If I'm not mistaken, one of the reasons for purchasing only 65 F-35's was due to the perception of higher survivability due to stealth technology. If Canada decides to abandon the F-35 procurement, do any of you think we'll see a larger purchase of jets?
If the F-18SH is half the price of the F-35A, would there be a logical reason to expand the purchase to say, 90 jets? Or if they went with the Eurofighter, would they buy ~75?
Obviously the maintenance and flight hour costs would be higher with a larger fleet, and we'd need the extra pilots, but it's interesting to consider.
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