By akademiotoelektronik, 04/04/2023

The F-35: a lame duck unfit for flight | JDM

Canada is about to award the largest military contract in its history to replace our 40-year-old fleet of CF-18 interceptors. The contract award is expected next year, with the first devices starting to be delivered in 2025.

Ottawa wants to buy 88 planes for 15 to 19 billion Canadian dollars. But the total cost for the full life cycle of the device could be four times that sum, or more than $77 billion. Ottawa is evaluating proposals from Lockheed Martin (F-35 Lightning II), Boeing (F/A-18E/F Super Hornet) and Sweden's Saab (Gripen E).

The plane that Ottawa seems to favor, the F-35, is a lame duck, a flying turkey, an albatross. Over the past few months, the accumulation of problems with the F-35 program confirms that after twenty years of development, this Jet is a pathetic failure.

Many expert reports claim that the F-35 will never be able to meet the high expectations placed on it. There are even reports that senior members of the US Air Force are beginning to lose faith in the device. Thus, the engine of the plane is experiencing problems that could immobilize 43% of the American fleet of F-35s - or about 800 planes - by 2030.

The Pentagon is solely to blame for the disaster. He wanted the airframe of the same aircraft to be able to take off vertically and stop mid-air while having the capability of stealth supersonic flight. And also to land on aircraft carriers. Impossible mission.

For Justin Trudeau, choosing the F-35 would be a denial. He declared during the 2015 election campaign that he would abandon the purchase of F-35 planes if he became prime minister. But withdrawing from the F-35 program would cost Canada $313 million. In 2006, Ottawa pledged $551 million for the project.

Let’s hope Canada doesn’t opt ​​for the F-35. Here's why.

Ottawa's decision to purchase F-35s would demonstrate its intention to have the capability to engage militarily alongside Americans anywhere in the world.

The United States expects Canada, like its other allies, to acquire F-35s, which offer full software and hardware compatibility with American aviation, making our aviation the auxiliary air force the United States.

These planes are not necessary for the defense of Canada. The F-35 is not an aircraft intended to ensure the air defense of our territory. It's not an interceptor, it's an attack aircraft. Its stealth technology is designed to give it a decisive advantage in first-strike missions in the initial phase of a war.

We don't need F-35s, unless we want to join in the American war adventures of the coming decades, when Washington will fight the inevitable rearguard battles of the world's declining empires.

What we need is a real interceptor to succeed the F-18 in its role of air defense of the territory. And we can still postpone for several years the choice of a device to do this. Canada has just acquired 25 used Australian F-18s to add to its CF-18 fleet. Excellent idea.

The American F-35s were already obsolete before they even made their first flight: the days of planes with pilots on board are numbered. The future of military aviation is on the side of robot planes, drones.

Why not see if we can make technological updates to keep our current CF-18s while we wait for the development of future interceptor drones?

But you are going to say that we then risk being technologically downgraded by our potential adversaries. The Russians, for example?

Their bombers, which have been patrolling our coasts for decades, are not about to be retired. Russia has decided to keep its old propeller-powered TU-95s in service until the 2040s, when they will be 100 years old. Our CF-18s would then be barely 60 years old!