A friend familiar with defence matters observes:
“I think we need a bit of humility to this discussion. Not everyone in the Norwegian, Danish, British, Israeli etc. air forces are fools and some of these are well respected for the depth of their technical competence. Understandably, many in the CAF find the fighter ‘debate’ in Canada extraordinarily frustrating, even if they are not close to the project, for the simple reason that the public discussion is incredibly idiotic and the politicians are no better. As has been the case in almost every similar procurement, except those done under pressure of war.
My own sense is that the F-35A has shortcomings in the RCAF context: aerial refueling is by the boom system which the RCAF does not have and the A model doesn’t have an adequate tail hook for use with the arrestor system at the far northern FOLs which is used much of the year, given the marginal length of the runways and the cost of fixing bent aircraft if they over-run. The USN F-35C has neither limitation but would be considerably more expensive.
I do not believe that the single engine should be a factor for NORAD missions up north but the internal capacity for weapons in stealth mode may be–pylons will no doubt be added for tanks and weapons but that will reduce the low observable quality.
Range on internal fuel seems no worse than the competition.
Perhaps it would be most responsible to argue for:
– the C model
– at least 80 aircraft.
Yes, this would cost more but we can afford it with a small increase of the budget to historic averages decade by decade.
As for the quality of the national conversation on defence, DND has to shoulder some responsibility for cancelling its academic support program.”
Money, money, money rather than public logical analysis based on knowledge in this country.
https://cgai3ds.wordpress.com/2016/08/02/mark-collins-new-rcaf-fighter-debate-on-f-35-vs-rest-esp-super-hornet/comment-page-1/#comment-18125
The point was that it's irrelevant if we have aircraft carriers or not.
