During the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau vowed that his government would never purchase the F-35.
As prime minister, Trudeau continued to point out the Canadian military had no need for the F-35. “Canadians know full well that, for 10 years, the Conservatives completely missed the boat when it came to delivering to Canadians and their armed forces the equipment they needed,” Trudeau said in June 2016. “They clung to an aircraft (the F-35) that does not work and is far from working.”
The Liberal government also noted the F-35’s “stealth first-strike capability” was not needed to defend Canada.
But Trudeau flipped on his election promise, not only committing to the purchase but increasing the number of jets from the 65 the Conservatives had wanted to buy to 88.
Who would win (funding)?
- A high speed rail project between Quebec City and Windsor 🚅
- Some wooshy bois 🛩
Why not both? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I figure from a back of the napkin-level math over a comparable service life the two projects would be within an order of magnitude of each other in today’s dollars.
Total program costs end up being ~$18M/yr per plane for 45 years. Not horrible for a 5th gen fighter.
Still not cheap.This is actually news in reverse. Considering present world situation (Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in the works) and the fact that between election in 2016 and now situation is absolutely and categorically different, Canada does need modern fleet. War in Ukraine highlighted all of the weaknesses of old equipment as well as prompted NATO members to be ready to depmoy forces outside of their own borders (yes, russia won’t be attacking Canada, but it may attack nearby NATO states and Canada will have to step in. Sending our pilots for slaughter under those conditions is wreckless).
While I’m no fan of JT and his flipping on promisses, this time I think there’s credit due. Article title should’ve read: “Canadian government reacted to military escalations around the globe by moving forward with fleet upgrade”. We can debate what should fleet be upgraded to, but the fact that it has to be upgraded is obvious.
Yeah, the article headline should be “Speech loving PM actually makes good call and reverses decision to not buy F-35s”.
Particularly now that the jet is looking less like a lemon, and that it’s function of being an intelligence sharing hub to drones and smart missiles seems to be looking more and more critical.
It does seem like investing in disposable kill drones is maybe the best route right now for military spending?
if anything, war in Ukraine has shown that it’s not all about big equipment if you want to hold position, but to move, you need heavy stuff
On the Ukrainian side, one of the issues they’re running into, as far as I understand it, is long range missiles being fired from jets inside Russian territory.
From my understanding, firing and guiding long range missiles is exactly what the F-35
Is good at.that too. So no matter how you slice it we do need those jets. Couple of years ago I’d be arguing otherwise.
Hell, I’d have been right there with you.
Wondering if waiting/delaying the eventual purchase of F-35 ended up being more expensive for Canada overall? Or did it become less expensive per “plane” (including servicing/maintenance contract, training, etc.) considering the manufacturing processes have been streamlined since then?
This is fine and expected, media just loves to run a headline with a big number to farm clicks. There is no real news here.
Few military assets are more expensive than fighter jets. Our CF-18s are verging on obsolete and the costs of just keeping them in the air is ballooning as every single part of them are going beyond their operational lives.
We basically won’t have an air fleet in 2 decades if we don’t buy the F-35s now, and trying to refurbish the CF-18s while we hold out for the next generation or something will cost us tens of billions in refurbishment and maintenance fees alone while running an air fleet that can only keep up with 3rd rate air forces. Even if we can somehow hold on until a newer and more cost effective jet comes to market, any discount we can get from that will be nothing compared to the extra cost of keeping the CF-18s running. Not to mention the pure reduction in capacity in the meantime. We still have to patrol the north, and anything we use for that can’t be spending weeks under maintenance between sorties.
Québec city wanted to build a simple trawmay in the city, nothing fancy. Cost was quoted 10-12 billion $.
