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
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.
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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”.
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
yeah! those warp lanes are damaging the Hekaras Corridor! traffic needs to be kept below warp 5 or we risk a catastrophic subspace rift
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.
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.
America first is America alone.
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.
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.
For comparison, the F-22’s skin had a reputation for scratching from a rough touch and straight-up dissolving in spilled jet fuel (or even water). Stealth aircraft from before that were basically allowed to be usually-hangared money pits because they only needed to fly occasionally, to collect intel or end the world or whatever.
The process of designing the F-35 was insane, slow and cost billions and billions of dollars, but that’s because the requirements given were over the top. They asked for three planes in one (an Osprey, an F-16 and a B-2), and eventually actually got something like that.
The other guy says they come out about the same as a Gripen, which would be remarkable because the Gripen is designed to be run out of a forest during a Russian invasion of Sweden, and not stealthy at all. Maybe it’s more with the engine and air-frame. Either way, it’s decent, and they like to brag about how almost all the parts can be reached without disassembly (they’re “one-deep”).
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.
The F-35 requires roughly the same amount of mmh / fh as the Gripen, exclusive of engine and air-frame. What’s been hampering the readiness rate of the F-35, which is below that of the Gripen, is the lack of maintenance depots. This was always going to happen because Lockheed planned from the beginning to sell the planes first and build the maintenance depots later. The F-35 sold so well that it outstripped the capacity to build the maintenance depots which created a lack of on-hand parts and technicians. This is turning around and readiness rates are improving as Lockheed slowly gets caught creating maintenance yards.
The Gripen has lower sales (that’s not a knock on it) which made it easier for Saab to keep up on the maintenance side. They also try to get maintenance depots setup simultaneous with deliveries. IMO they’ve done a better job of managing things.
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.
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Are you even Canadian? That’s a pretty dense comment to make.
Indigenous people are much more susceptible to homelessness and addictions due to generational trauma that the government has inflicted on them and their communities through residential schools and the Sixties Scoop.
So yeah, sorry for being racist by… reads notes… acknowledging issues that negatively affect other races.
What are you talking about? We have known for decades that indigenous communities in North America have way higher rates of addiction/alcoholism/etc. in their communities. It’s a huge fucking problem and they generally want help from the federal government
I understand how what they say could come across as racist, but you need to go look up this issue because it’s a very serious matter
The Canadian constitution recognizes both equality of all races and past injustice that may require reconciliation. This is why programs that put extra help to traditionally disadvantaged groups are legal and accepted.
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.
Ya, if you’re worried about a war with the US, you need French nukes, and fast. A handful of jets really isn’t going to make any difference.
Yep. And then the only question is about how fast we can grind down an occupation.
Start producing our own jets. A modern Avro arrow.
So the Gripen deal?
What’s that? I’m a Canadian living in Europe. Edit: it’s a Swedish plane made by Saab (great cars rip). I’d still prefer if Canada made its own jets.
No point reinventing the wheel, and we probably don’t have time anyways. With Gripens, it’s a proven design, and we could start production as soon as we can get a factory stood up
My comment was more about starting new Canadian industries. I agree that it makes sense to buy Gripens now though.
Lol, I mention it because that’s actually what they offered, including a transfer of all the needed intellectual property. Gripens are also kind of neat in that you can run them out of the bush with 5 untrained conscripts as ground crew.
If you mean design our own, sure, maybe in the future. We’re as good as the next advanced country when it comes to that kind of thing.
