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1 in one of me hate the different ways to write a number in this title
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.
I like the story I heard about someone's Chinese evangelical uncle who thinks trump was chosen by God...as part of a larger plan to destroy the United States.
I'm not religious at all, but this God sound pretty cool 😋
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
I am by no means an expert, I just listen to Perun, William Spaniel and Ryan McCabe a lot (and War Fronts et al). Probably the most pressing need for newer more reliable fighters are as interceptors. Russia has historically flown missions to "buzz" the airspace of NATO countries. I think the Baltics are more of a hotspot, and Alaska, but I would assume that Russia will likely do the same to ours more in the future as well. Especially considering we have already banned Russian civilian aircraft from Canadian airspace since 2022.
Second to that would be in support of NATO allies. Canada has routinely used our CF-18's in support of overseas operations of our allies. I would expect we would like to continue to do so. This is one of those things where if you want allies you probably need to pull your own weight… or surrender something else. I'm certain we could avoid this necessity and just accept increased US concessions. I can't remember who said it, but I've found it useful to consider the US as a "security exporter". They are getting something in return for their defence spending. Which is also what's so concerning, the current administration seems completely ignorant of even the cold Realpolitik calculus of US defence spending.
As to the second part, I would expect our NATO allies would appreciate some Canadian F-35s stationed in Poland say.
The third is straight up national defence. Having the equipment means that anyone actually attacking us needs to deal with the equipment. The old adage is that defence capability is built capability. You have the equipment you already have, not the equipment you are buying and will have soon. This 3rd requirement is where F-35 gets really dodgy. We have an ocean and the longest undefended border, what threats do we really face on the home front? Really? Well, even though I think it's unlikely, it is undeniable that it is vastly less unlikely than it was last year that we could be defending ourselves against US attacks. This could be from US freedom of navigation patrols of the Northwest Passage to an actual land invasion. Don't forget the best scenario is that nothing happens because it's not worth it to start anything.
The F-35 is a finicky and high maintenance race horse. It is highly capable but not rugged. That's fine for the first two requirements, but not great for the 3rd if airbases are targets. This is another reason why Gripen as a stopgap to GCAP seems like a better and better idea. Add in that the US could withhold parts and software updates to further degrade F-35 capability and it becomes less capable in this (currently) unlikely but absolutely devastating scenario.
I'm probably missing a lot, that's just my impressions as a non-expert. As a non-expert I think we should probably stick with 22 or maybe even 44 F-35s. We can take delivery of them soonest, they are very capable, and they absolutely rock for the first two requirements. The money saved should probably go to Gripen (or Typhoon) since we could order and take delivery in parallel, meaning more fighters faster (see requirement 3). Finally, we should use some of the increase in defence spending to join GCAP. Once our defence aerospace industry is a bit healthier than we can explore further capabilities.
The argument I resonate the most from you here is that our allies might appreciate having our F-35s in place to act as a deterrent to further Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.
I still don’t love the idea, but I’m coming around to the idea that your perspective overall on taking current deliveries and cancelling the rest is quite reasonable and may actually be the best option.
Thanks again for answering my questions. It’s a nontrivial amount of time to spent helping some internet rando. Cheers!
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.
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.
yeah! those warp lanes are damaging the Hekaras Corridor! traffic needs to be kept below warp 5 or we risk a catastrophic subspace rift
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.