Canada Considers Snubbing US F-35 For Sweden’s Gripen Fighter Jets
https://www.newsweek.com/canada-snub-us-f35-sweden-gripen-fighter-jets-11080328Open linkView original on reddthat.com641
Comments142https://www.newsweek.com/canada-snub-us-f35-sweden-gripen-fighter-jets-11080328Open linkView original on reddthat.com
And the Gripen will be built here in Canada!!!!
To be fair, we've manufactured a lot of parts for other country's F35s so far. That's quite standard for defense contracts. Still, if Saab commits to bringing more guaranteed manufacturing jobs than the F35 program, it could be worth it. If this gives us a leg up in F35 manufacturing bids, that could also be worth it. Feels like a strong play regardless of outcome.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/saab-lockheed-martin-air-force-9.6983557
Yeah, I saw that. I'm not sure how that 10k number relates to the number created by F35-related manufacturing so far.
We might not lose any jobs with dropping the F35. Canada is just allowed to bid on contracts to build parts for all the F35 production, not just our own.
Yeah, we might not. We could still bid on F35 production runs. I think the specifics will be quite important to determining what's a good outcome.
Regardless, I like that we're courting other options even if it just results in leverage elsewhere.
As a Linköping native, I can tell you right now how this is going to go down.
Saab will offer a really sweet deal including Canadian factories that can produce everything that Sweden makes for the Gripen. It will be on a short timeline and a good price. Canada will be locked in to help co-design the next generation of Swedish fighters.
Canada will use this as leverage against the USA. Then the USA will finally set their foot down and tell Canada in no uncertain terms that if they buy Gripen they'll get locked out of various US weapons systems indefinitely and end up on the US's shit list. But if they stop their ridiculous outburst they can get on the shortlist for some really cool destructive toys.
Also, aren't we all supposed to be one team America, you me and Mexico, guy?
Canada will most likely cave and Gripen will have fulfilled its role as a bargaining chip. I wouldn't even blame Canada, this is how it's gone down almost every time in the past 30 years and Canada has much better reasons than most to keep on the US's good side.
I fucking hope so
Please do
Now that the US is sending them to Saudi, how secure will they be from investigation by foreign adversaries?
Plus, the entire supply chain system of relying on the US for software and hardware updates, having to physically send the planes to the US for maintenance, all while the US continues to talk about annexing us is completely fucking bonkers.
Even without the annexation threats the setup would be stupid.
I know it’s a fancy and advanced plane, but knowing how the US military industrial complex works I’m pretty sure you’re paying a high multiplier for no reason too.
Super advanced, so advanced that Iran shot what 3 down?
If you want a laugh, go look up the photos Iran doctored up for this bit of propaganda. I remember one had an F35 with cockpit the size of a school bus on it. Another had the tail section on backwards. Probably AI slop, but fake photos to be sure.
Not only did they take down an F-35, they took down the biggest F-35 ever made!
Several "oops this plane just fell off the flight deck, oh well, shit happens" articles in recent memory. A great way to explain why the Navy is suddenly down a vehicle without having to explain to anyone in the general public what happened.
Americans are putting these jets into service and a surprising number of them are failing.
Whether Iran/Yemen have successfully struck any of them or the Navy can't get them on and off the flight deck reliably is almost a moot point. A downed plane is a downed plane.
Those were F/A-18s.
Is this a contest to crash the most aircraft?
Because my man, the GOAT, John "New Plane" McCain would like to have a word.
Oh so this is the part where we provide no sources to our claim. Then claim the sources are unreliable!
It was actually more like 0.
Try searching Google with "f-35 sales before:2024-11-01". Countries were lining up to buy them. Boeing had a years long manufacturing backlog.
No matter how you, personally, feel about the F-35 and the US military-industrial complex, Trump wants to both increase exports in general and tout US military strength. Most of NATO running with the F-35 would have been great for both of those. He could have succeeded at it by doing nothing. Complete failure of his own goals.
Lockheed Martin. Boeing makes the F18 (for example)
The Gripen is certainly not as advanced as F-35 but its operating costs per flight hour are only 1/5th of the F-35 which is definitely a big consideration when you don't have a US-sized defense budget.
What role does the jet have to fulfill? Fight off enemy planes in an invasion? If it's the US that invades you wouldn't want US tech, but it doesn't really matter, the US would win. Russia invading? At this point they're down to kites and helium balloons, right?
If it's to fulfill a role within NATO, a Gripen is probably just as good as an F-35, because any enemy of NATO's will almost certainly be many generations behind. China wouldn't be, but neither Canada directly nor NATO is likely to get into a direct fighting war with China. Only maybe if Canada wanted to help defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression could that possibly happen. But, because Taiwan's a small island, Canada's Navy would probably be the main force involved.
In a few decades, things might already have changed. Missiles and drones might have made fighter jets essentially obsolete. So, it doesn't make too much sense to buy something that's massively expensive just because it's the most up-to-date thing right now.
Likely there will be no such thing as a 6th gen fighter jet. The pilot will be replaced by AI, so the next gen will have completely different requirements.
I don't think the "pilot will be replaced by AI". I think there will just be drones that look nothing like fighter jets. Some might have a certain amount of autonomy, which is vaguely similar to "AI". Others will be controlled remotely. Still others will probably be a mix, like a swarm that's human-controlled but where the individual drones in the swarm are somewhat autonomous.
There's no way remote-controlled drones are going to be top-shelf items in the next generation. Even now, comm interference pretty much prohibits the use of remote-controlled drones in any scenario which involves actual armies rather than shepherds with AKs. That's why Ukraine uses fiberoptic cables for their FPV drones. Beyond that, in a real war satellite constellations will go down real fast.
I don't think we know what the next war is going to be like. Yes, radio interference is a major challenge with the current generation, but there are already partial work-arounds like fiber.
Yeah, it's unlikely that the next generation will be 100% remote controlled with no local autonomy because that requires a high bandwidth. But systems with a moderate amount of autonomy might be fine.
Fighter jets running on fiber?
Huh?
Canada should never trust any US military contractor ever again
I've been commenting on a bunch of threads the best way to deal with a bully is to tell them to fuck off and go play with everyone else in the playground. Glad we're taking the first few steps in the right direction.
Works best when the bully isn't stupid rich and surrounded by psychopath security guards.
A big reason why oil-rich oligarchies buy American military hardware is to avoid getting the heavy end of the "regime change" stick bounced off their heads.
That's cute and all but annexing Canada is literally in their agenda.
Thing the article conveniently leaves out, at least one of the "retired air force officers" works at (or did, seems to be some obfuscation) Lockheed Martin.
Of course they are against switching, they will lose their cushy lobbyist jobs.
I would.
Do it Canada! Purchase the SAAB and your pilots will have more seat time. The F-35 is a maintenance pig.
Do it!
Saabotage!
I hope we snub those unhinged fash. Fuck them.
I hope they do it! It's one of the few countries that can do it without hurting itself too much.
It's what happens when you harm and betray a peaceful ally. Let's do this! 🍁
There is unfortunately a lot of nuance here.
A Gripen does not do the same things that an F35 does.
Europe simply does not have an answer to 5th or 6th generation fighters and I feel like wanting to be supporting of peoples respective countries and acknowledging the US being pretty awful right now is making people unwilling to acknowledge this glaring and incredibly important fault in western arms manufacturing outside of the US.
Humans benefit greatly when people, groups etc, specialize as less resources need to be wasted reinventing the wheel, but when it comes to defence, the current situations shows how flat footed CANZUK+EU* has been left by allowing the US to basically become the single source for some of the most crucial defence items.
Projects like FCAS need to cut the bureaucratic bullshit and speed up development as its increasingly obvious that the US is not a stable partner. CANZUK+EU* despite years of warning about these facts remained unwilling to spend, viewing it as inefficient, and with every individual state that has the capabilities holding recalcitrant attitudes, fighting over who gets to build what.
Basically, what I am saying, is that I would love to have non US weaponry, but if that weaponry can't compete with US weaponry, there isn't much of a point.
I mean, quite frankly, for us, Canada, the most important thing we could possibly do this decade, is to internally create our own ultimate strategic deterrents. Anything short of that would leave us completely defenceless to our greatest military threat, and largest neighbour. There is literally no chance we win any conventional war, so in a way, not even this fighter deal matters.
I agree you on all points, but i want to add that weapon systems where manufactorer has a back door open and they can do things like remotelly lock the missile systems or other weapons, does not really sound appealing.
I don't disagree at all, hence my conclusion that if neither is effective we must do what is:
I think we'd do not badly in a conventional war when you factor in the fact that the Americans would be fighting on two fronts - within Canada against Canadians, and within America against the substantial chunk of Americans who would be trying to bring down the regime that was causing something as insane as an invasion of Canada to be undertaken. Plus there'd be international support at play. It would be a huge mess. Canada would just need to make the mess as big and as long as possible.
That said, preventing America from invading in the first place would be ideal, so the more preemptive preparation to strengthen Canada's position and weaken America's the better. Shifting our military supply lines to European sources is a step in that direction for many reasons. I do think a nuclear deterrent would be ideal, but that's a couple of steps of escalation further down the line I think.
Given the current trajectory, I have little faith that they would mount an effective internal resistance.
No matter what, conventional war is horrific and wed be losing our families, homes, friends, and more. Effective strategic deterrents make it such that we would never reach that stage and as such, is far more economical and moral.
You cant make nukes loudly in such a situation, but as we've seen, you definitely cant make them under the gun. The only time is before the circumstances that you feel would necessitate them when we are still not viewed as enemies.
Disarming yourself as to avoiding presenting as a threat clearly does not work.
Which is why I said "preventing America from invading in the first place would be ideal"
Right, it would be done before the US invades, to prevent them from invading. Nuclear weapons are deterrence, you don't want to actually use them.
I fear my point is being missed.
My point was in response mainly to this last sentence:
My point is that it cant be further down, because if you are down that far, its too late. We've seen this was most countries that became under the gun when they would benefit dearly from having nuclear weapons of their own.
Notably, if Ukraine did so before they would have been fine, but during, they have no chance.
Iran similarly has a difficult time.
Its not about the nation, its about the fact that if you are at a point where you feel the heat is on, its too late to build nukes. Now is the time to build them.
What's sad, is that Ukraine did have nukes. Then this happened in '94: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum Guess who is now a bully.
It should be noted that they were never actually their nukes (not their codes or delivery systems), but that this would have been a good time for them to make their own nukes.
A lot of the nuance is also one of threat assessment, and risk tolerance.
We can prepare for a situation where we're attacked by the US, but given all probabilities is that worth it compared to preparing for a situation where we get attacked by China or Russia, or is that even worth considering vs preparing for a situation where we can ramp up industrial military production as fast as possible and become a resource rich manufacturing powerhouse?
There's no way of knowing which path the world will go down, and preparing for everything simply isn't possible, so every decision is going to be a matter of what risks to take for what potential benefits.
Very much so. Russia is not that big a threat as they are an easy sell to alliances. China and the US would steamroll us regardless, hence, given that we have no one resembling near peers, ultimate strategic deterrents are literally the only things that can defend us should the worst come.
This is not happening when we don't even have our own jets and every country with fancy jets (etc) wants to build them in house.
A strategic deterrent program is the least expensive and most all encompassing. We generally stay out of the business of other countries so the bipolar fascist next door is the biggest threat to physical safety/sovereignty. We're also uniquely well equipped to start one. We need to have a Can du attitude.
Defense production is the key to all of these scenarios. Russia is off the board for about a decade, and most likely they'd go after Ukraine again in a decade, and if not Ukraine it would be the Baltics. If you have defense production we can produce more weapons and munitions before they lose any conflict in Europe.
With China they're bottled up inside a line of islands... Philippines, Taiwan, Japan. They can't get to Canada unless they can take Taiwan first. Again, with defense production we can supply Taiwan with what they need to repel an invasion.
Everyone looks at army size but seemingly forgets to look at a map. Army size doesn't matter if you can't get that army across an ocean. So it's all about navy, and Russia isn't all that good at navies, never has been. China is building a large navy, but they don't have a lot of experience, and amphibious assaults are ridiculously difficult, and it's not likely they would succeed in taking Taiwan. China is building Aircraft carriers (which they don't need for Taiwan since it's within range of airfields in mainland China) but they aren't building a lot of dedicated landing ships (though it's supposed the could appropriate civilian RORO ships), so it seems they're doing the typical authoritarian military that's designed for intimidation more than actually being effective. But in any case we should be more concerned with defending Taiwan than direct conflict with China, because that has to happen first... and even that looks unlikely to anyone that hasn't been influenced by Lockheed Martin's propaganda.
But the bottom line is no one is going to attack the Western Hemisphere without permission from the US. So really the only real threat is the US or a US proxy. To prevent that we don't need to straight up win, we need to first make a war too expensive for the US to attempt. Secondly if they do make the foolish decision to invade Canada, we need to have the capability of killing a few thousand American soldiers over the course of an occupation and they will become war weary and leave.
So we need strong alliances in terms of defense production so we'll supply other countries if they're attacked and they will supply us if we're attacked.
Submarines are great for both an invasion of Taiwan and for making a US invasion of Canada expensive. Not that we could destroy the US navy with a few submarines, but having the capability of taking out a few ships and hitting some targets on the US coast makes an invasion expensive for them. Sure they could eventually track them all down, but they are going to take some damage before they do.
The Gripen is actually a great option too. They're relatively low maintenance (it's a fighter jet so still pretty high maintenance, but way less than the F-35) and they're designed for a conflict where they'd need to potentially use regular roads as airstrips. Again it's not about destroying the US Air Force, but just inflicting some expensive damage.
The goal would be to have a Pentagon assessment of the cost of a war with Canada to have the highest dollar amount as possible, since that's all that matters to the psychopaths in power down there right now.
Get real. If US, China or Russia attacks us, there is nothing we can do with 100X the military spending.
Gripen is a great jet for Canadian requirements.
If I remember correctly, Saab has even offered to have the jets built.in Canada.
You do remember correctly. It's part of SAABs strategy, and if I remember correctly, there were also talks about Canada building their global eye AWAC
F35 doesn't even work.
F35 used to not work. Now it works well, after running away over budget and time.
Euro canards my beloved
I have no idea about the technical aspects but, with Murica not being an ally anymore, the F35 basically needing permission from Lockheed Martin to take off, and the F35 tech in the hands of the Saudi's and soon China... the F35s are worthless
Okay so just to clarify what the software lockdown on F-35 means is that other country except the USA aren't allowed to create update to the software. Exception for Israel and maybe the UK (don't quote me) are allowed to modify the software themselves.
It doesn't mean a instant kill switch. But it does mean that if the USA decides to block someone from update it's much harder for a country to make their own update.
is it actually possible for the USA to stop one of these jets from functioning?
if the answers is anything other than "absolutely impossible, no matter what", these jets are worthless
Any fighter jet requires a lot of maintenance, and the F35 requires more than most.
If they US cut us off from getting parts for the planes it wouldn't take too long before they wouldn't be flying anymore.
And yeah the biggest concern for me is a country that's potential adversary being able to shut down our air force when they want. I'd say it's not likely they'd do this to attack us militarily, but I could definitely see a them doing this to put pressure on us in a trade negotiation. They did temporarily cut off Ukraine from supply in the middle of a war to pressure them, that's a line that should never be crossed, and they crossed it. So yeah they'd be willing ground our airf orce to strong arm us someday.
So using American planes makes the RCAF a potential liability in negotiations in the future. The military should be a strength in geopolitics, not a liability.
The Swedish offer shouldn't just be about jobs, though that's a nice bonus. If we're building the parts for the planes here in Canada then no one can cut us off and ground our planes.
exactly right, IMO
I doubt they have a kill switch in the sense of making the jet fall out of the sky at the push of a button. But if they can stop you from updating its software or maintaining it that'll render it useless pretty quickly, so that's close enough IMO. They just need a little lead time on their invasion plans.
My thoughts exactly... and this is not a hypothetical, they have already shown they are willing to use any dirty tactic for any gain, even if it's just to strike the Orange Pedo ego
If they have control of updates, they can withhold updates or deliver malicious updates. So they may not be able to make them drop out of the sky*, but they can send an update that makes them completely unable to take off, or even crash upon takeoff.
*But they could install a kill command to turn off engines when a signal is received.
Weren't some of the US helicopters that were captured in Ukraine remotely disabled? I seem to remember a Russian general having a hissy fit about it early in the invasion.
I assumed F35s have a similar lockout mechanism.
If you have an article or maybe remember more details about that story?
The closest I could find is this.
Ukraine doesn't really operate western helicopter in general so the story may have been about something else. We have reports of the Russian using captured American armor vehicles. So no kill switch in those.
Hrm... Yeah, I'm not finding anything either. Might be I misunderstood something at the time, or took a rumor at the time as fact.
Elbows up!!
Damn that's a sexy plane. Delta wing and canards? Hell yeah.
The Gripen is quite interesting, who would have guessed that licensing fighter jets for manufacturing on other countries (Embraer is building them too, Colombia bought some, other countries seem to want it too) would be a good strategy?
I'll wait 50 years for a Gripen to be sold on Aliexpress for 150 thousand dollars, 250 thousand with replacement parts with a cool paint job.
MAGA would hate Canada escaping their abuse.
Wasn't a major problem with the F35 that they can't fly in the Canadian north? Shouldn't we have at least some of our fleet that can be used throughout Canadian territory in our defense?
I think they work fine as long as the hydraulic fluid is actually hydraulic fluid, and not water.
Don't leave your drums outside in the rain.
JK, fuck American tech
Canada buying F35s would be like Ukraine buying Su35 from Russia.
Whilst being told those Su35 will be 10% less effective
If we MUST get the jets from the US perhaps they'd consider a trade of some fighter jets for deez nutz
You do realize that the Gripen Fighter Jet uses General Electric Engines ... USA still has control over Sweden's Gripen Fighter Jets ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen
It looks like they're considering using engines from Rolls-Royce:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/nova-scotia/article/waiting-in-the-wings-ns-company-could-benefit-from-potential-jet-deal/
U
SKI sure do hope British politics doesn't take a turn for the batshit insane over the next few years.
Well then they are fucked. Maybe France's Snecma is an option and the Japanese also have engines. Pretty much everything else is Licensed copy of American engine or Chinese/Russian which are obvious no.
I think turkey was looking into making their own jet engines. But Erdogan Turkey is about as good of an option as trump USA.
Say what you will about the MiG, they're cheap.
The company was called "Snecma" until 2016, when the board finally grew tired of repeating they do not manufacture smegma /s.
Nor snecs.
What is or are snecs? Neither an English nor a French language search would reveal anything besides some acronyms.
Like snakes but cuter and with a c instead of a k.
they were originally made in sweden on license by volvo aerospace. now that's part of bae systems, but the entire thing is modular and if worse comes to worst, the drawings are probably still around.
List of accidents and incidents involving the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II
At the price of $100M/jet you want to miss out on all this?
hey now be fair
List of accidents and incidents involving the JAS 39 Gripen
although given the JAS has a 23-year head start, i gotta say the F-35 has made a fantastic grab for the lead.
To be fair most Gripen crashes happened in the early days, as a result of purposefully pushing the plane and pilot to their limits. Flying low enough to scrape treetops, sudden high-G manouvers... they train like they're in an actual war.
yeah the first two were because the pilot was outmanuevering the flight computer. the plane was much more capable than the initial software.
another fun fact is that the swedish air force does not have an aerobatics team. they all train for those maneuvers and whenever there's an airshow they're invited to they just send a random free airman from whatever base they happen to be on.
Yes. We don’t want the fascist us F35’s keep them and stick em where the sun don’t shine.
Why doesn't Canada design and build its own fighter jet?
I don't think I can understate just how ridiculously expensive it is to start up your own jet fighting industry from basically scratch.
In the entire world, there are only 5 countries that produce fighter jets. USA, Sweden, France, China, Russia.
Look at Sweden over here punching above its weight class!
(going strictly by population size)
Sweden has nearly a century constant fighter aircraft making experience but by the time of the gripen it all became so costly that it's heavily made of tech from like the UK and other European countries. Engines from the US. A big problem with trying to develop a modern engine without having all the research and industrial experience transferred from another country, it would take tens of billions of USD of research to accomplish even with good industrial espionage
Like the big hiccups for Russian 5th gen fighters are the engines. 30+ years of development and it's just barely looking like it's coming to readiness and that's with decades prior of other engines developed. For today's modern engines that became competitive at the high end competition, for China, research really started in the 70s. India had been trying since the 90s. It's an insanely expensive research project. Canada would likely have a worse time funding it than India.
South Korea and Turkey are likely a good aspiration for Canada while a Sweden a model they can better emulate. Canada would be far behind those SK/T in terms of domestic technology they can draw from though. Canada has Bombadier at least
I was just watching some informative stuff about jet engines the other day, so I appreciate what you're saying even more than I normally would, lol.
It requires a massive investment in research and development of advanced aerodynamics, material science, supply chain, skilled mechanics, etc. You just don't pop out a plane from a group of engineers like we did during WW1. Creating a fighter jet that is capable enough to defend against today's adversaries will require a couple decades of investment to start from scratch. And yes I know you probably think that we can just use the knowledge already available from previous fighter jet programs like older American jets but even if they had de-classified designs they still don't have the supply chain and technical experts to pull it off in a few years.
I don't think 20 years is enough especially for countries without the experience to fall back on. Not counting licensed builds. Engines and materials science. Also all the software. Digital and analog instruments. Modern fighters operate in connection with ground data links, satellite data links, other partner aircraft data links. All incredibly expensive and time consuming to develop
Countries with experience in Europe are all trying to partner up because of the financial costs and different part specialities for a 6th gen fighter and mockups make them look more like they'd be a gen 5.5 and they're pretty much all targeting ~2035 operationally when serious planning started between 2015-2020. I would not bet on any of the european gen 5+ being operationally ready for serial production by 2035.
Yeah, that's kinda like asking your mechanic neighbor "why don't you design and build your own car". Sure with enough time and money somebody could do this but it's likely to cost more, take longer, and have issues that an experienced producer has already come across and accounted for.
We tried once. Our government lacks vision sometimes.
Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow
We should bring back the program! And in the name of true Canadian patriotism, I vote we call it the Avro Lavigne.
What Canada really needs is a massive drone program. Drones from the size of a 747 to the size of a dime, and everything inbetween. The entire Russia-Ukraine war is a drone war.
Giant waste of money. Much smarter to buy a product someone else already wasted all the money to develop. Current-generation fighter jets are incredibly complex, Russia can't even figure out how to mass-produce one at all, even before the sanctions, and they're a very militarized state. Why spend 5x as much to develop something worse than what they can just buy?
Will require a lot of research and developement and spending and i am not ready to sacrifice services for it
Why dump more resources into something, that you don't need to, because there's a very serviceable option already prepped for sale?
Why redesign the wheel when we can build the wheels our allies designed? And I don't mean our former allies to the south. I wouldn't want to import Gripens, but it would be fantastic if we started building them here
Because jets are faster and have a greater effective range? Also Canada is the 2nd largest continent?
Why is Ukraine still using jets?
Drones require a radio signal to work. Radio signals can be jammed. You can get around this by having the drone on a wire, but obviously the range of the drone will be limited by the length of the wire.
An aircraft with a human pilot can still do it's mission even if radio signals are being jammed.
Also I can imagine someday they might combine the technologies. Human piloted jet carries drones close enough that it can hit the target while being connected to the jet by a wire so it can be controlled by the human pilot in the jet in an area where signals are being jammed. Of course the enemy will want to counter that... by sending a human piloted jet to take out your human piloted jet.
You could of course build more sophisticated drones that can operate autonomously. But remember they they may not be able to connect to a server farm to because of jamming. So you'd have to put a lot more stuff on the drone itself and before long it's no longer a cheap $400 drone, it's price tag goes up until you're basically spending almost as much per drone as we do on missiles.
Military tech is all about inventing new thing, invent thing to counter that, invent thing to counter the counter to your new tech. In wartime procurement you just need the thing that works right now. With peacetime procurement you want to get things that keep your options open and not be too dependent on a tech that might be countered in a few years. So you get both jets and drones because maybe the jets will be obsolete, but it's just as likely drones will be obsolete if the time comes to use them.
At the moment, no, probably not, and it's not either / or. Drones were a surprise in Ukraine, but their effectiveness has somewhat diminished as new counter measures like jamming, and just basic stuff like netting, are starting to blunt their usefulness.
Meanwhile they're still getting hammered by glide bombs, modified heavy bombs that can use GPS to find their targets and are launched by traditional aircraft, far away from the front line, and some of their most effective weapons have been the Storm Shadow / Scalp cruise missiles, which are also launched from traditional fighter jets (which effectively act as a first stage).
And again, it's not one of the other. In an actual war, either aggressive or defensive, you're going to want a mixture of capabilities... You can't always zerg rush.
Also... who's gonna be attacking Canada with drones?
Jets offer an extremely different range of capabilities from drones. They broadly aren't interchangable. Some highly advanced, expensive, and large drones have pushed the boundaries on this, but currently fighter jets are a largely unique asset.
Oh. You're a military commander with decades of experience, education and knowledge on the subject? Jesus fucking Christ.
I hope they do it. Maybe the arms manufacturers will turn on Trump when they start losing trillion dollar clients.
What's to consider. Do we need to hire an american consultant? (Canada's "go to" action in the past). Also, let's get those decisions made on the Chinese EV's and get that Canola flowing. Win-win for all Canadians. We can't be politicking all the time, can we? Pull up those sleeves, put away the middle-school insults, join hands, and get the hell to work!
I assume it's a bargaining chip for a reduction in tariffs. The problem as I see it is that any deal with Trump is not worth the paper it's written on, so I'm not sure much is to be gained.
Militarily procurement has always been massively corrupt in Canada.
Snubbing
If you want to make America piss itself, station J-35S.
Or you know stop building up your planet destroying unnecessary military altogether.
Militaries are only unnecessary so long as the other guys don't have one either
Oh yes Canada is really in danger of imminent invasion and I'm sure these planes won't be used to bomb innocent brown children if they are used at all
Canada is in danger of invasion by a nationalistic US in the next decade or two, if the trajectory our current regime is on continues unabated. Having defense equipment and capabilities that are backed by literally anything other than US tech is a great idea in that context.
Better idea stop building a death army so you can exploit the third world. Canada isn't buying bombers to defend against a US invasion. Stop inventing justification to support your militarism
Wow you are making a whole shitload of assumptions about my beliefs - not to mention, you clearly do not understand strategic military and geoeconomic policy in the context of modern geopolitics.
I don’t think they understand much.
Saying I don't understand "modern geopolitics" because I oppose the current mass military buildup worldwide is baseless. I just have a consistent opposition to militarism that you lack.
You do know the russia is our northern neighbour right?
More concerned about our southern neighbour atm.
No, your northern neighbor is a nearly impassable frozen sea of grinding churning ice.
I totally forgot frozen water can stop jets and missiles.
You are divorced from reality if you think Russia is a military threat to Canada. Sorry but thats not a good excuse to buy climate destroying military hardware which will either sit and not be used other than for "drills" and "parades" or be used to kill innocent people exploited for profit.
What colour is the sky in your little dream world?
Sure I'm in a dream world for opposing Canadian militarism that helped destroy Afgahnistan and Syria and will likely if used be used for similarly destructive means.
This attitude is why Europe is in the situation its in, and how Hitler got as far as he did.
The threat of violence maintains peace and sovereignty. It is a truth that cannot be ignored to cater to feelings.
Hitler didn't get as far as he did due to a lack of military buildup and militarism among European nations what are talking about? He got as far as he did because Britain and allies didn't see him as a threat because they had no problems with either his domestic policies and his beginning foreign conquests weren't deal breaking or a true threat to their power. It had nothing to do with a refusal to prioritize military spending.
He absolutely did. That, and concession after concession to appease that which cannot be appeased. He got very far because people kept at it with the "lets just be reasonable here" sentiments that only work if your opponent operates logically like a machine or even a traditional bureaucracy.
???
They most definitely thought he was a threat, but one they could contain without force and through appeasement.
Maybe not imminent. But you do need to have it ready on the chance something happens. It's pretty silly to completely dismantle a country's military and only start spinning it up when you need it.
Militaries take a long time to build up, equip, and train. Not to mention keeping the institutional knowledge of folks with the expertise on how to operate, build, and maintain all the moving parts involved so that when the time comes, you're not starting from square one. If you wait until you get attacked to get things rolling, you've pretty much already lost.