Don't be a cunt lah. During War time they still control the airspace meh? So easy for them to defeat all our fighter aircraft and anti aircraft defence?
Wouldn't it be cheaper to base them in Perth area? Bring in Yankees to Perth to train our scholarly pilots. And those aircraft would be merely hours away to defend sinkapore, not that sinkapore is defensible.
It is not a question of economics. the 2 mains reasons are as follows:
1) The aircraft like F-16 and F-15 are not flown by the RAAF. So, in order to base them in Australia and ship out the entire support structure like maintenance, spares, crew, flight instructors, etc is just not feasible. As well, in the continental US, part of their training includes Red FLag exercises which are not available in Australia. Its also a lot of politics involved on both the part of Australia and the US to allow USAF personnel to be based in Australia.
2) the other main consideration is geographic in nature. If the planes were based in Australia, they will have to be flown back over Indonesian airspace on the way back to Singapore. We are not talking about 5 mins of flying in Indon airspace, we are talking about a few hours. If they are a potential enemy (quite likely), the aircraft will be subject to attacks along the route back. Its not the case if they fly in from the west over the Pacific and South China Sea. They are only in Indon and Malaysian airspace for the very last part of the ferry flight.