As many will most likely know by now, I have long been wary of Prime Minister Harper's planned $16B dollar purchase of the latest and greatest of American military hardware, the F-35 Lightning. Okay, I will grant that this fifth generation fighter's appearance in 'Live Free or Die Hard' had me drooling. But there's some problems that need to be looked at.
First off is the purchase agreement. Harper decided to buy 65 F-35s to replace Canada's aging fleet of CF-18 Hornets. As versatile as those jets are, many of them are old enough to have voted for Harper when he first took office in 2006. So yes, inevitably, replacements must be found, lest our next use of them overseas sees them all drop like flies into the Atlantic. But the problem that exists is that even the F-35's developer, Lockheed Martin, has stated previously that they're not entirely sure how much the F-35 will cost in the end. This can be evidenced by the price of the purchase agreement per plane changing every two months.
The second problem is the process by which the CF-18's successor was chosen. The problem is simply this: there wasn't a process. The federal government approached only one country, and asked about only one plane. (I guess Harper's a Bruce Willis fan, too.) There are many countries we could've approached regarding updating and modernizing our air force. We could have decided to see how good China's Chengdu J-20 is. We might have contacted the Russian Federation to take a look at the Sukhoi Su-35. Of course, we could have put our own noses to the grindstones to make a plane suited just for us - we've done it before, after all. (I will note here that we could have also chosen the F-22 Raptor as the successor, but apparently it has a lot of problems of its own.)
But more than anything, more than any other problem, is Number Three: the F-35 itself. Reports from Rand Corporation (a research firm based in Santa Monica, California) that were drawn up for the Royal Australian Air Force have said that the F-35 is destined to be an inferior match to any planes constructed by Russia or China in the last ten years. To put it bluntly, the report says the F-35 "can't turn, can't climb, and can't run."
The problems with the plane continue beyond that point, I'm afraid. Included in all this are production and testing delays with the current design. (Please note, this doesn't mean they saw how badly it would perform and are taking it back to the drawing board.) It's to the point where the United States Marine Corps has chosen to extend current use of their own fleet of F-18 fighters to make up for the expected delayed receipt of the F-35, and Boeing has chosen to dust off the blueprints and schematics of the F-18 for a production run of up to 460 additional jets.
Now, I will say, we don't fight many wars over all. In fact, aside from the recent deployment to Libya for our jets, the most noteworthy uses of the CF-18 include flying combat patrols over the 2010 Winter Olympics, and their deployment during "Operation: Grizzly" for the 28th G8 Summit in Kananaskis, Alaska. For such 'hazardous' deployments, it's doubtful a major upgrade is required for our air force's needs.
At the very least, Harper could buy some new Hornets from Boeing - it'd be about half the cost.
First off is the purchase agreement. Harper decided to buy 65 F-35s to replace Canada's aging fleet of CF-18 Hornets. As versatile as those jets are, many of them are old enough to have voted for Harper when he first took office in 2006. So yes, inevitably, replacements must be found, lest our next use of them overseas sees them all drop like flies into the Atlantic. But the problem that exists is that even the F-35's developer, Lockheed Martin, has stated previously that they're not entirely sure how much the F-35 will cost in the end. This can be evidenced by the price of the purchase agreement per plane changing every two months.
The second problem is the process by which the CF-18's successor was chosen. The problem is simply this: there wasn't a process. The federal government approached only one country, and asked about only one plane. (I guess Harper's a Bruce Willis fan, too.) There are many countries we could've approached regarding updating and modernizing our air force. We could have decided to see how good China's Chengdu J-20 is. We might have contacted the Russian Federation to take a look at the Sukhoi Su-35. Of course, we could have put our own noses to the grindstones to make a plane suited just for us - we've done it before, after all. (I will note here that we could have also chosen the F-22 Raptor as the successor, but apparently it has a lot of problems of its own.)
But more than anything, more than any other problem, is Number Three: the F-35 itself. Reports from Rand Corporation (a research firm based in Santa Monica, California) that were drawn up for the Royal Australian Air Force have said that the F-35 is destined to be an inferior match to any planes constructed by Russia or China in the last ten years. To put it bluntly, the report says the F-35 "can't turn, can't climb, and can't run."
The problems with the plane continue beyond that point, I'm afraid. Included in all this are production and testing delays with the current design. (Please note, this doesn't mean they saw how badly it would perform and are taking it back to the drawing board.) It's to the point where the United States Marine Corps has chosen to extend current use of their own fleet of F-18 fighters to make up for the expected delayed receipt of the F-35, and Boeing has chosen to dust off the blueprints and schematics of the F-18 for a production run of up to 460 additional jets.
Now, I will say, we don't fight many wars over all. In fact, aside from the recent deployment to Libya for our jets, the most noteworthy uses of the CF-18 include flying combat patrols over the 2010 Winter Olympics, and their deployment during "Operation: Grizzly" for the 28th G8 Summit in Kananaskis, Alaska. For such 'hazardous' deployments, it's doubtful a major upgrade is required for our air force's needs.
At the very least, Harper could buy some new Hornets from Boeing - it'd be about half the cost.
