Canada buys 88 F-35 fighter jets for $14.2B
aljazeera.com
aljazeera.com
Yet hacker news can only imagine nefarious reasons why militaries would want an f35. Maybe it's because the Canadian government watched a Tom Cruise movie and acted on it rather than listen to their military advisors. Maybe they wish to display fealty to the United States rather than have a functioning military. Do they even need a military? Does a country need a military? If you were to believe hacker news, it is impossible for someone to make a judgement that the f35 is a desirable plane.
[0]: example I read two days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1062frs/the_bra...
[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/russia-holding-back-usin...
I don't understand why we spend so much time and resource getting better at war when we (US citizen here) are already so extremely good at it. Atm, the US has 11 aircraft carriers, which is just shy of half in all of the world (not to mention many belong to our allies).
We have crazy drones, missiles, submarines, nukes... How much better do you need to be at war? The truth is, if we wanted to light up some country or other, we could totally do it - the reasons we don't are ethical/economical/politcal, it's not because our war planes are not advanced enough.
Instead, what if we invested the same set of resources on public school systems or water desalination technology? Just let the 11 aircraft carriers ride...
The US's history with war is far from any of those reasons. Ethics is one of the least of politicians concern. The main reason why the US hasn't invaded a big country yet is because the world is divided in 2, and invasion would mean the end of the world.
Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen (recent ones) would beg to differ on the US's very ethical wars.
In order to stay ahead, you cannot afford to stagnate and feel like a fat cat.
Now imagine instead of a lesser product causing you to surf the web sightly slower, it instead causes your planes and pilots to be shot out of the sky. That is the reality that Russia and Ukraine are experiencing today.
Plus, remember that the f35 is similarly priced and in some cases cheaper than 4.5 generation planes. It was designed from the start to scale well, or at least better than in the past.
Your description of how you view war is hopelessly naïve (no offense). Take out the whole “war” aspect to this and just think about it in terms of raw technology.
“Why would we improve X? It works just fine with Y right now.”
My guess is your aversion to continuous improvement in defense tech is really related to an aversion to war, which is all well and good, but irrelevant. The enemy also gets a say, and adversaries tend to invest in technologies that exploit your weaknesses - something Russia and China have assuredly done. So all this stuff you seem to think makes the US invulnerable may not actually work as well, because we have a bunch of new technologies out there for the first time.
> The truth is, if we wanted to light up some country or other, we could totally do it - the reasons we don't are ethical/economical/politcal, it's not because our war planes are not advanced enough.
There are new missiles that may, in fact, mean our bombers are not advanced enough. So, no.
In a political scenario where lobbying, not actual strategy is the reason why so much money is spent on defense, it is your comment that sounds naive, not the parent.
I can steelman your argument to be something like "without lobbying, DoD procurement would be much more efficient and the savings would be spent on social programs" ... which is just absurd.
If you think that "lobbying" is the only reason that the US has a very very large defense budget that's on you, since the internet is widely available. Ad minimum, USN is responsible for policing the entire planet to allow trade to continue. The point of overspending your competitor (in the defense realm) is that you reach a point where they just can't catch up, or they realize it would take a decade (or many) to catch up and suddenly war makes zero sense ... unless there is a new technology that resets the gameclock. This has happened. And so, here we are, continuing to invest in new technology.
Lobbying also works against efficiency by prioritizing older companies over newer, more innovative ones. Look at the progress of SpaceX vs the the ULA. Following your premise that heavy investment can create a scenario where competition will suddenly cease to exist, this type of thing should not be possible. Heck, until World War II the US was not even among the highest military spenders in the planet. It was the heavily militarized Europe that started a conflict and shot its advantages on the foot. So, your premise that you can just overspend your way into invincibility is not sound either, if anything the opposite might happen.
Major citation needed on that one. There's inefficiencies in any large organization, sure, but this has nothing to do with a need to prepare a deterrent strategy for the actual wars that matter. Agreed that playing COIN in the desert for 20 years was stupid, and we should all be upset at the politicians and media apparatus that encouraged that stupidity. That doesn't have anything to do with the current situation.
I can't parse what your second paragraph is getting at, other than SpaceX is cheaper than ULA, which I'd consider to be irrelevant given their different mission profiles.
>So, your premise that you can just overspend your way into invincibility is not sound either, if anything the opposite might happen.
I never said this.
And as a concrete example, what's your take on this 2015 event where congress purchased hundreds of millions of dollars in tanks even at the direct protest of the pentagon itself? https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tell...
The 2015 example is irrelevant, because the USMC gave up their takes and turned them over to the Army. Sensational headline aside, part of the reason for maintaining that tank corps is that rebuilding that industrial capacity takes a lot of time and can be lost if you don't do it. The actual text of the article is more nuanced:
>"We are still having to procure systems we don't need," Odierno said, adding that the Army spends "hundreds of millions of dollars on tanks that we simply don't have the structure for anymore." [Emphasis added]
The Army had retooled itself to fight a counter-insurgency for what ended up being 20 years (stupidly), and is in the process of reverting back to fighting peer or near-peer adversaries. Obviously you need less tanks in a COIN fight than in a potential fight in Eastern Europe. Bet Odierno would be glad that we bought those tanks in 2015 now that Russia is engaging in some tomfoolery in Europe right now. I'm not denying that there's lots of inefficiency in defense procurement, but the reflexive "spending money on war machines is bad" takes are really reductive and signal a shallow understanding of geopolitics and the global security situation.
I think if you revisit this comment chain, you’ll find that no one made that argument, and it almost seems like you are defensively projecting a straw man to fight.
The original argument was about should we spend more money on defense (such as f35 development) given that we dominate the next 3 players put together by most metrics. Eg 11 aircraft carriers vs 2 (and yes I know that national defense does not simply boil down to num_carriers)
I’m a strong advocate for the US military being the strongest in the world, but I’m anti the position that we need to be 5x the next spender.
Edit: and yes, I’ll admit my understanding of the geopolitics and defense is indeed shallow, but from where I sit the “experts” got us into War in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam before that. So maybe we need less of this “expert” thinking
Not doing anything (i.e., not developing weapons) will cause the US to slowly lose that footing. And we just need to look at how quickly the PLA(N) has caught up to the USAF/USN (I'm not saying they're an equal, today, but they've come leaps and bounds over 10-20 years ago).
> crazy drones
So does RU, CN, and Iran.
> missiles
See above. When it comes to long range air-to-air and hypersonic, the US is lagging.
> submarines
PLAN is deploying diesel-electric and AIP boats, which can be virtually silent. USN boats are all nuclear powered, which we're good at making them silent, but they'll never be as silent as diesel-electric/AIP.
> nukes
Should never be deployed.
One of the things no one comes close to touching any of the US military branches on is our airlift and logistics.
> How much better do you need to be at war?
So much better than the other guy, you just need to rattle your sword, not use it.
I don't disagree with you about investment into social services, though I feel they're broken not only by funding, but by capitalism itself. I think the other thing we have to remember is that the Military Industrial Complex employs a significant number of workers and even more, if you extend that into all points of State and Federal government that touches the military. Those companies and workers are taxed (maybe). Those taxes cycle back into the system, etc. What kind of system would we have without those millions of workers? No idea. Maybe they'd all be doing something else and my argument would fall flat, which would be great.
Military bad? Yes. Military necessary? Probably, unfortunately, until we're no longer tribalistic. If necessity is a requirement, should we be so much better at it than anyone else on the planet that everyone keeps within their own borders? Yes.
We can expect China to engage Taiwan within the next 6-8 years. And they're practicing for it.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/mock-attack-on-u-s-nav...
(So is Taiwan)
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/taiwan-extends-mandato...
Another point is that US military tactics are highly reliant on the US maintaining a technological superiority over its opponents. This means that weapon systems constantly have to be tossed out and replaced with newer variants as technology improves. And it's often cheaper to build from scratch than retrofit existing platforms to support new technology.
[1] See the Russo-Ukrainian war, where both sides are running through things like artillery shells at something like 5-10× production rates. Even a short, "small" war consumes stockpiles ravenously.
[2] The US has 11 aircraft carriers, but not all of them can be on active duty at the same time. The USN essentially runs 1 in active duty, 1 in reserve, and 1 in refit at any given time; I suspect the USN would struggle to even have 8 aircraft carriers in forward deployment at once, let alone concentrated in one active theater (don't forget, the US has commitments literally across the world that don't go away in war!).
Can't say it much better than that. Threats aren't static. Wise planners plan around enemy capabilities, not intentions. Even ignoring the more BS of the claims about who are our enemies, there are real ones. After getting caught unprepared in two world wars, the US people and military had decided it shouldn't happen again. Secondarily, the constitution doesn't really make allowances for a federal industrial policy, so the clearest constitutional levers they have are in the national defence area.
In a way, it's cheaper to buy expensive F35s (providing jobs for those who build them and for those who shoot patriotic clips for election campaigns) and show how big your stick is than to be drawn into a war with F16s and just barely win it.
Another aspect is that the technology has to actually improve and that's expensive. Russian propaganda, for instance, was peddling Russian military superiority for decades. Putin kept saying "no analogues" at every opportunity. But it was just propaganda. They were trying to do it on the cheap. On the field they actually resort to WW2 era equipment.
Whilst the US can maintain a decent defensive posture at a much lower cost the cost of an actual war when it comes (not if) would be far greater than any savings you’ll make along the way.
It would also make it far more expensive for the rest of the world to boot, to some extent the US is subsidizing peace or reduction in the intensity of conflicts world wide which is what you do when you are a super power.
Soft power comes mainly from having actual power to back it up, either direct or through alliances and if you look at smaller states with a lot of soft power most of them rely on long term cultural ties and alliances with the US.
The reality is that the US can fund better healthcare, better public eduction and better public services in general without giving up its military spending its very difficult to for people to understand just how much wealthier the US is as a nation than everyone else.
The US on a wider cultural level doesn’t seem to want these things, heck the cost of Medicare and Medicaid alone outstrips per capita the cost of just about every universal health care system even when accounting for the entire population of the US not just for those eligible for it.
If the cost of healthcare in the US was similar to that of Germany it could outspend Germany 5 fold per capita whilst granting everyone in the US access to healthcare for what Medicare, Medicaid and the VA health expenditures currently cost.
Great idea, great in production, but getting from idea to production is an overpriced, inefficient process that every engineer shakes his head at.
Actually, I have one idea, which is to do some basic sentiment analysis and try to get some positive vs negative analysis of how people post, such that folks can start outright disregarding the negative forces.
That being said, Canada doesn't need 88 of these things. They're buying 88 because the government has convinced everyone that running more than one type of fighter is an expensive luxury that only top-tier militaries can afford, so they're going to use F-35's for everything right down to close air support. Everything. One plane. They're probably not even going to buy different F-35 variants and will just shoe-horn one variant into all roles.
What they should be doing is looking at how to replace manned fighter planes with drones in as many roles as possible, and using F-35's only in the roles where they are clearly superior to unmanned alternatives. If they did that, they'd probably wind up with an assortment of different drones better suited to individual tasks and a much smaller number of F-35's.
Telling the military what they need and spending more to do less are, however, longstanding traditions of both of Canada's ruling parties.
You should also know that planes can shoot at things behind them. There's no need to point the nose of the f35 at things.
Drones are a game changer but they do not replace planes. When's the last time you saw a Bayraktar video? They were effective in the initial chaos but once a front was solidified, jamming and AA were able to stop them. They need to be able to act autonomously or they'll just be jammed.
The F-35 will eventually be flown in combination with unmanned aircraft. The loyal wingman concept will have F-35s and F-22s leading a wing of fighter drones:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/secret-competition-for...
Honestly they have a point. There are a ton of inefficiencies associated with having more than one type of aircraft in your inventory. You need separate training pipelines, not just for your pilots but all your maintainers. Spare parts aren't going to be compatible across airframes. All of these costs are relatively constant whether you are purchasing a handful of new airframes or a bunch. Which is why in most air forces around the size of Canada's you tend to see only a handful of distinct jet fighters. Usually there are just 2 procured in numbers: one being the new airframe, the other being the legacy airframe that is slowly being retired. Which is exactly what you are going to see in Canada's airforce: the hornets will be slowly retired as new F-35s show up, a process that will take decades.
$14,200,000,000/27,855,050[1] = $509 per tax filer (regardless of tax contribution)
Also, the bottom 40%[2] of Canadians pay $0 in income tax, so every Canadian that actually contributes to the national revenue has paid nearly $1,000 just for this purchase.
I support defence spending but let's not sugarcoat how much it really costs.
[1] # of taxfilers in Canada in 2020 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/478908/number-of-taxfile... [2] https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/taxes/trudeau-is-...
The other article linked states that the programme lifetime is 40 years.
$70B/35M/40 = $50 / year per person
For the kinds of conflicts nato is likely to engage in in the next 20 years, the about to project power may be more valuable than the ability to fight a protracted conflict.
The costs are 18% higher according to the article. That is roughly equivalent to inflation over the same period. Furthermore, debt servicing costs are higher than they were in 2015. Also, we don't have any F-35s right now which is the whole point.
* Which TBH, Canada uniquely doesn't, but mid tier NATO country can't not, if only for optics considerations. For me CAN needs to "pay" for US protection anyways, tipping Lockheed to keep RCAF is one way to do it.
This is about being part of NATO. The more nations that we have with similar values, the better.
Canada is dealing with: - High inflation - Housing Crisis - Crumbling Health system - Food security issues; in 2022 a record breaking 1.5 million visits to the food banks across Canada. It will get worse in 2023
Yet, we are spending billions on ridiculous and unnecessary jets, and policies.
They're obviously not literally behind it (we know who's emitting the lion's share of CO2: not Canada) but as you say: they're going to benefit in some ways!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/new-prehistoric-palm-1.39392...
Harper joined the F35 program, it cost money to gain access to bid on manufacturing of the F35 with discounts. Ultimately would have saved money. Trudeau ran on cancelling the F35 and he did cancel. Canadian tax payers are now paying the cost of his short sighted and ideologically motivation.
F22 was never for export. We're never buying Russian or Chinese; especially now we are at war with both of them. India/Japan has lagged behind in their development and is paying for it in their north. F35 is really our only option. We never got invited to the british 6th gen. We never got invited to the german/french 6th gen. It's surprising how much military diplomacy has been excluding Canada lately, fear about what side we are on.
Trudeau did have other options other than the F35. He could take the money and develop a drone fighter. Built in Canada but made available to all NATO? It would sell and pay for itself. The future doesn't have pilot seats, it will be drones for air superiority.
I learnt something recently as well. One of the key reasons Canada is generally safe from invasion is primarily defensive alliances and not our pathetic military. But rather civilian firearm expertise. Our government should basically have a firearm mandate. Every house must own something. Except we're doing the opposite?
Maybe Top Gun Maverick marketing played a role :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDQow_MfE0s&ab_channel=CityN...
Cold weather: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/the-f-35-has-to-k...
Not to mention Canada has a lot of issues right now where that money should go to.
That said, big economic deals like this between the US and Canada don't happen in a vacuum either.
Our two countries have a large, complex, and mutually beneficial economic relationship.
And assuming Canada wants to maintain self-defense capability, it needs to buy the jets from somewhere. The F-35 is competitive with or superior to the competition from elsewhere in terms of price and performance.
“As our world grows darker, with Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine and China’s increasingly assertive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific, this project has taken on heightened significance, especially given the importance of interoperability with our allies,” Anand said.
Anand needs to be aware that Canada will never be threatened by China or Russia because they are not as capable as they pretend.
If this is true, why bother with any military at all...
Because politicians need kickbacks, wealthy shareholders need "defense" stocks to keep rising and vassal states like Canada need to act at the behest of their geopolitical master.
Well, things like logic can't beat arguments like this...
So, advocating for the military, especially by Canada is futile. I am sure this is just about funneling money so some people can pocket big money.
Maybe, it is better to spend money on Climate Change and Science than on the military.
It has 10x the population, of course it has. It's not going to give up it's position as world leader overnight. But it's also probably not going to get involved in foreign skirmishes as often as it has in the past.
>Meanwhile, the US is currently fraught with crime rates, illegal immigration, low wage, fear of recession, etc...
This is precisely why I believe the previous statement.
>Maybe, it is better to spend money on Climate Change and Science than on the military.
Ironically some of the greatest innovations of the century have come from military spending. The internet, nuclear power, GPS...
It is not going to give up in the future, too. Your points would be valid if the US military budget were reduced yearly.
> Ironically some of the greatest innovations of the century have come from military spending. The internet, nuclear power, GPS...
Not that much if we compare it to the output that we got from investing in another way. Also, in the example, many militaries introduced the technology and most of the innovations are done by other companies.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/04/failing-f-35-gr...
On the other hand, this is government (taxpayers) money, so why not waste some extra money, skimp on testing and pocket the difference, because everyone know they can and nothing will happen to them.
Lots of complaining around the F-16, F-14 had early issues as well: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/197...
Naval vessels have similarly eye-watering (or greater) price tags, but they usually don't fail so spectacularly that they sink or explode or are totally out of commission.
Problems with fighter jets are more "dramatic." If there is a problem with a jet, it either (a) crashes or (b) is effectively nonfunctional, stuck on the ground. Fighter jets also just capture the public imagination. We mythologize fighters and fighter pilots. Jets are considered "sexy" and so articles about them generate probably 10x or 100x the traffic as articles about problems with boats or rail guns or artillery or other procurements.
Also remember that there is fierce competition for those military contracts. Lockheed, Grumman, etc compete tooth and nail for them. Just a guess, but I bet the PR team at Company A is more than happy to seed the press with stories about failures by Company B.
And what advanced systems are present in the F-35 which can't be retrofitted into the F16s and F15s.
Those are both 45+ year old airframes as well. You're going to have to upgrade to something new eventually...
And what advanced systems are present in the
F-35 which can't be retrofitted into the F16s and F15s.
1. Stealth
2. Sensor fusion with other aircraft
3. Carrier landing/launch
4. An airframe that isn't on the verge of forced retirement due to accumulated flight hours and metal fatigue, like many/most of the F16s and F15s
The F16 and F15 are arguably more capable in movie-style dogfights. They can pull 9Gs while the F35 can do 7G IIRC with superior thrust to weight. In a guns-only dogfight maybe you want one of those.
But that misses the point. Modern air combat is not about movie style dogfights. It's about hitting your enemy with a missile from beyond visual range before he even knows that you or the missile exist.
Perhaps even more crucially, it's about surviving enemy ground defenses. Anti-aircraft defenses including man-portable missiles are cheap and getting more deadly by the day. No stealth? You're dead. You're not just dead; you were an easy kill. "Stealth" is not a binary property of course; "stealth" aircraft can be detected with enough luck and effort. But stealth is table stakes for not being easy pickings.
You can see this in Ukraine. Neither side has stealth, neither side has established clear air superiority.
However, it is a bonkers airborne munitions truck that can carry a loooot of missiles and bombs.
A common bit of speculation is that eventually what you could see is the F-15EX used in conjunction with stealthier fighters like the F-35 (and/or drones?) in mixed formations. The F-35s only carry 4 missiles in the internal bays. The F-35s can scout and relay targeting information to the F-15EX, which can then deliver the hurt from a safe distance.
In a bvr battle of missile trucks, it may be beneficial to have separate platforms optimized for sensing and attack. Maneuverability may not be required if the aircraft can remain high and fast.
Most of this is possible today and the rest is close.
The cost is obviously insane, and that's part of the appeal for the US. For the moment they own the skies in a comprehensive way that nobody else can even remotely afford to challenge. Look at the US's dominance in Desert Storm, and consider that the gap has probably widened since then.
I'm neither endorsing this nor criticizing it by the way. The US does this while a lot of its citizens don't even have healthcare, for example. The ethical issues are infinite!
Well that's kind of cheating, it's not like you can retrofit carrier landing onto an F-35A either.
100% right, f-35 can launch amrams with data link from AWACS, red team gets the radar lock warning about 5 seconds before they are dead.
But to answer your question - stealth airframe. And it’s an enormous benefit - you can’t shoot what you can’t detect. And if that thing has long range weapon systems, good luck.
It does not even get basic stuff like plane handling realistic.
Face it stealth is a huge advantage in BVR when you are well outside the WEZ of fox 2’s.
And yes the F-35 gets killed in dogfights, however it slays pretty much everything in BVR.
Also reports from war games report the same kinds of kill ratios, basically until the F-35 runs out of missiles it will kill every 4th gen
I am pretty sure the US military does their own wargames to get data for things like this, and I highly doubt they are using DCS as a data source...
No one said they did. But they do use simulators for training and mission planning:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-35-lightning...
Canada is buying these planes because they are the most effective fighters available within the general price range.
It's about BVR (beyond visual range) combat: launching a missile at a foe and killing him before he knows that you or the missile exist. It's also about survivability against enemy ground defenses attempting to lock onto you with radar and kill you with missiles.
For both of those things, stealth is a bare minimum requirement. The F-35 has it, the Eurofighter does not. (yes, stealth is not a binary property, but that is the TL;DR)
So the Typhoon is going to kick serious ass in certain situations and be completely unusable in others.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/more-sixty-years-la...
"The Air Force didn’t realize those early missiles
were terrible.
Studies showed that 45 percent of Vietnam-era
AIM-7s and 37 percent of AIM-9s failed to either
launch or lock on, and after evasive maneuvers,
the probability of achieving a kill fell to eight
percent and 15 percent for the two types,
respectively"
The Air Force and Navy had different solutions to the early trouble with the performance of the F4. The Air Force attached a cannon in a centerline pod, the Navy did not, and invested in more training and the development of new tactics (notably the Top Gun program).
The Air Force's gun pod did improve kill ratios a little bit, but the Navy's training programs improved kill ratios by a lot, using the same fighters and the same missiles as before. The Air Force later copied the Navy's training programs. I'm sure improvements were made to the missiles over the course of the war as well.
So even at the time (in the earliest days of missile technology) it's not clear that BVR focus was the wrong decision, only that you can't expect pilots to automatically understand how to fight in a new paradigm. But today it's 50 years later, almost as big a gap as between Vietnam and the Wright brothers - BVR combat is very well understood and missile technology is vastly better.
it's not better than the F-22 but it's a lot cheaper
So you literally have to, by NATO contract.
The Ukranians are using Western equipment but they had to be trained to use it first, and that took weeks if not months. That’s precious time in the kind of war involving all of NATO.
I don’t know that the F-35 is the only plane currently meeting requirements, if only because that would represent a bottleneck and single point of failure.
I think I got the original idea of the "requirement" from this article: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44740/germany-has-chos...
But I might've misread it, this might only apply to that particular sale to Germany.
But only a handful of NATO members are a part of nuclear sharing, and Canada isn’t one of them IIRC.
It means there's a larger pool of people qualified to fly and work on the jet, nations can do maintenance deals with each other to reduce costs, parts supply becomes less of an issue, air forces can fly to allied air bases and know that the tools, infrastructure, and mechanics are available for their jets, training costs and resources can be shared between nations, flying and integrating with other air forces becomes easier, shared experience on the same jet helps identify and resolve issues, etc., etc.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/197...
The early F-14As had engines that would just stop running for no apparent reason...
- Grumman salesman, probably
The F-16 encountered months of delays, but the F-35 A/B/C models will, on average, be delayed half a decade.
The F-35 was originally slated to cost $50 million apiece—nearly twice the original cost of the F-16 at today's prices—but the three versions of the plane currently run anywhere from $112 to $120 million each.
Yes, America and her allies have been down this road before, but this time it is a lot rockier.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/f-35-to-get-more-expensi...
The contract for lots 12-14, inked in 2019, included
478 F-35s for the US military and international
customers. Under the terms of the agreement, an
F-35A will cost $77.9 million in Lot 14, with the
F-35B short takeoff and landing variant coming in
at $101.3 million and the F-35C carrier variant at
$94.4 million during the same period.
That's still more expensive than an F-16, but it's also a more advanced plane. I think the relevant comparison isn't the F-16.... it's competing modern fighters like the Rafale, the Eurofighter, and the Gripen. And the F-35 is competing with and beating them on price.
(Direct price comparisons are impossible because of politics, hidden total cost of ownership concerns, government subsidies, etc. But... I've not heard it alleged that the F-35's cost is out of line with contemporaries)
If a Canadian F35 aircraft urgently needs a spare part on the other side of the world, Canada could purchase the spare part from another F35 user in the region and not have to wait until the part is flown from the other side of the world.
Pilots from allied countries could potentially fly the same aircraft type regardless of which country owns an individual aircraft. Thus if a country is short on trained pilots, the aircraft could still potentially be piloted by an ally.
These aircraft are estimated to have a sustainment cost USD$8-10M/yr/aircraft (July 2021) or for the 88 aircraft to be procured by Canada, USD$880M/yr (July 2021). These costs would no doubt be higher if Canada were to select or develop an equivalent aircraft that only a small number of countries use as production of a completely different set of spare parts would be required for many decades. The costs would also be higher due to Canada needing to install additional or upgraded equipment during the lifespan--radios, armaments, etc. Instead of benefiting from shared R&D costs of the US and other countries, Canada would need to develop and sustain customised equipment for the aircraft themselves.
An argument against consolidation and centralisation of the supply chain would be the fragility of only having one aircraft type. Perhaps there is only one factory producing a critical spare part that is forced to halt production, or a software defect impacts all F35 aircraft of all users at once, or as a generalised aircraft it is disadvantaged against adversaries with specialised aircraft, or countries such as Canada get placed at the back of the queue by the US when it comes to production and support.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2021/07/31/f-35...