Thursday, July 2, 2020

Lockheed Martin's Flying Brick

The National Post’s partisan afterburners light up today with a column by David Krayden on the issue of a replacement fighter for Canada’s RCAF.

The former public relations man for the Royal Canadian Air Force makes some fair points -- pick a machine and let’s go, for example -- but he is wrong, I think, on what fighter should replace our aging CF-18s.

Mr Krayden notes:

“I was working at the House of Commons at the time for the Official Opposition defence critic, who thought the decision to participate in the development, and eventually, the procurement of the F-35, was a refreshing but rare moment of common-sense, non-political defence planning on the part of the government.”

With such a purchase, what is required is not “common-sense” but an “informed opinion”. What I sense is happening is the given government has suspicions about not only the F-35 program’s ridiculous financial costs and technical problems, but the performance specs and performance data -- including maintenance and support costs. Don’t look too closely.

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First posted as "The Lockheed Martin F-35 Is Not Common Sense" on October 3, 2018.


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