The report will recommend whether the Government should proceed with plans to spend $16 billion on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the aircraft chosen by the Howard Government before it had even flown, to be the mainstay of Australia's air defences for the next three decades.
Air forces in Europe and the Americas are waiting on it, and if you believe the PR, it is the answer to Australia's strategic air combat needs.
Although some experts have described it as revolutionary, there is now mounting concern that the plane might not live up to the hype and that it cannot be delivered on time and on budget.
The Lowy Institute's Hugh White says the Joint Strike Fighter is one of only two fifth-generation combat aircraft available to Australia.
"The fifth generation are stealthier, they're harder to find on radar, and that is a really critical factor in success in air combat or strike operations," he said.
Just over a week ago, US Air Force Major General Charles Davis gave what appeared to be a ringing endorsement of the Joint Strike Fighter.
"Our recommendation to the panel was that there was no technical reason not to go ahead and pursue the next 12 aeroplanes," he said.
"We're already under contract for two for the Air Force already, so this is our second lot."
Industry backlash
But if the US Air Force is satisfied with its new acquisition, others are not so sure. Right now, the Joint Strike Fighter is at the centre of a major battle - not in the air, but on the ground.
Former RAAF squadron leader Peter Goon, who is also the co-founder of Air Power Australia, does not believe the aircraft has the performance or range to match it with new a new generation of planes.
"I'd say the Joint Strike Fighter is an aircraft which the marketing people have written cheques for which it will not be able to honour," he said.
"[Russian Sukhoi jets will] be able to run rings around the Joint Strike Fighter from both a performance point of view and a tactics point of view."
Rick Fisher, from the International Strategy and Assessment Centre which focuses on threat assessment in the western pacific, says many Asian air forces will rearm in the future, which is bad news for Australia.
"Perhaps by the end of the next decade, you could see a Chinese aircraft carrier making a courtesy port call in Suva armed with fighters equivalent to the F-35," he said.
"The weaknesses is that it will not be able to defeat the possible competition that you will face within a decade."
These, of course, are pretty serious criticisms. But neither the Defence Department nor Lockheed Martin, the company in charge of the Joint Strike Fighter project, was available to comment.
In a statement, Lockheed Martin says: "The fifth generation Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is unlike any other. Designed from its outset as a multi-role stealth fighter, it offers 'game-changing capabilities' that make all current fourth generation fighters obsolete."
Costly issues
There is another dimension to the potential problems the JSF faces, though. As RAND public policy expert John Stillion explains, this is a plane that has been made to a price.
"What is supposed to happen with the F-35 is that if cost rises above a certain point, then capabilities will be traded away in order to drive the cost back down," he said.
"If the safety, security and sovereignty of Australia ever depends on the Royal Australian Air Force being able to win an air to air battle, it is already not the best thing you could potentially buy."
If that is true, there may be more bad news for the Joint Strike Fighter program.
In a report published by the US Congress last month, the Government Accountability Office said this of the Joint Strike Fighter: "Midway through its planned 12-year development period, the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] program is over cost and behind schedule."
But the US Air Force disputes this finding.
"We do not agree with the assessments that the Government Accountability Office made, not so much the recommendations they had going forward but the numbers they came up with, which largely were, if you will, gleaned from other service analysis of the program," Major General Davis said.
All this is deeply troubling and it is even more perplexing when you know there is already a plane that in all likelihood can do the job we need better than the Joint Strike Fighter. It is called the F-22, or Raptor.
Six years ago, when the Government sat down to decide the fifth generation plane it would buy, the Raptor was deemed way too expensive.
It is also true the US Government does not want to sell the plane overseas, but Mr Fitzgibbon has been working hard to change that view, and part of the reason is that the Raptor's price will almost certainly come down.
"When we were putting together the 2000 white paper, we looked pretty carefully at this issue," Mr White said.
"Now since then the price of the JSF has gone up, the price of the F 22 has come down, the performance of the JSF is under questions they weren't under, that weren't under question before."
Who is right and who is wrong will be argued out in the weeks and months to come, but one thing is clear - Australia will pay heavily if it chooses the wrong aircraft.
Source: By Australian Broadcasting Corporation
