Israel is in a much different situation that Canada.
Israel has been support by the USG with subsidized weapons programs and militarily assistance.
Having the various F-16, F-15, F-35 are due to Israel being aptly focused on defense issues. For decades Canada’s policies mostly ignored defense. Which Canada justified due to not having a neighbor that had wiping out your existence as its #1 goal.
Canada faces situations and scales that no other Western Nation does, simply due to the giant coastlines.
Equipment that work for Canada may not work for all others and vice versa.
@ytz dealt with some of your other misconceptions.
Never fool yourself all Canada and Europe was utlized by the US as a buffer zone for fall out from Nuclear material. Plans were always to intercept incomming missiles over non US territory to defend the continential United States.
According to DT Canada has been heavily subsidized by the US Military along with their manufactring and supply network for many years.
Israel and other parts of the Middle East allow the US to fight a proxy war to which they can deny exists. Until it does not.
You are substantially misunderstanding fifth gen air warfare.
The F-35 was never supposed to take over C2. No idea where this is coming from.
US defense papers.
They discussed the elimination of all AWACS aircraft, running sattilite and or drones as communcations relay stations/hubs as required and having the F35 control the battle space.
The plan was to have F35 and F22 dominate the area, then alllow other assest (bomb trucks) to deploy and safely eliminate targets.
It also discussed the F35 group providing direct real time data, command and control to the Combined all arms under C4ISR. Discussion was for the F35 group to cordinate and target air, sea (sub sea) and land based targets utilizing all seaborne, land born, airborne and space assests to defeat, control and deny the enemy.
F35 was to CC the battle space due to its sensor fusion package.
The US was eliminating AWACS until they realized
1. F35 does not and more then likely will never be able to perform the full spectrum they dreamt of it doing.
2. Satellites are not that easy to deploy and maintain on the scale required for the type of operations they envisioned them for.
3. The rest of the Western World is not buying into the full space program, nor the cost of such a program that has been going on for 40 plus years and still can not reliably defend agaisnt ballistic missile threats, let alone find osama in a house in Pakistan.
4. The Us realizes they still need a AWACS capable plane. In fact they have boosteed its overall capabiltiy (depends on who you talk to). They also understand one platform can not do everything, everywhere. So they have employed various sized platforms and capabilites to suit their needs.
What is interesting is the employment of various Aircraft types over the past few years to accomplish missions that were not known about and or done by other/concentrated means.
What it can do is provide substantial passive collection and pass a ton of information through MADL, which other F-35s can fuse onboard in a coherent manner to consistently maintain the Common Operating Picture (COP) with much higher fidelity and refreshed tracks. This in turns substantially enhances Situational Awareness which in turn allows much better local decisionmaking. That information also gets passed back to various control centres, be that an AEWC or Ground Control Centre. Including these days with Cloud Based C2.
An F-35 is not a replacement for airborne radar. And nobody has suggested that. The long range of airborne radar is still very useful.
The Growler is an extremely specialized asset that would be substantially underutilized by the RCAF. Sure, it's needed in a coalition context. But there's less utility in a lot of defensive situations. If we bought this, we'd end up buying like half a dozen max. Australia is the only country other than the US to field the Growler and they only have a dozen. Realistically for us, a business jet based EW aircraft with some Stand Off Jamming (SOJ) capability like the Compass Call (EA-37B US), Hava SOJ (Turkey) or the Block 1 EWSDP / KJammer (Korea) are good enough. And indeed something like that is on the books. Note that both the Hava SOJ and the KJammer use Bombardier Globals. Tactical jamming for air forces like the RCAF is probably migrating to CCA payloads in the 2030s.
Opinion
www.truenorthstrategicreview.ca
The Growler would have been a great asset for Canada to have in my opinion. Again it can bring alot more to the table then we need, we can adapt it for other requirements. We could of used a Sqn or three of F18 E/F models until we gained full operational capacity for what ever Model of F35 we get.
Ultimatly it is all in how one looks at the future and our needs.
I think Canada going with the Over the Horizon Radar from Austrialia is a good step in the right direction. The US is upgrading their Radar stations in Along the Northern Dew Line.
I also think us buying the Global Eye as a good step forward. Along with getting the P8s, ( I would have liked to see us get on board with the bombarider offering)
The sattilite program we are going ahead with although is more scietific reasons they did state it can be used for Military requrimetns if needed.
Time will tell if the systems will come together and do the job the promised or if it all falls apart and we have to make do with what we have.
instead we are still hoping for the best radar and hoping for all that sensor fusion to work as proposed/ promised.
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