From Tindal to a Top Gun
Aussie pilots hone skills
SQUADRON leader Darren Clare strides toward the flight line in the shimmer of the Arizona desert runway at Luke Air Force Base and as much to himself as to those around him, he muses aloud.
It is a long way from the skies of the RAAF base in Tindal, near Katherine.
“We’re getting there,” he says with a broad smile as half a dozen F-35 fighters peel out of their bays with a roar as he makes for his aircraft, emblazoned with the distinctive RAAF kangaroo roundel.
Just exactly where we are “getting” has been a question the Australian public and Federal Government has rightly been asking for years about the oft-maligned, budget-blown next-generation F-35 aircraft.
It’s been almost a decade since Australia ordered its first F-35 and at about $120 million each and 72 on order so far, it’s the biggest acquisition of its kind in Australian military history but is yet to see service in Australia.
But for Clare and his team of Aussie “Top Gun” flyers, the getting “there” is both metaphorical and physical.
“We have to pinch ourselves because we are here seeing this every day, line after line of F-35s and from an Australian point of view in Australia, it’s still a paper aeroplane in a way because we have only seen it at an air show,” the fighter boss set to lead the squadron to its new home in Australia said.
“Because it hasn’t been in Australia, people don’t have an appreciation … that’s a big thing for me. It will be great to get the aircraft back and say ‘here it is, it’s here, it’s real and the stuff you are worried about, it can do it and we have the people that can do it and fix it’.
“It is fifth generation and it is changing the way we do things.”
And that change is already happening but will go into mach speed when the first of the aircraft make the long-haul hop from Arizona to their new base in Williamtown, 30km north of Newcastle this December, via stops in Hawaii, Guam and Queensland.
The Sunday Territorian was granted rare exclusive access into the US Air Force’s 61st Squadron based at the sensitive high security Luke AFB where 40 RAAF pilots, engineers and other service men and women are quietly schooling in the F-35 to lead the aircraft’s much anticipated 2019 introduction into service.
The USAF squad, known as the Top Dogs, is effectively the Top Gun program and such has been the Aussie pilots’ success in graduating from their courses, they are themselves now being seconded to train young American pilots to fly the aircraft before Australia’s training program begins.
The F-35A Lightning II will take Australia’s air combat capability well beyond anything the F/A-18 variants have been able to achieve.
In fact, it will take capabilities beyond what any other nation currently has with unparalleled stealth features and a sophisticated suite of technology including almost nine million lines of software code, earning it the moniker “the flying computer”.
Detractors have pointed to a litany of US Government reports flagging issues with the aircraft including flying limitations but for the team of Australian Defence Force personnel learning to fly, arm, code and fix the aeroplane, the criticisms are misguided.