Canada says F-35s cost $14 B; Norway says they cost $40 B
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I believe you have a first. Now the air force will have to look for some other useless expensive toy.
I wonder what the price tag would be on a $20,000 automobile, if you had to
factor in, in advance, all costs that might be incurred in its 20yr lifespan from
insurance to repairs to fuel and regular maintenance, to its ultimate recycle fee?
Would that $20,000 car then be priced at $120,000? Is that what we're seeing here?
factor in, in advance, all costs that might be incurred in its 20yr lifespan from
insurance to repairs to fuel and regular maintenance, to its ultimate recycle fee?
Would that $20,000 car then be priced at $120,000? Is that what we're seeing here?
What you are seeing here is that the Harperites didn't reveal the total cost of the F35 while other countries did and Canada's number was so out of alignment something had to be wrong. All the competitors include future cost estimates. These costs are decided by what is covered 'under warranty' and expected 'lifetime' of individual parts. For example, the landing gear may be rated for 500 landings and then have to be replaced at an anticipated cost of $1,000,000.00 or whatever it is. Brakes may be okay for 20 landings then need replacing at what ever that cost is.
It was also a no-competition bid. Well why not, it's the taxpayers money. Do a backread on this and you will see there are many other options and many other countries who are decrying the cost over-runs of the F35..........
What to do now? How about a real competition where we test all the contenders against realistic, Canadian requirements? I'm sure Harper can find the blueprint left by Pierre Trudeau when his government selected the CF-18. It worked brilliantly last time. It'll work again.
Super Hornet... Dassault Rafale... Eurofighter Typhoon... Sukhoi 37... take your pick. My guess is that Harper will try to throw a bit of oil on the troubled waters and go for the American option, the updated Hornet perhaps with some of the electronics suite envisioned for the F-35.
Somebody - or bodies - at Lockheed is going to be having a giant, brown hemorrhage tonight over this. Canada might just be the nudge that other foreign customers need to follow suit. Watch... and learn.
The Disaffected Lib: The Legitimacy of the Harper Majority is No Longer In Question. It's Over, Finished.
It was also a no-competition bid. Well why not, it's the taxpayers money. Do a backread on this and you will see there are many other options and many other countries who are decrying the cost over-runs of the F35..........
What to do now? How about a real competition where we test all the contenders against realistic, Canadian requirements? I'm sure Harper can find the blueprint left by Pierre Trudeau when his government selected the CF-18. It worked brilliantly last time. It'll work again.
Super Hornet... Dassault Rafale... Eurofighter Typhoon... Sukhoi 37... take your pick. My guess is that Harper will try to throw a bit of oil on the troubled waters and go for the American option, the updated Hornet perhaps with some of the electronics suite envisioned for the F-35.
Somebody - or bodies - at Lockheed is going to be having a giant, brown hemorrhage tonight over this. Canada might just be the nudge that other foreign customers need to follow suit. Watch... and learn.
The Disaffected Lib: The Legitimacy of the Harper Majority is No Longer In Question. It's Over, Finished.
One of the problems with being among the first group to select the F-35 is that the F-35 is
no longer the best of the bunch. Of the aircraft mentioned above, the F-35 is now the slowest
of the lot. I've always thought the Super Hornet was the best for Canada. We are already flying
Hornets and a lot of parts are going to be interchangeable. Another positive thing is that buying
an aircraft designed to land on a carrier is going to get us a very strong undercarriage and wing.
Another positive point is that the Hornet has twin engines......A good thing to have when flying
up north where airports are few and far between.
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No worse than the rest of the bandits! What did those Liberals catch you doing? (Hope it wasn't around a sheep pen)-
Is there another thread dealing specifically with the subs? This is an issue that's urked me for a long time, given that the Brits themselves were straitforward enough about why those four subs were docked, yet Canada figured it could "fix them up". It's like many construction-type issues, where half the time it's cheaper to just scrap everything and build something new than it is to do a fix-up project.
But there a tie-in between the subs and the F-35's, and yes, it has to do with boondoggles. Sometimes it's almost like the reason Canada boondoggles is because the US has said via diplomatic channels that it does *not* want to see a potential threat from the north - that Washington has northern protection well in hand - such that Canada will be doing itself a favour to bungle things in order to save Uncle Sam the hassle of having to subvert anything that could become a threat from a sovereign nation.
Given the geography combined with global warming, Canada does not need a bunch of F-35's with no operational subs.
It needs a handlful of F-22's for chasing off Russian air-badgers, a big pile of drones for aerial coastal and northern patrol, and a fist of really good, quiet seaker-subs for sneak-patrol in expanding northern waters, opening up because of climate change.
And we need frigates. If the drones see someone smuggling people in, we send in frigates, round them up, and send them back.
If the drones see someone smuggling drugs, we send in some CF-18's and blow them to smitherenes... although I supposed that's where a handful of F-35's might come in handy, but I'm pretty sure that CF-18's could handle obliteration of drug-smugglers... unless the problem is that drug-smugglers are getting good at using radar to detect an incoming attack.
What Canada needs very bad is Heavy Office Cleaning Eguipment. Carpet beaters and scrubbers, sub-carpet floor scrapers, closet evacuation pumps, skeleton recovery units and WMD Account Audit tanks. We don't need no fracking espensive junk to play world conquest with. That game is over already except the bleeding and burning. Any contracts signed now can't possibly deliver in time to engage the Russians or Chinese or Syrians in the up coming short war. Wait awhile and we can clean up on surplus stuff.
Every F-22 needs twenty or more pilots during it's service life, according to the mysterious pilot breakdowns.
Every F-22 needs twenty or more pilots during it's service life, according to the mysterious pilot breakdowns.
Why... do F-22's drive pilots crazy? Canada need *something* to run off Russians who make a systematic game out of seeing how far they can push into northern airspace before being chased off.
In any case, yes, the Cold War is over, but that doesn't mean an end-of-all-problems. Now Canada is looking at a new situation... what would be a good anacronym for Economic Globalization combined with Global Warming?
There are people-smugglers from India and China sneaking folks into Canada to end up as prostitutes and sweatshop workers because their illegal status means they can't ask RCMP for protection, plus Canada's long, empty coastline makes it so easy to smuggle drugs through that it's an old joke how Vancouver has the highest rate of heroin addiction in North America... it's so cheap and easy to get.
Drones are cheap, and are not made for engaging Russia, China nor Syria in face-front war. They are for patrol, and that's what Canada needs... not just to watch for drug and people smugglers, but to watch for guerrilla resource extractors sneaking around the northern archiapeligo in a way they never could before the ice cap started melting.
F-35's and the like are for joint, NATO-style operations, which is not making so much sense these days. Last time anything like that was tried was Yugoslavia, and it did *not* work out in any way called satisfactory.
But that doesn't change the fact that, in the context of global warming with economic globalization, Canada *does* need some better ways to patrol her borders and to enforce claim to the northern territories, which are far more vast than most southern Canadians can understand... and drones give good bang for the buck...
But I still think Canada needs better sneaker-sub patrol of the waters between all those northern archiapeligo islands.
I confess, I'm impressed with this action... especially in view of the fact that as a majority government, technically, they didn't have to.
Good point.
What threat? LMAO
Does Libya and Afghanistan ring a bell at all?
What do you need F-22s for chasing off a Cold War Era plane?
Oh, there's none there now, but how would you feel if Canada decided to do something with all that Plutonium from the Candus?
Of course, having an atomic weapon is nothing without a delivery system, and hercs could non-chalantly fly over Seattle or Detroit or Chicago or Boston or Philadelphia or New York or Mineapolis before anyone knew what they were up to...
So, I reitterate... are you *sure* the reason Canada keeps boondoggling military purchases isn't because they're under pressure from Washington to never become a real threat?
Oh yeah... Libya... *sigh*...
But Afghanistan ... that wasn't really NATO... and the CF-18's didn't go there.
No more so than an F-35 then... eh?
In any case, it's not that hard to imagine. The Canadian ambassador to Washington gets called in, and is told:
US: "You must not become in any way a viable threat to the US of A."
CA: "But we have to spend enough on defense to justify our existence as a sovereign nation."
US: "Well, the Brits have four fixer-upper non-nuclear non-missile subs sitting on mothballs... why don't you see what you can do with those... and Lockheed Martin is over budget on the F-35's, so why don't you pick up a handful."
CA: "Hmm... well... the subs should be no problem, unless they catch fire during the Atlantic crossing, but the Privy Council will need time to contact their brokers in Zurich to up their holdings in Lockheed, plus we might have trouble convincing Canadians they actually need F-35's."
US: "That's not our problem... just make sure you don't do anything that could translate into a potential threat against America, or you'll be castrated so quickly you'll feel like the Avro Arrow affair was a pleasant prelude to the prom."
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Well sir since you obviously have no idea about how drugs and slaves are transported from there to here I will educate you a tiny bit. You want us to buy these expensive weapons from the same people who own the drug and slave businesses. Examine the heroine business since we democratized Afghanistan. You might add organ smuggling to the list of wealthy criminal enterprise as well. Like I suggested Office Cleaning Equipment.
Like what? Build a nuke? lol
Oh please... put down the KY
100%
It wasn't? Check again
Canada helped design and build the F-35
You do have an imagination I'll give you that.
It's not that hard you know. All you need is the fissile material, good metalurgists, good chemists, and good electricians, all three of which Canada has. In 1966 a study was done of the potential of all non-nuclear nations to go nuclear if they wanted to, and Canada topped the list.
Is that what you call Kentuky Burbon?
Canada went to Afghanistan as part of a five nation coalition pulled together by Bush Jr. as the reaction to 9/11.
As did, technically, every other nation promising to buy some... but design decisions are/were made via a vote according to how many F-35s each nation had promised to buy (basically one vote per F-35), and since the US announced it would buy more F-35s than all other nations combined, it gave the US total control over the design decisions.
It's a very good thing we didn't develope them in 1966, cus we would have been democratized in 1967.