They cannot be trusted, that much we know. We need to become independent and not reliant
Let’s do it and replace them with MiGs 🤨
American here. Who cares if it provokes Trump? Actions have consequences. Canada helped out a lot during 911. What did we do? Prove to be an unreliable partner
We shouldn’t have caved back in the Arrow days.
The PM agrees with The Globe and Mail once and now they think they’ll get two in a row?
Nah, y’all should accept delivery then refuse to pay. Give him a taste of his own medicine.
A Trump never pays his debts
So take the planes, send Trump the bill, when he acts confused you tell him he should really be more grateful about this
“have you said thank you even once”
Maybe he should get Mexico to pay for it.
I mean, without American replacement parts I don’t know how flyable they are. Stiffing the US on something is an option for next play, though.
Edit: So, correction. Interestingly it looks like the US is actually dependent on others for parts itself, and Japan has a good helping of all the parts in the whole plane being built domestically, so maybe not all is lost there. (This link looks legit, but disclaimer that I’m unfamiliar with it and you can’t always tell at a glance post-AI)
That being said, the software is definitely closed-source, and all their design.
Bring back the avro arrow. Let’s do it.
Switzerland too!
Goddamn right we should. Take the French up on the offer to build the Rafale here. Or the Swedes. And get a few demo units for short term.
Fuck 'em on any cancellation fees too. Consider it partial compensation for the ridiculous trade war.
None of those airplanes even have similar capabilities. Why do you think the entirety of Europe has ordered so many F-35.
The only alternative is to wait 15+(realistically 20+) years for a 6gen plane from Europe. And with the alliance dying, who knows how much longer it will take now
Rafale and Gripen are more expensive and in many ways, less good. There is a reason why noone is buying them, or even if they did, they still want to buy more F-35.
Alliance isn’t dying, just the US isn’t really part of it anymore. The need for alliance is all the more stronger and it’s imperative to remove all dependency on the US defense industry within that alliance. The US dropping military aid for Ukraine proves the US is a dishonourable country and shouldn’t be trusted for anything anymore. By all indications, the US is surrendering to Russia because Trump is afraid of Putin.
The capabilities of the F-35 only represents the capability of an adversary now. We should use the ones we have to develop radar systems so we can shoot them down, and reverse engineer it’s capabilities to improve the fighter aircraft produced by the free world (which no longer includes the US).
The gripen is more agile than the f35 and capable of austere landings. Arguably more important traits than the ability to carry American nukes.
Being agile is kinda irrelevant if one can detect, lock and launch missiles tens of kilometers before the other plane can even detect it. Real life is not Top Gun. This is why everyone is buying the F-35.
There is a reason why China is spending billions designing and making stealth fighters, bombers and drones.
Agility isnt useless but it is highly overrated mostly by Russia, because they cant afford to produce(in relevant quantities) a stealth plane.
They buy F35 because the US is the premier supplier of arms for NATO bar none.
Russia has a different approach to the problem: Very aggressive jamming. Sure, you can see them before they can see you, but those missiles are gonna be much less effective at tracking and destroying targets.
Stealth is being as quiet as possible, Russian jets are so damn “loud” that you don’t know which target is the real one.
Once within range for a more traditional dogfight it’s basically a coin toss, mostly down to the pilots and the reliability of the plane’s hardware.
F35 is far more expensive to operate, so you end up paying more over the lifetime if you actually use it.
Of course the other aircraft don’t have a bunch of fancy features of the F35, but maybe we don’t need them, particularly in light of the US hostility and unpredictability. And the benefit of building our own is a factor as well.
As I undertand it, the F35 has only about 55% readiness and suffers SW problems as well.
The US is not the only game in town, and we need to be clear about that.
It is a little princessy(what stealth aircraft isnt) but it doesnt cost that much to run. It only requires specialized facilities.
F-35 readiness is on par with other comparable planes and will only get better (superior to other fighters) the more infrastructure is built. You would be shocked if you saw the readiness levels of other planes but that doesnt sell.
It is important to note that much of the bad reputation of the f-35 is because
- Outdated data from early development of the plane. The F-16(or any plane), the (currently) cheap, reliable and available workhorse had an even worse start.
- Because there is free press in the West, you hear about everything that goes wrong. This is not the case for planes from authoritarian countries.
- A lot of the misinformation comes and/or is amplified literally from enemy state propaganda.
- A lot of the issues of the F-35 are about the vertical takeoff variant(F-35B). Or about a new updated version(block) of the F-35 that is still in testing.
- “F-35 bad” is(though less so nowadays) an internet meme. I am still waiting for the internet to explain how this terrible fighter can do 20 to 1 kill ratio vs non stealth planes in exercises.
Ask yourself why is the F-35 the best selling fighter. Why is noone buying F-15, F-18 or F-16. Those planes still sell but on much more limited quantities and mostly because F-35 production cant catch up with demand(or because not all american allies are allowed to buy the F-35).
Now obviously if America is hostile to Europe, shit is gonna get really weird. While the Rafale and Gripen are capable planes, they cannot replace the F-35.
Look what is happening in Ukraine. The air space is extremely hostile to non stealth planes. This is the kind of environment that the F-35 can fight in, though ideally you want B2 to bomb most antiair defenses. Non stealth aircraft can fight too but it is infinitely risker and with significantly reduced capabilities.
The F-35 is the start of a new doctrine(for non american airforces), not just a plane.
The critical tradeoff is not F35 or a worse plane. The critical tradeoff is American or not.
You forgot to mention the difference in maintenance costs. The F-35 is the most expensive fighter jet not only to acquire but also to maintain. It’s a money pit. It’s beautiful and 6th gen and all that’s grand. But it’s not good enough to justify the difference in prices.
Both are cheaper than F35… Do you have an access to the internet? The reason people were buying US planes is they thought the US walked the talk. They clearly don’t, so they won’t sell those anymore.
Why do you think the entirety of Europe has ordered so many F-35.
The reason for Germany is that other aircraft, by choice, have not been certified for use with US nuclear weapons.
Nuke capability is irrelevant for most countries(rafale has a nuke capable variant, though only for French nukes). Take a look at its operators
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_operators
Everyone who can get it(allied to the US), has already ordered it or will soon. The only exceptions are Sweden and France, who wanted to maintain some degree of strategic independence and not lose their jet fighter building capability. And Spain, though Spain was also kinda thinking of getting F-35 too(before Trump).
Canada was like Sweden and France, they could manufacture capable planes. But this is immensely expensive. Thats why Canada(and most countries) stopped doing it. This is why the F-35 is cheap, economies of scale, and why countries are willing to wait 5+ years to get it(while rafale and Gripen are basically readily available).
Europe wanted to coast through 5gen planes by using the F-35 while skipping ahead and developing, 2 completely different apparently, 6gen planes by 2040ish.
Rafales are not readily available, the factories have a huge order backlog.
There was an article last week discussing how that plane calls home every day and that it can be blocked by the Americans. They can shut all of them down within 24 hours.
Time to nope right out of that contract.
The aircraft has significant security risks for sure and makes sense to cancel. But canceling the order won’t be on Trump’s radar unless it affects his inner circle of evil billionaires who have funneled dark money to him.
We should throw some cash at Saab and see if they can come up with a stealth gripen or something.
Europe already has a program for a 6th gen in the works for 2040 or 2050. Saab should join it! However in the meanwhile the gripen-e is an excellent aircraft yes.
Careful, that’s how you end up with cool sedans and hatchbacks.
With tariffs hammering F-35 sales, I expect the next Eurofighter project will have a lot more resources. I wonder if Canada will get involved.
Sweden also offered to get us building our own Gripens totally locally. The page for the bid is even still up
I assume we already have pilots trained in flying the F-35 at this point, which sucks if we’re never getting them, though.
This would be amazing for us to bring back military building here in Canada!!
Especially since the Americans are the ones who convinced us they had enough fighter jets to take care of us so we could/should cancel the Arrow. :/
I mean, there was also the issue of it just costing a lot as the Diefenbaker conservative government was looking to make cuts.
Absolute bozo move to not go for this in retrospect. They need to give this a look again asap
If I had hair, I definitely would have been pulling it out at the time. It’s not like this situation came out of nowhere, but normalcy bias won the day.
Existing provokes Trump.
Every country knows the US changes faces faster than my ex girlfriend.
At this point other countries just need to deal with 4 years of this bullshit.
If Trump were to take over the government like Hitler did, which looks to be the case, only then would countries start looking at dropping the USA.
No. There’s no telling what comes after these 4 years. The US has proven that they aren’t an ally worth relying on, we should look to more reliable partners and building them up and vice versa. Any concession or help offered by the next administration isn’t worth the paper it’s written on (just look at trump ripping up his own trade agreement for this nonsense.)
We need allies not a neighbour that on a whim might try to throw us into a recession.
Exactly. With a Presidential Monarchy, no deal or treaty can be trusted past the next election (assuming they’ll still have those).
More than more Trump, we are also seeing a complete abandonment of the US much vaunted system of checks and balances. You simply can’t deal with them except in 4 year periods.
If you look back at the history of the US, it’s been fairly reliable in it’s first world alliances.
Yeah, they’ve pretty strongly turned from recent history though. No one in NATO believes the US could be trusted to uphold article 5 anymore. That’s the whole issue.
Hell, why doesn’t Ukraine have the nuclear deterrnet that it had after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Because they foolishly believed American security promises, which were given in exchange for them releasing their nukes.
Exactly. But it also shows it’s more about Trump than America.
Plus we got other stuff to worry about, and playing nice with America is probably better in the long run.
What? Ukraine was first invaded before trump and then again without him there. In both cases, the security provided was less than what was originally guaranteed. Ukraine got screwed by believing America.
It’s not just trump, there’s a whole Senate and Congress cheering him on. I would not gamble our future by relying on it to only be a trump phenomenon. If Americans had elected him once and horrified of their mistake, never came close again, that’d be one thing. But we has elected with a plurarlity of votes.
America has proven an untrustworthy ally and that thwir promises aren’t worth the paper their written in.
I don’t think Canada’s security should be “well, let’s just hope they don’t do it yet again!”
@MyBrainHurts @x00z yeah its a harsh lesson here in Europe as well. But a Trump that was slightly more patient and subtle would have been far more dangerous for us all.
Oh absolutely, thank heavens trump is cartoonishly cruel and selfish, it’s quickly united everyone else. A clever, subtle and patient trump would’ve been much more dangerous.
I just fully disagree with the earlier comment that this is a one off trump only aberration.
When the us comes crawling back we should make them pay reparations for any economic or other damages before they’re welcomed back.
The “bullshit” might all start against in 8 years, 12 years etc… So it’s not just 4 years other countries have to deal with but the lifetime of the fleets they acquired yesteryears.
Too unreliable partner to trust. End of story.
ooh no, it might provoke the person who is back stabbing us at every conceivable opportunity
