Yea what the hell, Liberals claim they would back out of the F35 deal and hold an open competition for bids. What a waste of time!

its not a waste of time. you get ur money's worth. look up mmrca deal india is putting together. spending $10 billion, along with that they have offset clause which dictates that %50 of $ spent would be reinvested in india plus TOT. that means half of the $ will be reinvested in india by any company that wins the contract (meaning jobs/industry for canada, and future as a parts supplier). On top of the full tot and that they can modify source code if needed.

if u do readup on canada f-35 purchase they dont have any thing setup like that. on top of that no full tot. no source code .


Harper said the cost of the program will be xy to canada, where as pentagon has said due to costs overrun/inflation/parts it will be yz.

From MMRCA bid: source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_MRCA_competition
dont you remember when air canada bought planes from airbus rather than going thru full transparent competition for bids.

Don't laugh.

It's just as likely you could have a NDP PM as a Liberal PM. And if the Con's largely Anti Liberal Campaign has it's intended effect Layton will end up opposition leader.

While here in BC they're not particularly strong, there's sections of the country that are pissed at the Cons and don't trust the Liberals so may flip to NDP. (That said it's still most likely we'll end up with a Con minority again).

Layton, while some of his policies seem scattered actually is not a dumb guy as politicians go. He's the only party leader that actively goes looking for votes from traditionally non voting demographics and can regularly be found involved with the much needed student/youth vote as well as pandering to the blue collar and low income voter who are increasingly feeling alienated by the Libs and the Cons.

I personally would not want to see the NDP leading the country but don't underestimate Layton's political prowess. He's making very calculated moves and if you look at cost vs gain in terms of votes, very smart ones.

india is also developing a 5th generation fighter with russia the Sukhoi/HAL FGFA. They obviously wont be holding a compprtitive bid whe the time comes to purchase that.

At the end of the day there is only one 5th gen fighter jet available to canada which is the f35 and a competition would be completely redundant and a waste of time and money.

for amount of air combat canadian air forces see, i dont see the need to get F-35. but i guess thats a whole different argument. canada is needed in manily for more logistical support type of role.

last combat missions were flown in 1991 iraq, and now in libiya. u dont spend money on a prized stallion if u dont plan to have him race often..

meanwhile rest of the military/navy is using 1970-80 equipment.

I wouldn't call the F-35 a prized stallion... it's more of a workhorse (F-16 equivalent) than anything else.

I agree in that the F-35 is the only viable option (politically speaking) for Canada - F-22 definitely overkill and not being exported, the Eurofighter unlikely to be purchased and also pretty much overkill, the Rafale falls under the same problems as the Eurofighter...

^ eurofighter/rafale overkill? when they cost less than F-35... lol


[URL="http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20110330/harper-disputed-fighter-jet-estimates-110330/20110330?s_name=election2011"]

Actually - the last combat missions for the RCAF was in Kosovo - which wasn't that long ago (12 years ago).

And I'm tired of that excuse. The Canadian Forces - the RCAF is not meant to be a logistical support force. We're not there just to support other countries in times of conflict.

The military is undergoing an overhaul anyways. The Army has received "new" tanks, not sure about the Navy though.

Canada did 10% of all air strikes in the Balkans in the late 90's, totaling 588 bombing missions. One of the reasons behind the purchase of the F35 is our growing reputation as a military world leader, not in size but in quality. We want to continue this trend and participate in more NATO and UN Security Council missions such as we are in Libya right now.

working in the healthcare industry and seeing the cuts to services,,, i rather have that money go to projects in canada.

kosovo -12 years ago and now libya. I STAND CORRECTED, and thanks for making my point.


military world leader ? pulling out of afghanistan when the job is half complete?

We can't live in a shell and only think of ourselves. Every country is connected through the world economy.

Look at Libya, and how much gas has gone up because of the conflict there. That drives all prices up here, from transportation, to food.

Having worked closely with the military for a number of years, I can tell you that they've received cuts as well.

what happened in somalia? rwanda ? when u want to police the world, u cant be selective, maybe we should go into quatar, saudi arabia aswell.

prices went up again when US/NATO intervened. they were sliding back down after Gadafi took back control of some key towns.

and PS> i did serve in the reserves for 2 years ;)

what happens when russia stakes a claim to the canadian arctic and we dont have any way of muscling them out?

If we are paying about $70 million for F-35... that is indeed less than what Rafale/Eurofighter flyaway cost is. These are all quoted from Wikipedia. Who knows what the true cost of the F-35 is? I can't believe that it will cost $150 million.

Eurofighter:
Rafale:

do u really think F-35 would be able to muscle Russia??? :whistle:
for arctic we need navy subs/destoryers, not airforce.

and PS. US ,supplier of the F-35 is also laying claim to canadian arctic.


that said, this is going way off topic.

simply flying fighters over the arctic to escort out russian planes in canadian airspace which we have continually done for years, is muscling them out.

The service life of this plane is going to be about 40 YEARS like 2050s and who knows whats gonna happen then, Canada could be fighting all kinds of wars by then.

By then my future kids or even grandkids could be fighting china or russia or fucking aliens for all i konw and I sure as hell would want them to have the best jets not the slightly cheaper and shittier ones we cheaped out on 40 years ago.

Maybe tool001 would feel better if Chengdu put a bid for us to buy the J20s. I bet you they will sell it super cheap!
http://www.creativecrash.com/system/...jpg?1294114481

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...xon?CMP=twt_gu

harper canadian nixon (think watergate)

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/p...rom-media?bn=1

harper 5 questions a day lol

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Ste...394/story.html

harper refuses to explain limits on media questions

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226030310248

I like this line

don't be fooled guys! Don't make the same mistake the USA did with bush.

"But the economy is good"