[Newsbot]

Title: DND should rewrite requirements for $3B search aircraft project: NRC
Category: Military
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2010-03-17 22:22:58
Canadian

[bootlegga]

Just more of the same-old, same-old from the air force brass trying to play keep up with the Joneses. The US and other allies have to have it, so we do too.

It's pretty sad that a Canadian company has the ability to produce a plane capable of doing the job and we're busy looking at Italian planes.

[DerbyX]

Which is the CDN version we can make?

[bootlegga]

The Buffalo (a plane we've used already for decades);

$1:

But, worried that MacKay was championing the C-27J built by Alenia, Viking Air of Victoria, B.C., mounted an aggressive campaign to argue it could build new Buffalo aircraft at assembly lines in British Columbia and Alberta. Company officials and the union representing aerospace workers questioned why the Harper government would want to award the search-and-rescue contract to a foreign firm.

Other domestic and foreign aerospace firms also raised concerns that the air force wanted the C-27J, allegations that have been denied by MacKay and the military leadership.

David Curtis, president of Viking, welcomed the NRC report's recommendations. "I would take it as positive that they're opening up the statement of requirements that industry was critical of," he said.

Curtis said Viking is capable of overseeing a program to upgrade the existing Buffalo aircraft to allow them to continue flying while DND prepares to acquire replacement planes. That short-term upgrade would also allow Viking to work on building new production Buffalos, he added.

[DerbyX]

I thought we had already purchased new Buffaloes but that it was considered a stop gap solution? Oh, yes now I remember citing the cancellation of this program by the cons.

[bootlegga]

They haven't cancelled anything yet, just postponed it like everything else of late.

IMHO, at least some of the stimulus dollars should have been spent on new Buffaloes built in western Canada, LAVS built in Ontario, and new destroyers and Joint Support Ships built in the Maritimes/Quebec.

[DerbyX]

Don't worry though. With Harper clawing back the defence funding we'll still be able to afford all that. Right?