Canada goes down under

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Berf
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Canada goes down under

Post by Berf »

The Guardian:

Canada will purchase a fleet of 30-year-old F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets from Australia amid an escalating trade dispute with the US.

Plans to buy a newer fleet of 18 Boeing Super Hornets were ditched after the US imposed an 80% tariff on imports of Bombardier passenger aircraft and Canada will instead spend about $500m on the fleet of vintage RAAF planes.

Ottawa announced last year it wanted to buy the Super Hornets as a stopgap measure while it runs a competition for 88 jets to replace its ageing 77 CF-18s fighters, but it scrapped those plans and made clear the company had little chance of winning a much larger contract unless it dropped the trade challenge against the Canadian aircraft manufacturer.

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The Baron
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by The Baron »

Good on the Canadians.
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Brevet Cable
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by Brevet Cable »

Presume they copied the story from the Canadian press, who've been saying this for the past couple of weeks despite the official announcement only being made yesterday.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fighter-jet-competition-australian-announcement-1.4444466?cmp=rss
Don't know how much the Guardian posted, but the more interesting point is about halfway down the article linked above :
Angered by the Bombardier trade complaint, the Liberals have said Boeing was "no longer a trusted partner."

The complaint with the U.S. Commerce Department, alleging the Montreal-based aerospace-maker was dumping passenger jets into the American market at unfair prices, resulted in nearly 300 per cent import duties.
Despite that, senior officials speaking on background at a technical briefing Tuesday said no company will be excluded from the full fighter replacement program.

There is, however, one interesting, new aspect to that contest.
It involves the introduction of an additional assessment mechanism to measure each bidder's "overall impact on Canada's economic interests," said officials who spoke on background to CBC News prior to the announcement.

That means competitors will not only have to deliver billions of dollars in economic offsets in return for the specific contract, but also demonstrate their other business dealings benefit the country.
That is clearly aimed at Boeing.

"Bidders responsible for harming Canada's economic interests will be at a distinct disadvantage compared to bidders who aren't engaged in detrimental behaviour," Qualtrough said.
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harkins
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by harkins »

Given that the Canadian CF-188 Hornets were delivered between 1982 and 1988 and Australia's were delivered between 1984 and 1990, the jets aren't really any younger. So I assume that the Australians haven't used theirs nearly as much.

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Brevet Cable
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by Brevet Cable »

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-australia-fighter-jets-1.4354326

Australia's defence materiel group produced a scathing report in 2012 noting that the country's FA-18s were rapidly running out of airframe life and required bigger and bigger slices of the maintenance budget.

"The incidence of discovery of airframe corrosion in the Hornet fleet is increasing, and the annual cost of corrosion‐related repairs has increased significantly," said the report, which Layton said was considered "too critical" by the defence establishment.
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harkins
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by harkins »

I suppose it stands to reason really. 30 years in hot dry Australia and no adversary to intercept versus 30 years of hanging out in the Arctic circle intercepting Soviet/Russian aircraft and 10 years of heavy operations out of damp and wet northern Germany.

Stagger2
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by Stagger2 »

I thought the story above related to the Australian examples suffering advanced expensive corrosion issues? :dizzy:
Now that Warton is back in business, Canadian Typhoons could be the start of a independent partly post-Brexit Trade Agreement with Canada! :biggrin:

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Brevet Cable
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by Brevet Cable »

Yeeeesss....and just who do you think Canada are buying the used aircraft from....... :facepalm: :lol:
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harkins
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Re: Canada goes down under

Post by harkins »

Oops, I totally failed to read Brevet's post properly (which I guess is easily done when I should really have been working). :sweat:

So it sounds like the Aussie F-18's are not only equally old, but not even in significantly better condition. I suppose that they just pick the best and use them to supplement the best of their remaining CF-188's.

Going back to my previous post, it makes you wonder how cream crackered the Canadian Hornets are if the Australian ones are so worn out and yet worth buying.

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