The Canadian Forces, in respect to all of its operations at home and abroad, needs an aircraft that can conduct air-to-air and air-to-ground operations. The CF-18 was optimized air-to-air and then was modified for air-to-ground later on. The joint strike fighter would have both capabilities from the beginning. The F-22, which we are not allowed to buy, but which the United States has, is strongly air-to-air. Those are the distinctions.
I used to say that there's a home game and an away game, but I don't believe that anymore. We really need to think of our defence operations as a whole. We need to have a platform that can operate at home and overseas. We need air-to-air continentally; clearly we're not going to be doing air-to-ground. But overseas we need air-to-ground. It's exactly what we needed in Afghanistan. Of course, we didn't send our aircraft, but the British, the French, and others were giving us air-to-ground support.
We need a platform that can do both.