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Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay
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Very interesting article. I do wonder what the odds of everyone walking away from it are? I just don't see how the yanks are going to be able to afford to buy 2400 of those things.
I wouldn't mind at all seeing a made in Canada fighter hit the drawing boards. I suspect we don't have enough time to do that though as the F-18s are scheduled to retire in what, 2016?
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Sadly, it's not an option for us.
First and foremost, we need to have a degree of "interoperability" with the US systems, to keep up our end of the NORAD commitment. Yeah, we could buy the avionics suites from the US but these are half of the problem with "Lightning II" at the moment...
Bombardier (Canadair) builds one hell of a "regional jet" but let's be serious here.
Building something like the F-35 (or the EADS "Typhoon", or the "Rafaele") is more than a "few" steps beyond bending sheet metal and casting basic structural components.
Sadly...that's about all we can do as with regards to airframe manufacture. (Yes, I know...I'm grossly simplifying here).
As much as the F-35 is turning into a "trillion dollar boondoggle"...how on earth could you expect us to design and build a competitive "Made in Canada" solution? The last jet fighters produced here were Gen 3 CF-5's...the last one (116849?) rolled out of Cartierville in the mid-70's.
The world of indigenous military aviation has passed us by...
AND YES...Cancelling the "ARROW" WAS the right thing to do...not having another "iron in the fire" at Avro was the real fiasco.
We could have easily designed an indigenous airframe to carry the NASSAR attack system, powered it with the "Iroquois" engine, and built this (instead of 104's)
if our future role in NATO would have been
clearly defined back when these decisions were being made.
The much beloved/lamented CF-105 was a "bridge too far" for the tech of the times. "Look down, Shoot down" onboard radar using vaccuum tubes?
For that matter, so was the USAF/ADC's whole "Ultimate Interceptor" aka F-106A; difference being?
The USA could afford to bury untold
billions of mispent dollars back then...look at the XB-70 ffs.
Canada couldn't.
And here we sit...40 years on. Sweating the particulars over ~60 machines which will carry us forward until UAV's are the norm.
The F-35 will happen...Washington
has too much into it for any other outcome. Should we get off the bandwagon and abandon the taxpayers money that we've been investing since the late '90's?
That's the debate, but IMO?
Not likely.
Cheers, Ron