Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionCat
The environmental risk is not from the jets using more fuel, but from unregulated shipping through the Arctic. Investing resources on stealth fighters at the expense of a real ice capable navy / coast guard leaves more gaps in our national security than the number of square centimeters of radar exposure on an F35 vs a take your pick of other jets.
Again, if you believe that our greatest threat is other nations carrying out air superiority campaigns against the RCAF, then the F35 is probably the best plane out there. I believe we should have updated fighters and we should actually be able to sail around our own coastline at the same time. I'm not saying don't have an air force any more than you're saying we should buy 19,000 F35s.
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I don't think the government is sacrificing ice breaker support at all... We just had a new Polar class ice breaker announced in 2008 and another Arctic Patrol Ship project with 8 ships in 2007. Mind you 9 ice breakers isn't going to be enough, but its proportional to what we can afford along with the fighters.
What I'm saying here is the economics of re-opening tender on the fighter contract probably do not make sense at this point given the change in technology going forward given the additional hidden costs with a new process, tender, lost jobs pulling out of the F-35 and cancellation penalties while still ending up with an inferior product.
Stealth is not only useful in air superiority, its also with missile sites and ground troop support. If our ground troops are somewhere, need fire support and there's a SAM site nearby, lot better chances of taking out the SAM if you have stealth. Say detection ranges are 200km for a F-18, you'd only be looking at 20-ishkm for an F-35... That could be the difference between getting help for the troops vs get shot down.