The Royal Australian Air Force has revealed that as of February this year, only nine of its 35 General Dynamics F-111 strike fighters were available for operations.
The RAAF now has only 28 F-111s capable of operations, with two aircraft broken down for spares and five non-airworthy and not being maintained. F-111 flying was temporarily suspended in February following the discovery of new wing fatigue problems during long-term testing.
According to RAAF data, of the 28 F-111s still airworthy, "19 would not have flown during February 2002 while 13 would not have flown during the period November 2001-February 2002".
Based on these figures, the RAAF had 15 aircraft, or one third of the total fleet, available for operations in the three months prior to the February grounding. RAAF was on its highest alert state since the Vietnam War during this period.
The data does not indicate the impact of ongoing block upgrade work on the aircraft to their availability for flying operations.
The RAAF has also failed to answer questions posed by the country's Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the predicted cost of maintaining the aircraft in service until 2015-20. The Senate is now expected to pursue this during budget hearings early next month.
The RAAF advised the committee that investigations continue into the causes and implications of the wing problem - "cracking in a number of fastener holes" - but denied that the F-111s are subject to flying limits. Instead, "restrictions have been placed on the number of fatigue hours that can be accumulated by each airframe".
The RAAF says the F-111 requires 30 maintenance hours per flying hour, with the fleet flying 2,757h during the 2000-01 Australian financial year.
Source: Flight International
