Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked for a review of Canada’s plan to purchase a fleet of F-35 fighter jets.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked for a review of Canada’s plan to purchase a fleet of F-35 fighter jets.

The deal with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. government is for 88 planes at a cost of about US$85 million each.

A spokesperson for Defence Minister Bill Blair said Carney has asked Blair to look into whether the F-35 contract is the best investment for Canada, or if there are better options.

“We need to do our homework given the changing environment, and make sure that the contract in its current form is in the best interests of Canadians and the Canadian Armed Forces,” Blair’s press secretary Laurent de Casanove said.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
    0·
    12 hours ago

    F-35 is the most advanced aircraft currently available

    in west, but it may also be too advanced as root cause of its reliability and maintenance cost problems.

    sunk enough money into the program to pay for the first 16

    should demand refund for those 16.

    apparently Gripen’s aren’t that much cheaper.

    $85m vs $109m is a fair bit cheaper. Again, the maintenance costs and flight readiness metrics matter significantly.

    There are software systems that depend on the US, apparently ALIS/ODIN, plus the MDF file updates.

    We don’t need to focus on whether there is a “mid air kill switch or not”, when we know there is a “make this a paper weight switch”. Naive or disingenuous of you to say “if Lockheed finds a kill switch, they would surely patch it out”