National Defence committee  It's probably better to buy fewer F-35s. We've seen the allies who are involved in the program all starting to cut back their buys for budgetary reasons. But every time you cut one aircraft, the distribution of per unit cost will go up for everyone. The actual amount of savings you're going to accrue by reducing it is questionable down the road.

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. I know I go on. Academics, you should realize, always yak too long.

National Defence committee  Okay. I'll be brief about the advancements. National Defence, after a 20-year very slow and torturous process, has made great advances in engaging Canada and National Defence in outer space. There's Project Polar Epsilon and the ability to receive the current RADARSAT data, analyze it, and spread it as needed, and what it will be able to do, once the RADARSAT constellation is expanded to a global constellation, will have great overseas value for the Canadian Forces and our allies.

National Defence committee  We have a presence—

National Defence committee  We have a presence, and we are developing surveillance capabilities.

National Defence committee  It's a very good question, and one that almost has no answer. You're talking about opportunity costs. What is lost by continuing to invest in this if prices rise on this relative to existing alternatives and capabilities that different platforms provide you, relative to political and strategic considerations, and relative to the economic, industrial, and technology considerations that are all involved here?

National Defence committee  Well, my simple view on the Arctic is that it's not a military threat to Canada whatsoever. The thinking that we need to build up armed combat forces to be able to prosecute some sort of naval campaign in the Arctic, with supporting land forces, has a probability of near zero.

National Defence committee  To continue what they're doing right now, which is fundamentally being able to integrate effectively into U.S. carrier task forces. That is where we should continue our emphasis.

National Defence committee  We lack the capacity. If you're talking about taking the lead in the Arctic, or releasing U.S. forces from the Atlantic—we'll take over the Atlantic while you concentrate naval forces in the Pacific—we don't have the capacity to do that, period. This gets to a bigger issue, which is about the potential of the Canadian Forces to be leaders.

National Defence committee  Right.

National Defence committee  There are a lot of nations around the world that live beside international straits and have been able to manage their straits issues. Canada has certain sets of rights that stem from it being an international strait transiting through, roughly, internal waters: legal rights to enforce certain elements of its jurisdiction or sovereignty up there.

National Defence committee  That gets into the highly technical issues. The point you're making we can take specifically from the Libyan experience, where, by and large, before the NATO forces moved in, the U.S., from what's in the public domain, apparently had done most of the initial work to degrade enemy air defence systems.

National Defence committee  They don't need to use the F-22.

National Defence committee  They have a variety of attributes to use. What does stealth bring to the table? I guess the question is for the defence of air crews and very expensive platforms as lesser states acquire more and more sophisticated air defences. They're not going to stand still. The Irans of the world aren't standing still to see what will happen to them militarily if something goes wrong.

National Defence committee  Potentially.