BEST FIGHTER FOR CANADA

Typhoon, we hardly knew ye... Airbus, which represents the Eurofighter consortium, announced the decision to withdraw from Canada's future fighter competition .  This follows Dassault, which announced its decision to leave back in November of last year.  This leaves Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Saab pitching their F-35, Super Hornet, and Gripen; respectively. I wish I could say this came as a surprise.  Sadly, anyone who has been paying attention should have seen this coming. Airbus's reasoning for dropping out of the competition sound suspiciously close to Dassault's; citing difficulty meeting security requirements and a last-minute alteration to the RFP that seemed to favor the JSF. “A detailed review has led the parties to conclude that NORAD security requirements continue to place too significant of a cost on platforms whose manufacture and repair chains sit outside the United States-Canada 2-EYES community,” the statement from Airbus and the UK Defence Min...

FINALLY. After years of delays, setbacks, controversies, and false starts; Canada is now on its way to finding a replacement for its aging CF-18 fighters. There are still doubts as to whether or not the process will be fair.  Both Airbus and Boeing have expressed concerns that the RFP is skewed in favour of the F-35.  The RFP draft was modified after Lockheed Martin complained that its “industrial offset” clause all but disqualified the F-35.  That same modification gave additional points for sustainment , however.  This tilts the contest away from the JSF, as its current sustainment model is an absolute mess . Of course, with a federal election coming up this fall; things could go sideways yet again. The Liberal government has taken some flak (rightly so) for its handling of the CF-18 replacement.  After criticizing the previous Conservative government, the right thing to do would have been to immediately start rewriting an RFP and attempt to have ...