The myth of the Howard Government's defence competence

This has been shown categorically in the groundbreaking book National Insecurity - The Howard Government's betrayal of Australia published earlier this year and, more recently by the Four Corners documentary Flying Blind, which screened on Australian TV on October 29.

F111 and air supremacy

Flying Blind showed how Prime Minister Howard and his Defence Minister Brendan Nelson have scandalously mismanaged the procurement of replacements for Royal Australian Air Force's (RAAF) ageing, but still capable, fleet of F111 fighter bombers.

The F111’s are due to be replaced by the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), but the original decision to purchase the JSF was made counter to all well-established defence force equipment procurement procedures. In June 2002 during a visit to the US, aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin made a presentation to the Prime Minister in his hotel room. During the presentation John Howard suddenly agreed to purchase the fighter that was still on the drawing board at a projected cost of $16 billion. According to National Insecurity, he agreed so quickly that even senior Lockheed Martin executives were 'flabbergasted'. "That was just amazing, it stopped everything in the room at the time", said Lockheed's international programs director for the JSF, Mike Consentino, about Australia's surprise announcement. "This was our first international customer so it was a memorable day".

The JSF, however, may not be ready until 2018, and it appeared that the service lives of the F111's and FA18 Hornets were to have been extended with modifications and the use of an abundant supply of cheap spare parts.

This ran counter to the plans of another aircraft manufacturer Boeing, who had seen an opportunity to sell its Super Hornet, for which it was having difficulty finding customers.

At first, the Air Force was not interested in the Super Hornet, but after an F111 wing had cracked during a maintenance test, the new Defence Minister Brendan Nelson seized upon this to convince Cabinet that the Super Hornet was necessary, at a cost of $6.6 billion. It was subsequently found that the crack in the F111 wing had only been caused as a result of a fault in the test design. Professor Hugh White (Deputy Secretary of Defence, 1995-2000) told Four Corners that he could not "recall in Australia decisions of this magnitude ... being made so quickly on such a slender basis of advice".

The Hornet is markedly inferior to its likely adversaries in the region which would include the new Russian built Sukhoi 30's with which the air forces of Indonesia, Malaysia, China and India are soon to be equipped. Retired Air Vice Marshall Peter Criss said to Four Corners, "I cannot believe that we would waste $6.6 billion of the taxpayer’s money on an aeroplane that has no practical use against any modern, new generation fighter coming into our arc of interest to our north".

As a consequence of these decisions, Australia stands to lose the regional air supremacy that allowed it to safeguard the independence of East Timor from Indonesia in 1999.

The decisions to buy the JSF and the Super Hornet are not the only questionable defence equipment procurement decisions made by the Howard Government in recent years.  Others include:

The M1 Abrams tank

In 2004 Australia agreed at a cost of $539 million to purchase 59 second-hand Abrams M1A1 main battle tanks to replace Australia's current fleet of 100 German-built Leopard tanks purchased by the Whitlam Government in 1974. Due to the necessity having US contractors service the Abrams, rather than domestic contractors, only around 30 are expected to be operational at any one time. In contrast to the life expectancy of the Leopard, which have so far been operational for 25 years, they are expected to last only 10 years.