I thought it was being reviewed until after the CUSMA agreement was resigned, just to try and keep more options open. I however think those options are going to be gone now.
Can we just kill the fucking project already, please? The F-35 was a mistake from the beginning.
I hope it gets through to the higher ups of the Canadian military that the choice of hardware alternatives to the US is and has been more than just political.
It’s like Microsoft Office (now Slopilot) vs. Libre or any other FOSS office suite. Do you really want the “best” product if the USA can just take it away from you on a whim?
Libreoffice is 100x better than microslop office but people need to be shown the alternative. Sure MS is doing a good job pushing people into Linux but people still need to find out about it.
Canada is actively looking at potential alternatives to the U.S.-built F-35 stealth fighter and will hold conversations with rival aircraft makers, Defence Minister Bill Blair said late Friday, just hours after being reappointed to the post as part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new cabinet.
The remarks came one day after Portugal signalled it was planning to ditch its acquisition of the high-tech warplane.
The re-examination in this country is taking place amid the bruising political fight with the Trump administration over tariffs and threats from the American president to annex Canada by economic force.
There has been a groundswell of support among Canadians to kill the $19-billion purchase and find aircraft other than those manufactured and maintained in the United States.
It feels like going through with the F35 purchase is becoming politically untenable.
hard to justify buying weapons from a country threatening to invade you unless you’re Europe
Not to mention the possibility of a kill switch the can turn it all off and effectively make it useless for defence.
It’s not so much a kill switch as the F-35 being a hangar queen, needing a steady and constant supply of parts and software updates. That itself is a good reason to reconsider the purchase, though.
F-35 being a hangar queen
Hanger Queen was always my favourite ABBA song.
There is nothing this technologically advanced that the manufacturers cant brick or severely impair if pushed to do so (if not by remote command, then by support neglect), and you can be guaranteed the Americans know of remote vulnerabilities as well. Thats a given. We can 100% expect they would be tarmac bricks within weeks of the USA breaking hard from NATO or Canada.
Fyi, they could also brick nearly every modern large tractor in the country right at harvest season, and most of our street vehicles. All via standard remote update infrastructure.
Thats just the reality of modern tech. It would be the same with other options, but we should pick a country not threatening to annex us to buy from.
that is a Reddit rumor. there is no physcial “kill switch”, it’s a metaphor for dependence on US sold parts.
Anything we buy made in the US is an effective “kill switch”.
We should be abandoning it for the same reason the US navy abandoned the F35: it doesn’t fucking work.
I wish they’d just take that 19 billion and use it to make Crown Corps to kick start our industry. Of course, looks like they’ll just spend it on different toys for the military instead.
I wish they’d just take that 19 billion and use it to make Crown Corps to kick start our industry.
Then we vote PC and they shut it all down, again.
the wonders of liberal democracy
Part of the potential Saab deal for Gripens was to ramp up manufacturing in Canada. So at least there’s that.
Problem is we’ve already
given the $19B the USpaid for the first 16 jets and asking for a refund seems pointless with Cunty McCuntface in power.The $19M is a sunk cost.
If we have to throw that away to escape being locked into a lengthy contract with a nation who I had declared themselves to be opposed to us and our allies — that discarded money is well spent.
The $19M is a sunk cost.
All the biomedical research for all diseases, across Canada, for an entire generation. CAF PISSES money.
Yes $19M is a lot of money, but to use your terminology this is money that has already been pissed. The economic term for this is “sunk cost” — we aren’t getting those dollars back no matter what we choose.
It’s important to not let sunk costs influence our best course of action is going forward, but this is a challenge because people can get emotionally attached and massively overspend just to avoid feeling like the relatively smaller amount was wasted.
So is the better choice spending billions on F-35s and being locked into a forever contract with a country that is opposed to our interests? Or do we write off $19M and do something else? My vote is the something else.
