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1 in one of me hate the different ways to write a number in this title
Trump said just the other day that the US should remove some features from the jets they sell to other countries, because we might be at war with them someday.
Who are the other 4, I mean seriously?
They are openly bragging about how they will deliver crippled planes in case they decide to attack them later.
This should be 100% of Canadians. I can only hope a large chunk of the 38% are just completely ignorant about current events
Depends on the question. We've already paid for 16 of the F-35s, and we'd just be throwing money away if we totally scrapped the program. Plus F-35 is the most advanced of what's available.
I think we need to de-risk our armed forces, but trying to to keep relying on CF-18s that we know are unreliable vs. F-35 that might be unreliable is pretty clearcut. What I am less unsure of is how many F-35 we should continue with. 16 seems obvious. How many more? What would we get as a substitute? Should we look at GCAP or FCAS instead of or in addition to any of the above questions? Typhoon? Gripen?
So if the question was should we buy any F-35, I would be a yes. Should we buy 88 F-35, I'm a no.
By far the biggest threat is coming from the very country that is supplying and would be required to maintain the F-35s.
What good would these jets do? What threats could we expect to mitigate with them? They wouldn’t deter the US, China, Russia if they decided to attack us.
So with respect, I’m feeling like your answer is reflective of a mindset that reflects a world order that doesn’t exist anymore.
But I’m also open to consideration that I might be wrong. I’m not asking the questions about what good they would accomplish in a rhetorical way, I’ll listen to feedback from you about the usefulness they might deliver for us.
Probably a difference in risk assessment. I'd say I'm 99% certain the US won't invade Canada in the next 4 years. Granted I was 99.99% certain, so that's a hundred fold increase in risk.
Also consider the risk of F-35 being sabotaged. It's not 100%. Lockheed-Martin did not build in a kill switch. The risk is realistically more one of maintenance which does include software. More likely F-35 would be degraded rather than dead on the tarmac. I also discount this risk because in an actual US invasion scenario I don't think we can buy enough F-35 or Gripen fast enough to make much of a difference and what little defence production we have is close to the border. A US invasion scenario would mostly be an insurgency.
Still F-35 is what everyone is buying for a reason. It's also what everyone is concerned about for a reason. Like I said, 16 or 22 F-35 should be a no-brainer. They're already paid for. They are the most capable fighter currently, and they are good for everything we are likely to need them for.
How much more than that makes sense is where I get very uncertain. Arguably the best way to spend more on defence and get nothing in return is analysis paralysis. The other is gold-plating your procurement, and F-35 is already kind of the gold-plated option but it's also got the best economies of scale so that's probably not really here nor there.
I think Canada needs to build our armed forces, and we need to be quick and efficient about it. We are already on the waitlist for F-35, and they will support objectives such as supporting allies and arctic patrol. The only thing they aren't good at is defending against US invasion, but that is mostly because they are maintenance intensive (there is a reason I keep coming back to Gripen).
I also really like the GCAP program. I think it's a great way to reinvigorate our domestic aerospace industry. Gripen and Typhoon would also help reinvigorate domestic aerospace.
Finally, more money to defence industries in the US just helps the US. Walking away from fighters we've already paid for just let's them keep our money and sell those jets elsewhere. Halving (or one-quartering) our order gets us something that is still very useful, gets us that something about as fast as practical, and also messes with their economies of scale.
Put that all together I'm in the 22-44 F-35 camp, money saved into Gripen, join GCAP. Dual sourced fighters should show dual delivery. Saab is already working on a different Gripen revision replacing the US sourced engine.
You may disagree with my reasoning or conclusions, plus I'm 90% certain I put more thought into the question than 90% of the respondents to the survey. Assuming it was some basic "Should Canada cancel the F-35 contract?" question, how would you answer for me?
I appreciate your thoughtful reasoning, like you said even if we come to different conclusions.
You’ve helped provide some context to a position I’ve disagreed with, and that feels much better in my mind than just stumbling at “why” with no real answer.
One point of clarification I’d like to get a handle on. What in your perspective are these jets useful for in the context of Canadian defence?
You hinted at a partial answer to my question with the mention of arctic patrols and supporting allies, but if you have time to elaborate on some practical scenarios I’d appreciate your perspective on that
Australia wants the submarine contract cancelled as well
I think we're all trying to get away from the US at the moment
As we should. The US empire is collapsing, and even when they weren't collapsing, they don't really see any of us as "allies", we're either useful to them, or not. They've never done "loyalty".
We should be thanking Trump. He's so undisciplined, uncouth, uneducated that he talks like an 8th grade dropout mafia wannabe. However, that is much more representative of average America than the usual Presidents. He says all the quiet parts out loud. The US has been the biggest bully in the world since the end of WWII and uses every allied nation to prop up and enrich their own. For the past decades they have been masking it through a veil of diplomacy. But not Trump. He tells it as it is. Problem for the USA is that he thinks that is good and that America is a great nation that all others worship. Maybe under his government, the rest of the world will be freed from the US.
Just when the majority of wealthy western countries have realized the need to vastly increase defence spending, the world's largest arms exporter has cock blocked themselves. Very Sad.
France couldn’t be happier.
They'll add a 25% "Welcome back, assholes" fee to the new contract
Only 6? You'd think that would be an easy knee-jerk answer. I don't believe for a second many of the remaining 4 had a strong opinion on the necessity of stealth for survivability in a modern combat environment.
I'd guess 2-3 of the 4 are sunk cost fallacy, and rest are Trumpers
Or they know the state of the current airframes, and know we've already waffled on this to the point that any further changes are going to cause a delay that would result in a loss in operational capability, potentially for years. As much as I'd like to see us drop the F-35 on general principal, there is no magical fighter jet dealership where we can go pick something else up in any reasonable timeframe. We could accept the first batch and try cancelling the rest, to be replaced at some future date with something else, but for a small airforce like the RCAF, that presents operational challenges as well. I'd say renegotiate the deal. Get more jobs and a skilled workforce out of it. Lockheed is already offering, given the global drop in demand for their products. But for future purchases, we're either going to have to make our own or buy European.
It’s possible some of them also remember the decades long process of entering the multinational program, spending billions, pulling out because it was to expensive, then spending billions more re-entering when the Canadian air force could not find any aircraft near as capable as the F35 and even those less capable aircraft coat significantly more than the F35.
The end result of this is that Canada has so far spent enough to upgrade nearly the entire military, but not actually gotten anything at all out of it.
Now personally I lean towards joining the Japanese 6th gen project (they’ve also been burned by the Americans) and just accepting that Canada won’t have a combat effective military for another 15 years or so, but I can understand why many Canadians might not want to accept a temporarily (or permanently if it commits to 5th gen) weaker and more expensive RCAF just to spite Putin’s bitch in D.C.
Yeah, if there's some payoff coming or starting over is actually just as expensive, sometimes a sunk cost is worth considering.
Why not the Gripen?
I believe the main reasons Gripen was rejected by the 2022 report was lack of any Stealth capability, rarer among allies, and higher cost. Practically, while the Gripen is a pretty good 4th gen aircraft, non-stealth aircraft really arn’t capible of combating any airforce with stealth aircraft, and so Canada would be pretty much limited to only fighting Russia or smaller regional powers, and no small part of Canada’s NATO focus is on deterrence in Asia, where Gripen can’t really do much.
non-stealth aircraft really arn’t capible of combating any airforce with stealth aircraft,
That's a pretty absolute take. Can you back that up a bit? It lowers survivability, for sure, but even stealth aircraft aren't invisible, especially versus a technologically sophisticated adversary with cutting-edge sensors and networked warfare like we would be. The Gripen also has the advantage in that it can be operated from dispersed airfields with little supply chain, so it doesn't even have to spend too much time in the air - it was designed for a defencive war against a superior foe.
I believe the main reasons Gripen was rejected by the 2022 report was lack of any Stealth capability, rarer among allies, and higher cost.
Wait, higher cost? What for? I might actually have to read that. You'd think the minimal supply considerations and it being an older aircraft would make it cheap.
From what I've heard it was basically a forgone conclusion. The airforce really wanted the F-35 from the start, and were probably still in denial about if the good times with the US would ever end.
Stealth aircraft arn’t invisible, but if you need to get within 50km to even know there is an enemy aircraft there while they can can shoot at you from 500km away you are not going to achieve much beyond slightly depleting the enemy missile supply.
It also means that the enemy now needs advanced radars to be deployed every 100km to even know you’re there, as compared to deploying 1/10 the radars at every 1000km for the same effect. If you want the coverage to know where the enemy is above your country and not just they entered it, that goes up by the square root.
As for cost, the main driving factor is that there are ~160 Gripens flying for 6 countries, and 1100 F-35s flying for 10 countries, plus another thousand or so on order by the US itself. When it comes to extremely intricate and complex development and tooling heavy devices like aircraft, economies of scale matter a lot.
Getting the Gripen E down to ~121m CAD was a remarkable achievement in economic efficiency, no seriously this was incrediblely impressive, that involved significant compromises for cost, nevertheless it doesn’t change that Lockheed Martin can sell a more capible fighter at ~117m CAD just by being able to have an actual assembly line and tons of spare parts.
Stealth aircraft arn’t invisible, but if you need to get within 50km to even know there is an enemy aircraft there while they can can shoot at you from 500km away you are not going to achieve much beyond slightly depleting the enemy missile supply.
Yeah, but in this scenario you're not sending continuous radar pulses out from your plane, because that would instantly give away your position. Electronic warfare stuff is still mostly classified, but I have to assume finding the enemy has long been a team effort, and now with networked warfare would be pretty seamlessly so. Which brings us to:
It also means that the enemy now needs advanced radars to be deployed every 100km to even know you’re there, as compared to deploying 1/10 the radars at every 1000km for the same effect. If you want the coverage to know where the enemy is above your country and not just they entered it, that goes up by the square ~~root~~.
That's true, but in a defencive war they won't have much in the way of fixed radars themselves. Meanwhile, the Gripen seems vastly more survivable on the ground than a whole airfield capable of operating the F-35.
Without a bunch of information that's classified and a bunch that might not even be available I can't calculate myself how those factors balance. And, of course there's the elephant in the room of if our F-35s would even be able to fly in this scenario.
As for cost, the main driving factor is that there are ~160 Gripens flying for 6 countries, and 1100 F-35s flying for 10 countries, plus another thousand or so on order by the US itself. When it comes to extremely intricate and complex development and tooling heavy devices like aircraft, economies of scale matter a lot.
Getting the Gripen E down to ~121m CAD was a remarkable achievement in economic efficiency, no seriously this was incrediblely impressive, that involved significant compromises for cost, nevertheless it doesn’t change that Lockheed Martin can sell a more capible fighter at ~117m CAD just by being able to have an actual assembly line and tons of spare parts.
Oh, okay. That makes sense.
Radar transmitters and receivers don’t have to be one in the same, and indeed often aren’t in a military context. Your stealth plane is not sending out radar pulses except when it’s on its own in an extreme emergency, but rather is listening to the radar echos from your AWACS and ground air defense trucks. By contrast if the enemy has a stealth plane, those active radars have to get much, much closer to the front lines and often will be in easy range of anti-radar missiles before their accompanying SAM batteries can even see the enemy, much less shoot it down to protect their air-search radar.
These are all part of the reason why when the F-22 first started coming to joint exercises it was considered seal clubbing for them to use it, and why subsequently everyone with the resources to do so,(and some like Russia who didn’t), began pooring absurd amounts of money into trying to produce their own stealth fighters.
I also question your assertion that they won’t have many air defense systems, as in practice unless you are the USAF fighting a much, much weaker country they have proven pretty survivable and easy to replace. There is also the fact they can be in neighboring allied but not at war countries, which makes them basically invulnerable.
It’s also worth noting that while the Gripen is indeed very good flying out of very short mountain roads and very rough fields, basically any fighter jet is capable of flying off roads and dirt tracks, they just need longer and flatter ones while suffering a bit more maintenance cost while doing so.
6 in 10
Six in ten
42.12 in 70.2
Thank you for clarifying. Now it makes sense.
It's actually correct grammar. Numbers under 10 like six are spelled out, and numbers over 10 are written as numbers. English is dumb sometimes. Edit: at least for publishing.
English is dumb most of the time, what is that b doing at the end of the word dumb?
I totally get that. It just annoyed me lol
Or 3 in 5
I think it depends on the style guide used.
Some say to use words for single digit numbers and numerals for the rest (including 10).
But I like the consistency in you're suggestion.
Si6 in 1en.
yeah! those warp lanes are damaging the Hekaras Corridor! traffic needs to be kept below warp 5 or we risk a catastrophic subspace rift
America first is America alone.
Fucking good. Trudeau made a campaign promise not to go through with purchasing those F-35 planes to begin with and went ahead with it anyway. The deal should have been off the table to begin with, especially with the shit build quality these things have for the insane price point they have.
All that money could be put towards lifting up our fellow Canadians in homelessness and addictions treatment, especially those who are indigenous.
especially with the shit build quality these things have for the insane price point they have.
Eh, the cost isn't incomparable to other fighters, and they're way way more maintainable and rugged than older stealth aircraft. It's just that they're pretty tied to America.
Is that the case? I've been hearing a lot about how unreliable the F-35s have been with it being hard to even get them off the ground half the time due to the maintenance needed on them.
F35 is a terrible plane. Requires Lockheed consultants to maintain, even for US military, which is expensive. No manuals are provided with plane. Requires permission to turn on the electronics for every flight. Has lower flight time/readiness than any other western aircraft. No actual Canadian mission requires a bombing focused air fighter. Only middle east type force amplification from static airbases (not aircraft carrier capable). Pure BS of defending Arctic from complete non threat in next 30 years is a mission for navy, missiles and drones that have longer lives and much cheaper, and better at bombing focused missions.
We need to get a refund for the crap we bought already, or sell them to a sucker like KSA, or US enemy.
Right to repair should be our main concern. If we can’t repair our own shit, we won’t get very far.
Second place in the competition for this purchase was the SAAB Gripen which involved building/assembling in Canada. A much better return on investment, and provides some domestic capability.
The US navy could destroy an airforce 10x our size and there is no way to change that in the short term, especially by giving the US money. We should not be investing in conventional warfare.
There's a strong argument for this. Especially if we don't get a new alliance going with European governments soon.
Start producing our own jets. A modern Avro arrow.