Canadian Govt buys 18 Super Hornets

[Zaibatsu]

Maybe it's not such a bad idea after all....

Weeelllll... like my old Pappy always used to say (and he actually did say this), "If everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?"

Maybe that's what the US Navy... who has more fighters and actual combat experience than the majority of sovereign air forces... is thinking about the F-35.

[Mach1]

Maybe that's what the US Navy... who has more fighters and actual combat experience than the majority of sovereign air forces... is thinking about the F-35.

Except that the article didn't say that the navy was not buying F-35's. Quite the opposite of that, in fact.

[frosti]

Maybe it's not such a bad idea after all....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ource.html

Navy is waiting for the F35C.

While we are screwing around with the Super Hornet, the F35 will be flying in serious numbers around the world in the very near future.

[Old fella]

This could be interesting..............

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-f ... -1.3892314

[teacher]

Looks like Trump is thinking of taking a page out of JT's book.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... -3-432706/

[2R]

Canada can either spend the two percent of club fees for NATO in Canada or pay tribute to NATO for protection.
If Canada re-commits to NATO by spending the agreed treaty fees then there should be enough money for lots of toys and noise makers
If Canada spends the money wisely then a would give a well needed boost for long term employment and training for the next generation of factory fodder .If they spread it out properly it would allow some of the infrastructure to be repaired all under the "defence budget ' . Many highways down south were constructed as dual use . Long concrete straight roads with buried power lines that can be used as runways if the balloons go up. Most of those highways were built to defence specifications and provided stimulus to the economy. The UK counts medical costs of Veterans as a military expense towards NATO spending. They could help the Veterans in a similar fashion here and get some credit towards the two percent treaty costs.
An education and housing benefit for Veterans could be thrown in as well like the US GI bill and make that part of the two percent . Re-training and up dating skill sets would ensure that other Veterans would be more sought by employers .
A civilian conversion ATPL and a useful type rating after service would go a long way to ensure that the present shortage of skilled pilots in the military would be a thing of the past. We could hide it all in the defence budget !
They used to do that ,one of the guys who converted Lancaster bombers to spray planes had his University paid for . He later went on to use that knowledge to save the trees and birds in Quebec. Investing in people who have contributed is always a great investment as they always continue to contribute.


Or we could send a cheque to Trump for tribute and hope it does not bounce

[teacher]

The 80% solution he calls it. An advanced super hornet with advanced avionics. Not as good but would this be a feasible alternative? Combine this with stealth drones like what the U.S is developing for first strike and you might have your answer. Although by the time you purchase a greater number of aircraft and have them modernized to this level is it even any cheaper? I doubt it.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-bu ... hter-18875

[teacher]

Ouch!

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/ ... -years-old

[Gannet167]

So we're going to pay more for an inferior interim product, then throw that product away and still buy the same final product in the end anyway, just spending more money and many years to get there - all to honour a stupid and uninformed campaign promise. Funny, we're not following campaign promises on the deficit or election reform, only stupid ones on military procurement. This must be a government operation.

https://www.skiesmag.com/press-releases ... content=V1

[Gannet167]

An old article, but just as relevant today:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... ut-defence

"Canada has 40% again of Australia’s population, and nearly double the GDP, yet the Australians spend $7-billion more on defence each year, and have a military only slightly smaller than our own, with more and better equipment....

Australia and Canada make for an interesting comparison given the obvious historical and cultural similarities, but Fisher rightly points out that the nations exist in very different geopolitical environments. Canada has counted on the U.S. to do the heavy lifting for continental security for generations ....

Australia’s larger emphasis on defence may be a necessity, but it’s also possible thanks to the country’s mature political stance on defence. To the Australians, national security isn’t about politics, but securing the nation, which is something valued more than partisanship. In Canada, by contrast, each party uses the military as a political prop, to use and abuse as necessary for electoral gain, and then ignore and underfund until the next election."

[Goshawk]

If we are going single engine (which will be a mistake) the Gripen would be the better value for the Canadian taxpayers than the f35

I personally think the Gripen is the best choice for the RCAF right now in my eyes.

As for the single engine issue that you so obviously have a raging hard on for please explain if it is such an issue;

1)Why does Norway do just fine with the F16
oh but but but Runways...
2) Why does Sweden do just fine with the Gripen from highways?"
oh but but over water operations...
3) Greece does just fine with the Mirage and F16 over water.
but but the atlantic coast...
4) Portugal does just fine with the F16 over the Atlantic covering the Azores Islands and Madeira Island.
but but this is Canada...
5) Talk to the boys who operate Caravans, Beavers, Otters, PC12's etc all over Canada


No shit I'd feel better with 2 engines. No one is going to deny that. But your starting to sound like a Seneca graduate. Just give it a rest.

[shurshot17]

Purely political finagling in hope to save themselves from their foolish election promise. At the end of the day it will cost the tax payers more when we finally get the F35 after the "fair" procurement process takes place

Kitzbuhel....I hope to god the Canadian Government never commits to buy the F35. It is a very poorly thought out plan for one main reason; the F35 has a single engine. This platform IS NOT going to cut it in the high arctic. There have literally been DOZENS of cases over the last 30 years of the current CF18 Fighters losing an engine in the Arctic and limping back on the remaining. If we move to the F35, lives WILL BE LOST, not to mention 100 Million every time. Ask any CF pilot and you will get the same answer. Surviving in the frigid arctic if over water is mere minutes....

Part of our Arctic sovereignty requires and air-frame with redundancies, otherwise we are going to be in for a very rude awakening.....

The USA has been operating F-16's in Alaska without an issue.... single engine.

[teacher]

Can't have people looking into this too much......

Liberal MPs sideline Conservative motion to study purchase of 18 Super Hornets

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/ ... er-hornets

[BigWillyStyle]

I found an interesting perspective online from Laurie Hawn, LCol RCAF (ret), former parliamentary secretary to MinNatDef. I read that he has been asked to resign for this post.

"Speaking truth to power can be risky

I re-confirmed that this week by speaking out rather more forcefully than was appreciated to the Commander of the RCAF and the Chief of the Defence Staff, on the issue of the CF-18 replacement. This is a condensation of some of my main points, and I know that senior military leaders have their hands tied. As followers will know, I have been very critical of the 100% politically motivated plan to buy 18 “interim” Super Hornets for some time and the story only gets worse.

We could fill the fabricated “capability gap” with 27 F-18C/D aircraft from Kuwait at the bargain basement price of $330 million, but we’re not pursuing it. We could also upgrade our 76 CF-18s to Super Hornet system status for about 20% of what it will cost us to buy 18 Super Hornets. Rather than pursue either of those options, we’d rather waste about USD 5.4 Billion on 18 aircraft with no real increase in capability. The cost of 90 F-35As will be USD 8.5 Billion (USD 94.6 million per) in the latest contract; and that unit cost will come down to USD 85 million by the time we should be receiving our first aircraft about 2020. What is wrong with this picture?

The F-18C is virtually identical to our CF-18s, while the Super Hornet is very different in size, radar, engines, mission computers and other systems. We don’t have the qualified technicians, pilots and support capacity to manage our current fleet; and adding a dissimilar fleet will make a very difficult job impossible. We are losing pilots to release at a rate that is unsustainable, and there is no ether that we can dip into to hive off more to get trained on the Super Hornet.

Neither the CF-18 nor Super Hornet actually has the kinematics to properly execute our primary mission of peacetime air sovereignty, with commercial aircraft operating above 40,000 feet. F-35 can properly execute that mission, and many more. The real experts were not consulted and, in fact, 240 of them have been muzzled with lifetime non-disclosure agreements. Why would a government with nothing to hide do that? The answer is that they wouldn’t, and this government has a lot to hide. It would be nice if the Auditor General and the Ethics Commissioner would take an interest. The options analysis that was conducted and clearly showed F-35 to be the answer has been suppressed, because it didn’t conform to the Prime Minister’s foolish and inaccurate statements during and since the 2015 campaign. And you thought that Donald Trump was the only purveyor of “alternate facts”.

Super Hornet also has serious safety concerns with the oxygen system that has resulted in 297 (reported) incidents that have resulted in the permanent grounding of some aircrew. Can we afford that and has anyone done a risk analysis of operating Super Hornet?

An open and fair competition could be started tomorrow and take no more than a year; but the government wants to kick the can down the road until after the next election. If the Statement of Requirements (SOR) is not “modified” to eliminate F-35, that aircraft would win any fair competition, just as it has in so many other cases. There’s good reason to believe that the SOR is being “massaged”. There will be nothing interim about a Super Hornet buy. Even if F-35 were to win a rigged competition, the sudden realization will be that, “Gosh, we just cannot afford a mixed fleet and we’ll just have to buy more Super Hornets.” The first part of that statement would be correct – we cannot afford a mixed fleet of Super Hornet and F-35 down the road, just as we cannot afford a mixed fleet of CF-18 and Super Hornet today.

The latest bit of insanity is that we are looking at buying two-seat Super Hornets and putting navigators in the back seat as Weapons System Operators (WSO). Our primary mission is air defence and there are no two-seat air defence fighters in the world today. There is a reason for that - navigators in fighters and many other applications have been overtaken by technology years ago. To be sure, fighter pilots will also eventually be overtaken by technology; but for the next few decades they have a job to do. We have no capacity to train WSOs, even if someone did invent a reason to want to do so.

The bottom line is that we can’t afford to do what we’re doing for a wide variety of reasons – Canadian sovereignty and security, financial, technical, personnel, moral, alliance support, Canadian industry, etc. If we carry on, I firmly believe and many others share my belief that we will kill the fighter force. I simply can’t support that and my conscience will not let me stay silent and be deemed complicit by that silence. I have been in and around the RCAF for 53 years and it is soul destroying to see what is happening in the name of politics. As anticipated, my vocal opposition to the plan was not well received by the most senior leadership of the RCAF and Canadian Armed Forces. I was asked to resign my position of Honourary Colonel of 401 Tactical Fighter Squadron (the oldest Squadron in the RCAF, 20 Nov 1918). That, I dutifully did, but since I’m not important enough to have sword, I just fell on my pen-knife.

I will continue to advocate for what I think is in the best interests of the RCAF, Canada, our aerospace industry AND taxpayers. Most Canadians may not really care about Super Hornet versus F-35, but I think they do care about the waste of billions of dollars for very little return, especially if it’s purely in the name of politics. "

Mr. Hawn raises some interesting points, but I am not informed enough in the subject material to evaluate the details. Thoughts?

BWS

[Old fella]

Boys...... what part do you not understand. PMJT isn't gonna buy the F-35, that was a 2015 campaign promise - period and full stop. Prattle on with quotes and commentary from the various experts and military people on F-35, SH et al till the cows come back, go ahead and fill your boots. JT is PM until 2019, very good chance it will be beyond that. He won a majority government and he has the sole right to govern and he is doing just that. Fighter jet procurement isn't a hill any government will die on no matter the political stripe............

[234james]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fighter ... -1.3862210
I concern if Boeing had to attend a couple trudeau liberal regime pay to play fundriser
case to land deal???

[teacher]

Super Hornets, Eh? Canadian Airpower Falls Short on North American Defense
Gary Schaub, Jr. and Richard Shimooka

Politics over Strategy
Much of the criticism directed toward the November announcement has rightly focused on politics. The Liberal Party of Canada spent six years criticizing Harper’s handling of the program and the travails of the F-35. In the 2015 election campaign, the Liberal Party’s military platform focused its ire on the F-35:
We will not buy the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber. We will immediately launch an open and transparent competition to replace the CF-18 fighter aircraft. The primary mission of our fighter aircraft should remain the defence of North America, not stealth first-strike capability. We will reduce the procurement budget for replacing the CF-18s, and will instead purchase one of the many, lower-priced options that better match Canada’s defence needs.
This position posed several problems for the Liberals once in office. Legally, the government could not exclude the F-35 from a competition.  Although Trudeau continued to argue that the F-35 “does not work and is far from working,” Sajjan backed away from that argument — particularly as two F-35 models were declared ready for combat and then operationally deployed.
Furthermore, the defense bureaucracy firmly believed that the F-35 was the right choice. The Conservative government launched a reassessment process in 2012.  This reaffirmed that the F-35 provided the most capable option, offered the best industrial benefits, and was the least expensive over its life cycle. To reduce potential criticism, the Liberal government required 235 civilian and military officials to sign permanent non-disclosure agreements. Liberal parliamentarians also recently blocked a motion to study the interim purchase.
Finally, the government’s assertion that five years were necessary to conduct a proper competition was widely derided as conveniently pushing the likely F-35 purchase to after the next election. Prominent figures condemned this plan, including two former procurement heads for the Canadian Forces and two former chiefs of the Air Staff.
In general, it should not be surprising that the government’s decision is primarily designed to fulfill a poorly considered campaign promise. The real issue is that instead of quickly bolstering Canadian airpower, it will actually diminish it.

The December 2014 report by Defence Research and Development Canada concluded:
A mixed fighter fleet can provide the same or equivalent capability, but not without significantly more aircraft and pilots. Mixed fighter fleets comparable in size to the single fighter fleet will likely result in lower overall capability, at a higher cost.
The report goes on to suggest that the interim fleet is a poor option:
The costs involved with bridging options make them unsuitable for filling capability gaps in the short term; any short term investment results in disproportionately high costs during the bridging period…. This analysis assumes that the Government of Canada will not take on significant additional costs beyond those identified for replacing the CF-18, and so bridging options will not be further considered in this document [emphasis ours].

Full Article: https://warontherocks.com/2017/02/super ... n-defense/

[teacher]

Retired air chiefs urge Liberals to ditch ‘costly and unnecessary’ plan to buy Super Hornet jets

John Ivison | February 22, 2017 5:47 PM ET

OTTAWA — Former chief of the defence staff Paul Manson and 12 other retired senior air force commanders have written to the prime minister asking the government to abandon the $5-7 billion interim purchase of Super Hornet fighter jets.
Gen. Manson, who held Canada’s top military role between 1986 and 1989, said the government’s plan to buy an interim fleet to replace the current CF-18 fighters is “ill-advised, costly and unnecessary.”
“I’m 82 years old and I may not see the outcome of all this but I want the facts put before the public,” he said in an interview.
“The main point right now is that the government seems determined to go ahead with a plan that those of us with countless decades of experience running the air force think would take decades to correct. It makes no sense.”
Manson and the 12 former air force lieutenant-generals say they have serious misgivings about the government’s claim that a “capability gap” exists, justifying the need for an interim fleet of 18 Super Hornets.

I’m 82 years old and I may not see the outcome of all this but I want the facts put before the public
“Your government’s newly created policy calling for the Royal Canadian Air Force to meet its NATO and NORAD treaty commitments concurrently does not reflect a real and sudden change in the strategic situation. In our experience, it has been decades since Canada had sufficient aircraft to meet all our commitments simultaneously. Over the years, the air force, by judiciously balancing strategic risks and available resources, has managed its operational contributions reasonably well,” the letter states.
Rather than increasing fighter availability, the air force commanders claim the interim fleet would tax resources, because it would require training for pilots and technicians, plus new flight simulators, logistics support and maintenance operations.
Even that would not be enough, the authors say. “It would be necessary to recruit, train and qualify several hundred new technicians and dozens of pilots. Recent experience suggests the RCAF would face difficulty in achieving this … We forsee that bringing in an interim flight would create serious practical problems of this kind.”
If the government is intent on an interim purchase, the letter says, it should examine the prospect of buying so-called legacy Hornets, which are similar to the existing CF-18 and are increasingly becoming available as such partner nations as Australia and the United States replace their Hornet fleets with the F-35 fighter.
“The acquisition cost would be a fraction of a Super Hornet buy,” the air commanders say, pointing out that all the training, logistics and infrastructure needs are already in place.

Liberals admit ‘interim’ Super Hornet jets may only fly for 12 years, despite costing billions
Government decides report that questions purchase of interim fighter jets will remain secret
Retired RCAF commanders say not enough pilots to fly ‘interim’ fighter jets Liberals plan to buy
John Ivison: Liberals’ jet purchase a political solution to political problem of their own making

The letter also urges the government to proceed to the open and fair competition for a permanent replacement for the CF-18s promised by the Liberals during the past election.
During the campaign, Justin Trudeau said the Liberals would not buy the F-35, a statement Manson called “outrageous.”
He said he remains a strong proponent of the F-35, even if that is not the focus of the letter sent to the Trudeau government. He is a former chairman of Lockheed Martin Canada, manufacturer of the F-35, but said he left the company 20 years ago and today has no commercial interest in Lockheed.
Manson admitted that with the Liberals having just backed down on their electoral reform proposal, the prospect of a reversal on the interim purchase is slim.
“There is not an awful lot of hope they’ll do the right thing,” he said.
But, he added that if the interim purchase is being made by the Liberals to ingratiate the government with the incoming Trump administration, it is a superficial solution.
“The point needs to be made that it may add to the one per cent of GDP (spent on defence) but if it doesn’t improve operational effectiveness, it won’t fool our NATO allies,” he said.
According to Jordan Owens, spokesman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, the government has no intention of reversing its decision on the interim purchase.
“The Royal Canadian Air Force faces a significant challenge because it does not have the number of fighter aircraft available to meet Canada’s NORAD and NATO obligations if called to do so simultaneously,” Owens said.
“Our government believes that we owe it to our women and men in uniform to provide them with the equipment needed to do their jobs. By acquiring an interim fighter fleet and proceeding to an open and transparent competition to procure the full replacement fleet, we will be providing the Royal Canadian Air Force with the resources necessary to meet this challenge.
“We have full confidence in their ability to do so.”
National Post

[Leo G]

I didn't know that we were employing fighters over Canadian soil exclusively.

[confusedalot]

Super interesting thread.

I have zero military experience (except for air cadets lol), I personally think it would be better to defer to the professionals in the business that have contributed to the posts, instead of opinions from those who think they know better......

Ended up flying over a rather large part of this planet in tubes with vacuum cleaners equipped with fancy stuff in the pointy end, large, medium, and small, and I still have enough wherewithal to not interfere with a beaver pilot shoehorning his tool into lakes between two granite obstacles.

The fighter guys win. F35 is the tool of choice. (even if I would be shit scared over the arctic, alone, with only one engine!)

But, thinking about it, I never actually had a turbojet/turbofan failure after all this time. Says a lot.