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Maybe we should see if the business world could produce 30 fighter pilots a year for us and leave the those in the front line units to continue doing what they are doing.
The RCAF's Next Generation Fighter (CF-188 Replacement)
- Thread starter WingsofFury
- Start date
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The business will take from current fighter pilots. We’ll just have the same problem with a lot less flexibility.
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Leave the F35 training here and move the Gripen training to Sweden, if we were to get the Gripen.
Or
Run in parallel our current training and stand up training outside the RCAF in the business world.
Or
Figure a plan to move from x in year 2026 to x+y in 2027 to x+y+z in 2028, continuing upwards each year
Or
Just give up entirely
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I think that's a clear indication that our fighter fleet is too small. We don't have enough pilots man our squadrons, fill the admin and leadership roles and our training establishment and still have the personnel available to increase our training throughput.
If the only option to get more pilots is to reduce our operational readiness temporarily then maybe now while Russia is occupied in Ukraine, China isn't quite ready to take on Taiwan and our new fighters are still in the pipeline is the time to do it.
Alternately, we need to rethink our training system and come up with a quicker/different way to produce pilots at scale.
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Sounds like a good opportunity for a jr officer(s) to think outside the box and come up with some proposals on how to address the situation going forward. Great way to make a name for themselves and be seen as someone willing to tackle difficult issues head on.
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Fossil
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There's alot of thinking going on about the skill development thing in various quarters, not just for aircrew of course, but let's see if/how it pans out. E.g.
Powering a Postsecondary Pivot: Bold ideas to advance national ambitions in Defence and Space, AI and Energy
Canada is about to make historic investments to reorient the economy. The scale and focus of these investments should serve as a wakeup call to anyone working in Canadian postsecondary education or relevant provincial ministries—signaling both opportunity and necessity for change.
The upcoming federal budget is expected to allocate billions for nation-building initiatives like modernizing defence and space infrastructure, expanding computing capacity, and developing renewable energy. The potential rewards–sovereignty, growth and competitiveness–are great. As is the risk. We are hedging our bets on talent and innovation.
But as we laid out in our recent report, Testing Times, the postsecondary sector is facing a crisis. Just as Canada is ramping up, colleges and universities are scaling down–closing programs, departments and campuses. Postsecondary institutions across the country need to modernize and re-align their mandates for growth–as outlined in A Smarter Path—but they lack the financial footing, flexibility and connectivity with industry to do so.
This was the context in which RBC Thought Leadership and our partners at the Business + Higher Education Roundtable convened a summit on Talent, Technology, and a New Economic Order. In September, about 60 industry and postsecondary leaders came together at RBC’s head offices with a shared interest: ensuring Canada’s historic investments yield historic rewards. We focused on three areas of national ambition that depend heavily on postsecondary for talent and innovation:
- Defence and space capabilities
- AI and digital technology
- Major energy projects
Powering a Postsecondary Pivot: Bold ideas to advance national ambitions in Defence, AI and Energy
We gathered about 60 industry and postsecondary leaders to help craft a game plan
www.rbc.com
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Bombardier claims a Global 6500 can fly 12233km (Discover our jets | Bombardier) .
SAAB claims 11000km for global eye.
Boeing claims 6482km (E-7 AEW&C Airborne Early Warning & Control Aircraft)
If you’re going to fly to Alert, why not base at Thule or Yellowknife or are you giving worst case for a mission. How did you come up with a flight time of 7-8 hours. The great circle distance is 3200 km.
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Interesting snippet -
“The bulldozing mindset of the RCAF leadership failed to offer the opportunities to allow Canadian industry to provide solutions. Even today, Canadian industry could purchase those used Hawk aircraft, hire experienced pilots, and continue providing fighter pilot training; yet the government went deaf mute.”
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For the same reason we're not posting fighter crews to Iqaluit.
Sorry. Mixed up round trip. But yes 7 hrs round trip from Winnipeg leaves only 4 hrs on station with 11 hrs endurance. They can't refuel at Arctic towns. We can't be sure of fuel quality and quantity. And it's massively expensive to deliver and store fuel up there.
That aircraft is designed for Europe where there's a ready airport with tons of fuel 10-15 mins away all the time. This isn't the case with our North. Or even our coasts. And given that it's high demand, low density assets, there will only be one squadron in Winnipeg or North Bay so that they can train together. We aren't splitting them up and parking aircraft all over the country just because it can't refuel.
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After reading this, caution when speaking of Ikea-like Gripen assembly lines in Montreal. Unless, tangible, meaningful construction of related parts occur here, the juice may not be worth the squeeze. A number of major concerns would be needed to be overcome, a few look to be quite high to climb...
The Gripen Illusion: Why Canada Shouldn’t Buy Yesterday’s Fighter
Rainbow1910
Sr. Member
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While I agree with the article generally, I will point out that Billie Flynn was recently employed by Lockheed Martin as a test pilot for the F-35 alongside a global advocate for the F-35 program more widely. There is potential biases here, even if Flynn was an experienced RCAF pilot and officer with a long service record.After reading this, caution when speaking of Ikea-like Gripen assembly lines in Montreal. Unless, tangible, meaningful construction of related parts occur here, the juice may not be worth the squeeze. A number of major concerns would be needed to be overcome, a few look to be quite high to climb...
The Gripen Illusion: Why Canada Shouldn’t Buy Yesterday’s Fighter
Anybody who looks on places like YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, etc will see what he is talking about, there is an excessive amount of low effort AI slop surrounding the Gripen and Canada. I have been following this fighter procurement for decades and the amount of support from abroad for Canada to adopt the Gripen has always been strangely high, especially regarding what kind of aircraft it really is at the end of the day. Saab and the Gripen especially seem to get this reputation of the plucky underdog fighting against the big bad Lockheed Martin and their corporate American overlords, and people online seem to lap this narrative up.
Saab's claim of 10,000 jobs in Canada should throw up red flags when one realizes that Saab only has a hair over 26,000 employees total internationally. I suspect they are either trying to count a large chunk of Bombardiers existing workforce, or they are counting the facility janitors in those figures.
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Yes, I agree. I've read many an article about Flynn or by him.
His article points out a number of things that should be seen as red flags - 'assembly' not 'manufacture' - being one of them. There are still so much that is not out in the open in terms of what Canada and Sweden are potentially working on that to shout out 'NO!' so quickly is foolish. Much like our approach with the Irving and the AOPS, a similar approach might be in the works. Stand up a assembly/manufacturing facility here to produce Gripen E's for Ukraine (maybe they don't buy 100-150 but maybe the actual number is 50-75) and a small number of us, with the goal of building something more geared towards the future as the final end result.
Over the course of 2 days we've heard one source saying that we are getting between 32-40 F35's and then some RUMINT comes out saying we are getting the full 88 F35's. The public answer right now is, nothing has been announced, so sit tight.
Have a read of the earlier Billie Flynn article I posted on the state of pilot/fighter training in the RCAF and in his opinion how utterly f*cked it seems to be. The wholesale outsourcing to Italy/Finland/US at 2$ million USD per year per pilot instead of attempting to allow CDN businesses the opportunity to do it here in Canada. In his article, he's of the belief of an awful lot of egg on the face in the RCAF for the current state of fighter pilot training in Canada. Sure he might have an axe to grind but at least he's gone public with the current situation instead by playing Ostrich.
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I don't put a lot of faith in an article on fighter procurement when when discussing flight hour costs he makes a statement like this:After reading this, caution when speaking of Ikea-like Gripen assembly lines in Montreal. Unless, tangible, meaningful construction of related parts occur here, the juice may not be worth the squeeze. A number of major concerns would be needed to be overcome, a few look to be quite high to climb...
The Gripen Illusion: Why Canada Shouldn’t Buy Yesterday’s Fighter
Really? Our Gripens will be pulling up to Petrocan pumps and filling up with unleaded? How can you take the author seriously with a statement like that?
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And this assumes the entirety of the fuel load is consumed in 1h (which isn’t the case most of the time). Fuel cost is around $1.10CA a liter.
Having said this, I’d like to see SAAB math on their figure.
was involved in training ATC types for several decades so I understand just a little bit about complex instruction plus I am acquainted with pilot training and long-range planning. I wouldn't attempt to insert myself as an authority on combat skills or advanced systems but I do know from reading these pages that many of you are stuck in a hands in the air, woe is me we can't do that rut. Supersonic Max makes the point that the school can't handle 30 a year. Is it possible to hire back retired combat pilots to fill some of the training gaps. The potential for war within the next decade exceeds 50% if the military experts are to be believed so I don't think you have a choice. We need pilots and we have a lot of ground to make up fast.
Rainbow1910
Sr. Member
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You never will, Saab is notorious for not wanting to speak about specifics around the Gripen E/F especially with regard to operational costs. They often cite older figures for the C/D model, or nothing at all as it is unflattering to undermine the marketing of the aircraft as "cheap and cheerful" when in reality, that seems dubious.
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Far from it.
But, having instructed both at the OTU and the Nav School level for half a decade, I have a bit of clue about some of the complexities involved in aircrew training.
Some of the problem has been a reluctance to invest in modern training devices. Thankfully, that is starting to go away.
Another problem is that we value ops today over training tomorrow’s force. This comes from being too small for too long and being tasked to do too much by the Government. Thankfully, that is also starting to go away, but we are in another deep hole.
The final problem is the most wicked- just because you graduate a fighter pilot (or an ACSO or an AESOp), doesn’t mean you have a useable, combat ready aircrew. Now, they consume resources on Sqn getting them combat ready. Unless, of course, you just want them going into battle 1915 style.
OK so assume a war is coming what can we do about it because we really don't have a choice. (sigh)
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When the original competition took place did we have teams from the RCAF go to Sweden and do technical assessments and flight testing of the Gripen or did we just take written submissions from the bidders?
Regardless of the Pro's and Con's of a potential Gripen purchase I hope to God that we're not stupid enough to buy a fighter just from the glossy brochure!
