Canadian Military News

[CaptainCrunch]

You'd think we'd learn. I mean the last time we bought surplus we got taken to the woodshed by the Brits. on the Victoria Class Submarines that the Liberals bought. And those worked so well.

[CaptainCrunch]

Lots of news on the fighter jet replacement program.

the Canadian Government announced today that they are going to wait 5 years to decide on a replacement for the CF-18 fighter jets which means we probably won't see new jets until probably 2025.

In the meantime we're going to spend a wack of money buying aging CF-18's from Australia and updating them airframe and avionics wise

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/12...ts_a_23304661/

It is absolutely, totally, nonsensical," Alan Williams, the former assistant deputy minister (materiel) for national defence, told HuffPost Canada ahead of the announcement. "There is no need to have interim jets. There is no need to waste billions of dollars, no need to train people on different platforms," he said. "Even if you admit there is a gap — which I don't think anyone seriously believes — the way to go about resolving it is exactly the opposite of what they are doing."

While the Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen. Jonathan Vance, said called the interim Australian jet purchase a "logical choice," Perry argued they aren't needed.
"Even if we are going to get aircraft from Australia that are pretty similar," he said, "they are still going to spend a bunch of money and devote a bunch of time... to put them through an upgrade.
"I think it would make a lot more sense just to spend all the time and all the money buying the 88 new aircraft as fast as we could, as an actual priority project for the government of Canada [rather] than spending time on an interim deal," he said.

l Stephenson, a retired colonel with 35 years experience flying fighter aircraft, also believes there is no gap.
"This capability gap is a figment of their imagination," he said.
"The funny thing is they have dismissed the experts saying there is a capability gap and now they are creating one in order to delay the competition," Stephenson told HuffPost.
He is concerned that the government's timeline for an open competition will be five years, and extend past two elections — "which is nonsense."

onservative MP Tony Clement, the critic for public services and procurement, also argues that there is no capability gap. Buying a "bucket of bolts" from Australia, he said, is a bad strategy that risks turning into a fiasco on a scale similar to Canada's purchase of second-hand submarines. In 1998, the Liberal government purchased four inexpensive submarines from Britain that were plagued with problems — from leaking torpedo tubes, to faulty welds and ventilation troubles.
"The record of the Canadian government when it comes to buying used is not comforting. I don't blame the Australians for trying to unload their 30-year-old jets, but we have to avoid being the biggest suckers in the world."
Williams said he finds the government's actions "very disingenuous."

More on the Australian purchase


http://www.cgai.ca/canada_looks_to_t...m_source=cdfai

Canada, as a long-time friend and ally, is more than welcome to the 39-year old planes, said an Australian air force F-18 aircraft technician I spoke with as we watched several of the fighters screaming into the sky last week, headed to an exercise over the Pacific Ocean.


The Hornets had been well maintained and considering their advanced years were in good shape, said the jet engine specialist. He warned, however, that because their airframes were old and had been pushed hard during multiple combat deployments to the Middle East, they had in some cases become badly corroded and needed repairs. There were also issues with outdated avionics. In other words, before they can enter service alongside Canada’s own aged CF-18s they will require costly, time-consuming upgrades.


Why, wondered this airman and others, was Canada buying 4th generation fighters from Australia, aircraft tracing their design back to the early 1970s, when the Australian government had concluded more than 10 years ago that its fleet of aging classic Hornets should be replaced—not upgraded—because upgrades would be a waste of public money?

So the question beyond, how stupid is this government when it comes to Jet Fighter replacement is how are they going to stand behind an open and fair competition for replacements when today they basically announced that they're banning Boeing from the Competition in support of a incompetent should have died years ago Bombardier, and have basically said that they're not buying the jet that they should be buying in the F-35.


In otherwords, Australia loves us because we're idiots



This thing is the used Submarines and pissed up helicopter replacement program all over again, overseen by a incompetent Minister of Defense and a completely ridiculous Public Works Program.



https://globalnews.ca/news/3912118/f...ade-challenge/

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Lots of news on the fighter jet replacement program.

the Canadian Government announced today that they are going to wait 5 years to decide on a replacement for the CF-18 fighter jets which means we probably won't see new jets until probably 2025.

In the meantime we're going to spend a wack of money buying aging CF-18's from Australia and updating them airframe and avionics wise

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/12...ts_a_23304661/












More on the Australian purchase


http://www.cgai.ca/canada_looks_to_t...m_source=cdfai





So the question beyond, how stupid is this government when it comes to Jet Fighter replacement is how are they going to stand behind an open and fair competition for replacements when today they basically announced that they're banning Boeing from the Competition in support of a incompetent should have died years ago Bombardier, and have basically said that they're not buying the jet that they should be buying in the F-35.


In otherwords, Australia loves us because we're idiots



This thing is the used Submarines and pissed up helicopter replacement program all over again, overseen by a incompetent Minister of Defense and a completely ridiculous Public Works Program.



https://globalnews.ca/news/3912118/f...ade-challenge/

If there is one thing we learnt from the last submarine purchase, it is not nothing can go wrong.

[FlameyMcFlameFace]

I'm also pissed off with the purchase of used fighter jets from Australia. We are a first world country, it just seems unacceptable.

With that said, I want to know the final price that we paid for these 18 jets to tie us over. Ill reserve most of my judgements until then.

However I do feel like the positive we will gain out of this is Canada will seriously look at the European competitors to the F-35. I have no fighter jet knowledge, but from the research I gathered the Saab Gripen and Dassault Rafale/Eurofighter look like worthy options for Canada's needs.

If after all this and we still end up buying a full fleet of F-35's, I am just going to shake my head at our government.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by FlameyMcFlameFace

I'm also pissed off with the purchase of used fighter jets from Australia. We are a first world country, it just seems unacceptable.

With that said, I want to know the final price that we paid for these 18 jets to tie us over. Ill reserve most of my judgements until then.

However I do feel like the positive we will gain out of this is Canada will seriously look at the European competitors to the F-35. I have no fighter jet knowledge, but from the research I gathered the Saab Gripen and Dassault Rafale/Eurofighter look like worthy options for Canada's needs.

If after all this and we still end up buying a full fleet of F-35's, I am just going to shake my head at our government.

The Saab Grippen and Rafale/Eurofighters aren't in the same class as the F-35. They're on an curve to obsolescence that will occur long before their Canadian Air Force retirement date.

If we're going to a strategy of a smaller airforce with another 30 year + life cycle then you buy as up to date as you can.

Besides.

The second production run of the F-35 is expected to come in at a cost of about $80 million per plane

The Eurofighter is price tagged at about $105,000,000 per plane

The Rafale is a 30 year old design with a cost of nearly $90 million per plane

Saab Gripen is about $70 million US

And for the cost difference none of them compete with the F-35 capabilities.

So we save $10 million dollars a plane for the Saab over 30 years and it will basically lag behind the F-35 badly.

The Rafale and the eurofighter are just as much or more and far less capable in terms of future use.

If there is a fair competition for future fighter jets, its going to be the F-35. But I don't expect that its going to be a fair competition.

[puffnstuff]

So we're buying jets off kijiji now?

[CaptainCrunch]

Oh the Australians must on one hand love us, and on the other hand be laughing at us.

Thanks for taking this surplus off of our hands, we thought we were going to have to cut them into razor blades.

[FlameyMcFlameFace]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The Saab Grippen and Rafale/Eurofighters aren't in the same class as the F-35. They're on an curve to obsolescence that will occur long before their Canadian Air Force retirement date.

If we're going to a strategy of a smaller airforce with another 30 year + life cycle then you buy as up to date as you can.

Besides.

The second production run of the F-35 is expected to come in at a cost of about $80 million per plane

The Eurofighter is price tagged at about $105,000,000 per plane

The Rafale is a 30 year old design with a cost of nearly $90 million per plane

Saab Gripen is about $70 million US

And for the cost difference none of them compete with the F-35 capabilities.

So we save $10 million dollars a plane for the Saab over 30 years and it will basically lag behind the F-35 badly.

The Rafale and the eurofighter are just as much or more and far less capable in terms of future use.

If there is a fair competition for future fighter jets, its going to be the F-35. But I don't expect that its going to be a fair competition.

http://saab.com/air/gripen-fighter-s...ipen-e-series/

So you're telling me this Gripen E fighter Jet that Saab is just releasing in the upcoming years is already behind the curve? I remember seeing a youtube video earlier this year of them undergoing test flights. Surely the stats difference between this and the F-35 can't be that far off. Im getting the impression you're giving me that this is a flip phone vs iPhone comparison.

The F-35 can't be the only "advanced" option we have/there is?

[SebC]

Originally Posted by FlameyMcFlameFace

The F-35 can't be the only "advanced" option we have/there is?

It pretty much is. The only operational fifth generation fighters are the F-35, the F-22 (not for sale), and the J-20. Others are in development, but unless we're going to get our jets from China, the F-35 is the only choice for now.

Originally Posted by FlameyMcFlameFace

If after all this and we still end up buying a full fleet of F-35's, I am just going to shake my head at our government.

Any other outcome would be worse.

I am typically a Liberal supporter, but on this file they've just been pure stupid. The best thing they can do now is buy the F-35 and claim that all this nonsense was just a ploy to drive down the price.

[Harry Lime]

Screw it. At this point lets just make a fleet of Canadian designed single use death drones.

40 000 of them. They don't even have to be that good. I doubt we would ever have to fly them.

Just push the world around politically based on the fear of the sky darkening from a sunrise to sunset swarm of black death and sadness 'Kamakasi Maple Syrup Armageddon Sky Monsters'.

But seriously, maybe as a small first world nation, we should be thinking outside the box on this one. Even if we got our 88 F-35s, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the big dogs of the world. If we are going to use the military as a symbol of our sovereignty, why not a made in Canada solution? With all that has been spent already....

Sorry about the frustrated derail. At this point, I would look up at our new fleet of wooden biplanes, shrug, and say 'ok'.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Screw it. At this point lets just make a fleet of Canadian designed single use death drones.

Soo... missiles?

[SebC]

Originally Posted by photon

Soo... missiles?

We could even put nuclear warheads onto our Bomarcs. Surely we wouldn't need a high-quality interceptor if we had those.

[bob-loblaw]

Do we even have any drones in out military?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by bob-loblaw

Do we even have any drones in out military?

Yes, I believe we also just bought some from Israel.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by FlameyMcFlameFace

http://saab.com/air/gripen-fighter-s...ipen-e-series/

So you're telling me this Gripen E fighter Jet that Saab is just releasing in the upcoming years is already behind the curve? I remember seeing a youtube video earlier this year of them undergoing test flights. Surely the stats difference between this and the F-35 can't be that far off. Im getting the impression you're giving me that this is a flip phone vs iPhone comparison.

The F-35 can't be the only "advanced" option we have/there is?

Its behind the curve, its sensor suites, interoperability and stealth capabilities don't compare to the F-35. also the F-35 has a much longer upgrade path over the Gripen.

Don't get me wrong, if we want a conventional airforce with lots of planes, go with the Gripen, but it will cost more then a smaller more capable fleet made up of F-35's.

[FlameyMcFlameFace]

I hope when Canada launches this fighter jet contest that our top air force pilots/personnel will have a say in the matter.

To me, at this point, I trust our Canadian pilots to tell us whats best for them. Whether they say the F-35, Gripen, or whatever it may be or what tests they conduct. Their word is good enough for me for our future fighters.

[speede5]

Originally Posted by FlameyMcFlameFace

I hope when Canada launches this fighter jet contest that our top air force pilots/personnel will have a say in the matter.

To me, at this point, I trust our Canadian pilots to tell us whats best for them. Whether they say the F-35, Gripen, or whatever it may be or what tests they conduct. Their word is good enough for me for our future fighters.

They have been unanimously asking for the F-35 for years and no one seems to be listening. I don't know a single person in the community who thinks there is any other option.

This is a massive boondoggle, and is going to have a ripple effect all the way down to the entry level training program in Portage. This government has it's head firmly planted in the sand.

DND is trying to get competitions going for all levels of pilot training, Portage, Moose Jaw and Cold Lake, and without knowing the fighter no one can really put in any sort of proposals. We have already extended NFTC and will probably have to do a second extension just to get to the replacement announcement. Uggh.

[CaptainCrunch]

The funny thing is that the Government just wrote another check for 30 million to the F-35 project.

Also a look at the problems with Canada's defense policy going back to the 40's

https://ipolitics.ca/2017/12/13/cant...y-makes-sense/

Every time the Canadian Forces need a major piece of new kit, we have an opportunity to correct the mistakes made by every single federal government since the Second World War.
The need to replace the aging CF-18 fighter-bombers is the latest such opportunity. But so far, the indications are that the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is going down the same path of small-minded, narrow parochialism and political expediency well-trodden by all its predecessors.


And yet — because of the isolationism gripping the United States and the likelihood that its internal family feud will get ever more bitter — this moment still presents a golden opportunity to re-examine Canada’s future security.

Those countries manage coherent defence policies that, by and large, also mesh with equally consistent foreign and international trade policies. Canada has never managed those tricks — largely because this country has never had to look to its own security or to seriously dip its toes into the turbulent world of global commerce.


That golden age is rapidly coming to an end with every day that passes, but what the new world will look like is still uncertain. Here’s what ought to be obvious: it will not be infused by the values that have driven North Atlantic culture since 1945.


As China’s triumphalist President Xi Jinping says in almost every tub-thumping speech he gives, that new world will be antipathetic to the civic values that have been at the heart of the global stance of Canada and its allies for 70 years.

Harper already had shuffled the F-35 program off for review when Trudeau and the Liberals came to power with a promise to kill the scheme and start a new competition to replace the CF-18s.


This piece of cheap politicking had a grotesquely familiar face. When Jean Chrétien and the Liberals defeated the Tories in 1993, an early act was to kill the program to replace the navy’s wheezing, dangerously unreliable anti-submarine Sea King helicopters with CH-149 Cormorants. Chretien said the new helicopters were an unnecessary “Cadillac” option.


Trudeau on the F-35s and Chrétien on the Cormorants predate U.S. President Donald Trump’s fixation with removing any sign that Barrack Obama ever inhabited the White House. But they have the same flavour — of feral tom-cats marking the territory where their rivals were once supreme.


The farce over replacing the CF-18s has cascaded into fiasco as the Trudeau government prepares for a new international industry-wide competition.

The Trudeau government marked Boeing as a company that threatens the Canadian economy and cancelled the Super Hornet scheme.


Instead, Ottawa is going to spend around $500 million buying 18 Australian F-18s that are around the same age as the CF-18s due for retirement.


The whole thing has the stench of idiotic political expediency that has lingered over Canadian defence policy since 1945.


But it seems to be getting worse.


Soon after the Liberals returned to power in 2015, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan launched a defence policy review.


Well and good. But what on earth is the point of having a defence review that is not part and parcel of an equivalent and parallel review of foreign and international trade policy?
Those three arms of government are inextricably interlocked. Any attempt to refashion one policy without making it part of the other two is only going to produce a piece of flimflammery

There was also an appeal to nostalgia with a pledge to get back into classic United Nations peacekeeping operations with the deployment of 600 soldiers and 150 police. But this always had the pungent odour of politicking to win a Security Council seat in 2020.


This fanciful piece of retro nonsense has come up against a hard reality: there are no longer places in the world where Canadian soldiers in blue helmets can be sent as welcome mediators between two previously warring sides.


These days, there is only peacemaking at bayonet point, and usually between sides that have no interest in ceasefires or other civilized mumbo-jumbo.


Canada’s experience in Afghanistan is the new peacekeeping normal, which is why Sajjan and the government are no longer talking about sending Canadian blue helmets to Africa.
Mali and the Congo were on the list, but both look like turnstiles into new versions of Afghanistan. In Mali, 80 UN peacekeepers have been killed in the civil war since 2013. This week in eastern Congo, militants slaughtered 15 UN troops.


third African country where the UN has soldiers deployed — South Sudan — looks just as dangerous as the others. So, a couple of weeks ago, Trudeau announced that Canada’s blue helmet commitments will now involve “showing the way to others through our capabilities and specialized skills.”


As Canada has not put a military unit through a UN peacekeeping operation since 2001, it’s a bit of a mystery just how up-to-date those “specialized skills” might be.

[Zulu29]

It’s beyond frustrating how inept the Canadian government (liberal and conservative alike) have been managing the military. It’s an absolute farce and something needs to be done to correct it. Take defence policy out of the hands of the government and make a special counsel to deal with procurement etc. This has gone on far too long.

[btimbit]

I feel like we could save a LOT of time by just throwing money in the garbage instead