[Canadian_Mind]

My rational for 5 squadrons was that at any one time all three coasts could be covered by a full squadron each. That leaves 48 other aircraft for various roles including but not limited to protecting our major energy and manufacturing infastructure

Every cost should have stations in addition to the home base.I suggested a home base in yellowknoife because there is already infastructure that can be upgraded to support a base, and it's less likely to be cut off than islands in our archepellago.

[Xort]

peck420 peck420:

Yes, they do.

When? I've found a list that seemed complete, in that all the cases I could remember were reported, but I don't recall any times that a Bear was sent near to Canadian air space, can you point me to a source?

$1:

If hostilities start, they will be doing more than buzzing. There is a very large area that F-22's can't reach which will leave Canadians with a choice...defend our own, or wait for US fighters to start shooting them down over our heads.

What makes you think that something like a upgraded F-18 would be a superior air craft than F-35s for trying to hold back the Russians while we fight WWIII?

$1:

Given our physical size, 120 would be my minimum request, 200 would be preferred.

But it doesn't matter what sort of air craft, you just want 120 things that fly and I assume shoot some sort of air to air weapons? No calculation for combat ability or anything like that?

We could likely buy a few thousand MiG 21s, they only cost around 2 million USD each. The older ones are a few hundred thousand each.

[Canadaka]

[Xort]

So he opens with how the F-16 is superior to the F-15, and that F-15 is loaded down with a bunch of electronic junk like a large RADAR...

A MiG-21 is going to whip the F-35?
This is comedy gold.

Stealth is a scam and doesn't work.

In fairness long wave RADAR can pick up some aircraft at range, but their is a reason why it's not viable as a missile guidance system, fighter mounted detection or even mounted on ships. And the reason is that to use long wave RADAR you need huge emitters and detectors, and even with those large installations they are not very accurate for targeting aircraft.

The F-117 was shot down because the USAF got very lazy, ran the same flight path over and over the ground force believes they got a RADAR return when the jet opened it bomb bay doors which they fired a missile at.

The new F-35 is slightly more stealth than the B-2 which was about twice as stealth as the F-117.

The first Iraq-Gulf war proved how effective stealth aircraft could be, with F-117s doing whatever they wanted in Iraq air space, and scoring a huge number of successful bombing attacks.

I get his point that multi roll aircraft are more limited, but not even the USAF wants all single roll aircraft due to cost. The first thing they did with the F-22 was fit it with bombs so it could do more than air superiority with it.

The E-M theory is about 40 years out of date. I think most people have accepted the need for sophisticated RADAR and air to air missiles in fighter aircraft. His school of fighter combat was valid for the 1960s and likely was superior to the early stages of the RADAR missile battle space, but it's not 1970 anymore.

His comments about picking out a tank at close range and the need for a high rate of turn seems to have ignored the huge advances in imaging equipment. Unless a tank is under thick overhead cover and hasn't been turned on in over a day, or is inside hard cover it's going to get spotted at a huge range.

This reminds me of a few years back before the V-22 was refined and out in the wild. People talked at least as much shit about it as they are the F-35. Same for the F-15 which I think everyone can agree turned out as a really good aircraft.