Maintenance hours per operating hour increase with more modern platforms. It's a problem the Canadian Army experienced with the introduction of the Leo 2 fleet.
That’s not necessarily true, the Leo2 platform is a notorious maintenance pig though.
But if you look at a UH-60 compared to a UH-1, the 60 costs more / blade hour, but actually requires less maintenance hours. When one looks at availability rates, modern equipment can often be more expensive/usage hour, but has a heck of a lot more available hours — so it’s not apple to apples, unless you only plan on showing things for a parade or aerial demonstration team
Maintenance time isn’t necessarily the same thing as money, and while I agree that modern maintenance can be expensive, it’s not generally as expensive as trying to keep obsolete items running.
On the F35, the security clearance requirements are increased for everyone. That will also strain the personnel system.
That simply due to Canada’s absolutely shit security process. Back in the 90’s when TCCS was rolling out - everyone needed a Secret simply to use the radio - but the CAF ignored that and most troops at the time had Enhanced Reliability or Restricted Clearances (which I don’t even think is a thing anymore).
I remember doing the Security Audit of the CA Embassy in Afghanistan, and you needed a TS to access parts of the Embassy, and half the folks with me didn’t even have a Secret.
The MP’s at the Embassy were less than impressed about that aspect.
A Secret should be easily processed by the time folks are out of Basic - and a TS can easily be processed by the time those who need start trade training. A SCI requires two years (theoretically) with a TS, so that can limit personnel employment but most pipelines that are requiring an SCI are going to burn that two years up prior to the SCI being needed.
Heck we used to waiver Secret background investigations if the initially screening was clear (and some folks got interim TS on waivers before we learned the hard way that background investigations actually should be conducted prior).
Security Clearance issues are infrastructure at this point, most equipment requires a TS at min at this point for Operational items. The fact the CAF hasn’t addressed this in the past 2 decades is on the CAF for being an ostrich it’s not like it is something that it wasn’t aware of.
