I am all in favour of having a strong military but I wonder whether the $25 billion Canada plans to spend on 65 F-35s is the best use of our money. That's $384 million each plane and $700 per Canadian and more per Canadian taxpayer. And the price will keep going up because other countries are starting to reduce the number they are buying. Now, even the Americans are questioning whether it's optimum. The F-35 is designed to be smarter than a likely enemy – but Canada has mostly been fighting terrorists and patrolling the arctic! What radar are we wanting to avoid? The F-35 range is also limited (around 1300km radius) and the radios don't work in the far north.
According to the Economist, American Admiral Jonathan Greenert, U.S. chief of naval operations, says that Military procurement is too focused on building ever-costlier new ships and aircraft of complex design, with built-in capabilities to meet specific threats. Instead of procurement being "platform-centric", he wants it to be "payload-centric": highly adaptable platforms able to carry weapons and sensors that can be added or removed, depending on the mission or on technological progress. Further, because it can take 15 years from inception to deployment, the technology in the latest plane is outclassed by the latest cellphone.
Instead of building a highly sophisticated plane that is mostly not needed – and in fact whose sophistication may never be needed – why not plan on planes that can attack from a distance – out of reach of any radar. They could launch cruise missiles or a fleet of drones! And instead of spending on stealth technology which may not work against a sophisticated foe, use electronic-warfare devices to confuse or jam the other side's sensors, rather than trying to hide from them.
I would think Canada needs transport planes, long range attack planes, surveillance planes, helicopters and a fleet of drones – not F-35s. From the money saved, buy a full sized icebreaker for arctic patrol.
In my opinion, we, the citizenry, too often and too easily behave as if we have most or all of the relevant information on any particular matter which involves government (all levels) policies, programmes, decisions, etc.. We rely on this assumption because we think, as a democratic value, we have the right to have it. Nonsense. However, I also think that we shouldn't necessarily have it in all cases. We do elect our representatives based on their character and presumed abilities to deal with governing and we do end up placing a lot of trust in them to do the best thing under all known circumstances, to some of which we the public are not privy. I hesitate to second guess decisions ratified by parliament because those voting have more information than I do. The single most problematic aspect of this is that nothing is or works perfectly.
None of this keeps me from wanting to know what's behind such decisions, like the F35 one. I do have to allow that there's more to this than the cost. I refuse to believe that the decision-makers are as "incompetent" or "incapable" as they are made to appear in cases such as this, so I ask myself what is involved here that we do not, could not or should not know. To me, that's the pivotal thing. I roll my eyes when I read comments on other blogs based on information that is little more than hearsay and newscasts, as if that's all they need to know to come to a definitive conclusion that the government and/or politicians are corrupt or inept and incapable of understanding the issue as well as they seem to think they do. Your comments above certainly do not fall into that category. If they did, I wouldn't bother with adding my own here.
Governing is largely about strategy in many arenas and that is not something to flaunt for all to see. Ultimately, I think there has to be more to this seemingly questionable course of action being pursued by the Defense experts and their political bosses —- but what might it be?