{"id":50848,"date":"2019-09-27T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T20:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=50848"},"modified":"2019-11-06T15:08:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T04:08:58","slug":"projecting-power-with-the-f-35-part-1-how-far-can-it-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/projecting-power-with-the-f-35-part-1-how-far-can-it-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Projecting power with the F-35 (part 1): How far can it go?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

One of the ironies of the current debate about how Australia should adjust its military strategy in light of the changing great-power balance in the Indo-Pacific is that many of the participants\u2014regardless of their views on the future of US military power\u2014make similar recommendations, namely, that Australia should seek greater defence self-reliance.<\/p>\n

This would be achieved by capability solutions based largely on \u2018more of the same\u2019. That is, to meet an increasingly uncertain strategic environment, our future force structure should be built around more of the things we already have, or are getting, such as F-35A joint strike fighters and submarines (even if some advocate different submarines from the ones we\u2019ll eventually get under the current plan).<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s important to understand those systems and their limitations to see what additional capability more of them would provide. Since Australia and its region are geographically far-flung, and we have only a small number of military assets, we\u2019ll focus on their ability to maintain a presence over large distances. The key question is, to what extent do the capabilities the Australian Defence Force is acquiring enable Australia to project power and what would further enhance that power projection?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll start with the F-35A. Defence is in the process of acquiring 72, with potentially some more down the track. The F-35A is now a very capable aircraft, but it still faces the old problem that, no matter how good a military platform is, it can\u2019t be in two places at once. And due to the inherent limitations of fighter aircraft, there are a lot of places they can\u2019t be at any time.<\/p>\n

Most Australians\u2019 experience of aviation involves getting on a passenger jet in a major Australian airport and getting off on another continent, say in Los Angeles, Dubai or Tokyo. But those kinds of ranges are vastly greater than what modern fighter aircraft can achieve. This is a characteristic of all fighters; the F-35A has pretty good range in comparison to its peers.<\/p>\n

The air force\u2019s website<\/a> lists the F-35A range at 2,200\u00a0kilometres, which is how far it can fly in a straight line. That doesn\u2019t get the aircraft from the RAAF\u2019s main fighter base at Williamtown in NSW to Perth (3,363\u00a0km) or Darwin (3,108\u00a0km). But since you want the pilot and aircraft to get home from the mission, its combat radius of 1,093\u00a0km is a more meaningful number than range.<\/p>\n

There are three radii that are useful to consider in the context of the F-35A: they are (roughly) 500\u00a0km, 1,000\u00a0km and 1,500\u00a0km. The one that is most appropriate depends on the mission and how many resources Defence is able to apply to achieve it.<\/p>\n

The \u2018owner\u2019s manual\u2019 radius of the F-35A is essentially 1,000 km<\/a> with a little margin built in to take into account real-world factors. What does that look like in the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific or the blue continent of the South Pacific? The map below is based on one developed by my ASPI colleague Malcolm Davis. The red rings represent the F-35A\u2019s combat radius operating from the six mainland airbases in Australia\u2019s north: Darwin, Townsville, Amberley, the bare bases at Curtin and Learmonth in Western Australia, and Scherger on Queensland\u2019s Cape York Peninsula.<\/p>\n

Figure 1: 1,000-kilometre combat radius from northern Australian bases<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

So, 1,000\u00a0km doesn\u2019t project very far out into the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific. It doesn\u2019t even get very far out into our South Pacific backyard. At least from our northern bases we can cover our immediate approaches. However, the RAAF couldn\u2019t operate all those rings simultaneously with the three squadrons on order (and a fourth made up of the Super Hornet, or whatever replaces it).<\/p>\n

But 1,000\u00a0km doesn\u2019t include fuel to stay on station, so while it may be helpful for understanding range for a strike mission (fly out, launch ordnance, fly home), it\u2019s not a useful number for missions where the aircraft have to loiter\u2014for example, protecting a deployed maritime or amphibious task force, or providing close air support to land forces. The more time on station, the less range.<\/p>\n

Moreover 1,000 km isn\u2019t necessarily a representative number for air-to-air combat in which fuel consumption increases exponentially as the aircraft accelerates to combat speed or uses afterburners. In short, an F-35A that flies out 1,000\u00a0km and fights enemy aircraft probably isn\u2019t going to make it home, so a 500\u00a0km combat radius might be more accurate when it comes to an air defence role or one that requires some time on station.<\/p>\n

Figure 2: 500-kilometre combat radius from northern Australian bases<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

That makes a big difference. There are now gaps between the red rings, even if we could operate in each of those rings simultaneously. And the longer you want the aircraft to loiter on station, the smaller that radius becomes.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it\u2019s difficult for the F-35A to sustain a continuous presence over any land mass outside of the continent, which means a maritime task force could only be protected if it was operating very close to the Australian mainland, or, in the case of an amphibious task force, if it was seeking to deploy its land component actually on Australian soil.<\/p>\n

Of course, this analysis doesn\u2019t take air-to-air refuelling into account. In part 2, I\u2019ll examine how tankers change the picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the ironies of the current debate about how Australia should adjust its military strategy in light of the changing great-power balance in the Indo-Pacific is that many of the participants\u2014regardless of their views …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":767,"featured_media":50851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,271,279,726],"class_list":["post-50848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-f-35","tag-force-structure","tag-raaf","dinkus-north-of-26-south","dinkus-projecting-power"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nProjecting power with the F-35 (part 1): How far can it go? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/projecting-power-with-the-f-35-part-1-how-far-can-it-go\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Projecting power with the F-35 (part 1): How far can it go? 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