Monday, June 07, 2010

CF Picks F-35 Lightning II To Replace Ancient CF-18s


Story... en Francais, but the title of the post says it all.

7 comments:

Bloviating Zeppelin said...

Great! More work for Lockheed Martin!

Of course, us bleeding idiots down below canceled the F-22 Raptor!

BZ

glasnost said...

Great! An expensive and pretty well useless toy for the CF.

Canadian Sentinel said...

Hmm. How so?

glasnost said...

Try to define a useful CF role for two to three squadrons of fighters (it appears that the concept is for 65 aircraft?). How do you reasonably deploy and support them, and for what mission in what theatre? On this tiny scale of operations, whatever concept you come up with gives little bang for the defense buck.

Have we used the CF18s effectively; when and where? Compare to our use of transport and rotary aircraft, which have actually participated in meaningful ways.

The fighters look great at airshows but the money could be better spent in other areas of defense. JMO

Canadian Sentinel said...

Myself, I believe we need to be prepared for the worst in the future, not just for stuff currently going on...

∞ ≠ ΓΈ said...

B.Z. is right. So glasnost, Canada will probably be renting them to the U.S. by the flight hour. The N.Koreans are getting pretty squirrely. We could use the help there. And remember, world prestige is not a bad thing. It can bring more dollars in than what is spent on the planes. I believe Canada is joining the arms race at the right time. Buy a few, produce a lot more.

draco said...

I don't know anything about Canadian politics or defence, because I'm 14 and American, but what I do know is that Lockheed knows their stuff and that the f-35 lightning is less expensive than the f-22. Planes may not be what you guys need... but you need something.

Let me clarify, Afghanistan is out of control, Iraq is close to nuclear tech with Russia backing them, and north Korea and China will do anything to get rid of north America, because of what we did. China just doesn't have the balls to do any thing nuclear against america (which may very well effect you guys) because of our trade deals and debt to them.

All I'm trying to say is that the planes, while still expensive, are still relatively cheap 5th gen. fighters. Along with that, they're smart, fast, responsive, invisible, and very close to indestructable. So in tandem with the Canadian militant forces, these planes will kick butt. Without support...maybe not so much.