The cost to the taxpayer of converting 12 RAAF Super Hornets into $250 million electronic warfare warriors, or ''Growlers'', has increased almost six fold from $300 million to $1.7 billion.

By the time they are expected to come on line around the end of the decade, the planes' jamming pods will be close to their use-by date.

The United States government has had to accelerate its ''next generation jammer'' program to counter problems with its own Growler fleet and the results of that research could be operational by the early 2020s.

Australian critics say Defence wants to spend top dollar for technology that dates back to 1971, was used on F-111s over Baghdad during the first Gulf War, has ''survivability issues'' in a combat environment and that America hopes to replace sooner rather than later.

Although the Australian government will not commit to Growler until next month at the earliest, it has already spent $55 million on the capability which has been strongly championed by members of the ADF senior leadership group.