The word out of the Pentagon is that the stupid Canadians actually want to buy four Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning fighters. And when the Americans stop laughing, they will probably be happy to fill the order. While our new government next year would certainly want to cancel such a silly order, the cancellation charges would provide serious help to the Americans with their national debt.
But what the hell would we do with four aircraft? And remember these are stealth attack fighters. We could not find a country small enough to attack that all we needed was four fighters to control the skies. And only Stephen Harper is of the opinion that we would only go to war along with our friends the Americans. What is our percentage in that?
What a four-aircraft order really means is that we are committing to another 60 or so if and when they are ever really stealthy or live up to their other promised performance capabilities. It is the Harper government’s way of suckering the voters before next year’s elections. Every Conservative candidate in next year’s election is going to need a very thick book of how to present all the lies this government is creating for itself.
Do the politicians realize that training, maintenance and ground support equipment for just four aircraft could more than double the cost of the aircraft?
But the first question when it comes to the Lockheed Martin fighter is why does Canada need stealth aircraft to patrol its own borders? And then, we might ask, why does Canada need a single-engine plane that cannot traverse our northern coastline without in-flight refuelling? And why would we endanger our pilots in a single engine plane that has so far to go between our military airports?
The fact is the American fighter is being promoted by the Americans so that America’s allies will have fewer problems going to war as just additional squadrons of American attack aircraft. They want us to join their American Flying Club. It has nothing to do with their allies’ aircraft requirements.
And here we foolishly thought the deal was dead. After months free of sales pitches and BS for the purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning (II), we thought the Harper government had finally read the writing in our snows.
But now we need to find a use for these four orphan aircraft. We can hardly bronze them. They can be used to scare hell out of the cows grazing around our military air fields. They might be a big hit at air shows.
Or maybe, we can bring back the Avro CF-105 Arrow. Now that was an aircraft Canadians cared about!
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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