The government’s 2020 defence strategic update provided refreshing clarity about Australia’s deteriorating strategic environment and the need for new military capabilities to address it. These include long-range strike capabilities to impose greater cost on potential great-power adversaries at greater range from Australia. The government also included a shopping list of those capabilities giving a broad outline of schedule and the scale of investment.
But there’s a big gap between where we are today and where we need to be, and the shopping list crosses that gap achingly slowly. In the vast reaches of the Indo-Pacific, range is crucial and the Australian Defence Force’s long-range strike cupboard is bare.
The F-35A has an effective combat radius of about 1,000 kilometres. That can be boosted to about 1,500 kilometres with the use of expensive and vulnerable tanker aircraft....MORE
