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All of the army contracts are almost certainly going to Europe and even if the Koreans had a decent chance at them, they are minuscule in value and effort in comparison to this submarine program.

The choice of submarine doesn’t bother me as much as the choice of national partner. Canada is already a fairly close ally of both Germany and Norway through NATO and increasingly as of late, other economic and military partnerships. I personally view deepening of this relationship as a bit of a...

I very much hope so, a split fleet would be catastrophic for the RCN. Not that the PMO seems to care about operational reality given its leanings for major procurement programs as of late.....

I think the flipside of this is any announcements of this sort of magnitude at such a well attended and covered multi-national event will see huge media coverage both at home and abroad. If we want to show we are serious and especially regarding the size and substance of the submarine...

Fighter jet announcement at the NATO Summit would definitely be a choice, given it's basically the highest profile platform to announce a procurement. I would have guessed that if they were going for Gripen, they would have kept it more low key at home in a bid not to enflame the US given...

A Ukraine contract which is still up in the air, for a country at war who cannot pay for the aircraft themselves. Such an order could disappear tomorrow, is that the sort of item we want to hedge billions of dollars of investments and a 5-10 years of development on? Other export options for...

There is a distinct difference with all of these points, all of these nations have pre-existing established capability to design, produce and build these aircraft domestically. You are comparing that to something in all likelihood where Canada is going to be assembling largely foreign produced...

From the article you linked: This is incredibly worrisome, it sounds like we have the RCAF, DND and the Defence Minister being either frozen out of the fighter review or being actively undermined in their opinions/proposals by the Industry Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence...

The F-35 has a service life of 30-40+ years and considering the investment/cost/capability of the airframe, it would be intensively idiotic to retire the F-35A fleet at 20 years after delivery, keeping the much less capable and less advanced Gripen fleet operational to fly with some other...

No, I'm talking about a 6th generation program more generally. If Canada sets up the entire process to assemble Gripen domestically and commits to anything like the order we're talking about, it will take something like 10-15 years+ from contract signing to delivery of the entire fleet. Good...

If we end up going through all of the effort to get Gripens, you can kiss the idea of GCAP arriving on anything approaching a relevant schedule goodbye.

Biggest sticking point is Canada/many of the Gripen supporters are interested in that platform due to the supposed IP and domestic industrial workshare benefits from it, simply ordering a souped up trainer from abroad wouldn't satisfy this unless we opened a licensed production line in Canada.

You can also look to the RFA to see the pitfalls of letting your key logistical capabilities fall to a unionized civilian workforce.....

I'm pretty confidently going to say "never" specifically in this scenario, partially because the idea has been publicly shot down multiple times and also as I stated, a split fleet causes us to trade a lucrative contract for effectively minimal upside. South Korea and Germany have offered some...

A split submarine fleet is not going to happen, multiple officials including the Prime Minister have confirmed this. So much of the value in these bids is tied up in their associated content, that same content is going to largely disappear if one company doesn’t win the bid. TKMS has already...

There’s a distinct difference in “dare to dream” and “picking the worse horse to bet on”. We do not have an infinite amount of funding, effort, time and political capital to expend on military procurement. Battles need to be chosen in a smart way and we can’t let ourselves be naive. We need to...

A non-existent program from a nation who didn’t even build a 5th generation fighter and can’t seem to build their upgraded 4th gen fighter on a reasonable scale? Perfect option for Canada lol.

The only avenues where it makes sense for a split fleet of 72 F-35A and 72 Gripen E/F is if we're focused on domestic jobs production and developing our aviation industry. I'd argue we can do these items without sticking the RCAF with an inferior platform. In every other metric besides...

And that is a legitimate choice, although I’d point out that a lot of GlobalEye’s successes are still up in the air as far as NATO and a number of NATO nations go. It seems we are willing to give up capability and interoperability at home to suit economics, politics and interoperability abroad...

The article kind of touches on this, atleast tangentially. If we set a trend where any bidder in a procurement with a notable tie to Canadian industry is just going to be the winner regardless of the military implications, I think you are right in the fact that a lot of folks won't even bother...