Supporters of Canada’s F-35 purchase point to the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts that Canadian companies have earned by supplying parts for the U.S. aircraft. That, in turn, has sustained or created Canadian aerospace jobs. But on Feb. 28, the National Post reported that Trump has told Lockheed Martin he wants those jobs back in the U.S. when the Canadian contracts come up for renewal.
During the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau vowed his government would never purchase the F-35.
As prime minister, Trudeau continued to point out the Canadian military had no need for the F-35 and he blamed the Conservatives for agreeing to purchase a problem-plagued fighter jet. But, with the 2023 announcement, the Liberals not only committed to the acquisition, but also increased the number of jets to be bought to 88 from the 65 the Conservatives had wanted.
The Ottawa Citizen is American owned media pretending to be Canadian, infiltrating Canadian culture and politics.
I recommend putting a brief description of Postmedia Network somewhere noticeable on that post. Sort of like an abstract for an essay, maybe.
Just complain about multiple problems with the jet and cancel the order. Ask for a refund on the remaining jet. If no refund is given, advice Krasnov Trump that they will be sold to china.
I mean yes but i also do not want a real war. Fascists looooove war. Americans too.
You really think anything Canada does is going to change the fascist’s minds? They want to take Canada. They’re going to try.
Gripen might be a stopgap, but it is an older platform. At least with updates it’s at least considered a “4.5” generation fighter. F35 is pretty much the best option atm.
Planning ahead though, Canada needs to get involved with either GCAP (Global Combat Air Platform or FCAS (Future Combat Air System).
We can’t realistically pull off another Avro Arrow with modern 5th/6th generation features by ourselves. We can partner with more reliable allies though, and help bolster our own defence aerospace industry at the same time. In either GCAP or FCAS, we would be the junior partner though.
Well, stealth is part of the definition of 5th gen, so the F-35 is kind of the only one in production. The Chinese and Russian equivalents are rumoured to be not actually that stealthy.
Ignoring the “generations”, Gripen vs. F-35 is an apples-to-oranges comparison; they follow totally different philosophies.
Gripens are designed to be a workable fighter jet, while being operable out of an improvised runway with a small, untrained ground crew. It has air intakes that are resistant to swallowing rocks and only needs 500m to take off, for example. Notably, Sweden was preparing to slow down an invasion by a neighboring superior force with it until their allies could arrive, and that’s reminiscent of our situation now.
Meanwhile, F-35s are designed for general air operations in a large military, while being stealthy. They managed very impressively few sacrifices on maintainability and performance to get that stealth, but it still needs a massive supply chain to run. You’re not launching it from somewhere in the bush. I’m not even sure if a standard airport will cut it. Stealth is nice, though, for obvious reasons.
They both are NATO compliant and have network-centric warfare capabilities
I think Canada needs to accept a stopgap measure - the Gripen, Typhoon, Rafale, or Super Hornet - and dive headfirst into GCAP. FCAS is tempting as well, but GCAP is farther along and the countries are probably closer in goals to Canada.
I agree.
GCAP includes Japan (CPTPP partner), and they seem very motivated to not dawdle with getting a modern fighter. GCAP also includes the UK (CANZUK + NATO) and Italy (CETA/EU+NATO).
FCAS is France, Germany and Spain, off the top of my head, and has much less urgency. Of course that could be changing. They’re all EU and NATO, so more eggs in a single basket, but more reliable than US.
One other edge to GCAP is that Sweden had considered joining GCAP, but backed out. They might get back in maybe? Saab is pretty damn competent as well. It would be an even better team. Plus if we went with Gripen and already had some cooperation with Saab, could be even easier to work together.
Perun had a good video a little while back… here it is https://youtu.be/TTjdEtHYDJ4
I remember before the purchase was made, I was really hoping the government would purchase the Swedish Saab Gripen. I think it was one of the finalists for consideration (that’s what I remembered from a few news casts at the time, but not sure if it was an actual finalist, or just someone saying they thought it would be a good option.)
The main reason for me thinking we should have gone with the Saab, was that I trusted buying from Sweden more than the US. I can see the US putting some systems in place that could give them control or some way to negatively affect the F-35s. I remember someone saying that countries don’t have friends, only interests, but I’d still trust Sweden more than the US to not betray us in some way.
It was a serious finalist, and that’s even more impressive when you considered that our airforce went into the bid already knowing they wanted the F-35.
They kept the bid’s website up, and IIRC basically said “we’re around if you change your mind”.
I remember someone saying that countries don’t have friends, only interests
Charles de Gaulle. He was full of shit on that one, though. Countries have domestic politics.
I would love if they actually did follow through and go with the Saab. I don’t know how difficult it would be to get out of the contract (probably impossible at this point), but I just feel we need to start relying on other countries for comparable products, including military hardware.
I didn’t know it was Charles De Gaulle who said that line, I remember the first time I heard that was from a Youtuber called ‘Beau of the Fifth Column’. I wasn’t aware he may have been quoting him.
There’s a problem with the engine. It’s an US design and the US just blocked a sell to Colombia. I think Saab should make another design with the Typhoon engine or some other European engine that has roughly the same size and push.
This would be easier if another ally (or an ally, rather) made a 5th gen fighter, but there are none. We’d be stuck either with ageing platforms or waiting another 10-15 years for Eoropeans to finish one of the 5th gens they’re working on.
The problem is that in the event of a conflict with the US, those jets would be entirely unusable because they’d shut them down. And we’d be billions of dollars down.
It would be better to spend that money elsewhere, even if it’s out of date, than to have nothing.
Pretty sure we couldn’t buy enough of anything to make a difference against the US in even the long term. Except nukes. Those are the only feasible deterrents we could use.
China and America kinda already are, China has it’s J-36 and J-50 prototypes flying right now, America supposedly flew a prototype associated with it’s next-gen fighter program, but there’s just some pictures of airframes on tarmac that nobody can identify so they assume it must be the next-gen fighter.
Well thats what we need to be putting our money in right now (speaking as a european). Even if america does not turn full authoritarian in the next 4 years and we get them back to our site, we can not sit this out right now. We need to be able to fight for our own interests, thats one of the few things Trump is right about (even though it is simply an excuse to drop us).
Screw this “waiting another 10-15 years.” We need to join the GCAP program, and get seriously active.
Lead time is necessarily immense, but we could both shorten it and improve the end product.
“Waiting for someone else to develop” has been a symptom of Canada’s Aerospace industry since the Arrow was shitcanned, and has crept into our national subconscious stream. We need to attack that attitude.
I’d be on board with that, but it doesn’t solve the short-term problem. I seriously doubt our CF-18s will last another 15 years.
True enough, but we can get stopgap gen 4.5 fighters at about half the price of the F-35, and with a vastly lower operational cost.
Get a fleet of Gripen Es, and run them in parallel with our existing Hornets, replacing the Hornets as they age out over the next decade or so. By then the new GCAP fighter should be in full production.
