F-22 Raptor...nice plane...shame the Yanks won't trust Australia with them...

Just been checking out the F22 Raptor fighter...amazingly advanced plane, fantastic specs, and able to break the sound barrier without engagin the afterburner...this is the sort of plane Australia needs to replace the F18 Hornet when the time comes.
The niggling little fact is that when Australia asked the USA if we could buy some pretty please with sugar on top, the Americans said a polite "piss off".

That's right...the country who was asking was not Soviet Russia, not some tin pot little African country run by a despot, not some flakey South American dictatorship, but Australia, a country that has been a firm allie of the USA for more decades than I would care to count...we have stuck by the Yanks through thick and thin, usually being the first to stick up our hand and join in when wars are to be fought. We were the first to respond after September 11th, when our Prime Minister was in Washington visiting the President...Bush said we were off to Afghanistan, we stood up and said "The toothbrush is already packed, George!"

Some people might say it is silly, that it is looking back on a debt in WW2, but to be blunt, if it wasn;t for the USA in the Coral Sea, us Aussies would all be speaking Japanese right now...those of us who were left alive that is...and I don't know about you, but I would hate trying to type this on a Japanese keyboard. So when people who have a grasp of history say "we owe the Yanks our alliegence", it isn't just being a syncophant...we really do owe them something. I would think we have proved our worth over the intervening years by following the US into a series of wars and actions overseas, contributing far more than our small 21 million population could be expected to.

But when it comes to selling technology to us, it appears that we can't be trusted beyond a certain limit.

The sale overseas is banned by federal law in the USA...even a "watered down" non-stealthy version is not for sale to us (but it might be to Japan...go figure...).

So instead of the proven, already in production F22, Australia is going to be stuck with the purchase of F35 joint strike fighters...if they ever get them working properly...they are still in the development stage.

Our new Government is apparently going to review the purchase of the F35, and push American politicians to overturn the export ban, if only for Australia.

Come on Yanks...we let you build MacDonalds everywhere, let us have our planes and show us you remember the debt you owe us from all these years of following you into battle...