You mean you actually thought I thought you wanted to perforate Veterans with pitchforks?
Why exactly are you telling ME, to lighten up?
Oh ya, your obviously poor perception skills.
:lol:
F-35 program to get overhaul after scathing AG report
- Thread starter mentalfloss
- Start date
:lol:
I'm willing to wager a donut that the parents and grand parents of today's Parliament owned Edsels and raved about them.
Other countries are also having second thoughts about buying the F-35.
Thing is, if our allies do buy the F-35, shouldn't we?
Thing is, if our allies do buy the F-35, shouldn't we?
So have you noticed the pattern yet ? We used to call it King Midas in reverse. King Midas,as older folks will know,had this power so everything he touched,turned to gold,well steve and his minions have it in reverse,everything they touch turns to,what's the opposite of gold,yeah SHYTE.
After all the stuff steve and his minions have had their hands on,any ordinary person,and I qualify that because he been a boon for the corporate comunity,any ordinary person that still backs them aught to have their head read.
After all the stuff steve and his minions have had their hands on,any ordinary person,and I qualify that because he been a boon for the corporate comunity,any ordinary person that still backs them aught to have their head read.
F-35s may cost more than other fighters, but we’ll probably still need them
By Matthew Fisher
The auditor general’s report on the F-35 aside, no one knows what Canada will pay for the Joint Strike Fighter, and they won’t until a final price is negotiated. So, in the inimitable words of Aislin, “Everybody take a Valium!”
Price estimates now range from $75 million to $162 million per aircraft. The nine partners in the JSF project are currently pressing the manufacturer (and the U.S. government, as program co-ordinator) to get costs down. The odds are, they will.
Things such as which tranche you buy in at, how many aircraft you buy, over what time frame, and where your currency is vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar at the time of signing, all will affect the prices each country pays — just as with every other similar program. Indeed, these factors can have a huge impact on final pricing. As things stand now, the Canadian military still reckons the per-aircraft cost, as the U.S. Congress was told last week, is about $85 million and that the federal government still can purchase F-35s under the $9-billion ceiling the Harper government unnecessarily announced two years ago and boxed itself into for good last week.
more
F-35s may cost more, but we'll probably still need them: Matthew Fisher | Full Comment | National Post
Deal with it and carry on.
By Matthew Fisher
The auditor general’s report on the F-35 aside, no one knows what Canada will pay for the Joint Strike Fighter, and they won’t until a final price is negotiated. So, in the inimitable words of Aislin, “Everybody take a Valium!”
Price estimates now range from $75 million to $162 million per aircraft. The nine partners in the JSF project are currently pressing the manufacturer (and the U.S. government, as program co-ordinator) to get costs down. The odds are, they will.
Things such as which tranche you buy in at, how many aircraft you buy, over what time frame, and where your currency is vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar at the time of signing, all will affect the prices each country pays — just as with every other similar program. Indeed, these factors can have a huge impact on final pricing. As things stand now, the Canadian military still reckons the per-aircraft cost, as the U.S. Congress was told last week, is about $85 million and that the federal government still can purchase F-35s under the $9-billion ceiling the Harper government unnecessarily announced two years ago and boxed itself into for good last week.
more
F-35s may cost more, but we'll probably still need them: Matthew Fisher | Full Comment | National Post
Deal with it and carry on.
Around and around and around it goes, where it stops, nobody knows!
F-35s: Public was not misled about full cost of fighter jets, Conservative says | News | National Post
F-35s: Public was not misled about full cost of fighter jets, Conservative says | News | National Post
Regardless of the price the machines have a duty to fulfill?
For all the combat done our fleets of current fighters should have almost zero time on them. Pilots can get practice in full-motion simulators and if they need to be flown to find the bugs they should be free.
For all the combat done our fleets of current fighters should have almost zero time on them. Pilots can get practice in full-motion simulators and if they need to be flown to find the bugs they should be free.
The F-35 is a Bat man pipedream. It seems to want to be all things to all men. I think it is going to turn out to be one of the biggest schmozzles of all time. First, the F-35 is a big airplane.....Easily twice as big as the F18. It will take a hell of a pile of stealth technology
to hide that thing in the battlefield. I would much rather go against an F-35 than a Stealth Eagle or a Super Hornet
to hide that thing in the battlefield. I would much rather go against an F-35 than a Stealth Eagle or a Super Hornet
**** just got serious - even Andrew Coyne is on board now.
Peter MacKay's defence of F-35 price gap doesn't add up | Full Comment | National Post
Peter MacKay's defence of F-35 price gap doesn't add up | Full Comment | National Post
Maybe Mckay's pay cheque should be shorted and deemed "an accounting issue"? **** would fly without doubt.
Twenty-six billion dollars for 65 F-35s is approximately $800 for every child, woman, and man in Canada. Wow, this is cheap, after all the cost of educating all children in elementary and secondary schools in Canada was close to $51.2 B in 2007/8 (Stats Canada, 2010). More jets, fewer children!
The thing is, that we just know the price is going to go up.
The thing that bothers me is that while the F-35b is big, it is not bigger than the F-15 which has the added complexity of twin engines. How is it the F-35 costs over four times what an F-15 does? Is the rest of the world subsidising the U.S. new fighter program?
I was talking to a retired career US navy flight officer who, among other things, had participated in patrols of the coast from Oregon to Alaska.
He asked if Ottawa had bit the same bait as Washington, where the manufacturer is guaranteed to be paid whatever they say it cost, and that if said manufacturer says they've found bugs in the system, then the buyer must accept the bug-fixes, at whatever it cost to fix them, such that the buggier the craft and the longer it takes to fix the bugs, the more the manufacturer makes (classic MBA strategizing).
I told him Canada used to have an out, where if some part was buggy and no fix was forthcoming more-or-less promptly, that Canada would yank the buggy part and replace it with home-made tech that works, but that I couldn't tell him if that was the case with the F-35s. I mentioned that buying F-35s might be a roundabout way to generate work for Canadian high-tech, in that the buggier the craft, the more work it could generate for Canadian high-tech parts designers-and-manufacturers to fix it.
He talked about how they'd noticed in their patrols how porous the BC and Alaska coastline was/is to drug-and-people smugglers, and wondered why Canada didn't buy a cheeper and more useful fleet of drones to patrol the coastline. He said if Canada doesn't do a better job of stopping drugs and undocumented workers from entering Canada and sneaking south, that Uncle Sam might take it upon itself to patrol the coastlines with drones, whereupon, in Washinton's eyes, Canada has lost jurisdiction over its coastline, the same way they do not recognize Canadian jurisdiction over the northern archipelego... because Canada didn't enforce its claim.
He noted how the F-35 is not defensive... that it's at attack craft... and was curious to know whom Canada was feeling a need to attack. I told him I thought the only thing Canada needed 5th generation fighters for was to run off Russians sniffing at the northern fences to keep their pilots trained, therefore something air-to-air, and that F-22s would be better for that, and he didn't disagree... just wondered how Ottawa might get around US export restrictions on F-22s.
I told him LM could leave out the parts deamed too sensitive to export, such that Ottawa could fill those spaces with homemade parts, thus priming Canadian high-tech while saving the cost of having to pay for what was sounding like inevitable MBA-mandated bug-fixes to the parts that would be left out. He got a funny look on his face, ordered another, and changed the subject.
He asked if Ottawa had bit the same bait as Washington, where the manufacturer is guaranteed to be paid whatever they say it cost, and that if said manufacturer says they've found bugs in the system, then the buyer must accept the bug-fixes, at whatever it cost to fix them, such that the buggier the craft and the longer it takes to fix the bugs, the more the manufacturer makes (classic MBA strategizing).
I told him Canada used to have an out, where if some part was buggy and no fix was forthcoming more-or-less promptly, that Canada would yank the buggy part and replace it with home-made tech that works, but that I couldn't tell him if that was the case with the F-35s. I mentioned that buying F-35s might be a roundabout way to generate work for Canadian high-tech, in that the buggier the craft, the more work it could generate for Canadian high-tech parts designers-and-manufacturers to fix it.
He talked about how they'd noticed in their patrols how porous the BC and Alaska coastline was/is to drug-and-people smugglers, and wondered why Canada didn't buy a cheeper and more useful fleet of drones to patrol the coastline. He said if Canada doesn't do a better job of stopping drugs and undocumented workers from entering Canada and sneaking south, that Uncle Sam might take it upon itself to patrol the coastlines with drones, whereupon, in Washinton's eyes, Canada has lost jurisdiction over its coastline, the same way they do not recognize Canadian jurisdiction over the northern archipelego... because Canada didn't enforce its claim.
He noted how the F-35 is not defensive... that it's at attack craft... and was curious to know whom Canada was feeling a need to attack. I told him I thought the only thing Canada needed 5th generation fighters for was to run off Russians sniffing at the northern fences to keep their pilots trained, therefore something air-to-air, and that F-22s would be better for that, and he didn't disagree... just wondered how Ottawa might get around US export restrictions on F-22s.
I told him LM could leave out the parts deamed too sensitive to export, such that Ottawa could fill those spaces with homemade parts, thus priming Canadian high-tech while saving the cost of having to pay for what was sounding like inevitable MBA-mandated bug-fixes to the parts that would be left out. He got a funny look on his face, ordered another, and changed the subject.
Prime Minister Harper’s team gets a good laugh over ‘austerity’
There’s a striking photo of Ronald Reagan and members of his inner circle, cocktails in hand, practically doubled over with laughter.
A clever wag attached a caption to the bottom of the photo: “We told them the wealth would trickle down!”
With that caption, the photo has gone viral on the Internet. One can imagine the photo capturing a 1980s scene inside the White House, as someone pulled back the curtain and caught the Reagan team in flagrante, celebrating how successfully they’d fooled the public about their “trickle down” theory.
With the revelations presented last week by Canada’s Auditor General Michael Ferguson, it’s easy to imagine a similar scene here: members of the Harper cabinet buckled over with laughter, celebrating how they successfully hid from the public $10 billion in costs connected to the purchase of dozens of fighter jets, even as they sold gullible Canadians on the need for “austerity.”
Ha ha ha!
As the auditor general made clear, Stephen Harper’s government failed to be honest with Canadians about the true costs of buying 65 of the pricey, U.S.-made jets, which were always much more popular with Canada’s military brass, the Harper cabinet and the aerospace industry than with the general public.
Indeed, even before Ferguson’s damning report, the public had good reason to be wary of plans to purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35 jets, without a tendering process open to competitors.
Costs of military contracts are notorious for escalating wildly, on average by triple the announced price, notes Peter Langille, a defence analyst formerly employed by Canada’s defence department, who now teaches peace studies at McMaster University.
Langille says that the F-35 program, if it proceeds, will draw scarce government resources into preparing for war-fighting abroad, and away from public programs like health care and education — a development Canadians would likely resist if they thought much about it.
Anxious to prevent the public from thinking much about it, the Harper team deliberately lowballed the costs, suggesting Canada could acquire the planes for $15 billion.
As the auditor general has revealed, Harper cabinet ministers continued to insist that $15 billion would be the cost, even after our defence department provided them with confidential information in June 2010 showing that the true costs would be $25 billion.
But Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page smelled a rat, and produced his own estimate in March 2011 showing that the planes would cost $29 billion.
The Conservatives quickly dissed this annoying parliamentary watchdog as well as opposition critics, and insisted ever more vigorously that the price tag would not exceed $15 billion.
Still, some unpatriotic types remained skeptical. The government’s refusal to provide a fuller accounting was, in part, what led to the non-confidence motion that prompted last spring’s election.
Throughout that campaign, Harper and his ministers stuck adamantly to the $15 billion estimate — while knowing it wasn’t true — and won a majority government.
Ha ha ha! What a knee slapper! And did you hear the one about the two Canadians who walked into a polling station, only to discover it was the wrong one!
But, while a $10 billion cost overrun is apparently no big deal to the Harperites (who, oddly, present themselves as sound fiscal managers), they quickly shifted into “austerity” mode after the election, lecturing Canadians on the dire need to reign in government spending.
Just last week, citing “challenging fiscal times,” the Harper team ended a program that provides Internet access at libraries and community centres, giving low-income Canadians — about half of whom lack Internet access — a lifeline to the world, as well as a way to apply for jobs.
The nationwide program, which costs only $15 million, operates with the help of volunteers.
This example of generous Canadians volunteering to help Canada’s most vulnerable citizens is enough to restore one’s belief in the goodness of this country. But, suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, it was wiped out by the Harper cabinet, in the name of austerity.
Ha ha ha! High fives, boys!
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...team-gets-a-good-laugh-over-austerity#article
There’s a striking photo of Ronald Reagan and members of his inner circle, cocktails in hand, practically doubled over with laughter.
A clever wag attached a caption to the bottom of the photo: “We told them the wealth would trickle down!”
With that caption, the photo has gone viral on the Internet. One can imagine the photo capturing a 1980s scene inside the White House, as someone pulled back the curtain and caught the Reagan team in flagrante, celebrating how successfully they’d fooled the public about their “trickle down” theory.
With the revelations presented last week by Canada’s Auditor General Michael Ferguson, it’s easy to imagine a similar scene here: members of the Harper cabinet buckled over with laughter, celebrating how they successfully hid from the public $10 billion in costs connected to the purchase of dozens of fighter jets, even as they sold gullible Canadians on the need for “austerity.”
Ha ha ha!
As the auditor general made clear, Stephen Harper’s government failed to be honest with Canadians about the true costs of buying 65 of the pricey, U.S.-made jets, which were always much more popular with Canada’s military brass, the Harper cabinet and the aerospace industry than with the general public.
Indeed, even before Ferguson’s damning report, the public had good reason to be wary of plans to purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35 jets, without a tendering process open to competitors.
Costs of military contracts are notorious for escalating wildly, on average by triple the announced price, notes Peter Langille, a defence analyst formerly employed by Canada’s defence department, who now teaches peace studies at McMaster University.
Langille says that the F-35 program, if it proceeds, will draw scarce government resources into preparing for war-fighting abroad, and away from public programs like health care and education — a development Canadians would likely resist if they thought much about it.
Anxious to prevent the public from thinking much about it, the Harper team deliberately lowballed the costs, suggesting Canada could acquire the planes for $15 billion.
As the auditor general has revealed, Harper cabinet ministers continued to insist that $15 billion would be the cost, even after our defence department provided them with confidential information in June 2010 showing that the true costs would be $25 billion.
But Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page smelled a rat, and produced his own estimate in March 2011 showing that the planes would cost $29 billion.
The Conservatives quickly dissed this annoying parliamentary watchdog as well as opposition critics, and insisted ever more vigorously that the price tag would not exceed $15 billion.
Still, some unpatriotic types remained skeptical. The government’s refusal to provide a fuller accounting was, in part, what led to the non-confidence motion that prompted last spring’s election.
Throughout that campaign, Harper and his ministers stuck adamantly to the $15 billion estimate — while knowing it wasn’t true — and won a majority government.
Ha ha ha! What a knee slapper! And did you hear the one about the two Canadians who walked into a polling station, only to discover it was the wrong one!
But, while a $10 billion cost overrun is apparently no big deal to the Harperites (who, oddly, present themselves as sound fiscal managers), they quickly shifted into “austerity” mode after the election, lecturing Canadians on the dire need to reign in government spending.
Just last week, citing “challenging fiscal times,” the Harper team ended a program that provides Internet access at libraries and community centres, giving low-income Canadians — about half of whom lack Internet access — a lifeline to the world, as well as a way to apply for jobs.
The nationwide program, which costs only $15 million, operates with the help of volunteers.
This example of generous Canadians volunteering to help Canada’s most vulnerable citizens is enough to restore one’s belief in the goodness of this country. But, suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, it was wiped out by the Harper cabinet, in the name of austerity.
Ha ha ha! High fives, boys!
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...team-gets-a-good-laugh-over-austerity#article