RAAF fighter buy stuns US
Sat "The Weekend Australian"
RAAF fighter buy stuns US
By Cameron Stewart
October 26, 2002
UNITED States defence giant Lockheed Martin has admitted to being "absolutely flabbergasted" when Australia said it wanted to buy its Joint Strike Fighter.
Lockheed executives in Texas told The Weekend Australian Magazine they had not expected Australia to make a decision for many years on a replacement for the RAAF's F-111 and F/A-18s.
"That was just amazing, it stopped everything in the room at the time," Lockheed's international programs director for the JSF, Mike Cosentino, said about Australia's surprise announcement in June. "This was our first international customer so it was a memorable day."
Lockheed's vice-president for business development, Mac Stevenson, said he was delighted but "absolutely flabbergasted" that Australia had chosen the JSF so quickly.
Defence Minister Robert Hill yesterday flew to Washington where he will sign a $300 million deal for Australia to join the design phase of the JSF, also known as the F-35.
Although the deal does not commit Australia to purchase the F-35, the Government says it intends to buy the yet-to-be-built plane which would enter service for the RAAF from 2012.
Worth more than $12 billion, the F-35 purchase will be the country's biggest ever arms deal.
The Weekend Australian Magazine has today retraced the inside story of how the deal came together.
It shows how the Australian Government aborted its own selection process and fell for the F-35 years ahead of time.
The Government was not due to choose a replacement aircraft for the F-111s and F/A-18s until 2005.
But the RAAF was seduced by the F-35 in only six months, telling Senator Hill in early June that it could not imagine a situation where it was not patrolling Australian skies.
Senator Hill agreed and suddenly closed down the competition for the country's most lucrative defence contract, leaving some of the world's largest arms-makers speechless and angry.
"It was a modern-day case of all the way with LBJ," said Mark Proctor, from the Swedish group SAAB which tried to sell its Gripen fighter to Australia. "I think they went further than they needed to for the sake of the strategic relationship with America."
Now rival arms-makers are asking whether either the US Government or Lockheed cut a special deal to convince Australia to choose its F-35.
The Government denies it was pressured to buy the F-35, saying the plane best suits Australia's needs and offers the best value for money.
But Lockheed's rivals are asking what happened when the Prime Minister visited President George W. Bush in Washington only two weeks before the surprise F-35 announcement,
During that visit, John Howard was given a private briefing in his hotel by executives from Lockheed.