As far as I can tell, nobody has actually defined what they want to see or get out of a Canadian fighter, and there isn't a broad vision for the Canadian armed forces either.
A rejection of the F-35 is a rejection of the second vision and it's not anti-americanism, it's a lack of pro-americanism.
Hilariously enough the airplane that's best suited to the first mission would have to be able to sink Russian icebreakers from a long range at great speed, and would probably be the Tu-22M and it's assorted supersonic cruise missiles. Sadly no nation will sell you weapons that can only be used against itself.
Outside of these two missions all we need is a jet to do basic airspace defence, interceptions, and that can carry some kind of antiship missile. Basically any jet will do the job, there's not much point buying the F-35 for that with all that entails.
There is zero chance that a land dispute between the US and Canada will ever have anything to do with which fighter jets either side has available.
Yeah no sorry, not buying the f-35 is just sensible decision making. The idea that Canada is in a position to be playing with the most expensive death toys in the world is just comic absurdity. That's no world in which we use anything like the f-35 effectively, even if it lived up to the hot air that was blown about it.
Conservative hype about it was about as well placed as their attempts to get anyone excited about celebrating the war of 1812.
If you think Canada is a nation of peace-keepers (which it really hasn't done all that much of), it doesn't need fighters at all.
If you think Canada needs to defend North American aerospace, the F-15EX (or maybe Eurofighter Typhoon) looks quite good.
If you think Canada needs to be able to support her NATO allies in an armed conflict overseas against a peer adversary, the F-35 is the best fit.
It has nothing to do with Anti-Americanism. I have no idea where you got that from.
For a specific example here, the F-35, which costs more than the F-18, is still cheaper than the Gripen, which is still in contention for this bid.
In fact of the three planes remaining, the F-18 was the cheapest. The only remaining planes are substantially more expensive.
Can you blame them? Boeing basically ruined ( or at least were the final nail in the coffin) Bombardier, a Canadian national champion that was pretty good at two things - rail and aviation. They were so close to having the chance of a sustained success with the C-Series, which could have been scaled up in a few years to be in competition with the 737 and A320 series. They could have broken the duopoly in civilian airliners!
And Boeing killed them with protectionism because they were afraid airlines were buying from Bombardier instead of their vastly inferior not even a competitor to the C-series due to being larger and more expensive to run 737. Which was later deemed illegal. And which drove Bombardier to the brink of bankruptcy and them giving the C-Series to Airbus for free. Airbus won, Boeing lost, customers and passengers lost. If i were the Canadian government, I'd have banned Boeing from even competing in any Canadian government procurement programme.
Before today, the planes remaining were:
F-18 - unit cost is somewhere around $70m
F-35 - unit cost is somewhere around $80m
Gripen - unit cost is somewhere around $85m
The plane rejected with this announcement is the first one, the F-18.
These are made by Boeing, Lockmart, and Saab respectively. This is Canada rejecting the oldest and cheapest plane of the three remaining.
I think some people are commenting here by just stating what they want to be true, rather than looking at what's actually happening.
Personally I'd rather the whole thing be scrubbed and they spend the $19b on something else. But for now, it looks like they're going to either spend billions on F-35s, or even more expensive Saab Gripens (unless they go with a very old model cheaper Gripen, but I dunno if that'll happen).
>During the design process, great priority was placed on facilitating and minimizing aircraft maintenance; in addition to a maintenance-friendly layout, many subsystems and components require little or no maintenance at all. [...] According to Saab, the Gripen provides "50% lower operating costs than its best competitor".
>A 2012 Jane's Aerospace and Defense Consulting study compared the operational costs of a number of modern combat aircraft, concluding that Gripen had the lowest cost per flight hour (CPFH) when fuel used, pre-flight preparation and repair, and scheduled airfield-level maintenance together with associated personnel costs were combined. The Gripen had an estimated CPFH of US$4,700 whereas the next lowest, the F-16 Block 40/50, had a 49% higher CPFH at $7,000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Usability_a...
I'll admit I don't know all the ins and outs here, but I do know that "unit cost" is not the same as "final price tag".
and F-35 is probably around $30k/h
