Care to explain that one?
Well, a CP-140 is nice to have, when it's around. Basing is basically what I'm getting at. The Task Group is not always going to be within reasonable range of shore bases, or shore bases might not be available for military ops at all. Something like a Falklands/Malvinas dispute, or like I said, a conflict in the South China Sea are examples. Something on-deck and always available would be a lot more useful in these kinds of situations.
WRT to using AESA as ECM systems; I don't think AESAs are going to be useful as active jammers any time soon. As of yet none of the in-service radars can do this, and IIRC that function was supposed to be developed for the F-22 and ported to the F-35. This has since been cancelled from the F-22, and I don't know if it's going to happen for the F-35 in the forseeable future. Given that the USN has just dumped a whole lot of money into the Growler program, I don't think they expect it either.
I agree with whiskey601 that a lack of endurance is a very serious factor here. As for UAVs and satellites being the preffered plan B, that all depends on what kind of capabilities your UAVs have and what kind of satellite coverage you have. As far as UAVs go, we're talking rotary-wing, or very small fixed-wing ones here, not exactly Global Hawks (although there may be some circumstances where this IS the case, provided we buy them). They will be a step up in terms of endurance from a vertol F-35, but nowhere near in terms of sensors, or altitude. And we have to look at how many would be embarked (obviously this depends on the type, and is something I'm still looking into). As I said before, you still need UAVs, but IMHO any time you're expecting trouble, or actively looking for contact, an F-35 would be probably be a better bet.
As far as satellites go, I have to admit quite a bit of ignorance here. I can talk your ear off for hours about orbital mechanics, and all the physics-type stuff involved, but I really don't know much about the capabilities of electronic surveilance satellites. I'm going to make a few educated guesses though
1) Canada doesn't have any
2) Canada isn't going to get any soon
3) Geosnyc orbit is a LONG way away, so the good ones are probably lower orbit, and so of limited availability (a few passes per day) anyways
4) We're going to be dependant on someone else deciding that they agree with what Canada is doing, that they don't need the bird at the moment, that they don't mind burning a lot of fuel to get it to where we need it, and that people on our ships can get info from it in close to real time.
Please feel free to correct me on any of these points (I know people around here seem awful shy about correcting me), but it seems to me we shouldn't be relying on them too heavily. I think in a combat situation against another navy, 'plan B' should really involve any and all assets we can get our grubby little hands on, not just dinky ship-board UAVs and someone else's satellites. That would include F-35s (if they were on-board).
I'm certainly not trying to promote the F-35B as the be-all and end-all of Canadian EW. I certainly agree that it is a 'sub-optimum' use of the a/c. But it's also hardly the main selling point for the a/c. It was just one of a list of capabilities I was looking at, and it got jumped on, so we've been expounding on it. I certainly don't think you can justify carrying the aircraft (and displacing a helicopter) solely for it's EW suite (I'm still kind of up in the air as to whether it can be justified at all without a carrier). It's just one potential application for which it could come in handy.
Anyways, have a rotational dynamics class to get to, gotta jet
