The next National Defence Strategy (NDS) statement and its accompanying spending plan will have to pay a lot more attention to the Royal Australian Air Force’s future air combat capability.  And they must aim at exploiting big changes underway in the nature of airpower, giving the Boeing Australia MQ-28 Ghost Bat a leading role.

Those next policy statements, due in 2026, should contrast strongly with the 2024 NDS and its spending plan, the Integrated Investment Program (IIP), which offered little forward vision of air combat capability. Instead, they prioritised funding for nuclear-powered submarines, a larger surface combatant fleet and moving towards fielding a long-range strike capability.

The 2024 IIP’s biggest effect on future air combat capability was cancellation of a fourth squadron of Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightnings—leaving the RAAF with just 72 aircraft of the type—and a recommendation for their incremental improvement. It set out plans to keep the RAAF’s 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets and 12 E/A-18G Growlers until 2040, and it offered support for further development of the Ghost Bat, which is a collaborative combat aircraft (or CCA, an uncrewed aircraft designed to work with fighters). The IIP also made a vague statement on supporting development of ‘other uncrewed aerial systems.’

The rest of the airpower chapter in the IIP reiterated previous capability announcements on air mobility, such as replacing C-130H Hercules airlifters with aircraft of the more modern C-130J version. In regard to strengthening air-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), the IIP just reiterated long-standing plans—for buying MQ-4C Triton uncrewed aircraft and MC-55 Peregrines. Interestingly, it also mentioned a replacement for the E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft. This appears, with little detail, in the chapter on integrated air and missile defence.

The document’s cautious support for the future development of CCAs such as the Ghost Bat  was one, welcome glimpse towards the next generation of capability. But in two years the next NDS and IIP will need to be much more ambitious: they will need to fully support rapid production and early entry into operational service of Ghost Bat and development of future evolved versions with greater range, payload and performance for service late this decade or in the early 2030s.

Those evolved versions will be needed for the Ghost Bat to reach its greatest potential, but Defence and Boeing will also have to hold down manufacturing and sustainment costs. The great merit of CCAs is that they can bring combat mass—large numbers of aircraft—thanks to low costs. If the Ghost Bat becomes too expensive, we will simply end up back where we started, with few, exquisite aircraft providing a brittle combat capability. This will be a significant challenge for defence acquisition in the coming decade.

Defence also needs to push the edge of the envelope in trusted autonomy, with humans still not in the loop but on it, meaning that they can intervene when necessary to oversee CCA operations. Defence should be willing to embrace the role of artificial intelligence in managing large numbers of CCAs alongside smaller numbers of crewed platforms. Maximising the role of AI also mitigates risk posed by Chinese system-destruction warfare that is aimed at attacking critical information infrastructure at the outset of a conflict, and in doing so, destroying the resilience of ADF command and control. It’s time to let the machine take control, with humans asserting control only when they need to.

The current government has decided not to arm the Ghost Bat, though this option remains open for later versions. Even without weapons, the type can be valuable for ISR and electromagnetic-warfare missions and should be developed accordingly. Ghost Bats could, for example, offer enhanced situational awareness for crewed fighters undertaking defensive counter-air operations. Exploiting their stealthy design, CCAs could carry their sensors well forward of the crewed shooters and pass target information to them by data link. Ghost Bats could support warships in the same way.

Ultimately, the Ghost Bat’s potential won’t be fully realised unless it is armed with long-range air-to-air missiles or stand-off weapons to strike surface targets.

They must have long endurance but also high performance to ensure survivability, and they ideally should be able to be air refueled. This will of course cost more, and as noted before, its vital to avoid that cost blowing out to the point where the ability to procure large numbers of systems is lost.

It’s also important to get the acquisition model correct. One option is to exploit iterative acquisition of small numbers of more role-specialised designs, which can be developed quickly and updated more frequently. That, and exploiting design and development based on use of a digital-twin in simulated environments should allow faster and more flexible responses to changing threats. In the same way, heavy sustainment costs can be avoided.

CCAs such as the Ghost Bat are one type of capability which future NDS and IIP need to emphasise, but those aircraft and F-35As, Super Hornets and Growlers are not necessarily a complete solution to the RAAF’s future air combat needs. The next article will consider the implications of next generation crewed air combat aircraft.

A Royal Australian Air Force E-7A Wedgetail early warning aircraft will use its highly effective radar system to search for missiles launched from hundreds of kilometers inside Russia and Belarus as it watches over Ukraine’s supply lines from Europe.

The chief of the RAAF, Air Marshal Robert Chipman, tells The Strategist that the US decision to call in the Wedgetail to help protect the flow of military and humanitarian supplies Ukraine relies on as it battles Russia’s invasion demonstrates the aircraft’s effectiveness.

Chipman says the Wedgetail will provide early warning of any missile attack on depots and supply routes into Ukraine that run through Poland and other neighbouring countries. It will track the missiles and assess where they might hit, increasing defenders’ chances of bringing them down.

The Australian public sees the RAAF’s fast jets at air displays and giant transport aircraft on the news in a crisis, but most people would know little about the extraordinary role and capabilities of the Wedgetail.

The aircraft will operate from Germany for six months, and the very fact that it can carry out its crucial surveillance without entering the airspace of Ukraine, Russia or Belarus demonstrates the effectiveness of its electronic systems.

‘It’s not deploying to Europe to do an air battle-management role, but as an airborne sensor with a fantastic capability to detect missiles that might be directed outside of Ukraine towards some of the supply hubs providing Ukraine’s lifeline,’ says Chipman. ‘I think they would see Australia’s deployment as a very valuable contribution to secure their supplies, even as they know that it’s not providing any direct support to the battlespace.

‘It’s protecting Europe in the unlikely event that Russia would choose to escalate the war.’

The length of warning time the Wedgetail can provide depends on the type of missile and whether it’s been fired from an expected location, Chipman says. ‘But some missiles will be airborne for 20 minutes to get to a destination over a couple of hundred miles, so that gives you a reasonable chance to detect them.‘

That warning gives ground-based defences extra time to engage the incoming missiles and gives people in the target area time to disperse into shelters to minimise loss of life.

The Wedgetail has a crew of two pilots with another 10 aviators on its surveillance and communications equipment. Up to 100 Australian Defence Force personnel will accompany the aircraft to Germany to maintain and sustain it.

The Wedgetail was once on Australia’s defence projects of concern list. But Wing Commander Warren Haynes, who commands Number 2 Squadron which operates the aircraft, says years of effort have made it arguably the world’s most advanced battle-management system. Haynes, who will lead the deployment, says the Wedgetail is the perfect platform to help protect Europe’s humanitarian gateway into Ukraine.

Chris Deeble, who now heads the Defence Department’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, first played a role in the Wedgetail project in 2006. He says that for Defence and the companies that produced the aircraft and the radar systems, dealing with the most complex technical issues and getting it into operation was extremely hard.

Early tests as the technology was assembled were far from promising. The industry partners were losing money and pressure mounted for the project to be abandoned.

An aircraft that was supposed to enter service by 2006 wasn’t operational until 2010. But those backing the Wedgetail persevered, and the capability it ultimately brought was a key to making the RAAF the world’s best small tactical air force, Deeble says. ‘It’s not a slow, incremental change to warfighting capability. It’s a step-function jump in capability. When you add that to the RAAF’s other aircraft, you get a capability that is much greater than the sum of the parts. It doesn’t get much better than that.’

The Wedgetail is an important node in any network, says Deeble. ‘It’s a significant sensor in any fight, a critical aggregator of information and dissemination of information, taking information in, adding its own sensor and other information, and being able to push that out to the fighter force.’

US fliers and their commanders have been deeply impressed by the Wedgetail’s performance on operations. Based on Boeing’s 737 airliner and developed for the RAAF, the aircraft proved highly successful on missions over Iraq and Syria during the war on the Islamic State terror group and was clearly superior to US equivalents such as the ageing E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft, or AWACS. Over Iraq, the Wedgetail operated as a battlespace manager directing fighter aircraft and linking up attack aircraft with tankers.

The request to deploy the Wedgetail in its different role for Ukraine came to Australia from the US military’s European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

Last August, US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall was hosted in Canberra by Chipman, then the new chief of the RAAF. A key focus of Kendall’s trip was on modernisation, and he discussed options with his Australian counterparts on how to collaboratively develop the air and space capabilities both countries needed. Kendall told a media briefing that the American decision to acquire the E-7A Wedgetail command-and-control aircraft was an example of what the US could learn from Australia. ‘This demonstrates that there’s very much a two-way street,’ Kendall said, ‘that we depend upon our partners just as much as they depend upon us in any number of ways.’

In December, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Washington for the annual AUSMIN consultations.

A statement released after the talks said the two countries committed to work closely on developing the Wedgetail, including through the training of US Air Force personnel by the RAAF in Australia.

Haynes says some Americans are already serving with the unit in Australia and 70 to 80 will be trained overall. They include flight-deck crew, electronic-warfare operators and technical trades and support staff that are all needed to put a mission together.

Britain has also opted to buy the Wedgetail and 20 to 25 Royal Air Force personnel are now serving with 2 Squadron. Haynes says he and many other RAAF personnel had trained with US and British squadrons and this is an opportunity to return the favour. ‘We’re paying back what was afforded to us when we were trying to stand up a new capability.’

Haynes believes that after years of effort by the RAAF, industry and other defence partners to integrate new technology into the aircraft, the Wedgetail is now the best of its type in the world. ‘What we provide is a magnitude never probably seen before on any command-and-control aircraft. The ability of its crew and the aircraft to sustain operations and get the job done across multiple domains is probably unsurpassed at this point.’

Its advanced multi-role electronically scanned array (MESA) radar provides a very long range, unrestricted 360° view around the aircraft. According to publicly available sources, the MESA radar can track 180 targets and carry out 24 intercepts at once.

Chipman says that if Australia hadn’t persevered with the Wedgetail’s development, the Americans would probably not have ultimately bought the aircraft.

‘This was an Australian idea, an aircraft built to Australian specifications to meet an Australian requirement. The manufacturing was done by Boeing in the US and by Northrop Grumman for the radar and BAE Systems for the electronic-warfare system. So, a coalition of companies came together to deliver the aircraft, but it was to an Australian specification.’

Chipman says that in terms of fifth-generation technology, the Wedgetail has very effective sensors and it can use and share the picture it builds through modern datalink technology. ‘It’s not a stealthy platform, but it brings fifth-generation technologies into our air combat system. It’s an enabler of the fifth-generation air combat system that we fight today. It fits very comfortably in with the F-35, Super Hornet and Growler mix.’

The Wedgetail is the centrepiece of a system that includes aircraft, ground-based, maritime and space-based sensors and other capabilities. As the technology is refined, a goal is for the Wedgetail to seamlessly feed information to aircraft and other units on operations so that they can stay stealthy and avoid having to send out detectable signals.

Deeble says it is a ‘gem’.

The head of the Australian Defence Force’s new space command says she wants to focus on speed and doing things differently to meet the challenge of ensuring Australia can maintain access to space in uncertain times.

Air Vice-Marshal Catherine Roberts said Chinese and Russian activities in space were her biggest concern and that Australia needs to quickly develop the ability to protect both its civilian and military space infrastructure, something it currently lacks.

‘I think the activities by China and Russia, which have been fairly well documented in the public domain, scare me … We need to accelerate the capabilities so we can deal with the threats,’ she told a media briefing at the Royal Australian Air Force’s air and space power conference in Canberra on Tuesday.

Roberts used the example of China’s Shijian-21, which recently towed a defunct Chinese satellite out of its position in geosynchronous earth orbit to dispose of it, saying that Australia has no way to counter such a capability if it’s used against Australian assets in GEO, which include an Optus telecommunications satellite and the satellite responsible for the NBN’s Sky Muster internet service.

She said that the establishment of a space command in Defence, which although small at little more than 100 people, will aim to move quickly to stand up both defensive and offensive Australian space capabilities.

Roberts says space command is already investigating both reversible and irreversible methods to disable adversary space assets, including jamming from ground stations or using lasers to blind orbital satellites.

Australia will not, Roberts says, use methods that create space debris as Russia did with its test of an anti-satellite missile last year that created an estimated 1,500 pieces of trackable and potentially dangerous debris.

Another area of priority is ensuring satellite communications are resilient and cannot be easily disrupted or taken offline in a conflict.

Part of that effort is Defence’s Joint Project 9102, which aims to provide Australia with its first sovereign military communications satellites.

The current timeline for delivery of the $4-billion project is the mid- to late 2020s, though it’s clear that it’s a priority for the new command. Asked if under her leadership the new satellites would still be several years away, Roberts responded, ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’

A sovereign Australian launch capability is also on the cards, with plans to launch a 100-kilogram satellite as soon as next year. It’s something that Roberts wants to work closely with both local and international companies to achieve.

‘There will be a launch capability in Australia, but it needs to be commercially viable. Defence won’t have enough launches by ourselves, but there are a lot of customers out there,’ she says.

Officials are frank in admitting that Australia has a lot of catching up to do since its time as a space industry leader in the 1960s.

‘From the late 1970s we just stopped looking at space … and so did Defence, probably because of the same reason—everyone was just like, “Oh, someone else will look after it”,’ Roberts says.

‘Did we take our eye off the ball? It’s arguable. You’ve got priorities, [but] for us as Australia and the Australian Defence Force to turn around and say we’re going to assure Australia’s access to space, that’s pretty bold,’ adds Air Commodore Nicholas Hogan, the new command’s director general of space capability.

Space command is a joint command that takes in members of all three services and while it’s now small, RAAF chief Mel Hupfeld told the conference that the air force will likely soon shift its investment focus to space.

Whether that means the command will eventually morph into its own service similar to the US Space Force is not certain, though the possibility has already been flagged by Defence Minister Peter Dutton.

Senior US commanders echoed concerns about Russian and Chinese activities in space, as well as the need for the rapid development and acquisition of new capabilities to keep pace.

General John Dickinson, the head of US Space Command, said China has growing capabilities that the US is monitoring, though he wouldn’t be drawn on whether the US has its own satellites that could replicate what Beijing had done with Shijian-21.

‘China is our pacing threat and we’re watching it very closely,’ he noted, adding that the US has a specific focus on dual-use technologies that can be employed for both civil and military purposes.

He said Russia’s anti-satellite test was ‘irresponsible’ and added significantly to the burden of the almost 44,000 pieces of space debris his command is tracking.

Speaking on Wednesday, the head of the US Space Force, General William Raymond, said that his service wanted to rapidly accelerate the traditional methods of acquiring new technologies.

Raymond noted that after a meeting with SpaceX founder Elon Musk in a largely empty warehouse, satellites made in that building were launched into orbit barely four months later. ‘We want to be able to leverage that.’

Instead of giving companies a set-in-stone requirement for a particular capability, Raymond wants to bring industry players in earlier in the process—going to them with a problem and asking, ‘How would you build that?’

Raymond noted that simply looking at acquisition wouldn’t necessarily solve problems that begin with decisions on how to structure a force. One based around small numbers of exquisite platforms is going to look very different to one that is focused on using capabilities that can be easily, cheaply and quickly replaced.

Both Australian and US commanders are also thinking about how to manage personnel in less traditional ways as their requirements for people grow.

The US Space Force is looking at how to implement an approach similar to Defence’s total workforce system to allow its people to more easily transition between services and in and out of defence industry.

‘There are things you’re doing in the Australian air force that we would like to be doing in our service,’ Raymond said.

For its part, Defence’s space command is confident its workforce model will provide the people it needs despite the fact that prospective recruits can’t sign up to join a Royal Australian Space Force—yet.

Let’s see if we can spot a contradiction here.

On 25 April, Defence Minister Peter Dutton told the ABC war with China over Taiwan could not be ruled out. He did not need to add that, if such a war broke out, Australia, alongside the US, would be fighting fearsome, high-technology enemy forces.

Two days before, the US State Department approved export to Australia of $2.1 billion worth of General Atomics MQ-9B drones—aircraft that are useful only against an enemy that doesn’t shoot back.

In other words, amid a high and rising Chinese threat to the peace of the Western Pacific, the government is preparing to buy costly equipment for another Middle East campaign.

Australia is not remotely prepared for a major war against a powerful enemy close to home. Critical improvements to national resilience are urgently needed: for example, improved abilities to repair air bases, supply them with fuel, disperse aircraft to civilian fields, fix aircraft battle damage, and clear sea mines. We also need more pilots.

Dutton should challenge the Department of Defence to explain why a single dollar should be spent on preparing to go back to the Middle East before these more pressing issues have been attended to.

MQ-9Bs would be just about useless in a war with China. These propeller-driven aircraft have worse flight performance than World War II fighters and are simply unsurvivable in the face of modern fighters and surface-to-air systems.

This is not because the MQ-9B is badly designed but, rather, because it is not intended for serious combat or anything like it. As the latest version of the MQ-9 Reaper, it’s tailor made for conducting surveillance of territory occupied by enemies who have only guns or, at most, low-level anti-aircraft missiles. It can also attack targets if they are similarly incapable of defending themselves.

In a war with China, by contrast, the most that MQ-9Bs could do would be to collect radio signals from a very safe distance, from which they might not collect much at all.

The prospective Australian order would cover up to 12 MQ-9Bs, according to the US. They would come with an impressively complete array of sensors, communications radios and targeting systems, plus equipment on the ground for control and training. Hardly any weapons are mentioned, and additional facilities in Australia will presumably needed, so the overall budget has to be bigger than $2.1 billion.

Altogether, this program would indeed produce an excellent force for supporting Australian soldiers on the ground in, say, Afghanistan.

But Australia is not obliged to turn up in such places with all the equipment it needs. As with attack helicopters, it could rely on allies, such as the US and UK, which have similar aircraft and would well understand that Australia was under far too much strategic stress to fully equip itself for secondary wars. That is to say, they would understand something that the Australian Department of Defence evidently does not.

The MQ-9B should be a doubly unwelcome addition to Australia’s military, because it will be another type added to the aircraft fleet, with consequent complications in support and training. The burdens of a new fleet would not arise if the money were spent instead on, for example, hardening air bases.

Nor would new burdens arise if the money were used to pay for more aircraft of a type already in service, deepening an important capability rather than adding a new one of low priority. Limiting the conversation to surveillance and intelligence, there are three types, in service or coming into service, for which more units would be highly valuable.

For $2.1 billion, Defence could probably buy:

• Four or five Boeing E-7A Wedgetail air surveillance aircraft;
• Seven Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrollers (with weapons); or
• At least seven MC-55A Peregrine electromagnetic warfare aircraft from Gulfstream and L3Harris.

The budget would cover spare parts but would hardly need to pay for more infrastructure for any of these types, since that’s in place or coming. Support and crew costs might require more funding but would at least benefit from economies of scale by using existing training set-ups, for example. For supporting MQ-9Bs, just about everything would have to be new.

The MQ-9B would be even less attractive after 2031, probably only about six years after it becomes operational with Australia, because that’s when the US Air Force plans to begin replacing the Reaper with something more useful. Australian support costs will then begin to rise as interoperability advantages fade.

In the meantime, the USAF is upgrading the Reaper to make it useful in any war with Russia, especially by making it serve as a communications node. The MQ-9B already comes with a comms-node function, and that could be handy for defending Australia. But if that job is part of the requirement, it hasn’t been mentioned—and simpler drones could provide the service.

We must ask ourselves how this program to buy costly drones for Middle Eastern wars has persisted as the Chinese threat has galloped ahead.

The RAAF first mentioned its aim to acquire MQ-9s or something like them in 2014. Some might argue that the need to prioritise defence of Australia over expeditionary capability should already have been apparent. But, if it wasn’t then, it certainly was in the next few years as China moved closer to this continent by illegally building military bases in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, the risk of war over Taiwan kept rising as China built its capacity to ward off US intervention. And meanwhile Canberra’s relations with Beijing have plummeted.

Amid all that, we seem to have had defence thinking running on rails. It seems that, since the drone program had got started, it’s just kept going, regardless of changing circumstances.

One must wonder why neither Marise Payne nor Christopher Pyne called a halt to this during their terms as defence minister between 2015 and 2019. In Linda Reynolds’s term, from 2019 to 2021, the program somehow survived a 2020 defence policy review that called for a focus on fighting closer to home.

Now Dutton is the minister, and reportedly resistant to being run by his department. Will he, too, stick by this low-priority waste of funds?

Just before midnight on 7 December 1941, Flying Officer Peter Gibbes stepped off the train at Kota Bharu on the coast of northeast Malaya after a long, tiring journey up the peninsula from Singapore. Gibbes, an airline pilot in peacetime, had been newly posted to the Royal Australian Air Force’s 1 Squadron, which in the ensuing hours would become the first Australian military unit to see action in the Pacific War.

Soon after he headed for bed at the officer’s mess at Kota Bharu airfield, the sound of gunfire shattered the balmy night air. Reassured by the mess staff that the noise was simply an exercise, Gibbes tried to snatch some sleep. Then, as the firing intensified, he quickly dressed and headed straight for the squadron operations room. There he was greeted by a scene of utter confusion as the duty operations officer barked orders at stunned 1 Squadron pilots to get their Lockheed Hudson aircraft airborne, head out to sea and ‘drop some bombs’.

Not far off the coast, Japanese transport vessels had commenced disembarking 5,000 troops destined to land on the sandy beaches a short distance from Kota Bharu airfield. In Malaya, it was soon after 2 am on 8 December—an hour before the surprise Japanese air raid thousands of kilometres away on the other side of the Pacific Ocean at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Pacific War had begun.

According to leading RAAF historian Alan Stephens, Gibbes grabbed a life jacket and parachute and, as he headed for the Hudson’s lined up along the airfield’s grass strip, inquired, ‘[W]hich way is it to the sea?’ The reply was to head for the ‘flashes and bangs’. Arriving at his allocated aircraft, he found his three aircrew. ‘None had ever met him and he was not wearing any rank or pilot’s wings that might have reassured them of his legitimacy,’ writes Stephens, ‘yet they were expected to put their lives in his hands, as they flew together for the first time, into combat. This was amateurism on a grand scale.’

Once airborne, Gibbes quickly located the incoming Japanese transports and, at mast height and heading into heavy enemy anti-aircraft fire, dropped four 250-pound bombs. Within minutes he was back at the Kota Bharu airfield to rearm for another sortie.

In early December 1941, intelligence reports began flowing into the Royal Air Force’s Far East Command in Singapore citing Japanese shipping and aircraft movements in the South China Sea heading west towards the Gulf of Siam. Four RAAF squadrons (Nos 1 and 8 squadrons equipped with Hudson light bombers and Nos 21 and 453 squadrons equipped with obsolete Brewster Buffalo fighters) had been deployed to Singapore’s Sembawang airfield from late 1940. In August 1941, anticipating a possible Japanese invasion of Malaya, 1 Squadron had relocated to Kota Bharu, close to the Thai border. In early December 8 Squadron also transferred up the peninsula to Kuantan with both squadrons assigned reconnaissance roles.

On Saturday 6 December, a three-aircraft patrol from 1 Squadron took off from Kota Bharu. Soon after midday, Flight Lieutenant Jack Ramshaw’s Hudson spotted Japanese naval vessels heading into the Gulf of Siam an estimated 400 kilometres northeast of Kota Bharu. A sizable enemy naval convoy had been identified, including one battleship, five cruisers, seven destroyers and 22 transports.

The following day brought heavy rain and dense low-level cloud, making aerial reconnaissance difficult for 1 Squadron’s patrols. But by late afternoon Japanese naval vessels had been detected just 170 kilometres north of Kota Bharu. In fact, three large Japanese transports, protected by two battle cruisers and a destroyer screen, were steaming towards Kota Bharu, with 1 Squadron’s aerodrome a key objective for the initial Japanese assault on Malaya.

Faced with mounting evidence of an imminent seaborne invasion, the British high command in Singapore vacillated. The commander-in-chief, Air Chief Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham, declined to implement Matador, the defence plan for Malaya, and initiate any pre-emptive strike against the incoming Japanese invasion force. Notwithstanding the intelligence gleaned from allied aerial reconnaissance, the Singapore command believed the Japanese were headed for Thailand.

Within hours, hostilities were underway and 1 Squadron launched repeated attacks on the enemy’s landing craft and transports headed for Kota Bharu, scoring a direct hit on the 9,800-tonne transport Awagisan Maru—the first Japanese merchant ship to be sunk in the Pacific War. One of the RAAF bombers, A16-94, piloted by Flight Lieutenant John Jones, which had taken off at 2.20 am, was lost only minutes afterwards. Jones and his crew—First Officer Ron Siggins and Sergeants Graham Hedges and David Walters—were the first Australians to die in the war.

By midday on 8 December, Japanese forces had successfully established a bridgehead on the Malay peninsula and Kota Bharu airfield itself came under repeated attack from Japanese navy Zero fighters flying from nearby Thailand. In the afternoon, the situation became perilous, with pockets of Japanese troops penetrating close to the airfield perimeter. Just before dusk, having received orders from Singapore that the airfield should be abandoned, 1 Squadron’s five remaining serviceable aircraft took off for Kuantan, heavily laden with men and vital supplies. A total of eight aircraft had been lost in the short-lived battle to defend Kota Bharu.

As the victorious Japanese swept down the Malay peninsula, the two badly depleted RAAF squadrons soon found themselves back in Singapore before evacuating to Palembang in Sumatra and thence to Java, where many surviving members of 1 Squadron ended up as Japanese prisoners of war. For the RAAF, the action at Kota Bharu had proved a bitter lesson, underscoring a manifest lack of effective combat airpower, and shattering long-held assumptions about the inferior military capability of their foe.