Moonbox

They have 3 times the USA's population, thus it stands to reason that they'd come up with 3 times the number of engineers. If their per capita income is $3000, all that means is it's probably a heck of a lot cheaper to train them there than it is here. As I mentioned before, however, the top talent is being sucked away from India to North America and Europe anyways. The research costs are factored into the price of the plane genius. Anyone buying an American, European or Russian fighter is paying for the whole shebang -- research, materials, labour AND mark up. As far as I know it's state of the art and it's being manufactured solely in the USA. It's not an 'inferior' model in so much as it's a scaled-down and more efficiently designed aircraft. The F-22 was an over-engineered plane that cost tens of thousands worth of maintainance after every flight. The US military is designing and asking for 6th generation fighters as we speak. They're already designing man and unmanned replacements for the carrier-based F-18e for 2025-2030.

This is a really funny statistic. Did you know that India's population is around 3 times the size of the USAs, and nearly twice as high as the EU's? They're hiring cheaper Indian engineers. That speaks only of their lower wage expectations, not the quality of their engineering. If India or China had the expertise and knowledge their American or European counterparts had, they'd be building F-35's themselves. The fact that the Indians are coming to North America to work is rather telling as well. There's brain drain going on. We're taking their better engineers.

I'm not particularly pleased about it, but it would be interesting to find out what other leaders spent. As far as I can tell from the quote, he didn't say that. I'm almost certain he didn't say that and you confused the language. He said that as a PM it becomes a much bigger part of the picture than when you're in opposition. That's all. To be fair, he was never ever going to win the woman vote with his stance on abortion. You don't get the woman vote by bible-thumping. As for Quebec, he lost their vote on the funding of arts programs...ARTS PROGRAMS. I think that speaks much louder of the incompetence of the average Quebec voter than it does of the PM. To finish, I'm not defending him. He's not a great PM, but other than the spending I find your reasons for disliking him a little contentious.

They're still waaay behind the west though

While I'm neither an engineer nor a military man, I highly doubt we'll see the F-35 going for $60M each fully equipped. Either way, the fact that it's expected to be 4x as effective as current fighters and be stealthy I'd say we're going to be looking at reasonable costs.

I would looove a reference on that. The F-15 has a $30M price tag and the F-18E has one for $60M. I'm really not sure where a $35M price comes from....

From "what you can tell" is pretty limited technical expertise. Let's talk about what we 'know' though. First, the Ruskies/Indians are significantly behind in stealth, avionics and electronics/ECM technology. Second, they are significantly behind in terms of industrial and economical capacity and third, they're barely in the prototype stage. Any full production estimates pegging the plane before 2020 is pretty optimistic. Why would we trust what has generally been our continent's biggest strategic rival/enemy to provide us with weapons? Would it not make sense to trust our allies and neighbours (who've been technologically pre-eminent for decades) to provide us with the same equipment they've been using? I think so.

Bingo. Russia has been behind in technology for decades now and we don't have the same common interests as we do with the US. Add to that the fact that we share a continent with our neighbours ot the south and you have a pretty compelling set of reasons why we don't buy equipment from the Ruskies.

Yeah you would be. Capitalism is so evil.

I'd suspect that one of the main reasons he was prevented from coming was in fact the audience he would be speaking to. There are plenty of hateful Canadian, American and British bigots out there who say similar things, but we marginalize them and ostracize them from society. The fundamentalist Muslim community, however, seems to glorify these nuts and, what's worse, take instruction from them. Freedom of Speech is all fine and dandy, but I don't think it was meant be a tool to foment violence amongst a brainwashed religious extremity.

It will certainly be a more challenging and worthwhile role for her. At least now she'll have to actually do something other than play tea party.

US fighters have engaged in dog fights within my lifetime. I wouldn't say it's out of the question at all. Regardless, a lot of the capabilities of a good dogfighter are the the same capabilities required to evade and throw off AA missiles.

The man is a joke and a prime example of a rabid Muslim zealot.

I know the cons tried to get some reform in the banking industry, but as far as I know they weren't pushing us to drop the stiff requirements for default insurance.

Topaz you know absolutely nothing about the Canadian banking system. For years we were criticized for being too conservative etc etc and then lo and behold, the banks across the world start collapsing and Canada is sitting pretty. There are reasons for that, and none of them are the evil Harper conspiracy to keep the Canadian banks from collapsing.

The Chinese are going to LOVE us over the next few years and I doubt they think that way, no matter how much you want to see Harper fail.

The Arrow...right...obsolete before completion. Let's not get into that again.

It's a matter of trust. There is a code of conduct I'm sure CRA employees must follow, much like at a bank, where you don't act like an ass and access people's info without reason or authorization. When people break that trust, they should be summarily dismissed and criminally charged if the breach warrants it.

Is this another argument about fighters being obsolete because of nuclear weapons? If so you're missing the point entirely.

There are numerous fighter manufacturers in the US. The US military makes them compete for the best design. Once the best design is determined and you start production, that's the end of the competition. We're not talking about bartering for goats or anything here. We're talking about aircraft that take 10+ years to develop and will be in service for 30+ years. Your suspicion is pretty dumb then. The manufacturers live and die on the goodwill of the US military and its administration and any move like that would be like biting the hand that feeds you. The F-35 itself largely based on F-22 design anyways. As for all the eggs in one basket, it's called economies of scale. If you can get one fighter to do the job of 4 different designs, you save ass tons of money. Why don't you leave that up to the science geniuses who designed the plane and the years of testing they do on it?

Agreed. As soon as I see 'Zionist' or anti-Semitic labels get tossed around, the strength of any argument the speaker makes erodes into nothing. I know we don't generally agree on anything related to Israel Myata, but there ya have it...

As I said, if you deny it's happened I'd be happy to provide CENTURIES of examples. You can continue to close your eyes, plug your ears and scream loudly, but that doesn't mean it's not true. It's not like anyone would be in a worse position than before is it?? So why not try? With a signed treaty in hand, the Arab League would be able to literally FLAY the Israelis on moral grounds if the Israelis broke it. Only their own stupidity thus far has prevented Israel's enemies from embarrassing it into a settlement. Negotiations are pretty much never done from an equal position. Perhaps a little extra time in the real world will reveal that to you. My god man. Think about it. If the negotiations are seeking assurances that the hostilities you list above are ended, how can ending them be PRE requisites of the negotiations???? It doesn't even make sense. You can't have the objectives of the negotiations be the pre-requisites for the negotiations. That's the most bizarre logic I've ever seen here. That's not even something I can argue with. You're operating an a completely different magical plane of thinking.... No I would simply insist that if the other side wants Israel to stop the landgrab and return occupied lands, they'd have to negotiate with Israel a set of conditions upon which Israel would agree to do exactly that. It's not rocket science here man. The fact that the Arab League is willing to offer a peace proposal (a bad one but whatever) WHILE Israel continues its landgrab should stand as proof that the process CAN happen during ongoing hostilities.

Yeah I can see that working. If the Arab League proposed (and could enforce) something like this (without all the other conditions they've previously discussed) I'd be disappointed if the Israelis didn't accept it.

Clearly your advice isn't worth anything then because, like I already said, it's been done for thousands of years successfully all over the world. Hostile negotiations occur under the assumption that a signed treaty would be respected and witnessed by the whole world. The best part is that, particularly on the Arab side, they'd be giving up nothing but words. If Israel broke any treaty, it would be witnessed by all and Arab militants could denounce any concessions they made on the grounds of treaty violations, and go right back to launching rockets and threats. Capitulation generally involves terms imposed on the losing side and is associated with a surrender. The Arab side isn't surrendering. Negotiating often means both sides don't get everything they want. I didn't have an earlier interpretation. You made a claim and still haven't been able to reference it. Show us where the international community has indicated the pre-reqs for negotiation.

Unless you didn't type properly it almost seems like you said both sides are in the wrong and both sides perpetrate hostilities, in which case you're right and also we may be making progress here. Absolutely. Especially when we're not merely talking about 'words', but rather threats of violence from people and groups who have loooong history of ACTING on them. A respectable court of law would also punish an offender for those 'words' the same way it would for deprivation of property, since you cling so hard to 'law' in your arguments. International law has been your crutch all throughout this argument, but we all know how impotent and largely irrelevant it is. Keep clinging to it if you like, but since it won't be applied or enforced (on either side), it's pretty pointless. Yes. You absolutely can negotiate amidst hostilities. Most conflicts throughout history have been resolved in such a way. We have hundreds of years of history to show it can work. A lot of these peace settlements, in fact, were largely inequitable. The whole point of a negotiation is that both sides get something they want and end up (hopefully) better off than when they started. Fair enough, but read the terms of the proposal carefully and hopefully you'll see why they're simply impossible. The fact that it's non-negotiable according to the Arab League leaves some serious questions as to the intention of the proposal and in what sort of faith it was made. Wrong. If I have to I could probably go over hundreds of years of history throughout which what you say is impossible happened on a regular basis. Oh? Let's go over this again... That's exactly what you said. I asked for a citation of that and you just gave me a list of hundreds of UN resolutions. I'll even let you go on the 'illegal practice' part but I need to see a reference from you still on what the conditions are for serious peace talks, because I really think you're out to lunch there.