$12 billion for 58 planes? WTF?

This has been in the pipeline for a while, but you'd think with the gov line that Australia is on the verge of economic collapse, there would then be some consideration given to reducing such a huge expenditure on a few war planes.

Australia will make one of its biggest ever military purchases with a $12 billion order for 58 Joint Strike Fighters in a move that will lift the nation's air combat power to among the world's most advanced. 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott will announce the planned purchase in Canberra on Wednesday, confirming that Australia will join the United States and a select few other countries in adopting the fifth-generation stealth fighter as the backbone of its air combat power. 

On top of the two fighters that Australia has already paid for, and a further 12 that have been ordered, the large new purchase will deliver the Royal Australian Air Force three squadrons of the planes and cement its place as the dominant air power in the region. 

The government is keeping open the option of buying another squadron of up to 24 fighters, taking Australia's fleet of the cutting-edge planes close to 100. 

The first Joint Strike Fighter – also called the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II – will be delivered in 2018 and begin service with the RAAF in 2020. Read more

That's getting up to almost the entire Disability Support Pension budget for a whole year. This is Abbott's boy's with their toys I guess. No surprises there.

Perhaps a more interesting question is why the fuck Australia needs 58 latest generation US warplanes? Couple that with all these US troops in Darwin. Even if it wasn't the case and just a coincidence that the US war planes are being announced with US troops in Darwin, but it's not a good look. What does this say to our neigbours, and what complications might this cause in our region? That we're quite happy to help out the US with it's war games and regional power projection? What about our relationship with China then? 


Update:

Apparently the planes are already falling to bits :s

The Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter boss, Lieutenant-General Chris Bogdan, said during a recent visit to Australia that many problems were still being ironed out, particularly the complex software – requiring more than eight million lines of code – which he said was ''still a risky, risky business''. 

He also said the planes were still unreliable and needed too much maintenance, with "pieces and parts ... coming off the airplane way too regularly because they are breaking". 

"Once you've made a decision like this it takes more balls to actually say the emperor's got no clothes than to continue pretending that the emperor in fact has clothes," Dr Jensen said. Read more