Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked for a review of Canada’s plan to purchase a fleet of F-35 fighter jets.
The deal with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. government is for 88 planes at a cost of about US$85 million each.
A spokesperson for Defence Minister Bill Blair said Carney has asked Blair to look into whether the F-35 contract is the best investment for Canada, or if there are better options.
“We need to do our homework given the changing environment, and make sure that the contract in its current form is in the best interests of Canadians and the Canadian Armed Forces,” Blair’s press secretary Laurent de Casanove said.
FUck yeah! Canada will vote with its dollar!
Heck yeah. Go Carney.
With love from Portugal. 🇵🇹🤝🇨🇦
Welcome to the carnival!
or
CARNAGE!
Seems stupid to buy defense resources from a country that could become hostile. Do any European companies have anything to offer? I get that GOS and a lot of resources are still probably going to come from the USA but right now, the less the better.
It also seems stupid to keep importing on a mass scale the culture, news, entertainment, media, and media platforms of a country that wants to invade Canada. Yet here we are.
I would be thrilled if all American social media was blocked 100%. Sweep the trolls back into their caves.
I’d love that too.
I mean to be fair this hostility is being perpetrated by one man and just in the past 2 months. Zero of those things would change in that short amount of time.
It began with one man then was instantly magnified by major news agencies (Fox, CNN) and by his millions of cultish sycophants who hang off his every word.
The Swedish Saab Gripen would be a good choice. It would include assembly and maintenance in Canada.
I read somewhere they operate with a licensed American engine, and that some European nations are trying to replace it with a non-American one… Yeah, it’s a development of an F-18 engine.
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Me personally? I’d love to say yes, but I’m a bit skint atm…could I get it on IOU?
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Tbf. The F35 owns the sky. The Typhoon wins in a dog fight, but the way the F35 operates it eliminates the threat long before the dog fight. I would love for a European fifth generation replacing the F35 tho’
Only if the F-35 is fully operational. $2 trillion later and the damn thing is still a maintenance pig.
Dogfights aren’t a thing anymore in modern aviation. There’s a reason it was barely considered in the procurement process that led to the F-35 acquisition. Sure hope other countries step up to the plate to build viable exportable alternatives to the F-35.
They said this before Vietnam and it was wrong. Ironically if truly stealth fighters with low radar and ir profiles were to engage each other in the air they would probably end up using guns primarily again as radar/ir guided missiles wouldn’t be reliable in this event.
Something we can train on and maintain within our borders please.
He’s keeping up decorum but yeah these jets are done. You can’t buy military equipment from an enemy and the jets would have to be serviced in the USA over their lifetime.
maybe don’t rely on fighter jets than can possibly be disabled remotely by someone talking about invading you
It always seemed strange that Canada would agree (how much arm twisting?) to buy a plane that won’t work well in our Arctic. We are committed to buying 16 jets but it would probably be better to buy the rest elsewhere or put our money into homegrown solutions. Maybe drones or other machines.
Excuse me sir, may I interest you in Gripen? Cold weather tested, fascist free, and oh so stylish. Book your test flight today!
Maybe we should be looking at what we need for city close quarters defenses and guerilla fighting.
If they do plan on invading, it will probably involve them coming from the North as well, and not just the South-- especially if they were to occupy Greenland first.
Messing with the military industrial complex is not the smartest move for Trump. All that will do is turn the military against him.
Lockheed Martin — ”We specialize in destroying the lives of brown people, come fly with us”
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Prime Minister Carney, I have several better solutions. Cancel the F-35 and examine the Saab JAS-39 Gripen, Dassault Rafael, or the Eurofighter Typhoon.
I’m glad you’re doing this, but ultimately sad because love is irrational and I love the F-35.
Gonna need a tariff…
For the $70 billion it would apparently cost in total to have these super fancy fighter jets, they could instead build a million new low-cost housing units and still have some money left over to work on inventing innovative air defence systems that aren’t so expensive…
6 months ago I would have agreed with you. Unfortunately now we have to focus on saving Canada.
They could also build a high speed rail from Toronto to Quebec, something the people could actually use.
You’re underestimating the size of $70 billion. It’s more like high-speed rail to every major city in the country.
Nah, $70 billion is about right, and that’s a conservative estimate. If it turns out anything like california high speed rail then it could definitely go into $100 billion territory.
Common law countries like the u.s., Canada and u.k. are really inefficient at building hsr due to property rights issues. California is still struggling to build its hsr even though it’s scope has been reduced, its budget keeps ballooning. Similarly, the hs2 project in England to connect London to Manchester has also been cut back to just Birmingham, and it’s also over budget ringing in £ 50 billion for just that section.
If this were china then yeah you could probably get a Vancouver to Quebec line for $70 billion, but the Canadian central government isnt that strong and would have to deal with a lot more regulations.
California is the textbook case of paying way to much for that sort of thing, isn’t it? It’s always the one they go to when they want to make a crazy inflated budget look reasonable by comparison. But yeah, I was seriously underestimating the cost anyway. Maybe we should just go with medium-speed rail.
