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You are here: Home / Science and Tech / Final Total for F-35?

Final Total for F-35?

01/31/2011 by backofthebook.ca 6 Comments

f35 by Eric Pettifor

When buying an SLR camera, the price of the unit is not the entire cost. Will you need additional lenses? Tripod? Camera case/bag? Filters? Additional media? Apparently it’s the same thing when buying fighter jets.

You can’t just buy 65 F-35 fighter jets and think that’s the end of it, especially if your excuse is to defend the arctic from the Russians and the runways up north are all too short for the F-35. You’ve got to also budget for either extending those runways, or customizing the jets with drag parachutes.

Then there’s the issue of being able to fuel the jets in mid-air. You have to budget for tanker planes, or else adaptation of existing planes to serve that function, as was recently done in order to refuel the current F-18 jet fighters.

The Liberals have vowed to scrap the deal based purely on the originally estimated price of nine billion, though a recent article in the Ottawa Citizen cites the figure as currently between 16 and 21 billion dollars.

Personally, I’d like to see the Canadian Armed Forces equipped with the latest and best kit to fulfil their missions, but, as with a camera purchase, you have to total the cost of everything, all the extras and bits and pieces. If the figure is more than you can afford, then you either don’t make the purchase, or you figure out where cuts can be made.

Could we defend the arctic against the Russians with 30 F-35s? The Americans are purchasing 2,443 of them, so maybe they could loan us some in the event those evil Russians finally come over the pole as they’ve threatened throughout this long Cold War. (Wait a sec, didn’t the Cold War end some time ago?)

Or perhaps we could think more in terms of land-based defence, say polar bear operated laser installations. Yes, that would be expensive, but you can get a lot for one billion dollars, never mind 21 billion. Plus I prefer a sci-fi element over the old Cold War movie the Conservatives are still playing. If Ignatieff has his way and we suddenly find ourselves fighting off a Klingon invasion with antiquated F-18s and no polar bear operated laser cannons, it will be too late for regrets.

Filed Under: Science and Tech Tagged With: Canada, Canadian military, Canadian politics, Conservatives

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Comments

  1. Andy T says

    08/09/2011 at 2:29 pm

    Please pay attention to the price of weapons that will kill pepple. Do we really nedd them at the inflated price Boeing will charge? NO, we don’t,

    For Christ’s sake think instead of the student debt canacelation and health care this will provide.

    Come on Canada put down the f’n arms and hug your neighbour…….

  2. airborne says

    02/01/2011 at 8:27 pm

    Being a pilot, I’ve got to agree with alloycowboy’s comment about the media’s inability to intelligently comment on this issue. Of course, this doesn’t mean that folks should be barred from talking about the subject, but it seems that each day some media outlet has latched on to some new, crazy technical drawback that they’re sure will outright sink the project.

    It’s getting a little tiring hearing how f-35’s flux capacitor’s simply aren’t up to snuff.

  3. alloycowboy says

    02/01/2011 at 3:39 pm

    No offence but with the F-35 a lot of people are talking about issues way beyond their scope of competency. If you not an aeronautical engineered or a fighter pilot you really don’t understand what you are talking about. Being an aeronautical engineer some of statements I have seen coming from the media about the F-35 have absurd to totally ridiculous. What makes things worse is the Liberal party is playing on people ignorance about the F-35 and trying to twist the facts about the airplane.

  4. Cory Ulmer says

    02/01/2011 at 2:48 pm

    Eric, the cost overruns and problems are mainly with the F-35B’s, which are the STVOL version for the US Marines and Royal Navy. The other versions (ie the ones we’ll be purchasing) are fine, and the cost climb won’t be nearly as much as much of the media is claiming.

  5. Eric Palmer says

    01/31/2011 at 10:33 pm

    “The Americans are purchasing 2,443 of them”.

    No they aren’t. That is complete procurement fantasy from years ago paraded as gospel. It will never be that many. With the cost climb and problems, the U.S. will be lucky to see a few hundred before it is cancelled.

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