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Looger · 09-25-2004, 04:02 PM

Captain Crunch,

i'm tasting your barbeque and i like it, but i'll take you on for a couple of your points:

5) the CF-18s are indeed past their service life. why we chose a naval strike fighter, whilst without a) carriers and B) harpoon missiles, i'll never know.

we should have purchased the F-20 tigershark. modern, fly-by-wire, uses the old f-5 airframe, many cheap parts still produced for the thousands in service. grumman didn't have the right senators in their pocket when this plane was first debuted, but i bet canada could have swooped in and gotten a bargain.

hell, we could revive a few hundred f-5s the same way isreali aircraft industries is reviving F4's for turkey, or MiG-21s for domestic use. keep the f-5s as the training mules, a cheap way to keep a thousand or so pilots sharp in case a real war breaks out.

all this time keep maybe one squadron of f-20s up at the ultra-elite status, for deployment on a moment's notice.

the f-20 was one-half the price of an f-18, and its maintenance is one-quarter the cost. plus it does everything we've asked of the f-18, which mostly consists of carrying two missiles and unguided bombs. not that it couldn't carry guided if it had to, of course, an upgrade required for our participation in blowing up all those wooden MiG-29s and T-72s in Yugoslavia.

as to the MiG-31 - i agree, we shoould look at options for the old soviet stuff still around. the airframes are great designs, and we could get them upgraded to more modern avionics packages a la IAI as mentioned above. they aren't cheap but they do great work!

we could buy up old stock from former warsaw nations/allies like germany, hungary, rumania, etc. and get them going for us.

the MiG-31 is a newer MiG-25, the first plane to knock the Arrow off as the most capable interceptor in terms of speed, height, etc. - ten years after the Arrow (ha!).

it would be a good plane for canada, it is fast and rugged.

7) SUVs??????

i know that DARPA's 'manfinder' radar may be a good counter to guerilla operations, as well as helicopter-based IR detection, but if we face a threat to canada at all we could not mount a serious defence to meet them at the point of insertion, i think we should concentrate on harrassment until the british can come save our bacon.

8) i don't know much aboot the stryker but i do know this:

the age of the tank has left us. even the fastest tanks are very vulnerable to death from above. one hit from many weapons will blow a 100-ton tank to smithereens, so why not use something more mobile, that just might be able to hull down in time or jump into a ditch to save it from a hellfire inbound?

and i'll add a suggestion: adopt the south-african G6 mobile artillery, an absolute gem of a machine. can shoot at 2000 square miles of territory, sounds like it was designed for canada. also its predecessor was helped quite a bit by mr. gerald bull, a canadian...

09-25-2004, 04:02 PM	#5
Looger Lifetime Suspension Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: insider trading in WTC 7 Exp:	Captain Crunch, i'm tasting your barbeque and i like it, but i'll take you on for a couple of your points: 5) the CF-18s are indeed past their service life. why we chose a naval strike fighter, whilst without a) carriers and B) harpoon missiles, i'll never know. we should have purchased the F-20 tigershark. modern, fly-by-wire, uses the old f-5 airframe, many cheap parts still produced for the thousands in service. grumman didn't have the right senators in their pocket when this plane was first debuted, but i bet canada could have swooped in and gotten a bargain. hell, we could revive a few hundred f-5s the same way isreali aircraft industries is reviving F4's for turkey, or MiG-21s for domestic use. keep the f-5s as the training mules, a cheap way to keep a thousand or so pilots sharp in case a real war breaks out. all this time keep maybe one squadron of f-20s up at the ultra-elite status, for deployment on a moment's notice. the f-20 was one-half the price of an f-18, and its maintenance is one-quarter the cost. plus it does everything we've asked of the f-18, which mostly consists of carrying two missiles and unguided bombs. not that it couldn't carry guided if it had to, of course, an upgrade required for our participation in blowing up all those wooden MiG-29s and T-72s in Yugoslavia. as to the MiG-31 - i agree, we shoould look at options for the old soviet stuff still around. the airframes are great designs, and we could get them upgraded to more modern avionics packages a la IAI as mentioned above. they aren't cheap but they do great work! we could buy up old stock from former warsaw nations/allies like germany, hungary, rumania, etc. and get them going for us. the MiG-31 is a newer MiG-25, the first plane to knock the Arrow off as the most capable interceptor in terms of speed, height, etc. - ten years after the Arrow (ha!). it would be a good plane for canada, it is fast and rugged. 7) SUVs?????? i know that DARPA's 'manfinder' radar may be a good counter to guerilla operations, as well as helicopter-based IR detection, but if we face a threat to canada at all we could not mount a serious defence to meet them at the point of insertion, i think we should concentrate on harrassment until the british can come save our bacon. 8) i don't know much aboot the stryker but i do know this: the age of the tank has left us. even the fastest tanks are very vulnerable to death from above. one hit from many weapons will blow a 100-ton tank to smithereens, so why not use something more mobile, that just might be able to hull down in time or jump into a ditch to save it from a hellfire inbound? and i'll add a suggestion: adopt the south-african G6 mobile artillery, an absolute gem of a machine. can shoot at 2000 square miles of territory, sounds like it was designed for canada. also its predecessor was helped quite a bit by mr. gerald bull, a canadian...