Two things. First, this episode is incredibly frustrating as it just comes down to -- as the author states -- successive governments dancing around the cost for something that most voters don't care about (until there is a war, of course). That's an epic failure of leadership for both government and opposition. Defence is a core function of the federal government. Procurement is a core skill. Failing at both while trading barbs is embarrassing. Honestly, are there any adults who could do a detailed review of this mess and spell out what a non-insane military procurement looks like? Because I don't think I've seen one in my lifetime and I'm in my 50s!
Second, getting the F35s is a start and probably key for joint NATO operations. But I don't see a coherent strategy here even for air. What about drones? Air defense? Weapon systems? There is this sense that the purchase of the F35s represents a finish line, but I suspect there is a LOT more work to be done. And, we haven't fixed the process, so I'm not confident we'll make smart timely decisions.
I think we need to define (or, if it's well defined, clearly communicate) what we expect the Canadian military to do, what it needs to accomplish its goals, and what we need to do (funding, programs, procurement) to get them there. That's the policy discussion we need to have, but don't broadly seem to be having. And I say all of this as a voter that doesn't place military in my top five policy priorities! It's something I think any competent government should manage properly as table stakes and I am apparently wildly optimistic and naive in that belief!
The primary challenge is communicating that Canada has legitimate purposes for a military that go beyond domestic emergency response tasks. Too many Canadians indulge in a pacifist attitude fed by a conceit that Canada has no real adversaries, and is too far from any real threats to worry about it. They see any amount of military spending as diverting money that would otherwise be spent on social programs.
The first step is to develop a non-partisan consensus on Canada's security. This is probably as simple as being able to defend Canadian airspace as part of NORAD, participating in the defense of our historic allies as a member of NATO, being able to exercise control over Canada's exclusive maritime zone, and emergency contingencies in Canada. These are existing agreements Canada is part of, or obvious functions of a sovereign state.
A set of goals sets the framework for a defense strategy, and it should inform how to structure and equip the Canadian military to meet those goals. Canada could add on a further goal of being able to deploy expeditionary forces to support multinational security missions - that was certainly Canadian policy until 2011 or so. If it's a serious non-partisan consensus, it should be possible to work in an environment where defense spending isn't such a political hot potato. It'll just be something that needs to be done. There'll be haggling over the details, but Australia is an example of a comparable nation that maintains a fairly consistent policy over successive governments.
"Canadian politicians refuse to tell the public one simple truth". they also refuse tot tell the simple truth of our current fiscal situation.
"The Canadian government failed the Royal Canadian Air Force in this procurement". The Canadian government has repeatedly failed in military procurement going back to the Ross Rifle in WW1
Politicians are creative liars by nature.....usually now in the form of providing zero answers to direct questions. We've arrived at a place where 50 years of fiscal incompetence has caught up to us, and none of them has a vision of the hole they've dug. This means, there is no leadership; just a hamster on a wheel in full panic mode.
Reading back, that $19B bill clearly made me blow my gaskets and, functionally, become a troll here at The Line today. Apologies for the venting; everybody I argued with is welcome to come over for drinks (and endless argument over them).
I've been angry at "weapons that don't work for enemies that don't exist" for 25 years, since Jim Burton's "The Pentagon Wars", and the F35 is kind of the ultimate bete-noir, worst-case example, so 88 of them at $216M each, was, ah, 'triggering', so to speak.
I used to vent my need to snark at the National Post, where nothing else happens in comments. Then I saw this article about how many anti-vax sites suddenly switched to emitting anti-Ukraine material in early March, revealing where they'd been coming from all along...and that day, many NP commenters also began emitting the same pro-Russia prattle. I realized that most of them weren't Canadian, or even carbon-based, and I can't be bothered any more.
But The Line should not become an acrimonious place, I really value it.
*sigh* - they don't buy fighter jets they get slagged on, they do buy fighter jets they get slagged on. I feel bad for any government trying to do what needs to be done in military procurement.
If, as been asserted, that the Liberals and NDP are the ones who forced Harper to not balance his budgets, it appears he caved to that in order to stay in power. I think you're either a leader or a politician; you can't easily be both.
I think that at the time running deficits was the right thing to do, even if it was unpopular in Conservative circles. That took leadership, Harper's and especially Flaherty's. I didn't love everything they did, but they demonstrated leadership through the 2008 financial crisis. Timing the return to normal budgeting is notoriously hard; that they pulled back too early is a common criticism and probably apt in retrospect, but Canada managed better than most.
? Did you actually read my comment? I didn't say the Liberal government. I specifically said government. I actually blame political punditry and whining from people who should know better about the cost. *eye roll*
If i remember correctly the F35 had a number of problems back then and there were alternatives. The fact the governments procrastinated on doing anything was the problem.
It's a good question. I don't see us as much of a missile nation, but I could see us getting a great deal of value from drones....but in using, but more importantly, building.
Early days of the F-35s, was not one of the major issues the fact that this plane couldn't fly in our great white north on a single tank of gas? There was a whole laundry list of issues that for a long time no one was thinking this is a good deal, even if we get to fly with the Americans.
When Canada does military/war exercises with other countries, not everyone has the same planes, tanks, rocket launchers or whatever. I don't think it's necessarily the best plane at the best price but they didn't ask me. I can think of lots of reasons why they are going with the F-35 and it has little to do with flying so fast and so sneaky (stealth).
I wonder, though I imagine it is impossible, to follow the money in the 12 year saga. Who would have benefitted under the Harper agreement? Did those that benefit change through the completion (i.e. Liberal aligned companies, staff etc..) and who would benefit from the new agreement (again Liberal aligned). I mean, like in everything, there are ancillary benefits to all political actions, it seems in military procurement, since there is very little scrutiny except a the surface level, it would be a great place for skimming cash...also might explain why the Canadian military seems like a bottomless pit that just swallows money and provides very little return. I always wonder why at 70,000 person force with a budget of x can only support a 300 peacekeeping deployment in Mali for 6 months even when they were asked for more. Before putting any more money in to nation defence, I would like to see a massive, thorough audit of the expenditures for the last 10 years. Where did the money go and was it spent as intended to support Canada's defence or siphoned off to consultants or admin?
Because military equipment costs so much, several government departments tend to become paralysed trying to balance what we need the equipment to do versus how much money can be spent in Canada to build it. Thus, they order nothing, and pay far more in bandaid parts to keep what they have operating..probably at least doubling the operating cost. Military equipment is run at full speed. Kind of like the maintenance effects if you drove your car with the pedal on the floor all the time. Wear and tear is a killer. Eventually, rock bottom is reached and an order is placed.
Training is constant...and costs a fortune. Skills decay quickly if you don't practice.
The military is like home insurance....you pay and pay for it, but you want it there when you need it.
Then you have to factor that the government that involves our troops is sending them into harm's way. The reasons need to be justifiable, and the mission worthwhile, because you're literally risking people's lives with the decision that are made. Even our troops training the Ukrainians are at risk.. note that the US just lost 4 people in a training crash. It's not for the feint of heart.
Well, I'm furious and horrified that the buy is taking place at all, especially after I granted The Line my brilliant plan to just buy a bunch of their old A10 Warthogs and vow to provide all close-air support for NATO's future wars. Would have cost a small fraction, and been a better NATO contribution. All they had to do was read The Line, and read an objective article on the F35, and have some common sense.
But, we have to hand it to the government for at least giving us seven years of respite before the $19B waste began. It's a big financial win. Assuming 4% time-cost-of-money, a delay of 7 years reduces the NPV down to 0.96^7 = 0.75, saving one-quarter of the Net Present Value of the planned expenditure, that's nearly 5 billion dollars!
Of course, the price we had to pay was 7 more years of being defended by unused F18s instead of unused F35s. I think we bought a few of those for a billion or so. Let's call the saving only $4B. Still a huge win. I'm actually underselling the win, though, because the operational/maintenance costs on the F35s would have been much higher than for F18s, so we avoided seven years of that wallet-hoovering as well.
I was quite amused by the A10 idea....it had some merits. How would it hold up when doing the regular intercepts of Russian bombers that test the outer reaches of our borders on a regular basis? That it can't keep up with them might be a problem. Just to make the bill a little bigger, we also need to increase our airborne refuelling capacity significantly.
Sorry, I thought you had us *fighting* Russians, which was ridiculous, had to delete.
Why would we intercept Russian bombers "testing our borders"? They're wasting their time on a bomber-attack scenario that was abandoned in the 1960s. Just spending public money on fantasies, like the Americans continuing to spend $8B/year on Star Wars.
OK, looked it up, point taken, we *have* to patrol NORAD borders with something, that's a treaty obligation. But the treaty doesn't say what we have to patrol with. I'd go for a 737 or six, highly reliable and affordable, able to handle very heavy loads for large radars, mount in a few missiles so it's a warplane, treaty obligation met, as two militaries justify each other.
Not being a fighter jet, they'd be easy to shoot down, but having giant radars, they'd have a fair bit of warning, and there are parachutes. Not to mention that the fire-and-forget modern missiles would probably get them some revenge. Then their surviving attackers would still be a four-hour flight from anything worth bombing, and Moscow schoolchildren would be 30 minutes from being rapidly expanding clouds of gas. The "bomber" leg of the nuclear triad is so worthless compared to the other two, it's only kept going at all by military-industrial lobbying.
A nuclear war MUST be a surprise, so launch by surprise from a civilian cargo ship in the St. Lawrence; just use short range missiles that pop up out of a cargo container right in port. The "bombers over the pole" scenario has been silly since they invented nukes that don't need a giant bomber to carry them.
So a 737 is all the expense I think that particular treaty obligation is worth.
Purchasing a 737 would hugely piss off the American vendors that muscle their government to muscle other governments to buy their insanely overpriced crap; that's where the A10s come in. The vendors and Air Force would still hate us, double in fact; but the American Army would be very grateful and protect us. In the boardrooms where they do all their best fighting.
Because they do it to us on a regular basis, as the Americans and who knows who else does it to them. maybe it's just a big game to see if anyone is paying attention, but it happens all the time. And without it, they'd be free to fly all over North America. I don't think we really want that. I'm assuming yoru737 is a little tongue in cheek. I suspect there's just a wee bit more involved in turning a 737 into a combat aircraft....and it can't keep up with some Russian bombers as well. As the US has shown, the 737 can be a great electronic warning platform.
It doesn't matter if a nuclear war is a surprise. Both sides have enough assets in space to validate launches that there is no such thing as a surprise first strike missile attack. The only challenge will be for all sides to figure out which country's sub it came from.
Adults can solve all their problems around a table. As Russia has shown, egos and paranoia are far more pervasive than adulthood in world leaders.
Not as tongue-in-cheek as you think. When the Houthis shut down Saudi oil for a week, it was with a DIY drone with smartphone components. The Russian convoy was shut down by 30 guys with recently, locally DIY 8-rotors delivered by quadbike.
But it was certainly tongue-in-cheek, as the point was to not send a combat aircraft, no combat being in the offing.
You're dang right war is changing. It changed past the F35 being a good expenditure decades back.
Oh, the "which sub" thing - review the non-classified capabilities noted in the "sum of all fears" movie, 27 years ago, about an hour after a nuclear bomb goes off, and five minutes after the nuclear response team arrives:
AFRAT Specialist Stubbs: They always had a gadolinium problem. Hanford does it another way. They always generate too much promethium.
Jack Ryan: [on the phone] Hold on a second. Can you translate that into English for me?
AFRAT Specialist Wesson: This plutonium came from the DOE plant at Savannah River. February of '68 from "K" reactor. You can even tell which part of "K" reactor.
Believe that they'd know which sub. Which bomb. They all have spectral signatures. They could tell you where the bomb was manufactured. A minute after it went off. From space.
If you want to buy drones, I'm all in. Look what Ukraine is doing with them. Frankly, it's a military business we should be involved in, and if everyone at Bombardier hasn't been hired elsewhere, we have the people. . I often wonder how soon it will be until air superiority doesn't involve on-board pilots? The human limits the aircraft's performance.
And exactly what do we need these planes for? (The same applies to submarines and frigates). The lobbyists calling for more spending on military hardware never really say, it seems to me. Clearly it's not for defending our national territory, so where will they be used and for what? For example, what use were the frigates built in the 1980s that are now being replaced at eye watering expense, but to the great profit of the Irving shipyard in Halifax?
We do not have enough aircraft of any kind to patrol or observe our national boundary. We do not have enough equipment for Search and Rescue. We do not have enough fighter aircraft to meet either our NATO or NORAD obligations. If you can't patrol your border, how can you hope to defend it? How do we respond if Russia starts drilling for oil at the North Pole?
I think the govt and military need to do a better job at defining and communicating this. We do have obligations for joint NATO (and sometimes UN) missions which require both these fighters and the ability to interoperate with allies. The F35 accomplishes that. But, we also have our own national and continental defense, with vast areas. We need to update NORAD with the US. Given our vast costal area, you'd think it would be good to have a Navy capable of securing our coasts, particularly in the Arctic. We also lean on our military for natural disasters. They seem wildly under equipped for this set of pretty obvious (and diverse) missions. Agreed: F35s are a start and we really need to have a sober policy discussion as a nation as to what we expect from our military, what they can actually do now, and how to address that presumed gap.
Do you have house insurance, life insurance, or car insurance? Have you used any of those? Have you made use of a police service in the past year? If you haven't experienced a house break-in or an assault in the past 20 years, are you demanding a refund on your taxes for police services?
What you're asking is an unserious question, showing a lack of understanding of the threats posed by the authoritarian states in the world.
Can you name a credible threat that an F35 would be needed to defend Canada from?
Nuclear-armed attackers would just use those. Non-nuclear-protected attackers would fear our nuclear-armed allies.
Canada can only participate in legal uses of military force under our UN Treaty obligations. There have been three. Korea, we sent logistics planes, no fighters; there were very few enemy fighterjets to fight, and the Americans wanted to hog them all, so more guys could claim combat missions. Iraq 1991, we proudly joined in on the bombing of hapless Arabs, but we weren't remotely needed. Afghanistan had no air force, so we didn't send jets.
That's sixty years of their combat records, since the F101. I believe that some Canadian jets did come under AA fire while taking down Iraqi radars in 1991, all of which missed by literal miles. No dogfights.
CF-18s are still intercepting Russian bombers on a regular basis as they probe Canadian airspace. Canada has also contributed to air defense in the Baltic republics as part of NATO.
Air defense isn't the only role of Canadian fighters, of course - they're also used for strike roles. You mentioned the 1991 Gulf War, but seem to have missed Kosovo, Libya, and Syria. Maybe you're about to argue those weren't "legal", but they were all multinational missions that fell under the UN Responsibility to Protect doctrine, even if they were stymied by the authoritarian permanent members of the security council.
Your continuing advocacy of the A-10 suggests you're out of touch with how air power has changed since the late '60s, but stealth technology and advanced sensor fusion are basically par for the course now. Tactical aircraft are severely challenged against modern Russian triple-digit SAM systems if they don't have stealth, as the Russians have ironically discovered. Stealth also provides protection in the air-to-air role: if you're harder to see or detect, you're harder to attack and kill.
The demand exists for the A10 CAS service, the USAF just doesn't want to meet customer need. Indeed, they loathe regarding their Army as "customers".
...the point is not whether the A10 can do everything in every environment; the A10 is useful for many potential NATO needs that might come up, since we NATO so loves those low-risk jobs beating up on low-tech opponents. It allows us to make a contribution, indeed a major one, since we'd of course be supplying our own CAS for Canucks on the ground doing the dying.
If you're contributing to NATO, you get to call upon NATO if you need nuclear protection. We don't have to contribute by just making American suppliers of planes that aren't allowed within 25 miles of a thunderstorm, obscenely richer. We could contribute willingness to do the real down-and-dirty fighting.
Oh!! Hey, guys, excellent news: they think they've got a fix for the problem that keeps the F35 from being allowed within 25 miles of a thunderstorm!
You're also telling me you don't understand how NATO works, and that you A) don't understand much about the typical teething pains of fielding new systems, and B) didn't bother reading the article you posted as a criticism, because it indicates that they were in the process of closing out the problem.
Like everybody in those stories is not a "political lobbyist".
I read both, put forward the one with my argument-side to it, because I only need one supporter. It doesn't matter if they're the winning side, or even right.
We're going past each other, because you're arguing about actual military merits, I'm only looking for a plausible political excuse to claim we're contributing to NATO at all.
I see no military merits to the F35 at all; not net benefits, anyway. Here's both barrels at ya, from "The Spoils of War" (2019):
"The F-35 first saw combat last year, 17 years after the program began. The Marines sent just six of them on their first deployment to the Middle East, and over several months only managed to fly one combat sortie per plane every three days. According to the Pentagon's former chief testing official, had there been opposition, these "fighters" could not have survived without the protection of other planes."
They're still working on the "unacceptably inaccurate" gun.
If the A10s are good for anything, they're better than the Money Pit.
True, but we do have NATO and UN obligations to support. The F35 isn't really much of a dogfighter; it's really leveraging stealth to allow it to gain early air superiority from a distance. I am far from an expert on military hardware but will admit some concern that if this stealth is compromised by new tech the F35 loses a lot of its advantages. But our ability to operate as part of a larger coordinated force probably does make the F35 a logical choice given the other options (though I liked the idea of the Saab just as a cheaper option we could develop further, even if that probably doesn't make sense given domestic capabilities).
I get your point: an alternative would be to carve out specific areas for Canada to contribute and excel at (close air support and the A10). The 'do a few things really well' approach.
Really, it all comes down to defining what we expect our military to do, then properly supporting them to do that mission well. I'm not sure we do either.
The F-35 isn't actually all that bad in terms of maneuverability. The handling is apparently a lot like an F-18. There was a lot of artificial controversy about 10 years ago regarding a video of an early block F-35 being out-turned by an F-16. What the critics didn't bother to mention was that the software on that aircraft deliberately limited the handling of the early block F-35 as testing was still expanding the flight envelope. An F-16 with 9 g turn capability outturning an F-35 with software limiting it to 5.5 g? Who would've thought? Of course, that envelope expansion has been completed and the aircraft has now got full capability, plus about 45,000 lbf thrust from that huge engine that provides some significant benefits in energy management.
The other thing is that air combat has changed a lot. Fighter pilots still like to hang onto the idea of the dogfight, and that's why fighters have still got a gun. They like to point to the idea that missiles were supposed to do everything back in the '60s, making dogfighting obsolete. That ended up being wrong in Vietnam given the limitations of the missile technology of the time, and rules of engagement requiring visual ID of targets. The thing is that technology has caught up to and surpassed the ambitions of '60s pre-Vietnam doctrine: modern air-to-air missiles have a kill envelope that's extremely difficult for an aircraft to evade; short-range missiles can be fired off-boresight, meaning high maneuverability isn't as important as detecting the enemy first (and it was a rude shock in 1991 for NATO to discover that the Soviets equipped their latest fighters with a high offboresite missile and an helmet-mounted sight); and advances in sensors and non-cooperative target recognition provide a high degree of confidence in identifying an aircraft without a visual ID. The game now seems to be who spots who first, and can get a shot off.
Finally, the close air support mission has changed. Smart weapons have changed the game. Targeting is more accurate, which both increases the ability to hit the target and reduces the danger of friendly fire incidents. It also means that aircraft can operate at medium altitudes and stay out of the range antiaircraft gun fire, which everybody has figured out is huge danger to low flying aircraft. The 1991 Gulf War kind of spelled the end of low-level attacks against enemies with a decent AAA capability: the A-10 force got badly shot up, an AH-64 attack was mauled, and the British Tornado force took losses despite (and because of) their vaunted low-level attack tactics against Iraqi airfields. The best close air support aircraft in Afghanistan turned out to be the Cold War B-1 bomber: equipped with a big load-out of precision weapons, it could orbit over the battlefield for an extended period and deliver attacks exactly where it was needed. A little less cool than an A-10 flying overhead at low level, making a deafening "BRRRTTT!" with a big gun, but ultimately demoralizing for the opponents when they get hit by a precision-aimed bolt from the blue that they barely hear coming.
What about preventing enemy aircraft from entering our airspace? I don't follow these things closely, but it seems like once a year or so you hear some story about how fighters get scrambled to escort enemy aircraft that get too close.
Two things. First, this episode is incredibly frustrating as it just comes down to -- as the author states -- successive governments dancing around the cost for something that most voters don't care about (until there is a war, of course). That's an epic failure of leadership for both government and opposition. Defence is a core function of the federal government. Procurement is a core skill. Failing at both while trading barbs is embarrassing. Honestly, are there any adults who could do a detailed review of this mess and spell out what a non-insane military procurement looks like? Because I don't think I've seen one in my lifetime and I'm in my 50s!
Second, getting the F35s is a start and probably key for joint NATO operations. But I don't see a coherent strategy here even for air. What about drones? Air defense? Weapon systems? There is this sense that the purchase of the F35s represents a finish line, but I suspect there is a LOT more work to be done. And, we haven't fixed the process, so I'm not confident we'll make smart timely decisions.
I think we need to define (or, if it's well defined, clearly communicate) what we expect the Canadian military to do, what it needs to accomplish its goals, and what we need to do (funding, programs, procurement) to get them there. That's the policy discussion we need to have, but don't broadly seem to be having. And I say all of this as a voter that doesn't place military in my top five policy priorities! It's something I think any competent government should manage properly as table stakes and I am apparently wildly optimistic and naive in that belief!
The primary challenge is communicating that Canada has legitimate purposes for a military that go beyond domestic emergency response tasks. Too many Canadians indulge in a pacifist attitude fed by a conceit that Canada has no real adversaries, and is too far from any real threats to worry about it. They see any amount of military spending as diverting money that would otherwise be spent on social programs.
The first step is to develop a non-partisan consensus on Canada's security. This is probably as simple as being able to defend Canadian airspace as part of NORAD, participating in the defense of our historic allies as a member of NATO, being able to exercise control over Canada's exclusive maritime zone, and emergency contingencies in Canada. These are existing agreements Canada is part of, or obvious functions of a sovereign state.
A set of goals sets the framework for a defense strategy, and it should inform how to structure and equip the Canadian military to meet those goals. Canada could add on a further goal of being able to deploy expeditionary forces to support multinational security missions - that was certainly Canadian policy until 2011 or so. If it's a serious non-partisan consensus, it should be possible to work in an environment where defense spending isn't such a political hot potato. It'll just be something that needs to be done. There'll be haggling over the details, but Australia is an example of a comparable nation that maintains a fairly consistent policy over successive governments.
Absolutely spot on. What is our military for, and what does it need to carry out those jobs.
"Canadian politicians refuse to tell the public one simple truth". they also refuse tot tell the simple truth of our current fiscal situation.
"The Canadian government failed the Royal Canadian Air Force in this procurement". The Canadian government has repeatedly failed in military procurement going back to the Ross Rifle in WW1
Politicians are creative liars by nature.....usually now in the form of providing zero answers to direct questions. We've arrived at a place where 50 years of fiscal incompetence has caught up to us, and none of them has a vision of the hole they've dug. This means, there is no leadership; just a hamster on a wheel in full panic mode.
Reading back, that $19B bill clearly made me blow my gaskets and, functionally, become a troll here at The Line today. Apologies for the venting; everybody I argued with is welcome to come over for drinks (and endless argument over them).
I've been angry at "weapons that don't work for enemies that don't exist" for 25 years, since Jim Burton's "The Pentagon Wars", and the F35 is kind of the ultimate bete-noir, worst-case example, so 88 of them at $216M each, was, ah, 'triggering', so to speak.
I used to vent my need to snark at the National Post, where nothing else happens in comments. Then I saw this article about how many anti-vax sites suddenly switched to emitting anti-Ukraine material in early March, revealing where they'd been coming from all along...and that day, many NP commenters also began emitting the same pro-Russia prattle. I realized that most of them weren't Canadian, or even carbon-based, and I can't be bothered any more.
But The Line should not become an acrimonious place, I really value it.
*sigh* - they don't buy fighter jets they get slagged on, they do buy fighter jets they get slagged on. I feel bad for any government trying to do what needs to be done in military procurement.
We would have been flying them for years now if Harper had ordered them. We'd have had them for a year or 2 at most if Trudeau had done it.
Another sad example of doing what's best for the party and not the country.
If, as been asserted, that the Liberals and NDP are the ones who forced Harper to not balance his budgets, it appears he caved to that in order to stay in power. I think you're either a leader or a politician; you can't easily be both.
I think that at the time running deficits was the right thing to do, even if it was unpopular in Conservative circles. That took leadership, Harper's and especially Flaherty's. I didn't love everything they did, but they demonstrated leadership through the 2008 financial crisis. Timing the return to normal budgeting is notoriously hard; that they pulled back too early is a common criticism and probably apt in retrospect, but Canada managed better than most.
I still find it funny that harper spending his way through a recession is good, and Bob Rae is vilified for doing the exact same thing.
I think we're bankrupt. We spent our kids future on new cars and now the roof is leaking.
If the other parties pushed him to overspend, he should have said "no" if that's what he believed. He caved.
? Did you actually read my comment? I didn't say the Liberal government. I specifically said government. I actually blame political punditry and whining from people who should know better about the cost. *eye roll*
Ohhh, you're one of those blame the liberals for everything under the sun people. Got it. Carry on then.
If i remember correctly the F35 had a number of problems back then and there were alternatives. The fact the governments procrastinated on doing anything was the problem.
With new tech like drones and hypersonic missiles, I wonder how much we're chasing the trailing edge of a tech curve.
Just so Justin can "whip out" his new fighter jets.
It's a good question. I don't see us as much of a missile nation, but I could see us getting a great deal of value from drones....but in using, but more importantly, building.
Early days of the F-35s, was not one of the major issues the fact that this plane couldn't fly in our great white north on a single tank of gas? There was a whole laundry list of issues that for a long time no one was thinking this is a good deal, even if we get to fly with the Americans.
When Canada does military/war exercises with other countries, not everyone has the same planes, tanks, rocket launchers or whatever. I don't think it's necessarily the best plane at the best price but they didn't ask me. I can think of lots of reasons why they are going with the F-35 and it has little to do with flying so fast and so sneaky (stealth).
I wonder, though I imagine it is impossible, to follow the money in the 12 year saga. Who would have benefitted under the Harper agreement? Did those that benefit change through the completion (i.e. Liberal aligned companies, staff etc..) and who would benefit from the new agreement (again Liberal aligned). I mean, like in everything, there are ancillary benefits to all political actions, it seems in military procurement, since there is very little scrutiny except a the surface level, it would be a great place for skimming cash...also might explain why the Canadian military seems like a bottomless pit that just swallows money and provides very little return. I always wonder why at 70,000 person force with a budget of x can only support a 300 peacekeeping deployment in Mali for 6 months even when they were asked for more. Before putting any more money in to nation defence, I would like to see a massive, thorough audit of the expenditures for the last 10 years. Where did the money go and was it spent as intended to support Canada's defence or siphoned off to consultants or admin?
Because military equipment costs so much, several government departments tend to become paralysed trying to balance what we need the equipment to do versus how much money can be spent in Canada to build it. Thus, they order nothing, and pay far more in bandaid parts to keep what they have operating..probably at least doubling the operating cost. Military equipment is run at full speed. Kind of like the maintenance effects if you drove your car with the pedal on the floor all the time. Wear and tear is a killer. Eventually, rock bottom is reached and an order is placed.
Training is constant...and costs a fortune. Skills decay quickly if you don't practice.
The military is like home insurance....you pay and pay for it, but you want it there when you need it.
Then you have to factor that the government that involves our troops is sending them into harm's way. The reasons need to be justifiable, and the mission worthwhile, because you're literally risking people's lives with the decision that are made. Even our troops training the Ukrainians are at risk.. note that the US just lost 4 people in a training crash. It's not for the feint of heart.
Well, I'm furious and horrified that the buy is taking place at all, especially after I granted The Line my brilliant plan to just buy a bunch of their old A10 Warthogs and vow to provide all close-air support for NATO's future wars. Would have cost a small fraction, and been a better NATO contribution. All they had to do was read The Line, and read an objective article on the F35, and have some common sense.
But, we have to hand it to the government for at least giving us seven years of respite before the $19B waste began. It's a big financial win. Assuming 4% time-cost-of-money, a delay of 7 years reduces the NPV down to 0.96^7 = 0.75, saving one-quarter of the Net Present Value of the planned expenditure, that's nearly 5 billion dollars!
Of course, the price we had to pay was 7 more years of being defended by unused F18s instead of unused F35s. I think we bought a few of those for a billion or so. Let's call the saving only $4B. Still a huge win. I'm actually underselling the win, though, because the operational/maintenance costs on the F35s would have been much higher than for F18s, so we avoided seven years of that wallet-hoovering as well.
I was quite amused by the A10 idea....it had some merits. How would it hold up when doing the regular intercepts of Russian bombers that test the outer reaches of our borders on a regular basis? That it can't keep up with them might be a problem. Just to make the bill a little bigger, we also need to increase our airborne refuelling capacity significantly.
Sorry, I thought you had us *fighting* Russians, which was ridiculous, had to delete.
Why would we intercept Russian bombers "testing our borders"? They're wasting their time on a bomber-attack scenario that was abandoned in the 1960s. Just spending public money on fantasies, like the Americans continuing to spend $8B/year on Star Wars.
OK, looked it up, point taken, we *have* to patrol NORAD borders with something, that's a treaty obligation. But the treaty doesn't say what we have to patrol with. I'd go for a 737 or six, highly reliable and affordable, able to handle very heavy loads for large radars, mount in a few missiles so it's a warplane, treaty obligation met, as two militaries justify each other.
Not being a fighter jet, they'd be easy to shoot down, but having giant radars, they'd have a fair bit of warning, and there are parachutes. Not to mention that the fire-and-forget modern missiles would probably get them some revenge. Then their surviving attackers would still be a four-hour flight from anything worth bombing, and Moscow schoolchildren would be 30 minutes from being rapidly expanding clouds of gas. The "bomber" leg of the nuclear triad is so worthless compared to the other two, it's only kept going at all by military-industrial lobbying.
A nuclear war MUST be a surprise, so launch by surprise from a civilian cargo ship in the St. Lawrence; just use short range missiles that pop up out of a cargo container right in port. The "bombers over the pole" scenario has been silly since they invented nukes that don't need a giant bomber to carry them.
So a 737 is all the expense I think that particular treaty obligation is worth.
Purchasing a 737 would hugely piss off the American vendors that muscle their government to muscle other governments to buy their insanely overpriced crap; that's where the A10s come in. The vendors and Air Force would still hate us, double in fact; but the American Army would be very grateful and protect us. In the boardrooms where they do all their best fighting.
Because they do it to us on a regular basis, as the Americans and who knows who else does it to them. maybe it's just a big game to see if anyone is paying attention, but it happens all the time. And without it, they'd be free to fly all over North America. I don't think we really want that. I'm assuming yoru737 is a little tongue in cheek. I suspect there's just a wee bit more involved in turning a 737 into a combat aircraft....and it can't keep up with some Russian bombers as well. As the US has shown, the 737 can be a great electronic warning platform.
It doesn't matter if a nuclear war is a surprise. Both sides have enough assets in space to validate launches that there is no such thing as a surprise first strike missile attack. The only challenge will be for all sides to figure out which country's sub it came from.
Adults can solve all their problems around a table. As Russia has shown, egos and paranoia are far more pervasive than adulthood in world leaders.
Not as tongue-in-cheek as you think. When the Houthis shut down Saudi oil for a week, it was with a DIY drone with smartphone components. The Russian convoy was shut down by 30 guys with recently, locally DIY 8-rotors delivered by quadbike.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/28/the-drone-operators-who-halted-the-russian-armoured-vehicles-heading-for-kyiv?amp;amp;amp
But it was certainly tongue-in-cheek, as the point was to not send a combat aircraft, no combat being in the offing.
You're dang right war is changing. It changed past the F35 being a good expenditure decades back.
Oh, the "which sub" thing - review the non-classified capabilities noted in the "sum of all fears" movie, 27 years ago, about an hour after a nuclear bomb goes off, and five minutes after the nuclear response team arrives:
AFRAT Specialist Stubbs: They always had a gadolinium problem. Hanford does it another way. They always generate too much promethium.
Jack Ryan: [on the phone] Hold on a second. Can you translate that into English for me?
AFRAT Specialist Wesson: This plutonium came from the DOE plant at Savannah River. February of '68 from "K" reactor. You can even tell which part of "K" reactor.
Believe that they'd know which sub. Which bomb. They all have spectral signatures. They could tell you where the bomb was manufactured. A minute after it went off. From space.
If you want to buy drones, I'm all in. Look what Ukraine is doing with them. Frankly, it's a military business we should be involved in, and if everyone at Bombardier hasn't been hired elsewhere, we have the people. . I often wonder how soon it will be until air superiority doesn't involve on-board pilots? The human limits the aircraft's performance.
And exactly what do we need these planes for? (The same applies to submarines and frigates). The lobbyists calling for more spending on military hardware never really say, it seems to me. Clearly it's not for defending our national territory, so where will they be used and for what? For example, what use were the frigates built in the 1980s that are now being replaced at eye watering expense, but to the great profit of the Irving shipyard in Halifax?
Replace Ukraine with Arctic and you have your answer.
We do not have enough aircraft of any kind to patrol or observe our national boundary. We do not have enough equipment for Search and Rescue. We do not have enough fighter aircraft to meet either our NATO or NORAD obligations. If you can't patrol your border, how can you hope to defend it? How do we respond if Russia starts drilling for oil at the North Pole?
I think the govt and military need to do a better job at defining and communicating this. We do have obligations for joint NATO (and sometimes UN) missions which require both these fighters and the ability to interoperate with allies. The F35 accomplishes that. But, we also have our own national and continental defense, with vast areas. We need to update NORAD with the US. Given our vast costal area, you'd think it would be good to have a Navy capable of securing our coasts, particularly in the Arctic. We also lean on our military for natural disasters. They seem wildly under equipped for this set of pretty obvious (and diverse) missions. Agreed: F35s are a start and we really need to have a sober policy discussion as a nation as to what we expect from our military, what they can actually do now, and how to address that presumed gap.
Do you have house insurance, life insurance, or car insurance? Have you used any of those? Have you made use of a police service in the past year? If you haven't experienced a house break-in or an assault in the past 20 years, are you demanding a refund on your taxes for police services?
What you're asking is an unserious question, showing a lack of understanding of the threats posed by the authoritarian states in the world.
Can you name a credible threat that an F35 would be needed to defend Canada from?
Nuclear-armed attackers would just use those. Non-nuclear-protected attackers would fear our nuclear-armed allies.
Canada can only participate in legal uses of military force under our UN Treaty obligations. There have been three. Korea, we sent logistics planes, no fighters; there were very few enemy fighterjets to fight, and the Americans wanted to hog them all, so more guys could claim combat missions. Iraq 1991, we proudly joined in on the bombing of hapless Arabs, but we weren't remotely needed. Afghanistan had no air force, so we didn't send jets.
That's sixty years of their combat records, since the F101. I believe that some Canadian jets did come under AA fire while taking down Iraqi radars in 1991, all of which missed by literal miles. No dogfights.
CF-18s are still intercepting Russian bombers on a regular basis as they probe Canadian airspace. Canada has also contributed to air defense in the Baltic republics as part of NATO.
Air defense isn't the only role of Canadian fighters, of course - they're also used for strike roles. You mentioned the 1991 Gulf War, but seem to have missed Kosovo, Libya, and Syria. Maybe you're about to argue those weren't "legal", but they were all multinational missions that fell under the UN Responsibility to Protect doctrine, even if they were stymied by the authoritarian permanent members of the security council.
Your continuing advocacy of the A-10 suggests you're out of touch with how air power has changed since the late '60s, but stealth technology and advanced sensor fusion are basically par for the course now. Tactical aircraft are severely challenged against modern Russian triple-digit SAM systems if they don't have stealth, as the Russians have ironically discovered. Stealth also provides protection in the air-to-air role: if you're harder to see or detect, you're harder to attack and kill.
I'll leave it to the American Army to defend it's own preference for the A10 over F35, until they were arm-twisted:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/why-america-and-army-still-needs-10-warthog-180884
The demand exists for the A10 CAS service, the USAF just doesn't want to meet customer need. Indeed, they loathe regarding their Army as "customers".
...the point is not whether the A10 can do everything in every environment; the A10 is useful for many potential NATO needs that might come up, since we NATO so loves those low-risk jobs beating up on low-tech opponents. It allows us to make a contribution, indeed a major one, since we'd of course be supplying our own CAS for Canucks on the ground doing the dying.
If you're contributing to NATO, you get to call upon NATO if you need nuclear protection. We don't have to contribute by just making American suppliers of planes that aren't allowed within 25 miles of a thunderstorm, obscenely richer. We could contribute willingness to do the real down-and-dirty fighting.
Oh!! Hey, guys, excellent news: they think they've got a fix for the problem that keeps the F35 from being allowed within 25 miles of a thunderstorm!
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44152/critical-repair-could-allow-air-force-f-35s-to-fly-near-lightning-storms
You might consider what the Army actually says about close air support and the A-10, rather than merely accept the assertions of a political lobbyist:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-the-us-army-could-care-less-about-the-10-warthog-16704
You're also telling me you don't understand how NATO works, and that you A) don't understand much about the typical teething pains of fielding new systems, and B) didn't bother reading the article you posted as a criticism, because it indicates that they were in the process of closing out the problem.
Like everybody in those stories is not a "political lobbyist".
I read both, put forward the one with my argument-side to it, because I only need one supporter. It doesn't matter if they're the winning side, or even right.
We're going past each other, because you're arguing about actual military merits, I'm only looking for a plausible political excuse to claim we're contributing to NATO at all.
I see no military merits to the F35 at all; not net benefits, anyway. Here's both barrels at ya, from "The Spoils of War" (2019):
"The F-35 first saw combat last year, 17 years after the program began. The Marines sent just six of them on their first deployment to the Middle East, and over several months only managed to fly one combat sortie per plane every three days. According to the Pentagon's former chief testing official, had there been opposition, these "fighters" could not have survived without the protection of other planes."
They're still working on the "unacceptably inaccurate" gun.
If the A10s are good for anything, they're better than the Money Pit.
True, but we do have NATO and UN obligations to support. The F35 isn't really much of a dogfighter; it's really leveraging stealth to allow it to gain early air superiority from a distance. I am far from an expert on military hardware but will admit some concern that if this stealth is compromised by new tech the F35 loses a lot of its advantages. But our ability to operate as part of a larger coordinated force probably does make the F35 a logical choice given the other options (though I liked the idea of the Saab just as a cheaper option we could develop further, even if that probably doesn't make sense given domestic capabilities).
I get your point: an alternative would be to carve out specific areas for Canada to contribute and excel at (close air support and the A10). The 'do a few things really well' approach.
Really, it all comes down to defining what we expect our military to do, then properly supporting them to do that mission well. I'm not sure we do either.
The F-35 isn't actually all that bad in terms of maneuverability. The handling is apparently a lot like an F-18. There was a lot of artificial controversy about 10 years ago regarding a video of an early block F-35 being out-turned by an F-16. What the critics didn't bother to mention was that the software on that aircraft deliberately limited the handling of the early block F-35 as testing was still expanding the flight envelope. An F-16 with 9 g turn capability outturning an F-35 with software limiting it to 5.5 g? Who would've thought? Of course, that envelope expansion has been completed and the aircraft has now got full capability, plus about 45,000 lbf thrust from that huge engine that provides some significant benefits in energy management.
The other thing is that air combat has changed a lot. Fighter pilots still like to hang onto the idea of the dogfight, and that's why fighters have still got a gun. They like to point to the idea that missiles were supposed to do everything back in the '60s, making dogfighting obsolete. That ended up being wrong in Vietnam given the limitations of the missile technology of the time, and rules of engagement requiring visual ID of targets. The thing is that technology has caught up to and surpassed the ambitions of '60s pre-Vietnam doctrine: modern air-to-air missiles have a kill envelope that's extremely difficult for an aircraft to evade; short-range missiles can be fired off-boresight, meaning high maneuverability isn't as important as detecting the enemy first (and it was a rude shock in 1991 for NATO to discover that the Soviets equipped their latest fighters with a high offboresite missile and an helmet-mounted sight); and advances in sensors and non-cooperative target recognition provide a high degree of confidence in identifying an aircraft without a visual ID. The game now seems to be who spots who first, and can get a shot off.
Finally, the close air support mission has changed. Smart weapons have changed the game. Targeting is more accurate, which both increases the ability to hit the target and reduces the danger of friendly fire incidents. It also means that aircraft can operate at medium altitudes and stay out of the range antiaircraft gun fire, which everybody has figured out is huge danger to low flying aircraft. The 1991 Gulf War kind of spelled the end of low-level attacks against enemies with a decent AAA capability: the A-10 force got badly shot up, an AH-64 attack was mauled, and the British Tornado force took losses despite (and because of) their vaunted low-level attack tactics against Iraqi airfields. The best close air support aircraft in Afghanistan turned out to be the Cold War B-1 bomber: equipped with a big load-out of precision weapons, it could orbit over the battlefield for an extended period and deliver attacks exactly where it was needed. A little less cool than an A-10 flying overhead at low level, making a deafening "BRRRTTT!" with a big gun, but ultimately demoralizing for the opponents when they get hit by a precision-aimed bolt from the blue that they barely hear coming.
What about preventing enemy aircraft from entering our airspace? I don't follow these things closely, but it seems like once a year or so you hear some story about how fighters get scrambled to escort enemy aircraft that get too close.