Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked for a review of Canada’s plan to purchase a fleet of F-35 fighter jets.
www.ctvnews.ca
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So I've been looking into this more over the last week, especially as more concrete statements about what the US can and can't do to the planes after delivery have come out this week.
I think a reasonable outcome here is to accept that we're stuck with the first 16 planes (my understanding is that we've already paid for them, not that we're just legally committed to buying them. Money has already changed hands I believe) and those are set to be delivered in 2028.
I think that cancelling the rest of the purchase and going with the Rafale is the way to go. It leaves us with a limited 5th gen backbone if anything comes up where we need a stealth platform, but a very good 4.5th gen to handle the majority of the heavy lifting. That contract should be 60-70 planes, and split between existing units that can be delivered soon so that we can start phasing out the old F-18's asap, and new units we would likely receive in 2029-2030.
The 'kill switch' issue with the F35 is more of a mix of limited capability & longer term forced obsolence issue apparently than a brick switch. The US has certain network access capabilities built into them that require ongoing support from the US and that they can turn off. This diminishes some of the capability of the aircraft, but doesn't brick it, alter it's ability to function as an aircraft, etc. It's kind of like having an android smartphone but google cancelling your gmail account and access to any google apps you're using on it. Your phone isn't bricked, you can just do less with it than you could before.
I've seen the long term issues explained similarly. If the Americans choose to lock you out of software updates you're stuck run the same firmware forever and slowly attrit capability vs potential threats. So it would be like owning an iphone 15, frozen in time with software from it's launch, in a world where your competitors might have the iphone 30.
With where we are now, there's no sense in not taking delivery of what's already paid for, but also no sense in paying for any more of them.