ooh no, it might provoke the person who is back stabbing us at every conceivable opportunity
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
Canada should cancel the F-35 contract and their are better fighter jets from reliable NATO allies. The F-35 is a $2 trillion USD turd that is still not 100%. If Canada continues to purchase US weapons, this would be like Poland buying weapons from Nazi Germany. I am hoping the US MIC becomes pissed off.
2 trillion is a fuckload of drones!
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.
Any NATO member increasing their military spending would be idiotic to spend their money with US-based companies.
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. :/
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.
I don’t think Canada should be basing their defense decisions on the opinion and thin skin of the American government. Trying to force Canada, in any way, to purchase F35’s is fishy - not that that’s happening, of course.
Canada’s interests are for Canada. Not them. Also, maybe Canada should reboot their ventures into the Avro Arrow program again. That’ll ruffle some feathers. Canadian engineered military = quite formidable, I think.
Canadian engineered military = quite formidable, I think.
Here’s the bad news. It’s not. Sure, we’re good at peacekeeping, and we deploy to support (militarily) our allies. But we’re using US gear and we’re woefully underfunded because war budget has been declared a waste by even the parties who strut and posture about a strong military. We only needed to fulfill our NATO obligations, for decades, and even that has been a struggle we haven’t won consistently with the low budget.
And while we’re skilled enough and gung-ho, and our 1st Pioneers are about the most scary bunch of lumberjack commandos you’ll ever see, there’s just so few of them, and again their gear has been called old and out of repair by every administration campaigning because the last one never did a thing about it.
We’re gonna need a lot of funding and training and gear to make up the shortfall in people and powpow toys, and that’s a slice of gov pork that Milhouse is gonna latch onto knowing that he doesn’t need an army once he gives the country over. Justin doesn’t want to spend that, but he - and please God let it be Mark next - is really gonna have to.
But how do we sell it to the “hair guy bad” flatlanders steeped in 12 years of hating Justin for not being a pseudo-aristocratic milquetoast conservative?
What would they do instead? Get a bunch of J-35s, like Egypt?
Dassault makes jets…
I’m confused.
That’s not a poem.I was assured that Sprog bestows awesome poems upon the masses.
I don’t think I can anymore.
I don’t blame you, man. We live in unhappy times, it’s no place for happy rhymes.
That’s sad but I understand.
You brought joy to a lot of people but it must have been a ton of work.
J35 or the new Turkish planes. Or develop their own plane.
Fighter planes are very expensive to develop.
The F-35 program cost something around $1.7 trillion. That’s several times the annual GDP of Canada. A better bet would be to enter some joint development program with partners in the EU.
That is not several times Canada’s GDP. Maybe you meant many many times Canada’s annual military expenditure.
Regardless 1.7 trillion Is a lot of money
Join GCAP (Global Combat Air Program) or FCAS (Future Coma=bat Air System). They are both multi-country projects to develop next gen fighter jets. Off the top of my head, GCAP is UK, Japan and Italy where FCAS is Germany, France, and… I’d have to look it up, and I’m feeling a bit lazy.
Assuming there is no schedule slippage, they won’t deliver aircraft until 2035 and 2040 respectively though, so we would still need a stop gap. I’m partial to Gripen, and Sweden has flirted with joing GCAP as well, so that might be a good way to reivigorate Canadian aerospace, in cooperation with the other GCAP countries and Sweden.
Typhoon/EF2000/Rafale. Not stealthy, but still a superb multi role aircraft.
(Yes, I know Rafale is technically not the same aircraft, but it sprang from the same initial plans, so it’s pretty close)
#buyeuropean, I guess
From what I understand, those are fine if you’re going up against enemies that don’t have stealth (and all the ancillary technologies that go with it).
The general military analysis is that the F-35 and J-35 are superior to anything else in the air and are similar in capabilities to each other. Conflicts between them will come down to who can make more of them faster. Conflicts between one of them and an older generation fighter seems to be, they’ll blow you up before you can see them.
EU better get cracking and start making stealth planes.
That’s assuming stealth stays effective much longer.
Stealth planes can already be detected, it’s a matter of doing it fast enough and small enough to work in a missile.
Probably be some laid off government contractors soon with stealth expertise.
Tempest and FCAS are supposed to be coming.
Bring back the avro arrow. Let’s do it.
With a potential for an american invasion on the table, I wouldn’t want to cancel that deal without another similar plane deal lined up
If they were serious about invasions they wouldn’t deliver. We’re better off with Gripens IMO but she’s an even more expensive option.
the potential for an invasion is precisely the reason you don’t want the f-35 around. that warbird is the most technologically dependent device ever crafted for warfare. it is deeply vulnerable to an adversary with the knowledge simply bricking it remotely and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think the us military wouldn’t brick all of them. the better plan is to train with prior gen jets and asymmetric combat using drones.
Put the funds from that cancellation toward a contract with Ukraine for advanced drone technology and the capacity to manufacture it domestically.
Russian drones are better. Fiber optics overcome all radio jamming. Destroys all the things. Ukraine does not have excess production. Canada peace with Russia means that NORAD is us protecting the US, instead of allowing their BS that they are protecting us. US should pay a lot for NORAD.
that doesn’t really make sense given that the situation is that the US and Russia are aligned and Canada is not aligned with them. if Canada were aligned, the F-35s wouldn’t be a concern at all
Don’t forget the Gripen. There’s a great offer for domestic production still on the table, and it’s the asymmetric stall-an-invasion fighter.
I don’t think an invasion could realistically happen. 1. Need congress to authorize a war that would impact U.S. soil and 2. need the military which isn’t under trumps thumb
But making sure they have another deal is smart, probably delay the f-35, and get maybe the euro fighter or so. Solid planes and itd be horrible for U.S. to lose a military contract in NA to an EU. Get the military industrial conplex pissed at trump.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the President has a 30 day authority to use the military anywhere in the world. After 30 days he needs congressional authority. He can get a second 30 days while that’s going on and if Congress says no then he has to remove all troops within a final 30 day period.
If Congress never says anything then he effectively has a blank check.
Your best bet would actually be to run TV Ads trying to get the military to refuse the order. I think a large percentage actually would. I also think he’s going to invade Mexico first and if he does invade Canada he’ll do it like the Russians did Ukraine. (They told their troops it was a training mission and then only told them at the border that it was real)
There’s a hell of a lot of “Congress has to authorize” that’s being blatantly ignored right now.
Immediate cancel. After attitude readjustment, accept bids from Lockheed and others.
While I do not believe the US will actually invade Canada, I don’t imagine the F35 would be much help in that situation. I am sure there are remote access capabilities to cease their operation, at the very least.
You have to enter a password to start up the F35. That password changes every day and USA needs to give these passwords. Locking a country out of the plane is as simple as stop sending the new passwords.
Hmm, opinions on the internet on if that’s true are mixed at best. It’s a level of control I’d be shocked anyone would accept. Someone on Quora is saying most countries weren’t even happy Lockheed Martin manages the supply chain and maintenance software.
While I do not believe the US will actually invade Canada
Until a few weeks ago I did not believe the US would impose tariffs on Canada or call it the “51st state,” so…
The tariff go around happened last time, which is how we ended up with the NAFTA replacement. The “51st state” nonsense was projected previously, which is more about his ego and his belief that he has a lot of support in Canada.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
Nah, y’all should accept delivery then refuse to pay. Give him a taste of his own medicine.
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.
A Trump never pays his debts
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The critical tradeoff is not F35 or a worse plane. The critical tradeoff is American or not.
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.
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.
They buy F35 because the US is the premier supplier of arms for NATO bar none.
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.
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.
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).
We shouldn’t have caved back in the Arrow days.
The US can remotely disable them whenever they damn well please anyway, and can not be trusted not to.
Everyone should be canceling their orders immediately, and disable the remote access capabilities to the ones they have.
Nobody should have ever purchased military equipment with that feature.
Has it actually been confirmed they can do this? I would assume they backdoor them, but usually backdoors are secret.
They require software updates for every mission, that are distributed from the US.
You can probably fly / use it without those, but you lose all the advanced command & control features
Let me guess… microsoft designed it.
« You need to take off RIGHT NOW! » « I can’t . Upgrade in progress ! »
Post on TechHelp:
"I keep hearing the missile connecting and disconnecting.
Has anyone got the latest driver for a Sidewinder AIM-9L?"
“It’s military-grade”
Some high ranking US intelligence dude said something along the lines of that yeah. I dont think anyone has hacked into one of them to check or reverse engineer the code tho.
It’s several millions of lines of code, and it gets a lot harder to follow once compiled, so that would be a big project.
They don’t function without phoning home to a US-controlled server every 24 hours.
Well shit that’s an easy fix. Redirect it to your server.
You have the private keys?
I’m willing to bet a country, especially ones involved in the production, aren’t going to have too much trouble.
Give is to Empress, she’ll knock out a crack in no time.
Razor 1911
We keep telling them Always online is stupid, but do they listen?
