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I would actually say go ahead with the limited purchase. Then use the F-35 as aggressor aircraft in training that way we know how to fight them.
Doesn't the US hold some software keys?
I know what he’s talking about: not against American pilots, but as make-believe American pilots.
Which is a good idea, but not perfect: American pilots will have noticeably different behaviours and tactics, and even personality types that are (generally) not found up here. While training against other Canadians in an F-35 is great, it’s not as good as training against Americans in an F-35.
But that’s the trick - how do we get America, using F-35 aircraft, to help us to train up our Gripen pilots?
And when our original order of 88 or so F-35 planes could, if completely cancelled and on a per-dollar basis, buy 420 Gripens straight from Europe, how do we get America to unknowingly train up so many Gripen pilots?
No, I mean I think the US can remote disable the plane
Whoosh
Sorry, I am missing it I guess?
It doesn't matter if you only use them in training. At worst you can't train, but it doesn't stop you from responding to an actual military situation.
Pretty expensive training cost for the benefit.
Especially since, as Ukraine has shown, buying swarms of little drones can make expensive airplanes like the F-35 a non-factor.
I'm not Canadian, but as someone who doesn't like the US military, I'd advise you to cancel your contracts with the US, and buy lots of drones from China and Turkey, while you ramp up your local capacity to build them. Let the Americans choke on their own military contractor welfare.
I’m not sure that’s a confirmed thing but Trump did make the threat last year, so 🤷
They aren't proving they can't because they refuse to give us the code. We have to assume they can.
No.
I agree Trump and the ambassador to the US do help the public in supporting not going with the F-35 but calling it a potential phyrric victory because of the Gripens is too much
A phyrric victory is one where the costs have exceeded the benefits that have accrued through victory.
Make no mistake, we would never be able to win in a modern conflict against America. Even if we dropped the entire original order of 80 F-35 aircraft, and used that money to buy 420 Gripen straight from Europe (ignoring domestic production and the lack of skilled fighter pilots, here), we would still lose any kind of air superiority push by America.
But (again, assuming sufficient well-trained pilots) we would definitely f**k up America’s ability to project air superiority by a massive amount. I would even call it a strategic disembowelling of America’s air power.
Just like hunting boar with a spear, the hunter risks the boar being so enraged that, despite being lethally wounded, it still force-impales itself the rest of the way up the spear to get at and kill the hunter.
The point of the Gripen isn’t to win against America. That is impossible.
The point of the Gripen is to have the majority or entirety of the Canadian Air Force beyond America’s ability to remotely restrict operations or shut down completely, such that the pain of any invasion dramatically exceeds any rewards and could even be a lasting semi-lethal blow to their domestic air capabilities as a whole.
Full on invasion is not the only risk. What if we wanted to support allies in protecting Greenland? What if we wanted to conduct an operation elsewhere in the world that the US disagrees with?
It is not impossible to believe the US oppose NATO from defending a county against Russia. That is the enemy the Gripens were specifically designed to fight.
Then volume is the tactic we need to work with.
Keep in mind that if we were to cancel the entire order of 88 F-35 aircraft, and use that money on Gripens, we would be able to purchase about 420 of them from Europe. That is before any cost savings of building them domestically, this is full sticker price.
Then also consider that quality of tools has never won a war: quantity has.
WWII - on both fronts - has demonstrated this superbly. Sure the Tiger was an exceptional tank, and was virtually unbeatable by a Sherman. The Germans knew how to build a quality machine that was years ahead of anything that America could put out. In fact, it took about 8 Sherman tanks - operating in concert - to take out a German Tiger; distracting it until a shot could be taken against one of its vanishingly rare vulnerable spots at exceedingly close range. And the number of combat-ready Shermans by the end of that skirmish was usually 1 or 0.
But when America had manufacturing capacity to pump out Shermans by the tens of thousands, it didn’t take very long before 10, 20, or even more Shermans started trundling over the ridgeline for every Tiger the Germans fielded.
At that point, despite the clear technological superiority of the Tiger, it was simply overwhelmed.
Almost every modern combat has had numbers win. Not quality, numbers. Especially among tech-similar forces. And the Gripen is the closest available aircraft to the F-35 in tech; certainly closer than the Sherman and Tiger were.
What would happen is a tenth of the US Air Force would obliterate the token squadron of Gripens and then the ground troops would finish encircling every major Canadian city after freely advancing across the 9-fucking thousand km border.
Buying an American plane that you can't keep flying is stupid, but pretending Gripens, a full generation behind in technology, will even contest the skies much less let Canada fight back is delusional corporate brain rot.
Canada needs an armed population willing to fight a guerilla war and the rest of NATO coming in hot, not a money sink that only exists to pad expense accounts and make politician peepees feel big.
What bullshit, they can't even keep them in the air. Massive cost overruns, budgets ballooning exponentially, capabilities advertised unavailable, 50% availability means while our enemies are blowing the shit out of us they are stuck in the hanger being paper-weights. Look it up yourself, they won't have advertised capability until 2035. They are also rusting on the tarmac, how will that work for stealth, lol. Fuck the F35 i'd rather have a fighter that can fly and perform as advertised. Look up all it's problems yourself, they are numerous.
The paper pointed out that the F-35A, the variant being purchased by Canada, achieved a full mission-capable rate of only 36 per cent in 2023.
Mind blowing.
Your numbers are based on unsourced claims from RT lol
But sure bro, just trust your one squadron of Gripens will totally defend Canadian airspace from the US Air Force 😝
And then you’d have a few million Canadians that look physically identical to Americans becoming insurgents fucking up canadian infrastructure making a Canadian invasion expensive and troublesome. We’d never go after them with guns blazing, that would be foolish, we’d just make it uncomfortable and very expensive to be here.
America couldn’t win wars against 3rd world countries with a thousandth the resources of Canada and a visibly different demographic. What makes you think they’d be any more successful here?
Brilliant.
Heh if you haven't, read Turtledoves Southern Victory series. It winds up with a Canadian insurgency with exactly those problems
I sometimes point to the F35 sales as an example of what it means to be an America ally, as China would never sell this level of weaponry to anybody.
It is amazing how fast Trump is dismantling the partnerships that helped maintain peace.
You get planes that can't fly in the rain at an insane price?
Yes, because even though America made a shitty fighter jet, it is their best fighter jet, and likely better than your fighter jet(when working), and they will sell it to you because they believe non-Americans can be allies.
China will never ally themselves with anybody else at that level. They are an ethnostate that purges minorities and redraws the borders to capture land from their “allies” like clockwork.
Quip if you must, but know the next hegemon in line will barely tolerate you as a vassal.
Your “friend” is threatening you. To invade your airspace and also…they don’t need anything from you.
What a bunch of moronic bullies.
Enough is enough, let them fall on their own sword. Canada can do without a friend like that.
Nuclear Weapons Now
You’d need to be a total fool to believe this would have any positive outcome.
Nuclear weapons for all or none.
Ya know who HASN'T been invaded any time in the past fifty years? North Korea. Wanna guess why?
There’s literally nothing there worth fighting over. Like zero value whatsoever.
It's negative value, because you'd have tons of poor refugees. And it would cost massive billions to rebuild.
They’re sitting on $20 trillion in rare earth minerals and prior to NK demonstrating nuclear capability the US was ratcheting up their sabre rattling.
There is every reason to have nuclear weapons.
Rare earth minerals aren’t terribly rare. China has lots And they’re way easier to deal with than NK.
The US isn’t forward thinking enough to worry about it. But if they had oil…. The felon understands oil.
You're doing the lord's work!