The RCAF's Next Generation Fighter (CF-188 Replacement)

[IKnowNothing]

Do people believe that Europeans have no concern about IP control and jobs that they'll just sign up to build a major research centre for next gen platforms in Canada?

Or are y'all just delusional enough to think a 70 frame jet order is so big that a whole bunch of governments and major national aerospace champions will ignore their own interests?

Holy enormous strawmen batman.

The concept being discussed is that two governments and major aerospace champions will share some IP control and jobs because it's in their best interest, with a 70 frame jet order being our table stakes- not the end of our investment

The whole discussion is predicated on Airbus leaving FCAS because of Dassault/French monopolizing it, and pairing with Saab. They apparently think it's at least worth discussing.

Let's assume two things- A. The Swedes and Germans pair up, and B. Canada is willing to bet on that pairing.

Why would they let us play?

In that scenario the US is doing it's thing. FCAS still has the French and Spanish. GCAP has the UK and Italy. Canada isn't defined by being a 70 airframe Gen 4.5 order. Canada is defined by:

• being the only unaligned (Gen 6 figher) G7 nation left
• being the single largest NATO country by GDP left (by a large margin)
• being a historically respected middle power seemingly getting serious about our place in the world
• having an aerospace industry that was a tier 3 partner on F35 and just put in the investment into gen 4.5 production and supply chain.

Assuming zero outside of partnership sales the direct impact of Canada being a proportional (~200 Germany/100 Canada/75 Sweden ) orderer of the partnership's aircraft is to reduce the equal weighted R&D/ overhead cost per air frame by ~25% - (in their interest)

Assuming R&D spend is proportional to the above airframes - the inclusion of Canada reduces Germany's spend from 73% to 53% of the project, Sweden's from 27 to 20 - in their interest

Canada represents 27% of the hypothetical known orders (a 36% increase compared to a partnership without Canada), but we admittedly bring less to the table in terms of expertise- lets assume we show some Canadian humility on that front and take an underweight work share of 20%- the other partners net out ahead - (in their interest)

Now lets expand the discussion and assume this partnership delivers an aircraft that can at least compete technically with FCAS and GCAP. Which stands a better chance of winning Dutch/Danish/Norwegian/Finnish/Baltic orders, the partnership with Canada and it's 100 airframes or the one without? (in their interest)

Is that collection of benefits enough to be worth sharing IP and jobs? Maybe, maybe not. But let's not pretend that they don't exist.


I bow to your technical expertise on just how risky the endeavour would be, and how far behind it's coming from. But you've missed the mark on the success based business case for our inclusion, and implying that our role would be based on delusions of being a charity case is objectively unfair.

 

[Furniture]

There's a line between hopeless and rational.

Name one country thats abandoned its F35 order in the last year. Denmark actually ordered more.

Spain dropped the F-35 from competition in favour of European aircraft. Switzerland is in the middle of a fight over the F-35s they ordered, and it seems unlikely that they will want to buy from LM again.

 

[Remius]

Spain dropped the F-35 from competition in favour of European aircraft. Switzerland is in the middle of a fight over the F-35s they ordered, and it seems unlikely that they will want to buy from LM again.

Portugal.

 

[Quirky]

Spain dropped the F-35 from competition in favour of European aircraft. Switzerland is in the middle of a fight over the F-35s they ordered, and it seems unlikely that they will want to buy from LM again.

Spain never had the F-35 on order, good luck with the Eurofighter. Switzerland looks to be a money thing, I'm surprised they went the F-35 route to begin with.

Portugal.

I thought the order was back on?

https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/portugal-joints-reurope-favour-f35

 

[YZT580]

Holy enormous strawmen batman.

The concept being discussed is that two governments and major aerospace champions will share some IP control and jobs because it's in their best interest, with a 70 frame jet order being our table stakes- not the end of our investment

The whole discussion is predicated on Airbus leaving FCAS because of Dassault/French monopolizing it, and pairing with Saab. They apparently think it's at least worth discussing.

Let's assume two things- A. The Swedes and Germans pair up, and B. Canada is willing to bet on that pairing.

Why would they let us play?

Could there be a cost advantage as well for them to go for a threesome? Canada could bring an abundance of resources to the table including much of the source materiel, airspace to work in, and much much cheaper power. As well, dividing the construction/development across two continents makes it a much harder target to eliminate.

 

[Rainbow1910]

Spain never had the F-35 on order, good luck with the Eurofighter. Switzerland looks to be a money thing, I'm surprised they went the F-35 route to begin with.

Spain is stuck between a rock and a hard place, where they need the F-35B to replace their aging Harrier fleets aboard their amphibious vessels, but they don’t want to buy an American aircraft. They could retrofit drones to them but it’s nowhere near the same capability.

Portugal.

Portugal has flip flopped on the F-35 being considered for them or not, mostly down to political pressure given the behaviour of the US lately. They don’t take their defence especially seriously like Spain, so they aren’t the ideal benchmark to look at.

 

[Quirky]

When serious countries start cancelling or dropping the F-35 I'd be worried.

 

[ytz]

Assuming zero outside of partnership sales the direct impact of Canada being a proportional (~200 Germany/100 Canada/75 Sweden ) orderer of the partnership's aircraft is to reduce the equal weighted R&D/ overhead cost per air frame by ~25% - (in their interest)

If you think we're going to order ~100 sixth gen fighters I have some ocean front property in Saskatchewan you might be interested in.....

Holy enormous strawmen batman.

The concept being discussed is that two governments and major aerospace champions will share some IP control and jobs because it's in their best interest, with a 70 frame jet order being our table stakes- not the end of our investment

The whole discussion is predicated on Airbus leaving FCAS because of Dassault/French monopolizing it, and pairing with Saab. They apparently think it's at least worth discussing.

Let's assume two things- A. The Swedes and Germans pair up, and B. Canada is willing to bet on that pairing.

Why would they let us play?

In that scenario the US is doing it's thing. FCAS still has the French and Spanish. GCAP has the UK and Italy. Canada isn't defined by being a 70 airframe Gen 4.5 order. Canada is defined by:

• being the only unaligned (Gen 6 figher) G7 nation left
• being the single largest NATO country by GDP left (by a large margin)
• being a historically respected middle power seemingly getting serious about our place in the world
• having an aerospace industry that was a tier 3 partner on F35 and just put in the investment into gen 4.5 production and supply chain.

If this is close to true, we don't need a Gripen order. We can simply join the sixth generation effort. We're so valuable they should want us right?
But again my skepticism is twofold:

1) I don't think Saab et al will really succeed in delivering something significant. I think it could well be Gripen 2.0. As in a fighter that is substantially behind peers. And that's based on who is participating. It's literally the leftovers of the European defence sector. A bunch of companies who have never built a full VLO aircraft will build a sixth gen jet that has multi-band, multi-aspect stealth? I'm skeptical.

2) The entire reason FCAS is falling apart is fighting over industrial share. But here we have people thinking that Canada with no real experience building fighter jets in living memory or delivering whole subsystems (like say the entire avionics or radar or stores management, etc) to other fighter programs thinks we'll just magically get an equal share. If we had this capacity all along, we should have been a higher partner in F-35 and gotten way more work. But we don't.

For the reason above, whatever happens with sixth Gen, I want to see a competitive process where the three consortiums make us their best offer. I don't want to give one bidder an automatic win out of emotion or in this case, apparently blackmail with assembly line jobs on a 4.5 gen aircraft.

 

[ytz]

Could there be a cost advantage as well for them to go for a threesome? Canada could bring an abundance of resources to the table including much of the source materiel, airspace to work in, and much much cheaper power. As well, dividing the construction/development across two continents makes it a much harder target to eliminate.

I know everybody wants to feel all proud and patriotic of the home team. I do too. But nothing in my professional experience says we have much to contribute on that level. I know the technologies being looked at. They are so far out of our league. Which means the only thing the consortiums will want from us is cash and an order. Maybe CAE gets simulator contracts and various aerostructure companies get contracts for structural items or landing gear.

 

[dapaterson]

If you think we're going to order ~100 sixth gen fighters I have some ocean front property in Saskatchewan you might be interested in.....

Once the Greater Saskatchewan Liberation Front frees Churchill...

 

[ytz]

Spain is stuck between a rock and a hard place, where they need the F-35B to replace their aging Harrier fleets aboard their amphibious vessels, but they don’t want to buy an American aircraft. They could retrofit drones to them but it’s nowhere near the same capability.

I think this spat with the US is probably a way for Spain to exit the naval fighters game. They can stay with drones and helos.

 

[ytz]

Just to be clear. We're talking $200M-300M per airframe with sixth Gen. This 3-4x the cost of an F-35. The idea that we'll buy 100 of these is just laughable. And the entire point of sixth gen platforms is to buy far fewer of the manned version. And then buy 3x the number of CCAs. The eventual sixth gen fleet in the RCAF should be something like 40 sixth gen manned frames and 120 CCAs.

This is a part of why I detest the Gripen idea. We need to get moving on CCAs. And there will be no institutional capacity to do that if we're flying two fighter fleets in the 2030s. We should be working on developing a CCA strategy and inducting as many CCAs and unmanned supporting assets (like the MQ-25 tanker) as possible in the 2030s. All the money for that, the tech staff in Ottawa, the technicians on the ground and the operators, will all be going to fly Gripens instead.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Just to be clear. We're talking $200M-300M per airframe with sixth Gen. This 3-4x the cost of an F-35. The idea that we'll buy 100 of these is just laughable. And the entire point of sixth gen platforms is to buy far fewer of the manned version. And then buy 3x the number of CCAs. The eventual sixth gen fleet in the RCAF should be something like 40 sixth gen manned frames and 120 CCAs.

This is a part of why I detest the Gripen idea. We need to get moving on CCAs. And there will be no institutional capacity to do that if we're flying two fighter fleets in the 2030s. We should be working on developing a CCA strategy and inducting as many CCAs and unmanned supporting assets (like the MQ-25 tanker) as possible in the 2030s. All the money for that, the tech staff in Ottawa, the technicians on the ground and the operators, will all be going to fly Gripens instead.

With numbers of 6th gen shrinking to those incredibly small numbers, I would assume that the need to have 'air tight' air defense resources to ensure that those 40 are not completely wiped out while on the ground in one go becomes an absolute necessity. What prelim steps are we taking to mitigate this?

 

[IKnowNothing]

If you think we're going to order ~100 sixth gen fighters I have some ocean front property in Saskatchewan you might be interested in.....

If 6th Gen capability results in smaller aircraft orders then it should do so across the board- the relative proportions stay the same but the principles and ratios of cost sharing hold.

If this is close to true, we don't need a Gripen order. We can simply join the sixth generation effort. But again my skepticism is twofold:

That would be better. But as @GR66 pointed out, based on the timelines maybe that factory investment never builds a Gripen - by design.

1) I don't think Saab et al will really succeed in delivering something significant. I think it could well be Gripen 2.0. As in a fighter that is substantially behind peers. And that's based on who is participating. It's literally the leftovers of the European defence sector. A bunch of companies who have never built a full VLO aircraft will build a sixth gen jet that has multi-band, multi-aspect stealth? I'm skeptical.

Granted it's risky. But in the hypothetical scenario we'd be sharing that risk - and assumed risk mitigation strategies with the Luftwaffe. Go hard on the program for 5-6 years, if necessary pivot to being a pure purchaser of GCAP or FCAS while pushing the R&D fruits of the S-G-C project into the UCAV/CCA space - getting us ahead in the space you're calling for in post 7672.

2) The entire reason FCAS is falling apart is fighting over industrial share. But here we have people thinking that Canada with no real experience building fighter jets in living memory or delivering whole subsystems (like say the entire avionics or radar or stores management, etc) to other fighter programs thinks we'll just magically get an equal share. If we had this capacity all along, we should have been a higher partner in F-35 and gotten way more work. But we don't.

That's strawman 2 on the exact same point. Quote multiple people citing equal share or stop projecting. My post that you're responding to literally explicitly identified knowingly taking a proportionally smaller workshare than our R&D investment and airframe buy would suggest as fair.

 

[ytz]

With numbers of 6th gen shrinking to those incredibly small numbers, I would assume that the need to have 'air tight' air defense resources to ensure that those 40 are not completely wiped out while on the ground in one go becomes an absolute necessity. What prelim steps are we taking to mitigate this?

Hardened shelters and air defences will obviously be necessary and built before these aicraft are delivered. But we should be doing that for a lot of our bases today too. That's one of the lessons learned from the Ukraine conflict that will be operationalized in the coming years. We have only 5 C-17s. Doing what Ukraine did in Op Spider Web to 2-3 of those would cripple our strat airlift capabilities in Trenton.

 

[ytz]

Quote multiple people citing equal share or stop projecting.

Hopefully Reuters is credible enough:

Paris demands 80% workshare in Franco-German fighter jet, says source

France has told Germany it wants a workshare of some 80% in the joint Franco-German fighter jet FCAS, a defence industry source told Reuters, backing up a report by respected German defence publication Hartpunkt.

www.reuters.com

And in our case, I think we'd be the partner to rob share from since we don't have the same industrial capacity to contribute. We don't have an engine maker or sensor maker or processor maker who could build the components that qualify. We don't have companies that could make top shelf radar absorbent materials or coatings. So we'll be stuck making landing gears and structural members. It's decent work. But not critical enough to get us even a proportional share.

The reason the French want so much share above is that they have the supply chain to deliver most of it.

 

[Kirkhill]

Hopefully Reuters is credible enough:

Paris demands 80% workshare in Franco-German fighter jet, says source

France has told Germany it wants a workshare of some 80% in the joint Franco-German fighter jet FCAS, a defence industry source told Reuters, backing up a report by respected German defence publication Hartpunkt.

www.reuters.com

And in our case, I think we'd be the partner to rob share from since we don't have the same industrial capacity to contribute. We don't have an engine maker or sensor maker or processor maker who could build the components that qualify. We don't have companies that could make top shelf radar absorbent materials or coatings. So we'll be stuck making landing gears and structural members. It's decent work. But not critical enough to get us even a proportional share.

The reason the French want so much share above is that they have the supply chain to deliver most of it.

The one item missing from the French supply chain is money.

They want the Germans to foot the bill and sit quietly in the corner like they did in the good old days when they felt guilty.

 

[IKnowNothing]

Paris demands 80% workshare in Franco-German fighter jet, says source

France has told Germany it wants a workshare of some 80% in the joint Franco-German fighter jet FCAS, a defence industry source told Reuters, backing up a report by respected German defence publication Hartpunkt.

www.reuters.com

That's what everyone that's paying attention knows to be the potential cause of Airbus/ Germany leaving FCAS.

I'm talking about the supposed multiple posters on this site that have asserted that Canada will get an equal share.

Edit to match your edit

But not critical enough to get us even a proportional share.

Good thing I specifically stated
"proportionally smaller workshare than our R&D investment and airframe buy would suggest as fair."