[Winnipegger]

According to Wikipedia, Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 3A costs €90 million
Using a currency converter, today that equals CAD$130.29 million
US$150 million = CAD$190.9 million
Yea, we really can't afford either.

[Freakinoldguy]

And just to keep the discussion going. I found this article and it offers a different view as to why we should purchase the F35 vice the Super Hornet.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... ft-forever

[CDN_PATRIOT]

I've been saying since Canada's involvement in the F-35 program that we should buy Super Hornets instead. It makes the most sense, and is economically sound, unlike the F-35. The Hornet/Super Hornet are already proven, reliable aircraft that do well in our climate.

I have to give props where they are deserved. Good on Liberals on this one.

-J.

[Sunnyways]

Are there any experts here who can summarize this debate in simple language for me? In my ignorance, I imagine we should go bargain basement until the drones come along. I find the age of our planes embarrassing at this stage. It's like the helicopter mess. On a related topic, that secondhand submarine caper was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen. At the time, I thought they must know what they are doing here because it sounds very dodgy. They didn't.

One thing I do know - Canadians don't like military spending. Even Harper was quiet on that general subject other than gestures like trips to the Arctic and allegedly muttering something to Putin, keeping the budget way below what Australia, for example, spends per capita.

[Winnipegger]

Current cost of F-35A, including engine, is CAD$142.81 million.
Wikipedia: F-35 - F-35A without engine US$98 million
Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engine US$13.75 million (in FY 2015)
Total cost: US$111.75 million
Bank of Canada currency converter: CAD$142.32 million

I could use the Royal Bank currency converter, but that's for retail over-the-counter transactions, and they take 2% for every conversion. This is millions of dollars.

This means F-35 is even more expensive than Eurofighter Typhoon! Why would we want it?

[Winnipegger]

Chrétien/Martin Liberals got Canada into the F-35 program to keep our aerospace industry current, and to land jobs. They never intended to buy the thing. Paying $135 million Canadian dollars to land $825 million in contracts is profitable. That's what they did. Harper Conservatives wanted to pay double-digit billions to land single digit billions in contracts. Exact numbers kept changing, but how much they said they would spend was always greater than contracts. That's not profitable. Harper Conservatives claimed Liberals had committed to buy it. How did they know? Salesmen from Lockheed-Martin said so.

Ensuring we stay in the program ensures contracts. But that initial $825 million may already be committed, so we get that anyway. Investing more into a program where all customers are pulling out? I just hope Justin Trudeau Liberals ensure we don't lose that initial $825 million in contracts. But more importantly, don't buy the thing!

[Thanos]

Concise answer is that everyone who got involved got conned by Lockheed-Martin that a single jet could be like totally awesome at both long-range aerial interception (F-15, Eurofighter Typhoon) as well as at ground assault (F-16, F-18, A-10). And then they really went for the Cadillac package by adding in other things like vertical-takeoff-landing (A-8 Harrier) as well as stealth (F-117, F-22). Then it turned into an obvious crock when they found out that asking one air-frame to do every potential air combat task equally well was pretty much an impossibility.

Look at it this way: in World War Two the Sherman tank was middlingly good at multiple tasks, like shooting high-explosive rounds at buildings, mid-range bombardment of dug-in infantry, and firing mid-powered anti-tank rounds at lighter tanks similar to itself. The problem was the enemy went and manufactured thousands of other much heavier-gunned and better armoured tanks (Panther, Tiger, Tiger II, another half dozen or so specific tank-hunting variants built onto obsolete Mark III and Mark VI hulls) that excelled at one main task, and that was at destroying other tanks like the Sherman. The side that had the Sherman eventually won the overall war but it was at the cost of thousands of Shermans destroyed and tens of thousands of tankers killed and wounded, with the probability that a lot of those lives would not been lost if the Allies had also bothered to develop their own heavy armoured & heavy gunned tank-killing tank.

Lockheed's sales pitch was that they would create an all-in-one jet fighter package. Thanks to their sales department, backed up fully by too many of their cronies in the US Department of Defence, multiple nations (including Canada) bought into it. And at the moment that they're ready to deploy their end product, which was supposed to do even more effectively what the combat jets of the previous generation have already proven they excel at, it turns out the F-35 is not as good at doing any of what it was supposed to beat all the other jets at. It some head-to-head comparisons it's coming off as less effective than airframes that were first designed back in the 1970's like the F-15 or F-16. Even worse, the F-35 is turning out to be so overly complicated in terms of avionics that a new bug seems to develop on a regular basis. They're also finding out that it's incapable of carrying and effectively launching some of the modern armaments that have become basic ordnance the older fighters have been using for the last decade.

All in all it's a piece of shit, on par with the Ford Pinto. The only difference is that Ford didn't make a trillion dollars off of the Pinto the way Lockheed has with the F-35. It's going to go down as the biggest military procurement con-job of all time, and there's no guarantee at all that the F-35 will even be improved later on as the "bugs" are allegedly worked out. That's why I started this thread. I don't like the Liberals much at all in general but if they've gotten Canada out of this procurement quagmire Lockheed created then they did the right thing.

[BRAH]

They can build a multirole fighter jet but right now the F35 is not it.

[peck420]

The big problem with multirole fighters, in general, is that they are always medium or light aircraft. This is mostly due to cost. Multiroles cost more than designated designs.

Until the munitions, radar, ECM, etc. technology gets to the point that the delivery platform is largely irrelevant, that isn't going to change. Once it does though, then we will see some seriously impressive aircraft, ie: Full Multirole Raptors, or equivalent in performance.

The really sad part is that Russia is currently ahead of us in this regard. Not by choice mind you, they just had their collapse at a really good time, in regards to military technology. They have been putting more money into missiles than we have, because that was all they could afford to do for a long time. Also helps that China gets their hands on every new piece of electronics our side has, and trades them to Russia for engine rights.

[BeaverFever]

Thanos Thanos:

Concise answer is that everyone who got involved got conned by Lockheed-Martin that a single jet could be like totally awesome at both long-range aerial interception (F-15, Eurofighter Typhoon) as well as at ground assault (F-16, F-18, A-10). And then they really went for the Cadillac package by adding in other things like vertical-takeoff-landing (A-8 Harrier) as well as stealth (F-117, F-22). Then it turned into an obvious crock when they found out that asking one air-frame to do every potential air combat task equally well was pretty much an impossibility.

Look at it this way: in World War Two the Sherman tank was middlingly good at multiple tasks, like shooting high-explosive rounds at buildings, mid-range bombardment of dug-in infantry, and firing mid-powered anti-tank rounds at lighter tanks similar to itself. The problem was the enemy went and manufactured thousands of other much heavier-gunned and better armoured tanks (Panther, Tiger, Tiger II, another half dozen or so specific tank-hunting variants built onto obsolete Mark III and Mark VI hulls) that excelled at one main task, and that was at destroying other tanks like the Sherman. The side that had the Sherman eventually won the overall war but it was at the cost of thousands of Shermans destroyed and tens of thousands of tankers killed and wounded, with the probability that a lot of those lives would not been lost if the Allies had also bothered to develop their own heavy armoured & heavy gunned tank-killing tank.

Lockheed's sales pitch was that they would create an all-in-one jet fighter package. Thanks to their sales department, backed up fully by too many of their cronies in the US Department of Defence, multiple nations (including Canada) bought into it. And at the moment that they're ready to deploy their end product, which was supposed to do even more effectively what the combat jets of the previous generation have already proven they excel at, it turns out the F-35 is not as good at doing any of what it was supposed to beat all the other jets at. It some head-to-head comparisons it's coming off as less effective than airframes that were first designed back in the 1970's like the F-15 or F-16. Even worse, the F-35 is turning out to be so overly complicated in terms of avionics that a new bug seems to develop on a regular basis. They're also finding out that it's incapable of carrying and effectively launching some of the modern armaments that have become basic ordnance the older fighters have been using for the last decade.

All in all it's a piece of shit, on par with the Ford Pinto. The only difference is that Ford didn't make a trillion dollars off of the Pinto the way Lockheed has with the F-35. It's going to go down as the biggest military procurement con-job of all time, and there's no guarantee at all that the F-35 will even be improved later on as the "bugs" are allegedly worked out. That's why I started this thread. I don't like the Liberals much at all in general but if they've gotten Canada out of this procurement quagmire Lockheed created then they did the right thing.

The only thing I'll add is that if the F35 had been a private sector product like a commercial passenger jet, the investors and potential buyers would have bailed on the project years ago. But since the US government basically operates on a system of legalized corruption and crony capitalism, congress has just been funding and funding this albatross.

Congressmen and Senators are easy to buy, all one has to do is pledge some campaign donations and promise to employ a few people in their home district. Like Thanos pointed out earlier, the F35 has parts made in every state for a reason, although that can be said of many or most big ticket military items.

Now the US government and the company are trapped in this "sunk cost fallacy". Like a gambling addict, they've lost such an exorbitant amount of money on this thing that they feel compelled to put even more in just to try and see if they can get some kind of return.

[martin14]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

And just to keep the discussion going. I found this article and it offers a different view as to why we should purchase the F35 vice the Super Hornet.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... ft-forever

The writer also missed the more obvious points.

Every NATO country and some other friendlies like Australia have signed up for the F-35.
So, the next buttfuckistan country the West invades, all aircraft support will be brought by the US for the F-35, because everyone else will be using them.

If we buy the Hornets, we will have drag our own techs and spares to service them.

We all know the Canadian military is just not able to do such a thing.

So, we will be limited to patrolling our own skies, which will make the Lieberals happy,
but we will be sending the message that we aren't coming.. again.

[BeaverFever]

Also, defenders of the Sherman tank would claim that it's mediocrity was due to an intentionally simple and low cost design that allowed the tank to be mass produced in astounding numbers and could be maintained and repaired in the field with minimal requirements for specialized skills or tools. In other words it was a deliberate choice of quantity over quality and it wouldn't surprise me if USSR and China didn't examine the Sherman experience when designing their own defence strategy which is pretty much based on the same principle even today. Where this differs from the F35 not the low cost option and is not intended to be. Instead it's the worst of both worlds as the highest cost and lowest performing option.

And as more countries bail on this thing, the more expensive it gets for everyone else who stays involved in the program. We need to run away fast from this disaster.

[Thanos]

Lockheed threatens retaliation if anyone backs out.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stealth ... -1.3629403

Buy the jet you lose (because you end up with a POS)
Don't buy the jet you lose (because of penalties, fines, litigation)

Good sales staff at Lockheed in the way they've managed to guarantee that they're the only ones that get anything out of this debacle.

[peck420]

Tell LM to fly a kite. They have never guaranteed anything to Canada at any point in time. The reason Canadian firms got those contracts is because they were the most competitive bids received for that block.

LM is absolutely going to continue that policy. If they don't, per unit prices are going to go up, and LM is going to lose more clients.

The likelihood of LM allowing the price to increase, because Canada decides not buy, therefore jeopardizing LM's future sales, is pretty fricken low. They are in it for the bottom line, nothing else.

[Freakinoldguy]

I think the biggest point people are missing is the fact that this purchase will be a "interim" replacement. This points to the fact that at some point in the near future Canada will have to purchase new fighters.

So before I agree or disagree with the purchase of the Super Hornets I'd like to know how long do we intent to keep them especially given that their production line is scheduled to start shutting down and when that happens the new parts supply usually dries up along with it.

http://www.dailytech.com/The+End+is+Nea ... e34355.htm


Given that this is an interim purchase what the fuck are we going to buy in the nearer than necessary future to replace these planes? For some reason nobody, us included seems to be to overly concerned about that fact and would much rather argue the merits of soon to be out of production vs overhyped planes, facts that don't matter if we're saddled with either one because of a lack of a proper procurement procedure that puts politics before necessity.