Canada

Fuck yeah! Canada will vote with its dollar!

Heck yeah. Go Carney.

With love from Portugal. 🇵🇹🤝🇨🇦

Seems stupid to buy defense resources from a country that could become hostile. Do any European companies have anything to offer? I get that GOS and a lot of resources are still probably going to come from the USA but right now, the less the better.

Can I interest you in a Eurofighter Typhoon?

There was the "kill switch" rumour recently that trump (any president) can remotely disable any/all f35s they wanted to

It's probably not true, but the truth is just as disasterous for foreign buyers.

A shutdown of parts out of US does essentially the same and is much easier to do on a whim and withhold the solution in negotiations.

People weren't just buying US because "we're the best" it's because we could be relied on for support, because no one fucksnwith the US military industrial complex

trump is tho, and that's a hell of a lot more dangerous for a politician than pissing off day traders

Canada could do the funniest thing rn by buying J-35s at half the price.

Something we can train on and maintain within our borders please.

He's keeping up decorum but yeah these jets are done. You can't buy military equipment from an enemy and the jets would have to be serviced in the USA over their lifetime.

maybe don't rely on fighter jets than can possibly be disabled remotely by someone talking about invading you

Messing with the military industrial complex is not the smartest move for Trump. All that will do is turn the military against him.

It always seemed strange that Canada would agree (how much arm twisting?) to buy a plane that won't work well in our Arctic. We are committed to buying 16 jets but it would probably be better to buy the rest elsewhere or put our money into homegrown solutions. Maybe drones or other machines.

Lockheed Martin — ”We specialize in destroying the lives of brown people, come fly with us”

For the $70 billion it would apparently cost in total to have these super fancy fighter jets, they could instead build a million new low-cost housing units and still have some money left over to work on inventing innovative air defence systems that aren't so expensive..

F-35 is the most advanced aircraft currently available. We've also already sunk enough money into the program to pay for the first 16 IIRC. This puts us in an awkward position, considering the possibility of degraded functionality of the F-35 without US assistance^1^.

One of the worst ways to balloon military spending without getting anything in return is to keep changing your mind and hanging procurement up in endless indecision. Combined with the money already spent, I think we have to stick with F-35 for at least a bit.

I like the Gripen, and I'd suggest a switching some of our 88 fighters to Gripen's, but apparently Gripen's aren't that much cheaper.

Long term though, I think Canada should get in on GCAP, the Global Combat Air Program. It's not expected to deliver until 2035 if everything sticks to plan, so we'd still need the F-35 or Gripens I was mentioning in the interim.

^1^ My understanding is that the "kill-switch" myth is pretty much that, a myth. There are software systems that depend on the US, apparently ALIS/ODIN, plus the MDF file updates. The possibility of a kill-switch can't be totally excluded IMO though, there is a lot of software in the F-35, and the US writes and patches it all. Even if there isn't a kill-switch, the US knows what vulnerabilities they are patching, and if any of them where exploitable, I'd imagine they'd know.