David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few remarks to support the chair of the references committee, Senator Gallacher. I too confer that, certainly in the short to medium term, the joint strike fighter, the F-35A is an aircraft that Australia should be investing in. There is nothing that appears to be on the market or available to Western nations in the near to medium term that will provide the capabilities this aircraft is promising to offer. That does not mean in my mind that we should not have a healthy degree of scepticism about promises made, particularly in the medium to longer term, about its ability to continue to defeat threats in our region. I note that those threats will continue to evolve, particularly as other nations who may be peer competitors in an air combat space develop their ability to very precisely target the characteristics of the aircraft that are marketed as being its key strength—that being stealth—and also its ability to assimilate and disseminate significant amounts of data to increase the situational awareness of the entire combat packet, which is undoubtedly a force enabler but also introduces significant failure modes in the whole system.

I maintain the position I have had for some time—that, while Australia should continue its involvement in this program, we should not be aiming for a situation where we have an air combat capability which is completely reliant on the one aircraft type. At the moment, we have the Super Hornet and the Growler, which is planned to be held as a second platform type. I believe that into the future Australia should maintain a multiplatform fleet to provide some redundancy, some options, because, as we have seen with this aircraft as it goes through what is still a developmental phase, there have been single-point failures where the entire fleet has been grounded because of one issue.

Australia needs to maintain its options, in particular around the sovereign capability to do design support and engineering work. Clearly, we will never build the entire aircraft here, but we need to retain the capability in our engineering workforce to understand issues such as fatigue and how to do appropriate risk assessment. If there is a repair scheme, a software update or some other element of the technical airworthiness of the aircraft that the OEM or, indeed, the global support network for the aircraft cannot supply, either in the time frame that we need or with the priority effort to areas that are important to us, then we need to be able to make informed, risk based decisions for the Air Commander as to whether or not he can continue to deploy that platform in combat operations.

That takes me in part to the Defence Industry Policy Statementand how it should apply to something like the Joint Strike Fighter platform. I think Air Force and Defence are wisely embedding both civilian and uniformed engineers into organisations such as the joint program office in the States, but I make the point that, as we have more and more aircraft in our fleet which are reliant on a design support network overseas, we will not have the breadth of positions to take young graduates from university and give them the hands-on training needed to take them from a qualified person to a competent person in the field who can do those engineering activities. If we aim to be a smart customer and a smart operator of the Joint Strike Fighter into the coming decades then we need to make sure that we not only procure the aircraft but provide the training opportunities for young engineers to become competent in the role. We will never find enough places to embed people in either the United States air force or with the OEM, so we need to find other possibilities for that.

That brings me back again to the Defence Industry Policy Statement. If we accept the fact that air combat capability has a fundamental input to it, which is design engineering, then rather than looking at this program in isolation and looking at other programs—for example, something like the replacement for the training aircraft, the PC-9, in isolation—Defence has the opportunity, in fact the obligation, to look at that fundamental input to capability from a programmatic perspective. It should say, 'If we do not have enough places within the Joint Strike Fighter program to provide this training and development of competence for our young engineers then there is no logical reason, in terms of combat capability, with something like the PC-9 replacement for us not to hold a systems program office or do that engineering effort.' The rationalist approach to procuring that aircraft would be: let the OEM or another contractor do it by power by the hour for the aircraft, rather than doing it from an Australian sovereign perspective.

But if we take the programmatic perspective, perhaps this is actually the lowest cost and most effective way to provide training opportunities for young engineers, who can develop an understanding of structures, power plants, engines, airframes, avionics and systems which they can then transfer into our combat capability such as the Joint Strike Fighter. That is the kind of opportunity that the Defence Industry Policy Statement provides, and I would certainly encourage Defence, as they look to making sure that we have the sovereign ability to operate this aircraft into the future, to take the opportunities to grow that workforce.

My final comments are on the test and evaluation for this platform. My background is as an experimental test pilot in the military and I am aware that many people fall victim to the conspiracy of optimism. If there were one program in recent military aviation history that has had many people fall victim to a conspiracy of optimism it would be the Joint Strike Fighter program. Too much reliance has been placed on modelling, computer simulations, glossy brochures, marketing programs and unrealistic expectations and not enough focus has been placed on engagement in test and evaluation. I am pleased to see that there has been an increased focus on test and evaluation but I maintain the position, which I have put to Defence on many occasions, that Australia needs to invest more in the people we have engaged, not only in operational test and evaluation as the aircraft starts to be fielded but in making sure we have engineers and aircrew who are involved in the development and certification flight test activities. That is where we will develop the necessary deep understanding of any flaws, failures, weaknesses or strengths in the system. We can then adapt that understanding to our doctrine, procedures and tactics so that we can exploit the capabilities and compensate for any deficiencies in the system to maximum effect.

The US Office of the DOT&E has highlighted a number of areas where there are ongoing concerns with the rate of progress through the T&E program. When I hear people talking about thinning out the number of test points in order to meet schedule, my background means I become nervous about the quality of the final clearances that are achieved. Again, I would encourage Defence to make strategic and investments into test and evaluation so that we are not just a receiver of what another country wishes to give us but active participants gaining information and access to raw data so that we can make our own analysis of what it is telling us about the capabilities of the platform.

I commend the report to the Senate. The program is something we should continue with. It is, for the short to medium term, the most likely aircraft to meet our air combat capability needs. But I would make those three points again: we should expect to need a multiplatform fleet into the future; we should expect that the threats in our region and beyond will evolve and that the core characteristic of this platform may no longer, in the medium to long term, be the bulwark that it currently is advertised to be against emerging threats; and that we need to use the opportunities presented by the Defence Industry Policy Statement to develop sovereign capability, both in our industry and among our uniformed and civilian defence personnel, in particular in the design support and engineering network, to assure the continuing airworthiness and combat capability of this platform into the future.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.