Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - Canada plans to buy NEW Fighter Jets - F-35 reported chosen

FlameOn · 10-28-2010, 01:01 AM

What environmental risks? The F-35 isn't going to consume any more fuel than the F-18. As for dollars, looking at the stop gap measure that is the super-hornet may end up costing more than the F-35 contract. Say for example we order the super hornet and we save $2 billion, its probably only going to serve us for another 10-12 years before its made obsolete and we have to spend more money on an upgrade package. If the F-35 can serve us for that additonal 10 years we're already break even. On top of that you'd probably save all the administrative and contract costs that come with starting another process to do upgrades. After the upgrades you'd still end up with a plane that's still inferior to the F-35 since the airframes aren't going to change. The RCS (radar cross section) on the F-35 is only about 0.0014m^2 compared to 0.5m^2 on the F-18. That's going to improve pilot survivability by a lot because surprise is victory in aerial warfare.

As for the NW passage, just because the Americans say the passage isn't ours doesn't mean with have to roll over and accept that. Say we got rid of our air force and just let the Americans deal with it and they're busy with a threat in their own airspace, we're SOL then. We also have have separate ideals from the Americans and we can not reasonably expect them defend us or guard our borders while respecting our soverignty and some of our rights to self-determination no?

10-28-2010, 01:01 AM	#183
FlameOn Franchise Player Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Calgary Exp:	What environmental risks? The F-35 isn't going to consume any more fuel than the F-18. As for dollars, looking at the stop gap measure that is the super-hornet may end up costing more than the F-35 contract. Say for example we order the super hornet and we save $2 billion, its probably only going to serve us for another 10-12 years before its made obsolete and we have to spend more money on an upgrade package. If the F-35 can serve us for that additonal 10 years we're already break even. On top of that you'd probably save all the administrative and contract costs that come with starting another process to do upgrades. After the upgrades you'd still end up with a plane that's still inferior to the F-35 since the airframes aren't going to change. The RCS (radar cross section) on the F-35 is only about 0.0014m^2 compared to 0.5m^2 on the F-18. That's going to improve pilot survivability by a lot because surprise is victory in aerial warfare. As for the NW passage, just because the Americans say the passage isn't ours doesn't mean with have to roll over and accept that. Say we got rid of our air force and just let the Americans deal with it and they're busy with a threat in their own airspace, we're SOL then. We also have have separate ideals from the Americans and we can not reasonably expect them defend us or guard our borders while respecting our soverignty and some of our rights to self-determination no? Last edited by FlameOn; 10-28-2010 at 09:05 AM.