Fighter Jets

So an election is on and one of the big topics is fighter jet purchase to replace the aging CF-18s. Before we begin I want to express my personal view on "how many" planes that the Canadian Air Force should receive.

The CF-18 purchase under Trudeau was 138 planes. This was in addition another 100+ planes of another type. In the 1970s we had over 200 combat aircraft of various roles (interceptor, heavy fighter etc). Flash forward to today, and we've 80 CF-18s left. The current purchase on the table is from Harper who suggests that we should buy 65 F-35s (which by PBO estimate will be around 130 million a piece and including maintenance costs will total around 30 billion over the lifetime of the aircraft). So, basically the suggestion from Harper is that we should have even less planes than before. Does he also believe we should have one rifle for every two soldiers? Don't worry the rifle is really awesome.

I believe that Canada should at least maintain and airforce of 140 planes or more. Any less and we won't even have pilots for the next generation of soldiers.

Before we begin, these are the key easy points for what I believe should be done in order to secure the purchase of aircraft to replace our existing force.

• The Canadian Forces military analysts should be the ones who decide which planes are purchased. This includes the type and number of each. Certainly they should be allowed to choose more than one plane. I believe that we should not allow politicians to make this type of decision for the military.
• The government should be clear on how much money should be spent on new plane purchase and allow the military to decide the best way to spend this money. Alternatively, the military can suggest the optimum plane purchase for expected missions in the future (which is likely to be primarily peacekeeping)

So the choice is really down to how many planes we want and how much will it cost. Obviously, the more we can get per dollar the better. It is ridiculous to believe the F-35 is the only plane on the market. For someone like me, who is not a military analyst, I can mention this many planes offhand:

1. Boeing F-18 super hornet (at a cost of 55 million USD each)
2. Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (at a cost of at least 130 million USD each, estimate)
3. Dassault Rafale (at a cost of 80-90 million USD each)
4. Saab JAS 39 (40-61 million USD each)
5. Eurofighter Typhoon (90-125 million Euros each)
6. Mikoyan MiG-35 (???)
7. Sukhoi Su-33 (55 million USD each)

We probably won't buy the MiG or Su since they aren't from NATO countries but they're still planes that could be considered. I leave it up to military analysts to judge the risk/reward factors. (Or hey, we could buy the F-22, I hear we can get them second hand and they've never been in combat missions before!)

Let's not put ourselves into the same problem as the United States, stuck into spending billions into the black hole that is the JSF program that produced the F-35. We don't need to throw tens of billions down the drain needlessly. Let's get the best our military can get.