A good start
Apart from there only being three strategic airlifters, I like what Harper's proposing so far.
But.
Would it kill things to double that number of airlifters? Can we at least agree that Canada, the world's third-largest country, should have the military force of, say, Spain, right?
So where is the V/STOL carrier? Why aren't we upgrading from F/A-18's to the F-35 or Eurofighter? What about an MBT, at least something like the AMX-30?
The fact is, within NATO, Canada is second only to Luxembourg in least amount of per-capita spending on defence.
Yay us.
posted by Kevin Creighton @ 1:01 PM
3 Comments:
KC,
Depending on how you count 'em, the CF currently have 5 strategic airlifters. But that is a deceptive number:
*2 are in-service as transports
*2 are in various states of modification as tankers (courtesy of Lufthansa Technik)
*1 is a serving as a VIP transport. No doubt troops could be moved by this aircraft but I think the politicos have dibs on this particular Airbus.
http://www.sfu.ca/casr/101-cc150.htm
The tanker conversion program has hit some snags, at least one of the A310's (CC-150 in CF service) is sans engines right now in Germany. Once the engines are back on the plane, it should be ready for service fueling the other A310's flying their routes to Afghanistan.
So, if three more A310/CC-150's are purchased, that would mean that the fleet would increase by...
uh, what would it increase it by?
Well, at least Lufthansa Technik would keep the lights on for a while longer.
They may be cargo lifters, but the CAF lacks the ability to transport anything that can't fit onto a pallet, like trucks or armored vehicles. All of this started when they got caught with their pants down by the tsunami. They had the manpower and equipment, what they lacked was the air mobility. What they need is an updated IL-76 or similar.
Ah, that may be a solution, spare Russian or Ukranian Il-76s... Swap out the Soviet-designed turbofans and replace them with GE or Rolls-Royce engines and you might have a real winner. I reckon that throughout the FSU there are hundreds of Il-76s just laying around, plus a bunch of qualified pilots with nothing much to do. Hmmmm, that would be an interesting example of outsourcing indeed.
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