Thursday, January 27, 2011

Gates to Canada, Please Don't Back Out on F-35, Oh Please?


US Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to Ottawa today and pleaded for Canada and the other eight "partner" nations not to walk away from the overhyped, overpriced and underperforming F-35 ground attack fighter.

Apparently stumped for sensible explanations, Gates tied the F-35 ground pounder to NORAD and North American air defence.

"It is a true fifth generation fighter, it will give us significant capabilities, it will continue the interoperability that has been at the heart of our NORAD relationship for decades now."
 
Hmm.   If the F-35 is essential for NORAD interoperability, why won't our NORAD Big Brother, the USAF, be interoperating the same airplane for air defence?  Why?  Because the Americans have a genuine air superiority fighter/interceptor, the F-22 Raptor.  The F-35 is for blowing craters in the dirt, not air defence.  The F-35 is also pretty good for blowing smoke up a lot of gullible asses.

2 comments:

double nickel said...

Gullible neocon-reformatory asses at least.

Anonymous said...

plus, implicit in that 'continue the inter-operability we've had for decades' comment is the fact that we can be & long have been inter-operable without having the same types of planes as them. As the former Defense procurement ADM Alan Williams said on P&P about that: pretty much all we need to achieve that is 2-way radios tuned to the same frequency!