What's going on Canada?
π Meta
πΊοΈ Provinces / Territories
ποΈ Cities / Local Communities
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
π Sports
Hockey
Football (NFL): incomplete
Football (CFL): incomplete
Baseball
Basketball
Soccer
π» Schools / Universities
Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.
π΅ Finance, Shopping, Sales
π£οΈ Politics
π Social / Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca
As should europe. Clearly you can't trust the USA anymore. What is the long-term prospect for spare parts?
We should throw some cash at Saab and see if they can come up with a stealth gripen or something.
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.
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!
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.
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.
The gripen is more agile than the f35 and capable of austere landings. Arguably more important traits than the ability to carry American nukes.
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.
The PM agrees with The Globe and Mail once and now they think they'll get two in a row?
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
They donβt function without phoning home to a US-controlled server every 24 hours.
We keep telling them Always online is stupid, but do they listen?
Give is to Empress, sheβll knock out a crack in no time.
Razor 1911
100% TODAY! Do not pay a fucking dime of any amount owing for these. (good job on Globe and Mail for a change)
FYI, the Israeli version of F35 does not have this "US permission for every flight required"
F35 is a POS plane, with low uptime, in addition to "broken ownership". Even US military does not get manuals on how to repair/maintain them and must hire Lockheed consultants to do the job. The whole program was a boondoggle to pay Lockheed the most money possible instead of getting good military equipment, and any corrupt POS that was involved in approving this purchase for Canada should be jailed for treason.
There's nothing stopping Canada from getting the manuals and patching the software. Most of the FUD about it's performance abilities is propaganda. So getting them and just locking out Lockheed and the US would be a pretty good middle finger too.
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
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?
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.
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
ooh no, it might provoke the person who is back stabbing us at every conceivable opportunity