American here. Who cares if it provokes Trump? Actions have consequences. Canada helped out a lot during 911. What did we do? Prove to be an unreliable partner
Any NATO member increasing their military spending would be idiotic to spend their money with US-based companies.
Goddamn right we should. Take the French up on the offer to build the Rafale here. Or the Swedes. And get a few demo units for short term.
Fuck 'em on any cancellation fees too. Consider it partial compensation for the ridiculous trade war.
There was an article last week discussing how that plane calls home every day and that it can be blocked by the Americans. They can shut all of them down within 24 hours.
Time to nope right out of that contract.
100% TODAY! Do not pay a fucking dime of any amount owing for these. (good job on Globe and Mail for a change)
FYI, the Israeli version of F35 does not have this “US permission for every flight required”
F35 is a POS plane, with low uptime, in addition to “broken ownership”. Even US military does not get manuals on how to repair/maintain them and must hire Lockheed consultants to do the job. The whole program was a boondoggle to pay Lockheed the most money possible instead of getting good military equipment, and any corrupt POS that was involved in approving this purchase for Canada should be jailed for treason.
I don’t think Canada should be basing their defense decisions on the opinion and thin skin of the American government. Trying to force Canada, in any way, to purchase F35’s is fishy - not that that’s happening, of course.
Canada’s interests are for Canada. Not them. Also, maybe Canada should reboot their ventures into the Avro Arrow program again. That’ll ruffle some feathers. Canadian engineered military = quite formidable, I think.
Canadian engineered military = quite formidable, I think.
Here’s the bad news. It’s not. Sure, we’re good at peacekeeping, and we deploy to support (militarily) our allies. But we’re using US gear and we’re woefully underfunded because war budget has been declared a waste by even the parties who strut and posture about a strong military. We only needed to fulfill our NATO obligations, for decades, and even that has been a struggle we haven’t won consistently with the low budget.
And while we’re skilled enough and gung-ho, and our 1st Pioneers are about the most scary bunch of lumberjack commandos you’ll ever see, there’s just so few of them, and again their gear has been called old and out of repair by every administration campaigning because the last one never did a thing about it.
We’re gonna need a lot of funding and training and gear to make up the shortfall in people and powpow toys, and that’s a slice of gov pork that Milhouse is gonna latch onto knowing that he doesn’t need an army once he gives the country over. Justin doesn’t want to spend that, but he - and please God let it be Mark next - is really gonna have to.
But how do we sell it to the “hair guy bad” flatlanders steeped in 12 years of hating Justin for not being a pseudo-aristocratic milquetoast conservative?
Here’s the bad news. It’s not.
I guess what I was trying to get at was that it was at one point and that we could if we wanted to become that again. I wasn’t saying our current military is anywhere near the U.S military in any way, shape or form. I understand, quite clearly, just how out matched we are.
I was only putting forward the idea (which I agree with you, on) that we should absolutely rearm and become independent of their technology. We supply them the critical materials for their military. They need it. Maybe we should rethink that (not a popular idea, though).
ooh no, it might provoke the person who is back stabbing us at every conceivable opportunity
Hell yeah they should. We need to be able to defend ourselves against southern aggression, and the F35 is compromised based on what Trump himself threatened.
The PM agrees with The Globe and Mail once and now they think they’ll get two in a row?
Existing provokes Trump.
Bring back the avro arrow. Let’s do it.
We shouldn’t have caved back in the Arrow days.
They cannot be trusted, that much we know. We need to become independent and not reliant
Switzerland too!
What would they do instead? Get a bunch of J-35s, like Egypt?
Typhoon/EF2000/Rafale. Not stealthy, but still a superb multi role aircraft.
(Yes, I know Rafale is technically not the same aircraft, but it sprang from the same initial plans, so it’s pretty close)
#buyeuropean, I guess
From what I understand, those are fine if you’re going up against enemies that don’t have stealth (and all the ancillary technologies that go with it).
The general military analysis is that the F-35 and J-35 are superior to anything else in the air and are similar in capabilities to each other. Conflicts between them will come down to who can make more of them faster. Conflicts between one of them and an older generation fighter seems to be, they’ll blow you up before you can see them.
EU better get cracking and start making stealth planes.
Tempest and FCAS are supposed to be coming.
They’re being researched. It looks like there is a lot of funding pledged to the program. If those funds get cleared, they will be part of a 10 year research phase. That means that by 2035, they’ll be ready to start thinking about how to start building prototypes. There were predictions of earlier prototypes but they seemed to have gotten pushed back.
So the Tempest and FCAS could come eventually. Canada may need some planes before that.
Let’s do it and replace them with MiGs 🤨
