Tories To Waste Billons On New Fighter Jets

[Bar Sinister]

Then don't cry if Canada were to ever need defending and the USA is up here in a heartbeat BECAUSE we're under equipped and overwhelmed. And you know they'll do it too!(As they should). And then people(and posters)who didn't support a functional military will have a bunch of bleeding hearts, "Why is AMERICA in MY country!?!?! PATROLLING MY SKIES! WE'RE BEING OCCUPIED!!!".

Well boo hoo! Another country has to defend us now because we could never agree on how to equip our military. This wasn't so hard in past generations, I'm sure of it. When you need new war ships, you order new war ships. When you need new planes, you order new planes. Look at the vast improvements in firearms over the years. We've purposely upgraded every step of the way. Who uses a flint lock rifle anymore?

We need the jets. We should aggressively agree to a price BEFORE the cost goes up. The F35 Lightening II is an impressive state of the art machine. It's single seated, can perform ground attacks, reconnaissance, air combat, short takeoff, vertical landing and it has the latest stealth capabilities.

Most importantly, if we get them they would eventually be shown off at the Abbotsford Air Show, and I would get to go. ;-)

Perhaps you could be so kind as to enlighten me as to what possible invasion Canada faces that requires air superiority fighter aircraft. I hardly think we need aircraft with stealth capability. What are we going to use them for; to sneak up on boats full of Asians?

If we are looking to patrol Canada's airspace to prevent drug smuggling or possible suicide hijackings we don't need aircraft any more advanced than the F16, an aircraft the US plans to keep in service until 2025. For dealing with incursions into our territorial waters we need long range patrol aircraft; something that the F35 is incapable of. For search and rescue we need small, long range propeller aircraft and helicopters. For troop support we need heavy lift aircraft; transport helicopters and helicopter gunships. We could get all of these for a fraction of the cost of the F35.

I think your last sentence says it all. To you these aircraft are interesting toys. Don't worry, I'm sure the Americans will be kind enough to send a few up here for you to look at; and it won't cost the country almost $30 billion.

 

[Omicron]

I think your last sentence says it all. To you these aircraft are interesting toys. Don't worry, I'm sure the Americans will be kind enough to send a few up here for you to look at; and it won't cost the country almost $30 billion.

Did you know that for $30 billion, Canada could spend $12 billion of that to launch its own GPS satellite system, with most of the money staying at home because Canada has the engineers and skilled workers to design and build the things. We'd only have to pay for their launch, and Russia's been selling that service cheep these days.

That leaves $18 billion. From that we spend two billion to build the command and control center, leaving $16 billion.

At a unit price of $4.5 million, we could pay Bombardier to build three thousand, five hundred and fifty five drones - money stays at home - and remember, drones are re-usable unlike cruise missiles.

With that, we can have pilots safely at home with not just 65 piloted craft, but with 3555 remote controlled craft having a better range than F-35s.

...*plus* we'd have our own GPS system which we could tune to have better resolution than the US system will allow (for policy reasons) for civilian purposes.

A system like that would me *much* more useful for northern patrol, and if we ever need to participate in some kind of UN/NATO thing, we're not risking pilot lives for what is and always has been a favor.

Plus, when not in combat (i.e. most of the time) they could be put to use patrolling for drug and people smugglers.

With that many craft, it might be possible to actually get some traction.

(Canada's west-coast is very porous to drug-and-people smugglers because there's a steady stream of hobby boaters from the US constantly sailing up and down between California and Alaska, such that it's impossible to stop and search them all. Smugglers disguise themselves as American hobby boaters, and when nobody's looking they stop at one of the hundreds of islands and coves along the coast and do their drop. One of the biggest drop points is the island of Texada, in case anyone's curious.)

Given what *could* be done with $30 billion, those F-35's are obviously a boondoggle...

... Military-surplus, made obsolete by the end of the Cold War, being flogged off on Canadian taxpayers at top-dollar to puff up the profit margins of Harpo's Plutocratic puppet masters.

 

[EagleSmack]

He might have been borrowing or rewording the way analyses reports tended to be formatted by Russians, because if you read old Soviet era military analysis reports, that's *exactly* how they'd describe the cost of equipment versus that of a soldier.

We don't appear to be talking about Russians.

 

[Omicron]

We don't appear to be talking about Russians.

I know... which is why the essay was okay in as far as it goes, until that last paragraph, at which point it does a crash and burn.

Pity, because otherwise it wasn't a bad essay.

 

[EagleSmack]

I know... which is why the essay was okay in as far as it goes, until that last paragraph, at which point it does a crash and burn.

Pity, because otherwise it wasn't a bad essay.

Indeed.

I took it as he was saying why invest the money in F-35s when we can invest in a lot of soldiers whose lives aren't worth the price of their gear.

 

[ironsides]

Did you know that for $30 billion, Canada could spend $12 billion of that to launch its own GPS satellite system, with most of the money staying at home because Canada has the engineers and skilled workers to design and build the things. We'd only have to pay for their launch, and Russia's been selling that service cheep these days.

That leaves $18 billion. From that we spend two billion to build the command and control center, leaving $16 billion.

At a unit price of $4.5 million, we could pay Bombardier to build three thousand, five hundred and fifty five drones - money stays at home - and remember, drones are re-usable unlike cruise missiles.

With that, we can have pilots safely at home with not just 65 piloted craft, but with 3555 remote controlled craft having a better range than F-35s.

...*plus* we'd have our own GPS system which we could tune to have better resolution than the US system will allow (for policy reasons) for civilian purposes.

A system like that would me *much* more useful for northern patrol, and if we ever need to participate in some kind of UN/NATO thing, we're not risking pilot lives for what is and always has been a favor.

Plus, when not in combat (i.e. most of the time) they could be put to use patrolling for drug and people smugglers.

With that many craft, it might be possible to actually get some traction.

(Canada's west-coast is very porous to drug-and-people smugglers because there's a steady stream of hobby boaters from the US constantly sailing up and down between California and Alaska, such that it's impossible to stop and search them all. Smugglers disguise themselves as American hobby boaters, and when nobody's looking they stop at one of the hundreds of islands and coves along the coast and do their drop. One of the biggest drop points is the island of Texada, in case anyone's curious.)

Given what *could* be done with $30 billion, those F-35's are obviously a boondoggle...

... Military-surplus, made obsolete by the end of the Cold War, being flogged off on Canadian taxpayers at top-dollar to puff up the profit margins of Harpo's Plutocratic puppet masters.

The topic of what something will cost has been around for years. The bottom line is that if you send somebody into combat, make sure they have the best possible equipment and training no matter the cost. Secondly if you want to defend your country with average equipment, why bother just give up, saves lots of money. Drones do make a fairly handy silent spy plane but will never substitute for eyes on, there just another tool, your company would not be profitable unless your drones were unique.