OzairThat small survey has completely disintegrated your claim from response #5114, let me quote: There is about 1% of the Canadian electorate that have any idea what the F-35 is and what the alternatives are. That is what matters..
First, my claim was in response to the alleged political nature of the F-35 in Canada.
Second, I freely concede more people in Canada know what the F-35 is. I intentionally used about for a reason, it is vague as I did not have exact numbers.
Third, that doesn’t make the claim that the F-35 is a political issue of great importance in Canada any more valid. The links I posted clearly show that the F-35 was a non issue in the election and remains a non issue except to a very small minority, certainly not a top 3 issue for the election as KGB claimed, not even a top 10 and as my last link demonstrates it is essentially background noise in a country which has far greater social issues to concern themselves with.
Fourth, if we actually examine the small study we find some oddities. Look at the numbers… 75% are aware of the jet, that is all the study tells us. It does not tell us whether they are in favour of the acquisition or not. What it does say is of those 75%, which is 1124 of the 1499 surveyed, 86% are older and 84% are males which should be no surprise. 81% are in a very high income bracket. This is a surprise to have 81% of respondents of those aware, so 910 essentially older males out of 1499 in such a high income bracket. This link http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/wealthiest-1-earn-10-times-more-than-average-canadian-1.1703017 tells us that less than 10% of Canadians fall into that income bracket. They are primarily conservative, again approx 910 of those 1124 who are aware and 85% of the aware, 955 people, are very well educated. Lastly and most interesting, 85% of people aware are from Alberta so at least 955 of the 1499 surveyed reside there but Alberta makes up less than 11% of the total Canadian population. Do you know where one to only two permanent Canadian Fighter jet bases is located? Yes at Cold Lake Alberta…
So we have a study that apparently represents all of Canada, but actually appears to have sampled likely more than 2/3 of its respondents from Alberta where the only one of two Canadian fighter jet bases are located. It surveyed mostly conservative, highly educated older males who are so rich they fall into the top 10% income bracket.
The survey clearly does not represent a view of Canada in total but a very small segment of the population with most probably located in a small geographic area full of rich, old, well educated males…
Edit: These numbers make no sense. I have downloaded the study data and none of the percentages they provide match with the sampled data…
OzairWhen did Australia ordered 16 planes. Australia procurement is now very slow.
I was mistaken, numbers are 14 and 58 for a total of 72 initial F-35A.
Ozairface saving mode much ? 86% of male Canadians know about the F 35 that’s a far cry from the claims that were made. Im done with this one. People can decide.
People are deciding by not caring. You have posted a couple of cartoons and one small survey, as well as claiming the F-35 was a major issue in the 2015 election. That is simply not the case as I have proven.
Ozairhttp://poll.forumresearch.com/post/1397/most-dont-think-we-need-stealth-jets/
And yet this is such an issue in Canadian politics your souce site has only conducted one poll on F-35 which is the one you referenced. Not one has been conducted by them before or since…
OzairWrong. You are simply wrong. The F 35 was a top 3 issue for the previous federal govt, the election and this govt. The cartoons prove it. The cartoons depict defense ministers from a decade ago.
Top Canadian Political issues expected for 2016.
Economy
Syria Conflict
Climate Change
Indigenous relations
Marijuana
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/top-5-political-issues-2016-1.3374822
Top ten issues of the 2015 election. No mention of F-35
Top 10 issues of the Trudeau Government i 2016 – F-35 is not there.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ten-challenges-facing-trudeau-s-government-in-2016-1.2715854
Canadian issues tracking site that receives responses on issues in Canada – F-35 is not there, the only military one is about spending, which has 3515 votes compared to the the million votes for Bill C-51, the economy, native funding, environmental regulation, government surveillance, immigration, prescription drugs to name a few. More people care about LGBT rights, the citizen test, The united Nations, Gender workplace diversity, women in combat and offshore banking…
https://canada.isidewith.com/polls/popular
OzairBecause more than one person incorrectly said that Canadians don’t know or care about the F 35. Reality is, its probably the easiest scandal to identify in Canadian federal politics. The cartoons are some evidence of that. Which is why I posted them. This is the F 35 thread.
Because some newspapers shows cartoons of the F-35 in the political sections of their papers frankly means little. The F-35 issue is a non issue to Canadians. Again, if it was such an issue, why are Canadians not protesting in the streets at Trudeau now allowing the F-35 back into the open competition, directly against his campaign promise.
OzairThat is a fantasy. My mom lives in Canada. I visit her. She has the AM radio going with the news channel on and all I hear about is the F 35 sometimes. For hours. YOu simply have no idea how big of a topic it is.
Mate, I lived in Canada for many years and continue to follow Canadian politics. Whether your mother lives there or not means nothing. Sintra backed up my point, the number of Canadians who actually have any idea about the F-35, or any fighter jet in Canadian service, is minuscule.
OzairCanada… Australia… Trumpland ?
Do you actually follow the program? Canada has again paid their dues to be part of the industrial program and has stated that the F-35 will be part of the open competition held in a few years, despite the Liberals promising during the election it wouldn’t.
Australia has already ordered 16 jets and it committed for an initial total of 75, with the next 25 to be decided by 2025.
When you say Trumpland I assume you mean the US and in that case why does the US need to improve credibility of the jet when it is literally now ordering it by the hundreds…
All of them.. wikileaks has taught us what amount of political pressure the US sometimes need to exercise in order to push the F-35 orders through.. See Korea and their famous retired generals whining to save the day for Lockheed.. A plane consistently better than anything else, fully working, reliable, with good reputation, 4th gen level operating cost, and only $10mil more expensive than SH would not need ANY lobbying to get sales..
I asked for names, all of them are who? Who has an active competition to replace their current fighter fleet with a new jet and believes the F-35 lacks credibility?
Hmmm, the US just see no need to deploy a dedicated striker for strikes… but what do they do instead? Right, they send the ultimate air superiority machine, the F-22, to perform night-time strikes on the IS in Iraq 🙂
There is no logical reason to send it. There are already plenty of aircraft in the AO more than capable of handling the low intensity conflict. There is no rule that all new aircraft need to be deployed to an AO after IOC.
OzairF35 need credibility and the only area it could get credibility is in Irak. For a strange reason, Despite having IOC since for 1 year and a half…
Can you name an Air Force with the potential to acquire F-35 that thinks it needs credibility? Unless you’re talking about internet fans, in which case why would LM or the USAF/USMC care what they think?
US still consider this area is too dangerous for the F35.
That could be it but the far far far more likely scenario, given the US has already tested the airframe against higher threats and Red and Green flags…, is that the US sees no need to move the aircraft into Syria/Iraq. They have plenty of aircraft there already flying from established bases with supply chains and superbly trained crews. The USAF plans to operate the F-35 till 2070, they have plenty of time to deploy it to many different operations over the next 60 odd years.
Ozairwhat are you talking about man ? The F 35 is as political as it gets. Trudau was voted in to cancel the F 35. Imagine he backs off of that and then the next day, one gets shot out of the sky in Syria ?
There is about 1% of the Canadian electorate that have any idea what the F-35 is and what the alternatives are. The election of the Liberals had nothing to do with Trudeau’s stand point on the F-35.
Evidence of that can be demonstrated in Trudeau already backing down from the promise to not allow the F-35 into an open competition. The subsequent scrapping of the election promise to have an open competition. Instead he is going to sole source an interim aircraft in the SH, directly against his statements that sole sourcing the F-35 by the Conservatives was a flawed decision. The question is, are there Canadians protesting in the streets because Trudeau has now allowed the F-35 back in? Is there a ground swell of social media response?
Reality is few in Canada understand what is happening and even fewer care about the fighter jet acquisition.
OzairYawn… What should I again back up? Your invented nonsense? I could not have said that lobbying has resulted in the DoD putting the F-35 into combat zone because the F-35 obviously never took part in combat.. :rolleyes: It wouldn’t make much sense to claim it then, would it?
So when you said this…
Don’t be naieve, the F-35 desperately needs some good PR.. I have never seen an aircraft with such totally fxcked up reputation.. this is not about MSphere, it’s about LockMart.. they surely wouldn’t miss a chance to demonstrate the F-35 to its potential customers if there was anything to demonstrate at this point..
You directly indicate that LM had the ability to influence the Pentagon to deploy the F-35 into Syria for the purpose of providing good PR.
You then backed it up after both Vnomad and I called BS on your claim with this…
No logic fail.. LM has control over much more than you think.. The sheer amount of interlinking between LM and Pentagon by hiring all possible ex-military advisers, contractors and lobbyists is enormous. Getting an overweight, overpriced and delayed lemon like the F-35 into service with all three branches was a gigantic task, compared to that, lobbying for potential combat deployment surely is within their possibilities..
You stated they were capable of doing it.
I then asked you to provide any previous credible example of where it has happened before, at which point you again backed away from providing any evidence.
Subsequently you then claim that LM has so much money that they can lobby to get anything done and provide for your source a claim LM spent 10 million dollars in 2016 on lobbying. 10 million dollars…
But what is astounding most of all is that you have gone back and edited a post to add a source document.
Quite on the contrary, this is exactly what those nations want to see.. less bullsh!t and excited pilot reports and more cold hard evidence..
Yes, I seriously believe that.. and not only me, so does W.D.Hartung in his book Prophets Of War.. the one which you’re never gonna read because it just doesn’t fit your little bubble.. US allow anything what can be paid. and there is no defense company in the world having more money to spend on lobbying than LockMart..
That link most certainly wasn’t there, nor the reference to the book, and explains your last rather smug reply. You obviously thought I wouldn’t notice the edit but since you have done this numerous times previously, at which point as you know I have called you on it, I made a point of going back and reading your posts…
As for your edited added source, sorry but it does not tell us anything new. It alleges that LM paid lobbyists during and leading up to the award of the JSF contract. So? Do you think Boeing didn’t? The lobbying was declared, as they have done year after year after year.
Better yet, this source attributes LM as one of the leaders in the Defence sector on ethics and anti-corruption. http://companies.defenceindex.org/
So what do we believe, a guy who wrote a book, which you haven’t provided any quotes from, and a corporate watchdog site talking about declared lobbying, or another corporate watchdog site who actually investigated the company.
What I said was that if the F-35 was even remotely mature for combat, then it would already have been deployed to Syria and that LM would have used all their lobbying power to make it happen..
Okay, so this may be what you were inferring but it certainly didn’t come out that way. As for your claim, it is still wrong. LM lobbying would have no influence on the Pentagon deploying the F-35 to an operational zone.
So, again, you better stop putting words into my mouth
I have not put a single word in your mouth. I asked you to justify your claim that LM was capable of doing this. You cited two Russian companies, with no supporting evidence, to claim it is done at which point I again asked you to provide a single example of this happening with a US aircraft, which you still haven’t done.
I am getting quite bored with this kindergarten level.. :sleeping:
Again, instead of providing evidence you resort to distraction in an attempt to belittle or discredit me.
OzairYawn.. In 2016, Lockheed spent officially $10,380,488 on lobbying, rank 13 out of 3,651 monitored US companies, 2nd in the defense sector..
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=D01&year=a
So, you have moved on to lobbying then and decided to ignore all the rest…
Has anyone on this board ever said LM didn’t lobby? You are claiming then that lobbying has directly resulted in the US Department of Defence intentionally putting US aircraft into an operational zone to provide good PR. Please back up this claim!
Besides the absolute baseless claim, do you honestly think that 10 million dollars is enough to buy the US spending potentially ten times that deploying aircraft to a war zone… Let alone the fact that that 10 million needs to cover the entire sector of LM business, which is clearly more than just the F-35, which at this time already has near full congressional support.
I’m getting bored, it’s like arguing with a religious phanatic..
No, the difference is I speak from a position of objectivity while you simply pontificate.
Ozair[QUOTE=MSphere
Quite on the contrary, this is exactly what those nations want to see.. less bullsh!t and excited pilot reports and more cold hard evidence..
Rubbish and a claim that is completely unsupported. As I asked of Too_cool, which nations are these by the way?
US allow anything what can be paid. and there is no defense company in the world having more money to spend on lobbying than LockMart..
Again completely unsupported rubbish.
I have never asked for concrete examples about Kamov or KnAAZ, I shall not need any for the F-35, as well..
I didn’t ask you for concrete evidence for Kamov or KnAAZ, you are the one that brought them up. I will continue to ask you for evidence that the US has deployed a fighter jet to an operational area at the whim of the contractor to drum up sales and PR. The claim is utterly false and your desire to now back away from it speaks volumes for its credibility.
Maybe that is why LockMart is paying an army of retired generals, PR faces, excited pilots and other clowns promoting the jet.. because the PR of the general public is meaningless.. right.. ever checked who is really paying the jets? yes, THAT general public which opinion you have just thoroughly ignored..
Again, you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how jets are acquired in 99% of countries. Unlike Switzerland, the US and most other nations elect a Government to make these types of decisions. The Governments put these decisions into the hands of their Defence Departments. The public does not get a vote on which aircraft they want or prefer. That is thankfully left up to experts to either acquire or develop as required. Experts who have access to classified information and knowledge of the programs as well as access to the sales pitches of competitors.
If the general public really has an issue with the jet they will voice it but I haven’t seen a single political protest in the US that has vocalized opposition to the US purchase of F-35 over the SH or F-15 or F-16 etc. Plenty of examples of people who want no weapons spending but that clearly is a different scenario.
Be careful what you wish.. Factual reporting has been the greatest enemy of the F-35 program ever since.. and you guys are the very last ones willing to hear any, you just want to read pages of praise.. thanks goodness we still have objective info, otherwise we would be hearing the “$50mil a pop, almost-F-22, better-than-clean-Block-50 BS even today..
Again with the fact less claims and baseless statements… When presented with a requirement to provide facts as usual you resort to petty statements that have been discussed and refuted on here ad nauseam.
Every single one of the supporters of the F-35 on this board recognise that it is 5 years late. They recognise that it is 35% over budget, they recognise that it is still in development for at least another year. We are happy to talk about the technical issues with the jet, but instead of sensationalism we like a factual discussion about what has caused the issue, how they might fix it and what impact that will have.
In place of that we get people with no technical knowledge making claims they can’t support, people with some technical knowledge misunderstanding basic principals or operational tactics or in your case someone who has an acknowledged bias towards the contractor developing the jet and who has demonstrated an inability to critically or objectively assess the jet.
Ozairneedless to say that deploying the aircraft to a destination where it will, basically, continue do fly peacefully, far from any threat, even in case of malfunction is not what you’d expect from an aircraft so criticized and in desperate need to prove its combat capable…
all fighters the US made before (bar the F-22 as it had nothing to fight against and was unable to communicate properly with other aircrafts in their coalitions) were rapidly sent to wars that the USA were fighting at the time of their introduction… If the F-35 can’t even be sent into a low opposition conflict (if anything, to validate its air to ground capabilities), that obviously means something.. but hey.. some day it will…
There is no evidence to support any of that. The jet has already conduced Red Flag and other numerous exercises at threat levels far higher than what is present in Syria. Why do they need to drop a couple of bombs onto shacks to prove to the internet that the jet can do it. Any nation actually interested in buying a US jet isn’t going to suddenly lay the cash down because the F-35 added some IS militants to it’s kill record.
No logic fail.. LM has control over much more than you think.. The sheer amount of interlinking between LM and Pentagon by hiring all possible ex-military advisers, contractors and lobbyists is enormous. Getting an overweight, overpriced and delayed lemon like the F-35 into service with all three branches was a gigantic task, compared to that, lobbying for potential combat deployment surely is within their possibilities.. no big conspiracy here, KnAAZ or Kamov have done the same in Russia (unless you think those few Su-35Ss are badly needed in Syria.. against whom?)
No, your completely flawed and inaccurate understanding of how the Pentagon functions is the problem. If you seriously believe that LM has the ability to do this then you are completely delusional!
That KnAAZ or Kamov, or possibly Dassault with Libya, has done it does not mean the US allows this practise. If you think US does this, provide a concrete example?
But I think that all sides realize that getting the F-35s into the Syrian theater could easily end up a disaster.. the public would closely follow every quirk and every issue, a potential loss of just one aircraft would have tremendous consequences in terms of PR.. not really worth it until at least major bugs are fixed..
Unlike your claim the other day, the PR of the F-35 to the general public is meaningless. The public don’t buy fighter jets, governments do. In the case of internal US interest, we had Senator McCain this week provide a strong endorsement for increasing the acquisition speed of all three variants. Given he is the Chairman of the Senate Arms Committee he has some sway. In the case of external interest, other than Canada every single other partner nation has or is acquiring the jet and Canada will reach that point eventually. Korea and Japan, both well respected air forces have acquired the jet. The F-35 doesn’t need good PR, it just needs factual reporting…
OzairDon’t be naieve, the F-35 desperately needs some good PR.. I have never seen an aircraft with such totally fxcked up reputation.. this is not about MSphere, it’s about LockMart.. they surely wouldn’t miss a chance to demonstrate the F-35 to its potential customers if there was anything to demonstrate at this point..
Logic fail. LM has no control over where the jet is deployed. The USAF/USMC do not deploy hardware at the whim of the contractor to get some good PR…
Sign In
