Been out of the loop for a while. sympathies to the family and all the crew at thundercity.

Again Haavarla, the one ignoring the advice of the defense department and Air Force is the Trudeau gov…..and you (who apparently cannot read links),

The sad part is that your trying to frame this as some sort of F-35 zealots ignoring the “true” needs of Canada. Reality, the Trudeau government is ignoring what the military is saying, and your defending it because your some sort of odd anti-F-35 zealot. Please spare us any more self-righteous, uninformed rants until you have some clue what you are talking about.

The sad one in all of this so far is you FBW. Haarvarla makes good points, but you are some sort of “F-35 Vigilante” and cant seem to get your head around some fairly obvious facts to those not blinded by F-35 fervour, and attack any sort of anti F-35 points of view as if we insulted a close family member.

Trudeau is to me a left wing POS, and an absolute social justice warrior type blinded to the bleeding obvious, and I view his election as more motivated by a desire to be rid of Stephen Harper more than the Canadian people endorsing Trudeau and the radical views he holds on man levels.

However, if you objectively view the legacy hornet fleet world wide, you come to a different conclusion than “this is just anti F-35 Trudeau rhetoric”. The USN/USMC are regenerating a large number of legacy hornets that had been affected by sequestration. This has taken up a lot of the worldwide spares holdings, and pushed up the lifetime cost of maintaining fleets for the foreseeable future for other Hornet users.

The Kuwaiti F/A-18E/F buy was rushed through suddenly by all accounts, and the RAAF said at the recent international fighter convention in London that it is looking at buying 16 F/A-18E’s and 2 F/A-18F’s to re-equip 75 Squadron at RAAF Tindal, due to quicker than expected use of the fatigue life(possibly due to increased operational tempos in the middle east, possibly due to age).

When you combine this with the sudden Canadian announcement, you may start to see a pattern. Maybe the jets cant get past 2025 without a LOT of expense, and effort, so much so that Super Hornet buys make sense? That by retiring the 18 oldest jets, the RCAF and RAAF could cannibalise them to support the other jets for longer? That several nations buying at once helps get the airframe price down, AND keep the cost of their use down because they use most of the same infrastructure that the users already own from their legacy jets? No new missiles/bombs to buy keeps the cost down as well.

Boeing has previously said they could wind production up to 28 jets per year within 6 months if there was sufficient demand, and with 54 jets already confirmed with the USN and Kuwaiti buys, any RCAF and RAAF buy could push that up to 90 if not more if Trump keeps to his commitment to buy another 24 for the USN… meaning RCAF could see their first jets in 2018/2019.

And that doesn’t speak to other possibilities either. The Trump transition team is looking at restarting the F-22 line to build 200 jets for the USAF, and to subsidise that by offering the F-22 to close allies. Given Australia, Israel, Japan and Canada have all said before that they would rather the F-22 over the F-35, so the RCAF may decide F-35 isn’t the best jet for them after all!

On top of the differences in how they wanted the jet design, France would of also have been responsible solely for integration of nuclear weapons to Eurofighter, would of still had to fund integration of French weapons to Eurofighter, France was the only one looking for a CATOBAR capable aircraft at the time so would of been responsible for the cost of navalising the airframe, would of had to share manufacturing… Its a good thing Rafale came about, uncompromised.

I have never agreed much with Nicolas10, but he is right in this instance! Several factors are being over looked- while F-35 flyaway may be less than Rafale (I seriously doubt it, but lets run with it), the difference is the infrastructure behind the F-35 needed is cost prohibitive! Right now you can buy an F-15, F-16, F-18, Rafale or Eurofighter, and store them straight away on most existing base infrastructure and hangars. with F-35, even the RAF and RAAF are being forced to level existing hangars and build from ground up massive new hangars, to meet “sensitive technology standards”. Plus the LO coatings needing constant fixing, ****** all warload with out externally stores… Its pure fantasy! Its also sad to see more F-35 bullcrap fill up an otherwise brilliant thread. You can polish a turd, but only Lockheed Martin call it a JSF and sell it for $120 million a jet!

BACK to the actual thread topic-
The recent election result is going to bring significant changes to the USAF and US aircraft manufacturing. Already being costed is 48 more F/A-18E’s, 72 new F-15’s to replace the oldest airframes, 48 F-16’s, advancing KC-46A production by 2 years, a version of the P-8A modified to do the E-8 JSTARS mission, the possible replacement of the E-3 aircraft with new build E-7’s, accelerated C-130H replacement with C-130J’s… even evaluation of restarting F-22 production and offering it for export to a few select customer (Australia, Israel and Japan and South Korea spring to mind)…

Given all these ideas being thrown around by the new administration, what would you prioritise, and what would you discard? While a lot of these are suggested partly to kickstart US manufacturing, the $1 trillion over 10 years will enable a lot of options to be considered.

No it cant be invoked because a) there are limits of lat and long and the Falklands lies out side these, also the treaty was drawn up in such a way as to avoid dragging the US into colonial wars.

This isn’t a colonial war though! The islanders have decided their own fate! Britain is there just to maintain the islanders desire for freedom! wake up to it!

Do you have any military experience or knowledge?

To any country surrounded by so much ocean, a naval capability like the frigates is one of the biggest things to keep!

Otherwise NZ really will become Australia’s second military reserve force.

I think a brand new run of B-1s, using modern materials and processes would be a good replacement for the B-52, with the new bomber replacing the B-2…

no need to go all crazy tech for a long range bomber with a long loiter time over a mild to benign air environment. modernised B-1 would fit the bill nicely