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

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] 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.