U.S. ambassador gives prime minister the cover he needs to cut Canada’s F-35 order (ca.news.yahoo.com)

submitted 1 day ago by rekabis@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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The F-35 is a poison pill for Canadian defence sovereignty against a hostile America. We cannot win against an invasion, but with the Gripen we can make it a phyrric victory for them.

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[-] k_rol@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I agree Trump and the ambassador to the US do help the public in supporting not going with the F-35 but calling it a potential phyrric victory because of the Gripens is too much

[-] rekabis@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A phyrric victory is one where the costs have exceeded the benefits that have accrued through victory.

Make no mistake, we would never be able to win in a modern conflict against America. Even if we dropped the entire original order of 80 F-35 aircraft, and used that money to buy 420 Gripen straight from Europe (ignoring domestic production and the lack of skilled fighter pilots, here), we would still lose any kind of air superiority push by America.

But (again, assuming sufficient well-trained pilots) we would definitely f**k up America’s ability to project air superiority by a massive amount. I would even call it a strategic disembowelling of America’s air power.

Just like hunting boar with a spear, the hunter risks the boar being so enraged that, despite being lethally wounded, it still force-impales itself the rest of the way up the spear to get at and kill the hunter.

The point of the Gripen isn’t to win against America. That is impossible.

The point of the Gripen is to have the majority or entirety of the Canadian Air Force beyond America’s ability to remotely restrict operations or shut down completely, such that the pain of any invasion dramatically exceeds any rewards and could even be a lasting semi-lethal blow to their domestic air capabilities as a whole.

[-] LeFantome@programming.dev 15 points 1 day ago

Full on invasion is not the only risk. What if we wanted to support allies in protecting Greenland? What if we wanted to conduct an operation elsewhere in the world that the US disagrees with?

It is not impossible to believe the US oppose NATO from defending a county against Russia. That is the enemy the Gripens were specifically designed to fight.

[-] rekabis@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Then volume is the tactic we need to work with.

Keep in mind that if we were to cancel the entire order of 88 F-35 aircraft, and use that money on Gripens, we would be able to purchase about 420 of them from Europe. That is before any cost savings of building them domestically, this is full sticker price.

Then also consider that quality of tools has never won a war: quantity has.

WWII - on both fronts - has demonstrated this superbly. Sure the Tiger was an exceptional tank, and was virtually unbeatable by a Sherman. The Germans knew how to build a quality machine that was years ahead of anything that America could put out. In fact, it took about 8 Sherman tanks - operating in concert - to take out a German Tiger; distracting it until a shot could be taken against one of its vanishingly rare vulnerable spots at exceedingly close range. And the number of combat-ready Shermans by the end of that skirmish was usually 1 or 0.

But when America had manufacturing capacity to pump out Shermans by the tens of thousands, it didn’t take very long before 10, 20, or even more Shermans started trundling over the ridgeline for every Tiger the Germans fielded.

At that point, despite the clear technological superiority of the Tiger, it was simply overwhelmed.

Almost every modern combat has had numbers win. Not quality, numbers. Especially among tech-similar forces. And the Gripen is the closest available aircraft to the F-35 in tech; certainly closer than the Sherman and Tiger were.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

What would happen is a tenth of the US Air Force would obliterate the token squadron of Gripens and then the ground troops would finish encircling every major Canadian city after freely advancing across the 9-fucking thousand km border.

Buying an American plane that you can't keep flying is stupid, but pretending Gripens, a full generation behind in technology, will even contest the skies much less let Canada fight back is delusional corporate brain rot.

Canada needs an armed population willing to fight a guerilla war and the rest of NATO coming in hot, not a money sink that only exists to pad expense accounts and make politician peepees feel big.

[-] FreeBooteR69@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago

What bullshit, they can't even keep them in the air. Massive cost overruns, budgets ballooning exponentially, capabilities advertised unavailable, 50% availability means while our enemies are blowing the shit out of us they are stuck in the hanger being paper-weights. Look it up yourself, they won't have advertised capability until 2035. They are also rusting on the tarmac, how will that work for stealth, lol. Fuck the F35 i'd rather have a fighter that can fly and perform as advertised. Look up all it's problems yourself, they are numerous.

[-] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

The paper pointed out that the F-35A, the variant being purchased by Canada, achieved a full mission-capable rate of only 36 per cent in 2023.

[-] FreeBooteR69@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Mind blowing.

[-] fourish@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

And then you’d have a few million Canadians that look physically identical to Americans becoming insurgents fucking up canadian infrastructure making a Canadian invasion expensive and troublesome. We’d never go after them with guns blazing, that would be foolish, we’d just make it uncomfortable and very expensive to be here.

America couldn’t win wars against 3rd world countries with a thousandth the resources of Canada and a visibly different demographic. What makes you think they’d be any more successful here?

Brilliant.