[h9n]

After selling Australia the F/A-18 Hornet, the US refused to give Australia access to its friend-or-foe identification system, making it essentially useless for its role as the country's front-line fighter. Australia had to resort to subterfuge to make it work. This was revealed by the then-defence minister, Kim Beazley, in his valedictory speech to Parliament[0]:

> The radar of our Hornet could not identify most of the aircraft in this region as hostile—in other words, our front-line fighter could not shoot down people who would be the enemies in this region.

> I went to the United States and, for five years, it was up hill, down dale and one knock-down drag-out after another with Cap Weinberger, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. I tried to get the codes of that blasted radar out of them. In the end, we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves

[0]: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

[zaphirplane]

So basically the conversation went we will sell you f18 so long as you use them against the Chinese or Russians, the Australians said no worries we will take 20 ? How strange