Ottawa will buy the F-35

These will come in handy if the Chinese pull their 20% Arctic Rights BS. You can deliver their warships death from above.

I still wish we were buying a twin engine plane instead of a single engine one. Unlike everyone else participating, we've got huge expanses of Arctic territory to patrol, and if the engine dies, so will the pilot and the plane.


BTW I love this Google translation!

"The Council of Ministers of the Harper government"

Council of Ministers? WTF is that?

"The U.S. is planning to purchase more than 2,400 copies"

Apparently planes and CDs are the same thing...

"Canada is an economic partner of the F-35 since 1997"

Shouldn't that be was?

LOL at the translation.

For the planes, we were due. The CF-18 are 30 years old. We have a lot of space to watch. And there's also our duty with the NORAD.

Single engine, rather expensive, and a lower overall fleet capacity than we had/have. Sounds like trouble to me.

Plane will die, Pilot will Eject.

We'd have been better off with the Eurofighter

What's the best plane isn't really the question here, the government is likely trying to recoup some of the millions they put in for the R&D of the F-35.

It'd be another political boondoggle if they poured millions into that consortium and then went out and bought another Fighter.

and die.
It's the arctic...

bears will learn to watch the skies for snacks.

and die.
It's the arctic...

Uhh, no. It's not Space or the surface of the Sun.

Ahhh, in the whole scheme of defence spending/federal budgets, $150 million is chump change (we spent $1.3 billion on four transport planes a couple of years ago).

What we should be doing is buying two fleets of planes, one of the F-35, and one of a dual engine plane (F/A-18E or Typhoon).

and die.
It's the arctic...

I didn't write that...

I didn't write that...

The shortcoming with the Eurofighter is the absolute certainty that every last one of the secrets concerned with it were long ago communicated to the Russians and the Chinese. The F-35 is not so wonderful, IMHO, as it is the economy fighter that tries to do too many things at once and does none of them in a superior fashion.

Hate to say, but for now I'd be more inclined to order another run of the CF-18 and update the avionics so they can carry the newer payloads.