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U.S. could hold a 'red card' over Canada's Gripen fighter jet option (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 3 days ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There is a way the U.S. could play hardball with Canada, if the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney decides it wants to limit its purchase of F-35s in favour of the Gripen.

Critics who favour the Lockheed-Martin stealth fighter have long argued that the Swedish-built Gripen would not be interoperable with American aircraft and the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).

That's not what you see at the NATO air policing mission in Iceland, where Danish-owned F-35s have been training and operating alongside Swedish JAS-39 Gripens-Cs.

Commanders of both the Swedish and Danish air forces, speaking at the airfield in Keflavik on Tuesday, said the aircraft have been performing well together.

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[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Canada's geography isn't exactly conducive to relying on anti-air systems alone. It's the same reason Trump's golden dome is a fantasy; he's trying to recreate Iron Dome, but Iron Dome only works because Isreal is tiny. Canada isn't.

There's also a huge cost to air defense systems. Just for some rough perspective, a single Patriot missile system costs as much as 10 F-35s. A Patriot covers a radius of about 160km, an F-35, without midair refueling, covers a radius of about 1800km.

You simply cannot create the same kind of air defence network with ground batteries only as you can with aerial interceptors, and when you need to cover a country as large as ours that makes a huge difference. Far from being a fraction of the cost, your proposal would actually be orders magnitude more expensive.

Even when you throw drones into the picture they're simply not going to adjust that calculation in any meaningful way. A drone capable of intercepting enemy aircraft or missiles as effectively as a fighter plane is going to cost as much as a fighter plane. There's really no avoiding that.

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. I'd like to see fighter planes, or heavy drones, built without the needs of g-sensitive, heat-intolerant, oxygen-needing meatsacks. The major problem is communication links and jamming, but on our own territory, keeping a pilot in a bunker with a good link to a plane seems like a better bet.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is an idea that's been toyed with, but simply doesn't give the same kind of situational awareness that a human pilot directly in the situation has, not to mention the issues with communication links, which not only present the problem of jamming as you said, but also make stealth much more difficult. With a human pilot, the craft can shut off all radio comms for a much lower signature.

What we're seeing instead as the expected path forward is a hybrid approach; wingman drones.

You build a top of the line stealth fighter, and then you give it two drone buddies, which can be remotely fed instructions by the human operated craft. You retain situational awareness, and from a flying platform you can fall back to laser communication; unjammable and undetectable. Pilot safety is significantly enhanced because they can hang back and let the drones engage, and each pilot (a very expensive asset) can now command significantly more firepower.

Saab are working on this for their upcoming sixth gen fighter, which I'd very much like to see us collaborate on developing.