritime nation, submarines make for a compelling problem for any potential adverary.
A welcome drift. Submarines for Australia indeed. Should be nuclear of course but again the bogan debate for submarines over the years fails to use compelling historical evidence of their importance to our unique environment, more a case for them being diesel to placate the Left.
The compelling argument for airpower and submarines, the sea-air gap and Indonesian/ PNG archipelago, goes back 70 years to WW2. Battle of the Bismark sea with RAAF & USAF airpower and USN submarine operations and the sinking of Japanese convoys reinforcing New Guinea. The Take Ichi convoy is used as an example in naval institute press of two US submarines wiping out a Japanese infantry division without Allied loss ( interdicted in the Celebes Sea )- more Japanese losses here than direct combat losses on the Kokoda and Buna from Australian troops!
Nothing has changed- even the rise of China. China's trade and energy requires steaming on the Malacca Straits well before the South China Sea. A Chinese supertanker, following a blockade of this strait, has alternative choke-point routes, via Indonesia's Lombok and Sunda straits . Annex or invasion of Taiwan say, would see battles well beyond the Formosan straits, as China's starved of its trade and oil.
The positioning on the ADF with a push toward cutting-edge maritime and stealth airpower and the American repositioning to "training" bases in our north, suggests we are preparing to fight a war with China on the same seas as WW2. And the decision was made a fair while ago! Though recent published comments by former PM Paul Keating, to USN admirals, of a glug-glug scenario of allied surface combatants ending up at the bottom of the South China Seas, suggest misplaced geography in many quarters. The PLN in its modest blue water capabilities is no match for western stealth airpower and subs a long way from its ports in Hainan.