Quote:
Originally Posted by calgarygeologist
With the Liberal's deep pockets Bombadier can make anything happen. They just need a little bit of positive support and a blank cheque.
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That blank check would be massive.
If you look at the F-18 the total costs of production was about 40.9 billion dollars to build 500 of them.
Probably the majority of those costs were accrued during a lengthy and grueling development and design phase, where there were no assurancees that the plane would be accepted. The first time around the F-18 which was designated YF-17 lost to the YF-16 which later was designated as the F-16. the only thing that saved the F-18 was that the Navy was looking for a plane to compliment the F-14 in the fleet.
Even after they went through a redesign, billions were burned just on the design and competition and then redesign.
Then once that was accepted a whole production line had to be built from the ground up and 500 were built.
Now we're talking about a Canadian Airforce built around 65 to 70 fighters, not 500.
Now, there's a chance that you could build a model for export, but Boeing, MD, Saab, the french german consortium and the Russians and Chinese pretty much own those markets and set the standards, and would probably crush Bombardier.
We don't have the in place industry to build a Canadian only fighter, we're struggling badly enough with the new ship building for the Navy.
Even the lauded Avro Arrow has create some exaggeration in a desparate effort to over romanticize that plane.
The Arrow if built today based on its 12.4 million dollar per plane cost back in 1958 would have been $105,000,000 per plane and that's before they had even created a proper production line.