January 11, 2023
Dear Minister Anand,
I cannot help but reflect that my concerns outlined in my letter to you on your appointment as MND have come to pass.
As a former air force Colonel and former CF18 engineering fleet manager, I am writing to express my deep disappointment for your F35 announcement to select the F35 as for the Air Force. I do understand your task is to bring the political and public context to military affairs, but certainly not to be subordinate to powerful military interests.
I will state for the record that you will very much regret the day we made this decision. We are buying a fighter, the type of which, even the Ukraine war will rarely commit to the close battlefield due to the growing overwhelming sophistication of air defenses. Drones and missiles are the current and future to the close ground attack mission. This is what the F35 was designed for. Throwing an F35 into such a dense battle space is suicide.
What you have bought is the most expensive squadron of the USAF in history. In can only be effective as part of a US war. The Canadian Air Force in its air war structure could not use a fraction of the sensor fusion capabilities of the aircraft. We cannot afford even a fraction of the surrounding space based and US battle management structure and support capacities, needed around this aircraft. We can do sovereignty surveillance and control with a far less expensive fighter
And as an engineer, I believe we are buying an aircraft with serious outstanding deficiencies and with a horrendously complex computer backbone, which may never be reconciled to anyone’s satisfaction. We will simply get the latest Block upgrade with many ongoing upgrades to pay for. This is a money drain that will go down in history. It is like buying a car that is not fully designed or in which the salesman has the gall to state that we will not initially get what they bid on and we are paying for, if we even do.
As I said before this aircraft is designed only to kill people and destroy infrastructure. What did we learn from our participation in Libya and Iraq? We have killed civilians, which although we claimed was unintentional, but it was 100% foreseeable. Public opinion was very clear on this. No more.
What we could do for peace with 70 billion dollars? Killing is never good for the Canadian economy.
There are no words.
I had hoped for so much more.
Paul
Colonel Retired
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