I'm sure there are security reasons, but it still seems so wasteful.
I suspect it makes absolutely zero sense for Canada of the 50s to be designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets, but the mythos is strong.
And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
The US: having it both ways ("be our subservient raw resource provider and nothing else" and "oh, but it costs so much to defend you") since forever.
Surprised this doesn't get mentioned more.
If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
It's easy for America to complain about other countries not spending as much when it's the one that owns the market we all shop at.
We're about to find out if we want to. This is a major point in Carney's defence plan.
I personally would love to contribute in whatever way I could to homegrown manufacturing, tech, and maybe even defence sector, and am willing to put in the hours and even compensation cut to make things happen in this country.
I just hope there's investors out there willing to make things happen, and that the gov't doesn't just do its usual thing of protecting a few existing corporate buddies.
Sweden has one heck of a domestic defence industry, but it's tailor made for its requirements and expensive. The SAAB Gripen is one of the best planes in the world for what it was designed to do: operate dispersed off of regional roads when your main infrastructure is destroyed or unavailable. But its flyway cost is the same as an F-35 because hundreds have been built instead of thousands. And the Gripen's engine is still from General Electric.
The NLAW anti-tank weapon is a good example of export success. It was developed jointly with the British and has had a lot of exports and proven success in Ukraine.
On top of that, Canada's defence civil service is terrible at procurement. Even when we buy foreign, we manage to drive up the costs to the point where its rediculously price just to shove in some domestic "advantage", rather than focusing that money on stuff we are really good at (we tend to kick ass at sonar and anti-sub tech, for example).
You could remove "defence" from that and describe almost every large company or gov't in this country, too.
We need a moral and civil reform in this country, to really build again like we used to. Civic spirit revival.
Look at the joke of the Eglinton LRT, or even more so the Hamilton LRT. Even when we commit to building things, it turns into a swamp of mismanagement and a game of political hot potato.
Most embarassing thing about the Eglinton LRT is it sounds like its our (software) profession that is to blame for the latest series of dysfunctions. I'm disgusted.
That doesn't mean no longer spending money at the altar of the military-industrial complex, it just means having your own altar. Which you're free to do, by the way. You don't have to buy our stuff.
Canadians seem to consistently ignore the effects that a strong military-industrial complex has had on the US (and UK, to a lesser extent), particularly on foreign policy. When major components of the TSX Composite need sales, they're going to start lobbying MPs to get them. It's not a coincidence that a lot of the defense industry is based in Northern Virginia.
As far as the sovereignty... I don't think you have to worry about that.
You should see what happens when we even make motions like we're not going to.
https://skiesmag.com/news/bombardier-concerned-about-u-s-ret...
a legit concern because:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/us-government-slaps-...
and then again
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-cseries-boeing-1...
I seem to recall this being tied to our review the F-35 programme last time, but I can't find a reference to it. In any case, not buying F35s will have huge consequences with the US, if it doesn't happen.
That's not a mortal threat to Canadian manufacturing and the country's defense sector. Unless, of course, Canada really is as reliant on American dollars as Trump makes the country out to be, which is why he feels he can be a pain in the ass and push tariffs higher.
Seriously though, those are decent paying jobs that glue together a manufacturing economy that often times is barely holding on in the face of the same kinds of forces that have decimated American manufacturing, too.
It's the same with the autosector here in Ontario.
It's not that it's "American dollars" holding Canada together, per se, it's that this is a continental-wide trading system developed by ruling classes in both countries since the 80s and it barely serves the interest of working people here or in the United States because the bulk of work has been exported to China in the the last few decades... and so what is remaining is absolutely critical to hold onto.
These are the facts Trudeau was trying to explain to Trump, who is too stupid and arrogant to grasp.
In the end working people in both countries have more in common than not. And face threats from overseas as well as our own political classes. (And no, that's not a call for the dissolution of our sovereignty.) As much as I despise my premier Doug Ford (he's a corrupt buffoon) he was right to emphasize a "fortress North America" alternative approach to Trump -- continent wide security and prosperity insured by cooperation. That line worked with Obama and Biden, and IMHO strengthened both countries, but Trump is deadset on burning it all down.
The Avro Arrow was only proposed as an interceptor but neither a fighter nor bomber. There were spitball ideas of future bomber adaptations but they were never part of the project.
Something similar happened to the RAF Nimrod: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12294766 , although I think the safety case was much stronger there after one caught fire in the air.
It's very Trumpian. Perhaps the steelman argument might be "if we leave this thing in limbo, people will continue to advocate spending more money on it". Sometimes institutions or individuals in them will have a pet project that they keep pushing beyond economic sense, and the only way to get them to stop is to shoot their pet.
Separately, the planes were all very old, and had been constructed over several years so were all slightly different. Projects that tried to do fleet upgrades usually went massively over-budget because each airframe had to be treated as a special case, even for things that you would expect to be standardised like the basic fuselage and wing dimensions.
[Edit] The Haddon-Cave review was exceptional in that it actually named and shamed those in the MOD and industry who helped develop the bodged safety case. People in the MOD and industry lost their jobs after the crash.
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
> Prime Minister John Diefenbaker [ordered] all the completed planes (five plus a nearly finished sixth) to be chopped up and destroyed, along with all plans and blueprints so that the plane could never fly again.
Stopping the program was understandable, but the destruction is mysterious and the article doesn't say a word about why. Strange.
They are electric and have no trans.
As far as I can tell they only kept part of the nose/cockpit.
Honestly asking, I might have missed it.
But still, wouldn't successful projects which were later decommissioned be more at risk of spies than an unsuccessful project? Yet successful projects do not have their blueprints and airframes routinely destroyed without a trace.
Diefenbaker being "suckered" by the Americans is not what really happened (the CBC mini-series on the Arrow has some really cringey scenes about that angle, as well as portraying conservative party ineptitude and American arrogance). The more you read into Diefenbaker, the more he comes across as vain and susceptible to overreacting to slights (perceived or real), in over his head on the international stage, and ignorant of cold war realities (despite it being his government that had Canada form NORAD with the US).
It did set the stage for Canada's mercurial relationship with the United States, as Canada tended to over-react and over-compensate our opinions in both directions since then. This still continues to this day.
> Two airframes eventually survived: the complete XR220 at the Royal Air Force Museum Midlands [...]
So the destruction of the project's artifacts was less thorough.
For pure speed, they notched 1,852 mph. They could climb to 98,425 feet in four minutes and 3.86 seconds and ultimately reached an absolute altitude record of 123,520 feet.
edit: it's cheating but the Starfighter with a JATO had an insane climb rate too
For anyone on mobile (android/chrome at least) select "Desktop Site" under browser settings to see five historical images. They don't show up for me at all in the default mobile view.
The so called "Deifenbunker" is now a museum open to the public. Pretty interesting, being in it feels like being in a ship.
The sole surviving XB70, another super cool plane that was obsolete by the time it was ready, is a valued museum piece. These planes should have been.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar
I recall hearing about how the US Air Force was investigating reports of UFO's, and was surprised to find a 'real' one closer to home.
Highly unstable more than a few feet off the ground, it never proved viable. Unfortunately nobody at the time realized they might have been onto something if they'd pivoted to inventing the hovercraft.
Different times. Canadians are now possibly now more worried about the US than Russia.
If you're interested in the subject, look up the performance of the beam riding missiles in use, and the limitations for deployment of the AIM-9B - those do a good job highlighting the extremely limited envelope in which these weapons could be deployed, and the difficulty in getting the aircraft in that envelope.
For those who dont see it: the arrow has a rectangular "box" body, so do the mig25/31 and f-15. Most multiengine fighters have cigar shapes (f18, f111) or "tunnels" such as the su-27/35/34/57, f-14 and even the sr-71. The box shape was new in the arrow but can arguably be seen today in the US 22 and 35.
Article with a good pic showing the design consideration is still a thing today: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/102446/why-does...
UncleSlacky•6h ago
cf100clunk•3h ago
NikkiA•35m ago
NikkiA•36m ago
In the end the tiny jaguar could carry 4 WE177s just fine.