"Makes me wonder if we had gone down the path of building our own jets instead of subs whether financially we would be better off. "
A good question, jason. Australia once had a very good aircraft manufacturing industry in CAC, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation. This entity built everything from Mustang fighters, Canberra bombers, Sabre Jets, Meteors....you name it. It also had on its drawing board an Australian designed supersonic fighter with specs & performance equal to if not better than any US aircraft of the time. Sadly, CAC and its project were axed by geopolitics in favour of buying our aircraft at very high prices from the US. Just think, we could have been an exporter of world class aircraft. I guess we're just doomed to having to keep the US economy going, huh?
