National Defence committee  Again, the military, being in the nature of who we are, will always have notions for how to deal with situations that unfold. We always retain our own view of agility, how we can maintain our readiness. Ultimately, we're going to keep focused on how to maintain sufficient readine

National Defence committee  Again, as I pointed out earlier, right now our initial training will be done in the U.S., with our partners, as part of the original construct for the F-35. Clearly, as we develop some in-depth knowledge of this program and launch into the procurement aspect of it, we'll be looki

National Defence committee  Good question. I'll just go back to your first point on the state of our current fleets. The Cormorants are improving. Last year, there was an initiative by government to procure a fairly substantial amount of spares from the U.S., as they had shut down one of their fleets, the

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. I mentioned earlier that our SAR trade is healthy. As far as the numbers are concerned, there's no lack of applicants, and we're actually producing them in sufficient numbers right now to populate our squadrons robustly. I'm very satisfied with that.

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. The issue is do I pay attention, and the answer is yes.

National Defence committee  The issue right now is confidence, whether we have confidence that the F-35 program will deliver. That's pretty fundamental. The U.S. Air Force has a giant investment in that program. It is central to their future and they remain absolutely confident that it will deliver the good

National Defence committee  When we started the program, and again in 2003 or so, when they were asking what the rough numbers would be if Canada were interested, they went with what was in our fleet establishment at the time, which was 80 F-18s. That was a benchmark to start the planning. Once we got into

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question, Mr. Chair. Without trying to target specific countries, I think that every country out there, any modern and sophisticated country, is still looking at manned fighters as a deliberate tool of national policy. Therefore, they're making investments in

National Defence committee  If I understood your question on the issue of delays, I wouldn't agree with your portrayal of three to five years. I don't think that's going to be the case. Right now, one year is the current readjustment.

National Defence committee  The Chinooks are of course a tremendous platform. As we saw in Afghanistan, the arrival of that airplane opened up options that we didn't have before, as far as mobility and a far more secure way of travel are concerned. There is also their tactical effectiveness. You can surpris

National Defence committee  As to way our training system works, there is a basic selection that occurs, where all pilot candidates have to go through a filter to ensure they can learn at the speed required by the air force so they can go on to the other phases of pilot training. Everybody goes through that

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. It goes back to readiness. Why have we been able to achieve what we have this year as far as the speed of response and the quality of response are concerned? It's because we've maintained a significant investment in the training part of maintaining fu

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. On unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, we've seen over the last few years how critical they can be in any battlefield setting. They have fulfilled the initial mandate given to them to do the dangerous, dirty, and dull jobs where you don't have to put

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. I'll answer the last question first. The SAR trade is actually healthy. It's slightly over establishment, in fact. We have no problem recruiting our SAR techs. We're slightly ahead in numbers, which is good, because it is a trade that's prone to inj

National Defence committee  Other than the fact that Chris Hadfield is one of our former test pilots and a great supporter of the RCAF.... We also have a pilot who was just selected to go to the space agency to train. So we remain one of the providers, as part of the greater Canadian gene pool, to provide f