Tories To Waste Billons On New Fighter Jets
- Thread starter dumpthemonarchy
- Start date
Sticker shock
F-35 price tag expected to top $29B U.S.: parliamentary budget officer
That's a lot of meatballs.
F-35 price tag expected to top $29B U.S.: parliamentary budget officer
That's a lot of meatballs.
The problem is that the military does not need these jets. The last time Canada committed its current air force to military action was in Kosovo. In that situation Canada sent four jets to complement the several thousand NATO aircraft that were already there. This hardly makes a case for buying state of the art aircraft designed to fight a Cold War type enemy. What this is really all about is the air force making sure that it gets its share of the defence pie whether it needs it or not. BTW who else should Canada rely upon for parts? Isn't the USA a NATO member?
Well, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to counter those kinds of incursions would be with conventional-tipped cruise missiles.
Cruise missiles are cheap, very accurate, and they don't have to be tipped with nukes.
If on patrol you find that someone has set up an unlicensed mine or drilling platform, you issue a 30 minute warning, then point a cruise missile launched from some place like Churchill or Cold Lake, guide it in by GPS, and blow it up.
And speaking of patrol, on the geo-political level there's two aspects of maintaining a claim over a region.
The first is to show you can keep an eye on it, and for that we have light, long-range fuel-efficient patrol craft, which is part of the forces that we *should* be spending money to upgrade and improve instead of pouring money down the pighole of those baroque F-35's (and by the way, the term "fifth-generation fighter-jet" was invented by Lougheed-Martin's marketing department... it doesn't mean anything in real military terms).
But, the second part is where a power like Russia could send in fleets of warships to sail through waters in convoys *wanting* to be seen and basically daring anyone to force them out, such that if you don't force them out after a certain period of time, they can make a "de-facto" claim to the part of the arctic they are patrolling and they can start moving in their drilling rigs.
Forcing them can be tricky because you have to demonstrate the ability to hurt them if they don't leave without actually hurting them.
You can tell them you have conventional cruise missiles, but it's not hard for warships to defend themselves from conventional cruise missiles given the relatively slow speed of cruise missiles combined with the fact that on open water, there's nothing for the cruise missiles to hide behind as they sneak towards their target... cruise missiles are for hitting dumb static stationary targets like claim-jumping mines and unlicensed drilling platforms.
You can fly F-35's in circles around them, but again, unless you're prepared to shoot nuclear-tipped air-to-sea missiles from a distance, F-35's really don't pose that much of a threat to a convoy of modern warships.
The only things to scare off fleets of warships is to be faced down by an equal or stronger fleet...
OR... stealthy subs.
For the money being peed away on those mis-allocated F-35s Canada could build their own subs, creating jobs at home, armed with torpedoes way too big for F-35's to carry and with the kind of punch required to hurt a warship.
And if the foreign power is going to try to make a de-facto claim by patrolling into a part of the Canadian arctic with wings of fighters and bombers instead of fleets of warships, the best way to run them off is with F-22's, which are way better at air-to-air combat than F-35's... and a dozen or two F-22's would take care of that... not 65!
There are SO MANY aspects of the C-forces that should be upgraded or extended that *do* make sense for the real needs of soverignty... just try to list them all... and then try to figure out what-the-heck is being thought by Harpo and his minion-cabinet for them to blow wads on those F-35's if their goal really is to do the job they were elected for.
Something about it does not add up, and it's reeking of the effects leading to Athens having lost the Peloponnesian war. That was a war between Athens and Sparta, and Athens should have won because it had a bigger population, more money, and a vastly superior navy.
However, it had a system of extreme democracy where voters were called upon to listen to generals propose battle plans and then vote on which should be the next campaign, coupled with a lobby system where military-supply vendors could bribe voters and generals to support campaigns that made no military sense but which cost a lot for all the resources it would take to equip.
It cost them the war, and it cost them their civilization... *plus* it had ripple-effects through history, because Athens was just on the verge of becoming the dominant power in the Mediteranian, hundreds of years before the Romans, which means it could have been the Athenian Empire and not the Roman Empire, and because it came hundred of years earlier it might have short-cut the conversion of the Mediteranian to Christianity, which led to the Middle Ages, which cut off all scientific progress for a thousand years when the Romans were just on the verge of discovering industrialization (they were up to the point of having steam engines and pumps but they hadn't put the two together to make a piston).
It means that we could have had industrialization by 300 BC, and we could have been on the moon some time around 50 BC...
But we didn't... because of the effect of commercial-interest lobbyists on Athenian military purchases.
Harpo's beligerance about blowing money on those misplaced F-35's makes *so* *little* sense that there has to be something he's not telling us.
I wonder if he and the cabinet get bonuses from sales like that the way those gargoyles on Wall Street got bonuses for goldman-sacking the global economy to drive it into one of the longest recessions in history, thus driving down the prices of all real-assets and making them cheaper to buy up by those who piled up fortunes pillaging money out of the economy, said pillaging being what triggered the financial collapse.
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I think we are just fine with the 3 canoes armed with slingshots that make up our navy right now.
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. ;-)
Thesis: Aircraft have no purpose beyond a Clausewitzian method.
Industrial production had increased in Germany; despite the strategic bombardments that amounted to terrorism on the civilian population.
Poor confirmation and overclaiming of aerial victories. Brush aside the newsreels, historians more or less agree that almost 50%; if not more, of real air losses were due to anti-aircraft guns.
Myth that "air power" had won the Western Front. We had P-51 Mustang Pilots, whose aircraft are equipped with 20-mm cannons, claiming by the hundreds that they've "taken out" a Panther Tank which has a 120mm armor... not possible... We were apparently killing more German tanks than those which actually existed on the Western Front - most of the Panthers and Konistigers were on the Easter nFront.
We won the Western Front because we were fighting 10% of the German army and that 10%'s morale was rock bottom when it became clear that the Eastern Front was being lost.
And even then, it is widely known that the Germans had air superority and contestation throughout the Eastern Front.
Our battles with the Germans amounted to pure propaganda. We were writing newsreels about fighting Germans in North Africa, even though the Germans had 4 divisions in Northern Africa and 193 Divisions in Russia... Uh huh...
While aircraft were important during the Pacific War; in that, carrier-launched planes were a method to sink Japanese logistics. On the other hand, airpower didn't accomplish much during the Battle of Iwo Jima and most military Japanese losses throughout the war were due to disease and starvation - not tactical bombardments from aircraft. In our contemporary day, we can use missiles over aircraft.
During the Yugoslav Conflict, we literally had all the airpower in the world and we couldn't stop the Serbs from running around and acting like brigands.
During the Gulf War, the A-10 pilots weren't comfortable with ground attack missions. Most of Saddam's tanks were taken out; not from A-10s, but from infantry with M47 Dragon Anti-Tank missiles and M1 Abrams which had a range and armanent advantage over Saddam's monkey model tanks.
In 2003, air power didn't make its show and once again it was the tank and infantry that was doing the dangerous work. Even then; facing an opponent with rusted T-72s and militias armed with RPG-7s, it still took two week to enter Baghdad (contrary to "shock and awe" morons on the internet who think a country can be conquered in a day).
In Afghanistan, air power hasn't done a thing for us in regards to winning that insurgency.
Conclusion: The underlining theme are that aircraft are Clausewitzian method and are otherwise useless in tactical conflict against a determined opponent. Furthermore, most of the time they are grounded less we get incidents like a "Stealth Bomber", as was the case in Yugoslavia, being shot down by an obsolete infantry launched SA-7 Grail ground-to-air missile.
True... overwhelming air power can win a war but we've never come close to such figures. 5000 Aircraft (U.S. Airforce) sounds like a lot but only half of those are ground attack aircraft and we have 2000 Aircraft "tasked" with eliminating a half million to million men in uniform... it's simply not possible! Ground attack aircraft have to "go in" for the "kill" and consequentially, that means even a .50 Caliber machine gun has a chance of taking one out.
Economically, for the price of a single fighter jet we can purchase 15 tanks or purchase 20,000 missiles for an infantry missile system.
Why even bother with aircraft? Propaganda. Once the world finds out how useless these things are; much like the battleships of the old (which was a major military industrial complex in Britain), you won't see anymore money wasted on them.
Even then I think people are starting to have doubts. Afghanistan has proven that aircraft isn't making a difference there - no more than it made a difference in Vietnam.
In the 1920's, everyone had believed that future armies would consist of parachuters... The Soviet Union was the most progressive in that regard.
Fast forward to Crete and most parachuters died when landing into trees, were shot by Greek farmers with shotguns, et al.
People are quick to disregard infantry as useless but they're fools. Infantry doesn't need a huge logistic train. Infantry can dig himself a hole to hid in. Infantry doesn't produce a defeaning engine sound. And infantry, can lug around a missile platform that can fire a missile 5 kilometers away and nail a tank. Most importantly; infantry is cheap and replacable.
Second you lose your $100 million aircraft it's gone. It's another when you lose a conscript who is worth less than his equipment.
Industrial production had increased in Germany; despite the strategic bombardments that amounted to terrorism on the civilian population.
Poor confirmation and overclaiming of aerial victories. Brush aside the newsreels, historians more or less agree that almost 50%; if not more, of real air losses were due to anti-aircraft guns.
Myth that "air power" had won the Western Front. We had P-51 Mustang Pilots, whose aircraft are equipped with 20-mm cannons, claiming by the hundreds that they've "taken out" a Panther Tank which has a 120mm armor... not possible... We were apparently killing more German tanks than those which actually existed on the Western Front - most of the Panthers and Konistigers were on the Easter nFront.
We won the Western Front because we were fighting 10% of the German army and that 10%'s morale was rock bottom when it became clear that the Eastern Front was being lost.
And even then, it is widely known that the Germans had air superority and contestation throughout the Eastern Front.
Our battles with the Germans amounted to pure propaganda. We were writing newsreels about fighting Germans in North Africa, even though the Germans had 4 divisions in Northern Africa and 193 Divisions in Russia... Uh huh...
While aircraft were important during the Pacific War; in that, carrier-launched planes were a method to sink Japanese logistics. On the other hand, airpower didn't accomplish much during the Battle of Iwo Jima and most military Japanese losses throughout the war were due to disease and starvation - not tactical bombardments from aircraft. In our contemporary day, we can use missiles over aircraft.
During the Yugoslav Conflict, we literally had all the airpower in the world and we couldn't stop the Serbs from running around and acting like brigands.
During the Gulf War, the A-10 pilots weren't comfortable with ground attack missions. Most of Saddam's tanks were taken out; not from A-10s, but from infantry with M47 Dragon Anti-Tank missiles and M1 Abrams which had a range and armanent advantage over Saddam's monkey model tanks.
In 2003, air power didn't make its show and once again it was the tank and infantry that was doing the dangerous work. Even then; facing an opponent with rusted T-72s and militias armed with RPG-7s, it still took two week to enter Baghdad (contrary to "shock and awe" morons on the internet who think a country can be conquered in a day).
In Afghanistan, air power hasn't done a thing for us in regards to winning that insurgency.
Conclusion: The underlining theme are that aircraft are Clausewitzian method and are otherwise useless in tactical conflict against a determined opponent. Furthermore, most of the time they are grounded less we get incidents like a "Stealth Bomber", as was the case in Yugoslavia, being shot down by an obsolete infantry launched SA-7 Grail ground-to-air missile.
True... overwhelming air power can win a war but we've never come close to such figures. 5000 Aircraft (U.S. Airforce) sounds like a lot but only half of those are ground attack aircraft and we have 2000 Aircraft "tasked" with eliminating a half million to million men in uniform... it's simply not possible! Ground attack aircraft have to "go in" for the "kill" and consequentially, that means even a .50 Caliber machine gun has a chance of taking one out.
Economically, for the price of a single fighter jet we can purchase 15 tanks or purchase 20,000 missiles for an infantry missile system.
Why even bother with aircraft? Propaganda. Once the world finds out how useless these things are; much like the battleships of the old (which was a major military industrial complex in Britain), you won't see anymore money wasted on them.
Even then I think people are starting to have doubts. Afghanistan has proven that aircraft isn't making a difference there - no more than it made a difference in Vietnam.
In the 1920's, everyone had believed that future armies would consist of parachuters... The Soviet Union was the most progressive in that regard.
Fast forward to Crete and most parachuters died when landing into trees, were shot by Greek farmers with shotguns, et al.
People are quick to disregard infantry as useless but they're fools. Infantry doesn't need a huge logistic train. Infantry can dig himself a hole to hid in. Infantry doesn't produce a defeaning engine sound. And infantry, can lug around a missile platform that can fire a missile 5 kilometers away and nail a tank. Most importantly; infantry is cheap and replacable.
Second you lose your $100 million aircraft it's gone. It's another when you lose a conscript who is worth less than his equipment.
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Okay okay...
Instead of responding to each scolding PM individually I'll do it this once in a shotgun approach...
*sigh*...
When I said:
"...it could have been the Athenian Empire and not the Roman Empire, and because it came hundred of years earlier it might have short-cut the conversion of the Mediteranian to Christianity, which led to the Middle Ages, which cut off all scientific progress for a thousand years..."
... I didn't mean unadulterated Christianity per se. Christianity forms the basic framework of the moral code for most of the western hemisphere and a good chunk of the east, and it's extremely difficult to imagine how life would be in the west without it. It forms the core of my own moral code, and I'm quite content with it thank you very much.
What I meant to say was, "... the conversion of the Mediteranian to Constantinian post-Nicaean Catholicism, which led to the Dark Ages..."
Okay... is that better? Everybody happy now?
In any case, I still think it's a waste of money spending all those billions on a pile of F-35's that we don't really need when there are so many other aspects to the forces which could use improvement... and even for the situations where jets of that class are what we'd need (chase off intruders into our airspace) F-22's would be a better choice, and we wouldn't need 65 of them. A dozen or two F-22's would do the job.
This whole thing about people thinking they need souped up jets like that to provide defense is frankly kind'a strange. If somebody really wants to fly in and start bombing Canadian targets, it's way simpler and cheaper and over-all more effective to use a lot of good, cheap ground-to-air missiles.
When I read the way some people go on about jets like that, it's like they're romanticizing war... as if it's a jousting competition.
It's like they see jet pilots as noble knights charging each other over the jousting field, and that simply shooting down an enemy jet with a sweet little missile is somehow against the rules of war, or is not fighting in the spirit of the game.
Well, war is not a game. It's war, and anything goes, so if some tasty little missile is what will stop an enemy charging in on his platinum plated jet, then so be it. Ker pow... you're dead... now stop invading.
This romaniticizing of what is really a Cold War purpose design when there are cheaper and equally effective methods to fight against an invader reminds me of the British attitude towards German U-boats.
There were British Admirals who refused to look into the feasibility of submarines because it was "Un-British to sneak around under the water! Harumph!", and the result was that U-boats were sinking ships at the rate of three million tons per month at the peak of WW-II.
They almost cut off the convoys, in which case the Russians would not have got the supplies they needed to keep marching against the Nazis, and Hitler would have won. The only reason they didn't was because the US and Canada were willing to dig into everything they had for steel and ship production and sail them out in such huge numbers that if even just a few could get through, the Russians would get supplies, at the cost of many merchant marines.
The attitude of some people towards cheap missiles as they wax poetic about jets is like those British Admirals waxing poetic about British Battleships while dissing U-Boats.
But today we know that submarines are the way to go.
Did you know that in virtually *all* naval war-games played by the west through the Cold War, the only consistent result from all their maneuvers was that the side with the most subs always won.
Why don't they do equivalent battle simulations (probably computer based) to see which kind of airspace invasion goes better: jets against jets, or jets against swarms of missiles.
Instead of responding to each scolding PM individually I'll do it this once in a shotgun approach...
*sigh*...
When I said:
"...it could have been the Athenian Empire and not the Roman Empire, and because it came hundred of years earlier it might have short-cut the conversion of the Mediteranian to Christianity, which led to the Middle Ages, which cut off all scientific progress for a thousand years..."
... I didn't mean unadulterated Christianity per se. Christianity forms the basic framework of the moral code for most of the western hemisphere and a good chunk of the east, and it's extremely difficult to imagine how life would be in the west without it. It forms the core of my own moral code, and I'm quite content with it thank you very much.
What I meant to say was, "... the conversion of the Mediteranian to Constantinian post-Nicaean Catholicism, which led to the Dark Ages..."
Okay... is that better? Everybody happy now?
In any case, I still think it's a waste of money spending all those billions on a pile of F-35's that we don't really need when there are so many other aspects to the forces which could use improvement... and even for the situations where jets of that class are what we'd need (chase off intruders into our airspace) F-22's would be a better choice, and we wouldn't need 65 of them. A dozen or two F-22's would do the job.
This whole thing about people thinking they need souped up jets like that to provide defense is frankly kind'a strange. If somebody really wants to fly in and start bombing Canadian targets, it's way simpler and cheaper and over-all more effective to use a lot of good, cheap ground-to-air missiles.
When I read the way some people go on about jets like that, it's like they're romanticizing war... as if it's a jousting competition.
It's like they see jet pilots as noble knights charging each other over the jousting field, and that simply shooting down an enemy jet with a sweet little missile is somehow against the rules of war, or is not fighting in the spirit of the game.
Well, war is not a game. It's war, and anything goes, so if some tasty little missile is what will stop an enemy charging in on his platinum plated jet, then so be it. Ker pow... you're dead... now stop invading.
This romaniticizing of what is really a Cold War purpose design when there are cheaper and equally effective methods to fight against an invader reminds me of the British attitude towards German U-boats.
There were British Admirals who refused to look into the feasibility of submarines because it was "Un-British to sneak around under the water! Harumph!", and the result was that U-boats were sinking ships at the rate of three million tons per month at the peak of WW-II.
They almost cut off the convoys, in which case the Russians would not have got the supplies they needed to keep marching against the Nazis, and Hitler would have won. The only reason they didn't was because the US and Canada were willing to dig into everything they had for steel and ship production and sail them out in such huge numbers that if even just a few could get through, the Russians would get supplies, at the cost of many merchant marines.
The attitude of some people towards cheap missiles as they wax poetic about jets is like those British Admirals waxing poetic about British Battleships while dissing U-Boats.
But today we know that submarines are the way to go.
Did you know that in virtually *all* naval war-games played by the west through the Cold War, the only consistent result from all their maneuvers was that the side with the most subs always won.
Why don't they do equivalent battle simulations (probably computer based) to see which kind of airspace invasion goes better: jets against jets, or jets against swarms of missiles.
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To a point you are correct but an anti-tank weapon is a reactive weapon. Thin skinned pick up trucks with Javelins in the back would not last 5 minutes against an armored column. The only thing that can stop an armored column is armor and air. When I was a infantryman our anti-tank guys were assigned as a reactionary force in the case a tank showed up unannounced or was laying low.
We need them. Period.
The Hornets will remain in the air for sometime to come. Combined with the drones and stealth F35 we'll have an airforce that still falls short of the DEW squadrons but it's a good start.
What I'd like to see is Canada building 4 aircraft carriers. Our navy and the city class frigates are the first line of defense for the US navy battle groups and it's time we set sail with our own battle groups.
We may not have troops on the ground in Iraq but our navy is there and not getting the accolades they deserve.
The Hornets will remain in the air for sometime to come. Combined with the drones and stealth F35 we'll have an airforce that still falls short of the DEW squadrons but it's a good start.
What I'd like to see is Canada building 4 aircraft carriers. Our navy and the city class frigates are the first line of defense for the US navy battle groups and it's time we set sail with our own battle groups.
We may not have troops on the ground in Iraq but our navy is there and not getting the accolades they deserve.
Very good but I'd like to comment.
I agree that it was the Soviets that did the most damage to the Germans by far. That should not take from what the Anglo-Allies did but anyone who knows WWII knows that whole German armies were gobbled up on the steppes and vastness of the Soviet Union.
Aircraft were very important in the Pacific Theater. It was air power and submarines that strangled and isolated Japanese held island and eventually Japan.
I disagree here. It was air power that brought the Serbs to heel. When they were being bombed cross-eyed they stopped.
Says who? That is what the A-10 was made for.
Most Iraqi tanks were taken out with Air and Tanks... not Dragons. By the time the infantry rolled up the Allied air and armor columns had already wasted the Iraqi Tanks.
Two weeks is pretty fast too.
True. But it helped the Northern Alliance break the stalemate and push the Taliban out of power.
You need to have air cover. You just can't disband your airforce and think you'll be ok. Of course if you'd rather play the insurgent role you don't need air cover.
Yup... of all the engagements the F-117 has been in, one was brought down. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
It's not possible I agree. However swarms of attack aircraft can sure help. Combined Arms my friend.
If the US had left all the planes at home and invested more in tanks and infantry we still would have lost Vietnam.
Fast forward to D-Day. Airborne units created havoc for the Germans.
Infantry requires a HUUUUUGE logistical train. HUGE! We are not talking Recon Units here. We are talking large scale infantry units. You need food and lots of it. Supplies, ammo, medical, fuel... the list is endless. And if you think that the common infantry man can carry to world on his back... think again. That sh*t gets pretty darn heavy. I can speak from experience. Try carrying 60 to 100 pounds on your back for miles and fighting effectively when you get there. Ground pounding is exhausting when you are stripped down never mind carrying a pack.
Conscript? Come on friend... is that what you think of a Canadian soldier? He's not worth his equipment?
Arctic defense is already covered by NORAD, stealth planes are offensive first strike platforms. Libyan radar has been jammed by the Brits right from the start so drones would be more than enough to send to Libya.
These planes have a long list of problems and they're slow, they don't turn well, they don't carry enough fuel. Some rated them as substandard platforms across the board. They're expensive junk.
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.