I think there's an assumption in your statement that we are not going to have a situation in which Canadian aircraft are coming into combat with stealth aircraft of other nations. I suggest that is an extremely risky assumption. The evidence is quite clear from the exercises the Americans have undertaken that stealth against non-stealth results in the defeat of the non-stealth and its being shot down.
The exercise I've cited in my text was one in which F-22s—now, those are not F-35s, but they are a superior fighter—against F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s resulted in a score of 144 to zero. It seems to me the conclusion that I draw from this is that if you're going to put a stealth aircraft against a non-stealth aircraft, the non-stealth aircraft dies.
The question here is are we going to invest in an aircraft for the past environment, in which there were no stealth aircraft, or are we going to invest in an environment that contains stealth aircraft? It seems to me that, from a standpoint of risk—combat risk and risk to the lives of our aviators—we have no choice but to acquire an aircraft that is a stealth-capable aircraft.
My preference would be for an F-22, but they won't sell that to us, and the line has been closed.