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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 7:36 am
 


Title: Defence Department gets approval to spend $7B on 16 F-35s: sources | National Post
Category: Military
Posted By: Scape
Date: 2022-12-20 13:29:30
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 7:36 am
 


I bet they spend all $7B before there is an air worthy F-35.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:38 am
 


I still think the F-35 is a turdburger, but like most defence procurement in Canada, it's been a mess. Had Harper just had a competition in 2011, we'd already have some of these in service by now.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 10:13 am
 


Yup. The F-35 is a flying Schewinnigan Golf course. But most of our allies are likely to have them, so it makes sense that we do. Barring of course, any real alternative that would integrate into our allies systems.

But there are many that think the F-35 can never be all the things it needs to be, in one airframe. It should have been different airframes, like the F-14, F-16, and F-18.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 1:04 pm
 


I think after a while, the F-35 will be a decent enough platform. But that doesn’t change the fact that it costs way too much and that the offered deal from Saab was way better.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 3:03 pm
 


Hasn't there been a running theme of politicians wanting to buy vehicles that look cool, but aren't actually what our troops most need? I seem to recall something about Hornets and how they were unsuited for the Northern patrols they'd be intended for, or am I conflating two separate issues?

Boots, why didn't Harper have a competition for fighter jets in 2011? I'm not the biggest expert on defence issues, but I'd have thought that rebuilding our military vehicles would be one of Harper's biggests focuses.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 3:11 pm
 


JaredMilne JaredMilne:
Hasn't there been a running theme of politicians wanting to buy vehicles that look cool, but aren't actually what our troops most need? I seem to recall something about Hornets and how they were unsuited for the Northern patrols they'd be intended for, or am I conflating two separate issues?

Boots, why didn't Harper have a competition for fighter jets in 2011? I'm not the biggest expert on defence issues, but I'd have thought that rebuilding our military vehicles would be one of Harper's biggests focuses.


Almost everything Harper bought for the Armed Forces while in office was sole sourced, from Chinook helos to Globemaster transports to Leopard 2 tanks to the F-35.

IIRC, the explanation back then was that that was what we were industrial partners in the aircraft and that that was the plane our allies were buying. I'm sure there was significant behind-the-scenes lobbying from the US as well, to prevent us from buying the Rafale or Typhoon, both of which have longer ranges, twin engines and are probably more suited to Arctic patrols, but less suited to the network-centric warfare that the Americans are moving towards.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 3:27 pm
 


Given the pathetic display put on by the Russians in Ukraine everyone in NATO could probably go back to flying F4 Phantoms and still be able to knock the miserable bastards out of the skies by the hundreds, and that's even if the pricks are in their magical "next gen" planes with their awww cool! thrust-vector crap. Gotta have a discussion someday about how successful the equipment salesmen were in terrifying our governments over decades into buying the most expensive stuff imaginable given that the enemy is still training their idiots like it's still the 1950's even if the garbage they're using is supposedly cutting edge and hyper dangerous. The guys at Jane's Defence publications should really hang their heads in shame at how much they wildly over-estimated Russian capabilities from 1950 to 1995 or so.

Not arrogance here, just addressing the obvious reality. A country like Russia will never produce a quality item. And they're also no longer capable of swarming a battle, either in the sky or on the ground, with superior numbers the way they did against the Germans in the last half of World War Two. Nuclear weapons are their only real threat and Putin will probably get his head chopped off by his own catamites if he dares to go that far. So the lesser countries in NATO, like Canada, don't need this Star Trek grade crap the likes of Lockheed keep pushing. And we probably never did ever need it at all either.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 3:34 pm
 


Russia may be a rotting husk but China isn't making biplanes. It may not be as cutting edge but they have the money and can mass produce.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:16 pm
 


China also doesn't pose a direct military threat to the West in the way the Soviets did. China can only really fuck us with cyber problems, like tech theft and hacking. Given that their own never-proven-in-battle equipment probably suffers the same quality problems as their consumer goods do, in that they're so cheaply & horribly built they're literally crap, a out and out military fight against the US and the other Western powers would result in just another stalemate like happened in Korea from 1953 onwards. The odds are much better that the combined Chinese fleet wouldn't even make it out of the Philippine seas before it was sunk en masse by the US Navy, much less ever got as far as Hawaii.

Being prepared is vitally necessary. Running around in terror, a fear deliberately provoked by salesmen like the ones at Lockheed, and screaming "oh my god we're gonna lose and all die if we don't spend a billion dollars per plane on this funky new fighter aircraft" is simply unbecoming of any adult. And it's also literally impossible for any country that isn't the US to keep up at that level of purchasing because we simply don't have the money for it, and never will either. $7 billion for a mere sixteen aircraft is simply obscene, even more so given the fact that the odds are massive that none of them will ever fire a shot in anger at an enemy anywhere.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:43 pm
 


We outsourced dam near all of our manufacturing and union jobs to Mexico and then to China under Free trade and NAFTA. China is a MUCH bigger threat than the USSR ever was. The worlds production lines are still based there in our mad rush to the bottom to appease stockholders. The only thing keeping them from asserting their will on the world stage is access to resources and that is where the belt and road initiative comes into play. This will lock down Africa, Indonesia and South America into a debt prison where China will promise development and loans for access and LOCK OUT anyone else to those markets.

Without economy you can't field a military.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:51 pm
 


^^^ What he wrote.

Look at all the problems we have with China just fighting Covid. If they wanted us to suffer, they would blockade Taiwan and then our modern society would be back to ox and cart.

War is just politics by other means.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:55 pm
 


The Soviets at their peak could have wiped out around 60 to 70% of the population of Europe & North America in the space of a few hours if a full scale nuclear war had broken out. And billions more across the world would have died as well over the following weeks & months from the ensuing nuclear winter, the infrastructure obliteration, and the wholesale environmental collapse. There is no way China presents, or ever will present, a threat that was as brutally existential to the overall population of the planet as the one that existed from the 1960's through to the 1990's.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 5:04 pm
 


Wrong.

Play wack a mole with nukes

There are HUNDREDS of silos now, no way we can target them all and no way to know which sites are real and which are decoys. Never mind their space program that will develop platforms in space. When Russia collapses they will have access to all of those as well.


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2022 5:09 pm
 


Thanos Thanos:
China also doesn't pose a direct military threat to the West in the way the Soviets did. China can only really fuck us with cyber problems, like tech theft and hacking. Given that their own never-proven-in-battle equipment probably suffers the same quality problems as their consumer goods do, in that they're so cheaply & horribly built they're literally crap, a out and out military fight against the US and the other Western powers would result in just another stalemate like happened in Korea from 1953 onwards. The odds are much better that the combined Chinese fleet wouldn't even make it out of the Philippine seas before it was sunk en masse by the US Navy, much less ever got as far as Hawaii.

Being prepared is vitally necessary. Running around in terror, a fear deliberately provoked by salesmen like the ones at Lockheed, and screaming "oh my god we're gonna lose and all die if we don't spend a billion dollars per plane on this funky new fighter aircraft" is simply unbecoming of any adult. And it's also literally impossible for any country that isn't the US to keep up at that level of purchasing because we simply don't have the money for it, and never will either. $7 billion for a mere sixteen aircraft is simply obscene, even more so given the fact that the odds are massive that none of them will ever fire a shot in anger at an enemy anywhere.


I agree these planes are expensive, but every modern fighter aircraft is, and the F-35 actually comes in in the middle of the pack, not the top when it comes to price. That's mostly due to production ramping up and effiency gains. You should also note the pricetag isn't just for 16 jets, it's for support equipment (simulators, training aids, etc.) too.

I didn't think we'd ever use the CF-18s in combat, but we used them in the Gulf War, Balkans, Libya and Iraq in combat missions, and given the way the world order is shifting with increasing Chinese and Russian belligerence, I'd expect these will get used in the future in similar roles too. Where I do agree with you is that we don't need these planes for that role, and we could probably get by with something cheaper and less capable like the Gripen.

I also agree with Scape that China is a far bigger threat than the USSR, because unlike the Soviets, the Chinese clearly learned from history (Cold War, Gulf War, Afghanistan, etc.) that they need a strong economy to build their armed forces up to match the US/West. They also realize that scads of cheap low-tech weapons (like Silkworm missiles) will not come out on top of the US, which has spent the last five decades researching weapons and associated technologies to maintain their dominance. That's China is investing heavily in weapons R&D (and using corporate espionage to fill in the gaps), so they can build hypersonic missiles, anti-satellite technology and who knows what else so that if a conflict does happen, the US won't roll over them like it has so many other countries.


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