Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

What I got from reading this article is the impression that it makes absolutely no sense to use the F-35 for close-air support. It is inferior in performance and far more expensive to operate than the A-29 for CAS missions. Here in Canada, politicians are dithering and dickering over whether or not to buy the F-35 now that it's looking less impressive and the weak Canadian dollar has made it far more expensive. For some inexplicable reason, the prevalent idea is that the RCAF should own and operate just one model of fighter. This idea needs to change.

The reality is that Canadian planes have not engaged in air-to-air combat since the Korean war, but virtually every conflict the CF participates in requires close-air support. That mission is currently fulfilled by CF-18's. The A-29, or a similar plane, could provide superior CAS capability for far less money. Then, as an added bonus, the successor to the CF-18 would not need to be compromised for CAS, as the F-35 is. Canada could look for a pure air-superiority fighter, and buy a smaller number of them because they would not be called upon to perform CAS. The end result would be an air force that's better at it's primary roles and far cheaper, and Canadian forces (and their allies) on the ground would be far safer.

Maybe I'm wrong?

I'm totally with you. The CF-18 is pretty good for Arctic sovereignty and for maintaining our NORAD commitments, but absolutely terrible for peacekeeping & observation missions. Same goes for coast guard missions. The F-35 seems like it would just be bad at all of them. Would you want to fly a sortie north of the Arctic circle in a single engine jet?!

In your opinion what makes it terrible for peacekeeping & observation? Isn't it just a matter of Canada not buying and integrating suitable armament? With Jdams and Paveways you have to go too close for early operations, but Canada still dropped 10% of bombs in Libya according to wikipedia. Sweden has a similar setup, missing proper ranged options but they were restricted to doing strictly recon in Libya. In the end I suspect that even if you had the ability, no-one besides USA(/UK/France/Germany) has the stockpiles/willingness to start throwing around cruise missiles in foreign ops. For smaller countries there's political reasoning behind doing enough but not everything you possibly could in foreign ops.

Not all modern fighters have started as a multi-role, but every good fighter has ended up as one.

Dropping bombs isn't necessarily peacekeeping :).

If I'm remembering properly, my grandfather was stationed in Yemen in '63-'64 as an aircraft field mechanic. Their mission was purely observational: every 12 hours, fly over the border and count any accumulation of military equipment. I believe they had a DHC-3 Twin Otter.

I don't know the specifics, but looking at the specifications: 945 mile range, 121 mph cruise speed on the DHC-3. That's give or take a 6-7 hour loiter (they were landing in the desert and had fuel trucks come daily). It's harder to get exact specs on how a CF-18 would perform on such a mission, but I've got a pretty good feeling it's not going to be landing on any gravel airstrips, nor is it going to be fun trying to count vehicles on the ground.

When I think of peacekeeping missions, I think of boots on the ground, ideally with air support. Looking at the A-29 from the article, that sounds a lot more like the type of aircraft that should be providing that support.

There are no pure air superiority fighters on the market, so you'll end up with a jack of all trades in any case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com