Canada tells Boeing its bid for fighter jet contract falls short
reuters.com
reuters.com
And as for bombers, Northrop Grumman is at the pole position with the B-21 Raider contract.
The B-52 will be flying forever, but that can't be a major revenue win for Boeing.
The F/A-18E/F is getting a bit long in the tooth, and the Navy (and Air Force) are both starting up new fighter programs (aka Next Generation Air Dominance, separate for each service).
That's a lot of planes, and a huge contract, but it's not a recipe for growth.
Before today, the planes remaining were:
F-18 - unit cost is somewhere around $70m
F-35 - unit cost is somewhere around $80m
Gripen - unit cost is somewhere around $85m
The plane rejected with this announcement is the first one, the F-18.
These are made by Boeing, Lockmart, and Saab respectively. This is Canada rejecting the oldest and cheapest plane of the three remaining.
I think some people are commenting here by just stating what they want to be true, rather than looking at what's actually happening.
Personally I'd rather the whole thing be scrubbed and they spend the $19b on something else. But for now, it looks like they're going to either spend billions on F-35s, or even more expensive Saab Gripens (unless they go with a very old model cheaper Gripen, but I dunno if that'll happen).
>During the design process, great priority was placed on facilitating and minimizing aircraft maintenance; in addition to a maintenance-friendly layout, many subsystems and components require little or no maintenance at all. [...] According to Saab, the Gripen provides "50% lower operating costs than its best competitor".
>A 2012 Jane's Aerospace and Defense Consulting study compared the operational costs of a number of modern combat aircraft, concluding that Gripen had the lowest cost per flight hour (CPFH) when fuel used, pre-flight preparation and repair, and scheduled airfield-level maintenance together with associated personnel costs were combined. The Gripen had an estimated CPFH of US$4,700 whereas the next lowest, the F-16 Block 40/50, had a 49% higher CPFH at $7,000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Usability_a...
I'll admit I don't know all the ins and outs here, but I do know that "unit cost" is not the same as "final price tag".
and F-35 is probably around $30k/h
As far as I can tell, nobody has actually defined what they want to see or get out of a Canadian fighter, and there isn't a broad vision for the Canadian armed forces either.
A rejection of the F-35 is a rejection of the second vision and it's not anti-americanism, it's a lack of pro-americanism.
Hilariously enough the airplane that's best suited to the first mission would have to be able to sink Russian icebreakers from a long range at great speed, and would probably be the Tu-22M and it's assorted supersonic cruise missiles. Sadly no nation will sell you weapons that can only be used against itself.
Outside of these two missions all we need is a jet to do basic airspace defence, interceptions, and that can carry some kind of antiship missile. Basically any jet will do the job, there's not much point buying the F-35 for that with all that entails.
For the very basic and extremely infrequent strike missions that they are used for, the CF-18s and the F-18s we got from Australia will realistically be enough.
There is zero chance that a land dispute between the US and Canada will ever have anything to do with which fighter jets either side has available.
The issue comes down to whether the passage is qualified as territorial waters or just exclusive economic zones and how the islands are connected to the mainland may determine that. Regardless, the US is pushing it because it's a useful way to get concessions on other issues. Like him or hate him, understanding and using that aspect of negotiation is one thing Trump was always very good at and in this case Mike Pompeo was the one putting it forward and lobbying other countries to see it their way.
Purchasing the F35s has been discussed here since at least 2007 when Russia was flying bombers into Canadian northern territories. Something is needed to respond assert sovereignty over the area. A potential issue in theory of purchasing the F35s is a strategic one of maintaining those water rights if in the moment Russia starts moving in suddenly the planes don't work or need parts and the US suddenly has a great point leverage.
There is militarily 0 need to use an F-35 to intercept Russian bombers. Actually the F-35 is pretty bad at interceptions. The F-35 has a pitiful 1100km combat radius, and cannot supercruise. The Gripen is a bit better and may be able to supercruise meaning that it's effective interception range is significantly better, and most importantly can usefully utilise drop-tanks. Even the CF-18 is a better interceptor than the F-35.
The F-35 is not the right choice to deter Russia in the arctic. It's the right choice if you're planning an invasion or need to do strike missions past enemy air defences, or if you're going to be doing air-to-air combat far from home.
Yeah no sorry, not buying the f-35 is just sensible decision making. The idea that Canada is in a position to be playing with the most expensive death toys in the world is just comic absurdity. That's no world in which we use anything like the f-35 effectively, even if it lived up to the hot air that was blown about it.
Conservative hype about it was about as well placed as their attempts to get anyone excited about celebrating the war of 1812.
If you think Canada is a nation of peace-keepers (which it really hasn't done all that much of), it doesn't need fighters at all.
If you think Canada needs to defend North American aerospace, the F-15EX (or maybe Eurofighter Typhoon) looks quite good.
If you think Canada needs to be able to support her NATO allies in an armed conflict overseas against a peer adversary, the F-35 is the best fit.
It doesn't really make sense for Canada to have fancy toys to "support NATO allies overseas". If we want to make sure our allies have sufficient armament to defend themselves it'd make more sense for us to just give them money to buy it themselves. Then they'd at least actually be where they're needed and not stuck halfway around the world unless the US decides to ferry them there.
For Canada to have projection into Europe or Australia we would just need so much more than just some fancy jets. We'd need carriers that are worth a damn to bring them there, battleships to support the carriers, bombers to support the battleships, etc. A whole whack of infrastructure we don't really have anymore, if we ever did, and that after buying the f-35s we probably couldn't afford anyways.
If the only way Canada can support NATO is by propping up the US military-industrial-complex then we probably don't belong in NATO.
Canada used to have fighters in Germany, to forestall or intercept Soviet aggression, and they were relatively well-equipped and well-trained units. I am not 'imagining scenarios', I am just laying out alternatives.
Like, other than symbolic ones where we try to pretend we're contributing in a way similar to the US with its little plots of american land in half the countries of the world even though we have neither the means nor the stomach to do so.
The main thing that kind of capability is useful for is a first strike, I'm pretty sure. And I'd argue that's not the kind of thing Canada should be involving itself in.
(Peace keeping has nothing to do with a jet fighter acquisition. The only reason you brought it up was so you could add a jab - very classy.)
Isn't that precisely what the F-35 has been criticized for? :)
So if you accept the "mission profile" of defending NA and meeting NATO commitments while having a reasonable price tag, is the F-35 still the obvious winner in your opinion?
You are now conceding there is no straightforward answer to this question — That maybe, just maybe, it's a very hard problem to solve given the criteria and constraints?
Perhaps your earlier observations would have been better served to acknowledge this fact, instead of chalking things up to "Anti-Americanism" and other garbage.
I think there are a number of straightforward answers, but you need to define what you want the Air Forces to do, instead of coming up with post-hoc rationalizations (disguised as requirements) for why you chose one aircraft or another.
>"Perhaps your earlier observations would have been better served to acknowledge this fact, instead of chalking things up to "Anti-Americanism" and other garbage."
Canada isn't the only country to politicize defense acquisitions, it's just one of the clearest. From the endless support for, and subsequent cancellation of the Avro Arrow to the Chinook contract cancellation in the 1990s, Canadian politicians have always played political games with defense acquisitions.
You don't even seem to really disagree that it wasn't a sensible purchase for canada, if only because you don't seem to believe that Canada has a plan for its military that is sufficiently fleshed out to justify it.
If you want a cynical reason there are much simpler ones. The Liberals are a center left party that continues to be at least a little in love with austerity, and it was an easy high price tag to axe with basically no meaningful consequences in the short or medium term (because it's not like we were going to get them in that timeframe anyways).
Never mind that as half of a quasi-stable two-party power structure they pretty much always benefit from taking easy stances that are opposite their conservative pair.
That is a pretty fair assessment of my position, though I do think there are reasons why the F-35 makes sense, depending on what the Canadian air forces are supposed to do. The F-35 is a very capable aircraft, it's just not clear if the capabilities are suited to Canada's missions.
I have an idea. How about not starting armed conflict?
I am not against having big stick just in case. That is what nukes are for.
It has nothing to do with Anti-Americanism. I have no idea where you got that from.
For a specific example here, the F-35, which costs more than the F-18, is still cheaper than the Gripen, which is still in contention for this bid.
In fact of the three planes remaining, the F-18 was the cheapest. The only remaining planes are substantially more expensive.
At any rate, I never said cost was the only factor - only that it was an important (read: non-arbitrary) one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Usability_a...
Can you blame them? Boeing basically ruined ( or at least were the final nail in the coffin) Bombardier, a Canadian national champion that was pretty good at two things - rail and aviation. They were so close to having the chance of a sustained success with the C-Series, which could have been scaled up in a few years to be in competition with the 737 and A320 series. They could have broken the duopoly in civilian airliners!
And Boeing killed them with protectionism because they were afraid airlines were buying from Bombardier instead of their vastly inferior not even a competitor to the C-series due to being larger and more expensive to run 737. Which was later deemed illegal. And which drove Bombardier to the brink of bankruptcy and them giving the C-Series to Airbus for free. Airbus won, Boeing lost, customers and passengers lost. If i were the Canadian government, I'd have banned Boeing from even competing in any Canadian government procurement programme.