[Zipperfish]

There's enough expertise in Canada for us to develop our own jets. Enough of relying on the US all the time to care of our military needs. We could be developing our own R&D and military technology industries up here, and it would be keeping a lot of high-powered minds here in Canada.

[EyeBrock]

Nice idea Zip but countries with massive military industries such as the UK, German, Italy etc have had to club together to develop decent combat aircraft.

Canada would have to spend an inordinate amount of money in order to build a competitive product. I really don't think it's a feasible prospect.

[Zipperfish]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

Nice idea Zip but countries with massive military industries such as the UK, German, Italy etc have had to club together to develop decent combat aircraft.

Canada would have to spend an inordinate amount of money in order to build a competitive product. I really don't think it's a feasible prospect.

Well, we've done it before (the Arrow), until spineless jellyfish Diefenbaker folded like a cheap tent. It's all about will. We shouldn't be relying utterly on a foreign power for our military capability.

[OldChum]

I do agree with part of what you say it is time for Canada to develop more of its own things . This buying from America is getting tiring, we should develop our own industries for some of these procurements , maybe not jet fighters but the engines for them or the electronics whatever .

[ASLplease]

I don't understand why this is news.

Even with the F-18 program, most UN nations have not been equiped with the complete set of information to maintain there planes. If someone like Sweden owns a fleet of F-18 jets, they have replacement parts, but their repairs go back to the US.

In the case of the CF-18 Canada is one of the few, perhaps the only country, that was provided with full details on how to repair their own jets. Even then, they are not allowed to do repairs for other countries.

There is rumor that this may change because the US, frankly, finds it a nusance to repair other people's problems. They may grant canada the clearance to take on this work, which would be good news for quite a few civilian workers that are already doing the repairs for the canadian jets.

[BeaverFever]

The difference here is that the article states this software is key to MAINTAINING the aircraft. The analogy to Microsoft is not not accurate. A more accurate analogy would be buying a computer from Dell and not being able to upgrade your browser install your own programs or do routine system maintenance without bringing it in to the Dell shop and using only the products they authorize you to use. Its unprecedented and unfair.

As for Canadian Defence industry, its not really cost feasible for us to produce our own product. The only way defence development for major items is feasible is if you can produce large volumes of that product, which almost always means export markets, especially for smaller countries like Canada. Unfortunately, the military export market is highly politicized and competitive, with the current and former world powers dominating much of the market due to the influence those countries wield in global affairs. Canadas track record on big ticket items like the Arrow is not very good; even when we field a great piece of kit, other countries just dont see the political advantage in buying Canadian when they can buy from the US, UK or France and leverage that into political favour with those countries.

Canada does best in components and subsystmes like radars, electronics, engines, simulators, etc that we either sell to foreign militaries as an after-market upgrade or to foreign manufacturers like Boeing as integrated equip for one of their major products.

[HyperionTheEvil]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

Seems like a prudent security measure to me.

Canada hasn't exactly top of the class on screening who it gives citizenship to or how we police our borders.
Now we have 'security specialists' spilling their unsupported beans on how bad our guys are in Afghanistan. We are hardly rock solid on internal security.

And this is a software key, if we need to upgrade we go back to the contractor.

Another anti-American storm in a tea cup.

This isn't Anti-american, this is the US intentionally pissing of it's allies. If the US doesnt trust us fine, they can keep thier jets and we'll send our money to someone else

[EyeBrock]

Hype, as others have said; this is defence procurement as usual and this 'story' has been pushed as a negative on us getting the JSF.

Defence contractors worldwide have to take in their own national security interests when they export weapons.

This is not a new concept and the only people getting pissed off about this are the ersatz patriots in the media et al who see their measure of patriotism directly proportional to the amount of anti-US rhetoric they can spout.

[commanderkai]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

The difference here is that the article states this software is key to MAINTAINING the aircraft.

Which means what, exactly? Maintenance of a software program, once again, goes through patches, like in any other software system. The developer of the software keeps fixing its software through patches and bug fixes, and only tolerates modifications as long as it still uses the original coding of the game itself.

$1:

The analogy to Microsoft is not not accurate. A more accurate analogy would be buying a computer from Dell and not being able to upgrade your browser install your own programs or do routine system maintenance without bringing it in to the Dell shop and using only the products they authorize you to use. Its unprecedented and unfair.

Wrong. Totally off analogy. You're buying an Apple computer with Apple software, and now you're upset that you can't change the operating system of your Apple computer to fix or upgrade said software to what you want that operating system to be. That more accurately describes the situation.

Once again. The Canadian government expected this. The Canadian government, and its military, does not see this as an issue. Who sees this as an issue? People who are grumpy we are too reliant on the Americans for whatever. It's tiring.

[ASLplease]

The US fighter jets aren't Open Source. quit yer bitchin.

[EyeBrock]

ASLplease ASLplease:

The US fighter jets aren't Open Source. quit yer bitchin.

Come on ASL, isn't everything the Yanks' fault?

[BeaverFever]

So what if we want to use our Canadian made CRV7 rockets on the JSF, or some other Canadian made radar and avionics? Right now thats common practice in militaries around the world to customize their own fleet of aircraft. Canadian CF18s are unuque from US CF18s for example. Under this provision, we might not be able to do that.

If this is just business as usual as you suggest, why is Americas "staunch ally" Britain, creating such a furor over it?

And so what if the Canadian govt agreed to it? Are you talking about the Liberal govt that couldnt give a flying fart about the military, or the Conservative govt, which never saw an American dick it didnt want to suck?

[commanderkai]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

So what if we want to use our Canadian made CRV7 rockets on the JSF, or some other Canadian made radar and avionics? Right now thats common practice in militaries around the world to customize their own fleet of aircraft. Canadian CF18s are unuque from US CF18s for example. Under this provision, we might not be able to do that.

If this is just business as usual as you suggest, why is Americas "staunch ally" Britain, creating such a furor over it?

And so what if the Canadian govt agreed to it? Are you talking about the Liberal govt that couldnt give a flying fart about the military, or the Conservative govt, which never saw an American dick it didnt want to suck?

*Sighs* We were able to do this for the CF-18, right? Probably. Once again, the "operating system", or the basic computer components or code of the fighter aircraft will be closed for us. It did not say that we'd be stuck equipping only US equipment. Adding new hardware or weapon systems seems doable, we'd just have to use the "operating system" for the fighter.

Also, Britain, which is an ally of the US, no matter how much you suggest otherwise with quotes, seemed to be satisfied with their part.

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,1 ... tories.RSS

That furor you mentioned is either being suppressed by Google or you have information I don't.

Another article, I found, states that the Netherlands had problems because of seemingly anti-American or a protectionist party within their coalition government, and the Italians who are pissed by a military contract that was canceled.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -pressures

It also states Britain is still going good with the deal, and that's a more recent article than the last one.

[bootlegga]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

Nice idea Zip but countries with massive military industries such as the UK, German, Italy etc have had to club together to develop decent combat aircraft.

Canada would have to spend an inordinate amount of money in order to build a competitive product. I really don't think it's a feasible prospect.

Well, we've done it before (the Arrow), until spineless jellyfish Diefenbaker folded like a cheap tent. It's all about will. We shouldn't be relying utterly on a foreign power for our military capability.

The problem with developing a jet fighter is that you needs dozens of companies helping to produce the thing (just like car companies have dozens of suppliers for parts), as no one company can do it all and be competitive on the world market. If we had one company that was a world beater in say jet engines, aerial weapons or even avionics, it might be doable, but that's not the case.

The Arrow was built in a time when Canada still had a large (at least compared to now) and independent aerospace industry. Today, many of the companies in the Canadian aerospace industry are just subsidiaries of larger European and American defence contractors, and even then are much smaller than companies like A.V Roe was back in the 50s.

No, building a fighter jet for our own use is out of the question, unless you are willing to let the federal government spend, oh say, $20 billion or so in the next decade to do so (stealth ain't cheap). If you want built in Canada weapons, engines or any other major systems, tack on $5-10 billion per system. And that's just to build some prototypes. Production would be over and above that. That mens either the other services get nothing, we go into an even bigger deficit, or we raise taxes.

No, if Canada wants to build it's own weapons systems, we should focus on the doable, like building our own ships (and maybe a missile or two to arm them, so we can export the design like other countries do), APCs, infantry weapons and other smaller, more affordable systems.

What I would love to see is Canada become a leader in the UAV field, as UAVs will conceivably replace manned aircraft in the next few decades, simply because UAVs/planes can now be built that can exceed human tolerances. Building some long range patrol types for the Arctic could be a start, with armed fighter UAVs for aerial combat afterwards. They need not be autonomous, and could be armed with a variety of off the shelf weapons (like our own CRV7 rockets).

[EyeBrock]

I like it Boots. Going after the UAV market is totally attainable and realistic. We have the infrastructure to do this. Bombardier and CAE could totally hack this.

You know, you regularly come up with good defence/procurement ideas. I'm impressed again.