In June 2002, former Prime Minister John Howard signed Australia up to the F-35 development program in a secret deal with the American manufacturer Lockheed Martin in a Washington hotel.
In April 2014, current Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Australia will buy 58 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) at a cost of more than $12.4 billion. It will cost another $12 billion to keep the fighters operational over their active lifetime. The 58 aircraft are an addition to the 14 F-35s Australia already had on order. This represents the largest military procurement in Australia’s history to date.
The purchase of the JSF has been plagued by controversy.
Criticisms of the JSF include:
- Its design defects, performance inferiority
- Cost overruns and incompatibility with future defence requirements
- Claims that Australia’s national security has been unduly influenced by the US alliance and corrupted by an ‘industrial-military complex’ interested in promoting the global arms trade.
The references below relate to all these aspects of the JSF controversy and more!
Greg Hoy, ‘Have Australians been manipulated over the purchase of new fighter jets?’, ABC 7.30 Report, 4 Sep 2014. (Transcript available – refer to Peter Goon’s comments in particular).
Jeremy Bender and Armin Rosen, ‘This Map Shows Why The F-35 Has Turned Into A Trillion-Dollar Fiasco’, Business Insider, 20 Aug 2014.
Ben Doherty, ‘F-35 Joint Strike Fighter purchase ‘a great national scandal says Coalition MP”, SMH, 16 Jun 2014.
Michael Byers, ‘Will the F-35 be another ‘Widow Maker’ for Canadian pilots?’, The Globe and Mail, 12 Jun 2014
Stan Correy and Alex McClintock, ‘Defence spending from the F-111 to the Joint Strike Fighter’, ABC RN ‘Rear Vision’, 18 May 2014. (Transcript available – refer to comments by Adam Ciralsky on ‘political engineering’ and Lockheed Martin especially).
Stephen L Jones, ‘The Joint Strike Fighter: is it the right aircraft for Australia?’, The Conversation, 28 Apr 2014.
ABC News, ‘Joint Strike Fighters: Government to spend $12 billion on 58 more next-generation F-35s’, 23 Apr 2014.
Michael Vincent, ‘F-35 Joint Strike Fighters: Australia’s biggest Defence acquisition ‘unaffordable’, US congressional committee hears’, ABC News, 23 Apr 2014.
Andrew Fowler and Clay Hichens, ‘Reach for the Sky’, ABC ‘Four Corners’, 18 Feb 2013.
Pierre Sprey, ‘The F-35 is a lemon’, The Fifth Estate, YouTube (published 10 Jun 2013).
Danny Nowlan, ‘Alarm from an Industry Professional over Australia’s involvement/ procurement of the F-35 Lightning – II Joint Strike Fighter’, Submission to Joint Standing Committee for FADT (Review of the Defence Annual Report 2010-11), 17 May 2012
Danny Nowlan, Open Letter: ‘Alarm from an Industry Professional over Australia’s Procurement of the F-35 Lightning – II Joint Strike Fighter’, 5 May 2012
ABC News, ‘Further troubles with Strike Fighter project’, 3 Dec 2011.
