Derek 2.0

I'm being dishonest? The Government announced in 2007 that it would procure 6-8 vessels. This year it signed an incentive based contract with Irving shipbuilding to produce 6 vessels, the Royal Canadian Navy is expecting 6 vessels . Production on the first vessel has started, production on the second vessel will start next Spring/Summer etc. Said vessels with be a new capability for the RCN, that it did not have before, hence this Government has expanded the scope of the RCN. Unless you have information that states otherwise, that lends you this "insight", it is you that is being dishonest.

Without a doubt, the rumor is he wanted O'Reilly to toss him soft balls........which nobody gets.

"BHS" was never a funded program, and has been a concept in constant flux for over a decade, starting with the JSS program under the past Liberal government......... The AOR replacement, as JSS, started with a requirement of 4 vessels, once strategic sealift was divorced from the program, the requirement shrunk, alas, we are getting direct replacements for both AORs, in addition to the interim type through Davie (its retention, I would assume, would be determined after the Queenstons class is in service and its actual level of performance is known). AOPS is a new capability, hence not a reduction at all..........

An amount in constant flux, that is outside the annual operating budget.....a budget that the Government has provided an elevator to ensure the budget keeps up with inflation...........like I was saying.

Every annual budget, in any fiscal year, that the Government has purchased new big ticket items..........DND didn't return pop bottles and hold car washes to purchase the Chinooks, Leopard IIs or Globemasters........

So that is a no........hence unfounded claims, since, as mentioned, the final design (hence cost) of the program are not known........do they also pick sports scores and the lottery numbers?

Yes, I've stated as much in this thread..........this is the fault of the current Government how?

Yeah, like all major procurement programs in the past, that Governments budget for and in turn make funds available for said purchases, and then adjust annual budgets to account for operational costs.......

How many of your forum friends are involved directly in the program? I would assume none, as those that actually are and commenting on it without authorization are in violation of the National Defence Act.....

Could it be, like in the past, procurement is budgeted outside the annual defence budget???? I'm shocked!!!

What "foot dragging".........again, your claims are unfounded in reality.

Its intent was quite clear, the final design of the CSC hasn't yet been selected, hence calls that it is over budget or underfunded are unfounded in reality.

And Trump is now boycotting FNC This now, after his drop in the polls, should hopefully be a sign that the Donald is nearing the end of his successful trolling of the GOP establishment .......With now Perry and Walker gone (and I expect others to soon follow), the GOP will start to shift to the more realistic contenders....

As asked before, how would the Government have started the program earlier with a blank sheet, after nearly two decades of failure based inertia? You keep failing to mention that............ As to "patchwork solutions", you fault the Government for a series of accidents, and then fault them for addressing said accidents, with both short term and medium term solutions?

As has been gone over numerous times with you, the first JSS concept (not a design) was an unworkable solution, born in the 1990s and further complicated by the Liberal Government in 2004-2005 with the inclusion of a requirement for sealift and support of forces ashore.........I applaud the Government for not continuing with it, as does the RCN.

Bold statement, lacking both context and substance mind you...........by all means, explain how the current Government has failed the RCN.....

Good!!! Less Government the better!!! But, that doesn't answer your repeated, unfounded, gripping about the NSPS.

To refute and add context to the unfounded claim by CTV, from a leaked document years old, released during the election, "by chance", the same time Trudeau is announcing his policy platform for the navy.......

And DND's response to the tin-foil hattery in the media: In other words, to hit the panic button and cry over budget, before the actual design has been selected, is a fool's errand........

How has it been a waste? As I asked of you numerous times, by all means, explain how the National Ship Building Strategy could/should have been sped up? As said before, as a contrast, the British type 45 destroyer program for 12 ships (reduced to 6), in a nation with an established shipbuilding industry, began the program in the later 80s, in a partnership with France and Italy (both nations with their own shipbuilding industries), but didn't commission the first ship until 2009......... Verses our National Ship Building Strategy, which began in 2010, and will produce dozens of ships for both the navy and coast guard, and see the first vessels begin commissioning in Spring of 2017...........

No, I wouldn’t consider it American arm twisting, quite the opposite. The JSF program, started under Clinton, was a realization that not only the Americans, but many of their allies, could no longer afford to go it alone. Hence why the JSF is comprised of international partners (US, UK, the Dutch, Italians, Turks, Australians, Norwegians, Danes and Canada) all contributing varying levels in the aircraft’s design and development, in return, each nations aerospace industry receives a workshare based on initial investment. Canadian industry has already received (in terms of dollars) more than we invested in terms of work, with various Canadian companies already contracted to make portions of the aircraft for the entire production run, from engine parts produced in Quebec, to the drogue chute in Ontario, and portions of the wings and the flight training simulator made in British Columbia. Likewise, Canada will also likely house one of the international training centers for all the partner nations, similar to how we do flight training today and have in the past, hosted low level flight training for our NATO partners (the Geography of Canada shares a resemblance to that of Russia) The aircraft itself aside, the benefits to the Canadian aerospace and hi-tech industries couldn’t be matched by any other selection, as no other program has the possibility of growth as the F-35, based on production alone. Not really, as we’ve done it already and are looking to do it again to push the aircraft out to the mid-2020s (when the replacement is expected to be fully in service). It comes down to airframe fatigue on each individual aircraft, we’ve already retired some aircraft that are no longer fit for service, some will go in the next few years, and some could potentially still be air worthy once the new aircraft is in service…. Some of this is a reflection on luck, and some on how our air force uses aircraft. As an internal rule, some aircraft were used hard and put away wet (those typically used for training), some have been used moderately and some with little relative use, ensuring a portion of the fleet is always mission ready. For comparison sake, we purchased our Hornets the same time as the USN, USMC, Australians and Spanish. The USN has already retired their Hornets of similar vintage (The airframes don’t last as long in a maritime environment and landing on aircraft carriers), the Marines are retiring their oldest Hornets as we speak, replacing them with the F-35B. The RAAF will have replaced their Hornets, with the F-35A, by about the end of this decade and the Spanish (which have the newest of the oldest vintage Hornets) had bought additional Hornets in the later 90s and are slowly replacing their fleet with the Eurofighter. To answer your question, no, the Hornets won’t last much longer and our current fleet’s numbers will gradually be reduced in the coming years as aircraft are no longer air worthy…….this is but a reflection on high performance aircraft, the fly in a very stressful nature (to the aircraft), that only have a finite lifespan.

Well no, there isn't, as we can expect our Hornet replacement to be in service until the 2050-2060 time frame. Though the West currently has a generation+ on the Russians/Chineses, they won't remain stagnant. Purchasing a slightly cheaper F-16 or Super Hornet today won't offer any form of deterrence in the later 2020s and beyond......anymore than an aircraft from the Korean War era would today. That is a matter of foreign policy, inversely, we could very much so end-up in a war in the decades ahead that we won’t have a choice on. When we purchased our current Hornets in the early 80s we expected their intended use to be defending Canada from Soviet bombers and fighting on a nuclear battlefield amongst the ruins of once what was Western Europe…….no one then would have expected their usage as historic.

The Chinese are still incapable of designing their own military engines, relying still on Russian produced engines. Their latest domestic fighter uses Russian engines from the 70s/80s, engines that the West knows inside and out (Many of the Soviet’s former allies are now in NATO), as such are able to determine the aircraft’s performance based on its size and aerodynamic shape, coupled with the engines……. The Russians aren’t much better, but in fairness, their latest developments can be expected to be a least on par with current Western 4th and 4.5 generation aircraft.

The stories are exactly that, the test flights with the F-16 was used to calibrate the F-35 avionics and flight safety presets.........From what has been released in the public sphere, the F-35 will have similar performance to both the Hornet and F-16, the difference though, such specs are based on "air show" configuration, without fuel tanks and munitions hanging under the wings, which degrade performance drastically.......The F-35 can carry munitions and similar amounts of fuel internally, hence not effected by drag, hence not a reduction in performance.

The two most common causes of fighter aircraft losses, from engine failures, are fuel contamination and ingesting birds. Fuel contamination will effect a single or multi-engine type equally, likewise, we’ve lost twin engine Hornets (and Voodoos before that) to birds, where unlike a civilian airliner (with its engines under the wings), both single and twin engine fighters share common inlets (air intakes) and their engines are within in a near proximity within the airframe/fuselage……I don’t know if there has ever been an instance of a twin engine fighter surviving a bird strike that resulted in the loss of only one engine. And yes, the Danes do conduct sovereignty missions over Greenland with their F-16s, likewise, the United States Navy and USMC have used more single engine types in their history than twins. And I think the comparison to the F-16 is fair, as that is the primary aircraft the F-35A will replace. Despite the often repeated myth that we purchased the Hornet because of its 2 engines, the reason we didn’t purchase the cheaper F-16 (which at the time had its engines made in Quebec) was because the early versions didn’t have a radar capable of guiding the Sparrow medium range missile, which we needed for NORAD. Once the later F-16s did have an upgraded radar, the once cheap fighter became comparable in price as other fighters. The F-35A version will be a modern “cheap” aircraft purchased in the thousands, as the F-16 was before it. All modern types are considered multirole, absent air superiority types like the aging F-15 and the F-22 (or the Russian T-50), of course said types are nearly limited to only air-to-air missions, but would excel in the NORAD mission. Of course though, said types cost more than the F-35 (The newest version of the F-15, an aircraft in service since the early 70s, even costs more than the current price of the F-35), and would preclude us from NATO commitments that require a more multirole type. Very few air forces today can afford singular mission focused aircraft. The USMC, since WW II, have had no qualms with rejecting countless underperforming aircraft types (even during wartime), inversely have a reputation of taking aircraft panned by “experts” and restoring said aircraft’s “reputation”….From the F4u corsair, to the Phantom II as a CAS platform, the widow making Harrier and now the F-35B………If the Marines are jumping up and down over it there should be little concern. We initially (during the cold war) had a requirement for nearly 175- 200 fighters, to fulfill our commitments to NORAD, NATO (in Germany) and to reinforce Norway in case of a war with the Soviets. We ended up purchasing nearly a 140 Hornets (with options for another 30 IIRC) and filled the balance of our needs with the substandard CF-5 Freedom Fighter. From the early 60s to the present day, it was determined we would require ~50 aircraft at home for NORAD (plus spares and aircraft for training) and an equal number based in Germany. Once the Wall came down, we no longer needed the older Freedom Fighters, and the active Hornet numbers were also reduced to present levels. We currently have 48 operational Hornets, plus spares and trainers, with an F-35 buy, we’d have 48 operational F-35s, with spares and a reduced requirement for trainers, as F-35 training will be more reliant on technology (simulators) and joint international training in the United States (similar to how we operate today the NATO flight training center). With that said, sometime in the future, depending on aircraft losses, we might require a small attrition purchase of anywhere from ~5-10 aircraft (based on the loss rate of our current Hornets).