Canada Poised To Buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 JSFs 417
Freshly Exhumed (105597) writes 'Canada is poised to buy 65 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, sources familiar with the process told Reuters. A detailed, 18-month review of Canada's fighter jet needs has concluded that the government should skip a new competition and proceed with the C$9 billion ($8.22 billion) purchase, three sources said. When the F-35 purchase was first proposed, Canadians were alarmed by the colossal price tag, and also that no fly-off competition had been conducted or was planned. This latest news is sure to rekindle criticism that the RCAF's requirements seem to have been written after the fact to match the F-35's capabilities (or lack thereof)."
Suckers (Score:2, Insightful)
Suckers
Re:f-35, beta feature set (Score:4, Insightful)
My opinion, the F-35 will always be in beta. The design and procurement process is fundamentally broken. That being the case, they might as well buy now; it's not gonna get any better.
No Bid Contracts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, let's absolutely buy the jets that can't stay up in the air and cost ridiculous amounts to purchase and maintain when they do manage not to crash!
In rougher climates than they're designed for! Instead of something cheaper and more rugged that would be just fine for our purposes!
This is the greatest idea ever!
Re:Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy drones instead. They are rapidly making aircraft obsolete.
Re:Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy drones instead. They are rapidly making aircraft obsolete.
Where do you live? Iran? Drones have a long way to go before they can replace a supersonic air superiority fighter.
But then again, so does the F-35.
Re:Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy drones instead. They are rapidly making aircraft obsolete.
Unfortunately drones aren't quite there yet. This will probably be the last manned fighter purchased by Canada, but we're not quite ready to go drones-only at this point.
That's actually been one of the only really solid objections to this purchase ... it can be persuasively argued that it makes much more sense to try and extend the lifespan of the current CF-18 fleet (or purchase new CF-18s with a much lower price tag than the F-35s) and wait 10-15 years for drone technology to further mature. I'm undecided on the issue. We do need new fighters in the interim, and the F35 is a fantastic piece of technology, but I'm not convinced it's the wisest decision at this point.
Re:Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy drones instead. They are rapidly making aircraft obsolete.
Where do you live? Iran? Drones have a long way to go before they can replace a supersonic air superiority fighter.
But then again, so does the F-35.
Fighter Jets became useless 20yrs ago. They're only still around because the current generals running the US military grew up whacking off to topgun.
Re:Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are confusing creating a military defence force with a vassal state making a tributary payment.
For those various vassal states like Canada and Australia, that money would be far better spent on turning infantry and armoured units into mechanised combat engineers with full infrastructure building skills. Basically as a part of the extended training doing full trades apprenticeships. Of course you shouldn't let that training go to waste. So when the Federal government sponsors infrastructure spending they send in the combat engineers to do the labour, as they are already paid for and it applies their training honing it in a most useful fashion. Then all the government then has to pay for is materials creating huge savings on infrastructure spending. Of course the military are then useful beyond the service employment and easily go into construction careers. Even that ever demanding corporate US military industrial state should consider making that switch in order to repair it's deteriorating infrastructure.
Seriously, the reality, you want to defend you country, just look at North Korea vs Iraq. Just a handful of nukes is all you need. So forget tributary payments to the US in the form of buying tanks and planes just make your own long range stealth cruise missiles and arm the with nukes. No matter how big that invasion force one or two nukes and they are gone, just like they were never there. Never there being the normal outcome of the threat of tactical nukes.
As another example of how BAD Harper is for Canada (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care if the F-35 works as planned. It's just another totally corrupt vile thing the Harper government of Canada is doing to lower the nation down to the likes of the USA. (I'm American and I realize we are not #1 at anything. except perhaps the number of literate creationists and global warming deniers.)
Canada could have spent all that $$$$ on robotics and then they could lead the world in the field... plus they could hire China to make a million dumb drones then put in their robotic brains... then maybe we'd have many good robots to battle against Skynet when the USA eventually builds it (which will be tiny because it'll cost 1000x what a robotic overlord should.)
Re:How will history judge the F-35? (Score:3, Insightful)
The F-35s suffer a fundamental design flaw: the wide body. The wide body is needed to accommodate the VTOL that the marines wanted but it really fucks up performance. Most any 4.5 gen craft should be able to outperform it handily, and at a much reduced price.
Re:Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
So let me see if I get what you're trying to say. Russia, the single largest country in the world, that has exactly one problem with oil and other resources - it lacks people and investment to actually get those resources out of the ground will care about Canadian resources enough to go and grab them? The Russia that sold Alaska to US because it simply could not use its resources and needed investment just to put what it has on the Eurasian continent to some use?
I'm not sure how many hits to the head it takes to be that stupid, but it must be quite a lot.
Peacetime designs (Score:5, Insightful)
All the great military aircraft ever built have been produced in wartime for the jobs needed doing right then. And I include Vietnam and the Cold War among them. The post-soviet skirmished the west has got involved in don't seem to need fighter planes at all, and in the meantime, the bloated F-35 slithers along, as unpopular as Jabba the Hut.
Re:Russia (Score:1, Insightful)
Where do I begin?
a. Any country that has nuclear reactors can be safely assumed to have a few strategic nuclear bombs stashed down a deep mine shaft. Plutonium has a 25000 year half life, so once you have them you have them. You just have to make triggers regularly.
b. Nuclear bombs are obsolete. It is not necessary to destroy a whole city. Precision guided missiles and bombs are much more useful and cheaper.
c. Russia is not our enemy. Russia is an ally. Russia has never attacked Western Europe or North America, it was always Western Europe attacking Russia, or Western Europe descending into a civil war, then requiring Russia to help fix the mess.
d. Russia is the Slavic big brother that always has to come to the rescue of his little Slavic brothers. They like doing that time and again, just as little as the little brothers like getting slapped upside the head each time.
e. Hysterical propaganda doth not history books make.
f. If you are really looking for an expansionist, evil empire to blame for everything in a simple world view, then you need not look any further than the good Ol' US of A, UK, France or Germany. Blaming everything on Russia doesn't quite fit the facts.
Re:How will history judge the F-35? (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing I am certain about: It's a mistake to try to replace the A-10 Warthog with F-35s. I don't even understand how the F-35 is supposed to do the same mission.
The F-35's primary mission is to make Lockheed Martin shitloads of money (the secondary missions being to make its subcontractors shitloads of money, and get politicians shitloads of campaign contributions). Since the A-10 is not made by Lockheed Martin (or anybody else anymore), the F-35 will be infinitely more successful at its mission.
Re:Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah... so many errors.... Where do I begin?
a)
Sweden and Finland has nuclear reactors. Neither has nuclear weapons.
c)
I would hardly say that Russia has fixed anything. Just recently they invaded the Ukraine.
d)
See above. What in that event was rescuing?
e)
Very true! And it goes both ways......
f)
True as well! But that doesn't mean that there is no blame on Russia. (Well, I do mean the government, not all the people)
Re:Russia (Score:2, Insightful)
As a Slav I would like to request Russia to stop taking care of other Slavs.
Right, "defending" "other slavs" with genocide... (Score:4, Insightful)
Be glad that Russia never reached as far as Western Europe. Not for the lack of trying though... They planned to "bring the communism to Europe on the tips of bayonets" since 1920s, but their hands were too short. Oh, and then there was this guy Hitler who got 20 million of them killed... And then there were nukes.
I agree, do go and read some history books
--Coder