Sometimes you do need the old ute in the back yard for the low tech solution.
Ozbig, I think your comment - which I agree with 101% - can be transposed to the close air support mission. As I said in my earlier post, I can see we need a top shelf fighter as a 'big stick' to give potential adversaries pause, (as much at the political level as the military), I can also see the mission taskers being very averse to risking such valuable assets in close air support missions in a purely tactical environment, particularly since we will have so few of them.
(Stand by for a reduction in total numbers of JSF (or whatever we get) as the horse trading for dollars gets really intense between a half dozen equally vital programmes.)
I know the Hawk could provide some semblance (but only a semblance) of what I'm suggesting, but it has some major limitations. I can't help but think we've reached the stage where the RAAF could really use something specifically designed to be able to remain on station with a decent payload for more than a few moments.
(I can remember the days at Rocky where the Miracles could only provide a few minutes top cover over Shoalwater Bay and recover to Townsville so long as they didn't have to come down to low level to deal with any Orange Forces hostiles.) Maybe any such aircraft should also be able to operate from unprepared strips or even roadways as well.
I know the purse isn't particularly deep - it never has been for Defence in Australia - but I think it's time th 'bou was replaced. The long-suffering groundies were doing a Herculean job keeping them flying twenty years ago. God only knows how many rolls of speed tape they're going through every day nowadays.