National Defence committee  Should the F-35 show up tomorrow, it would have the same capabilities as our F-18s have had for 28 years of their service life in the Arctic. We will have beyond line-of-sight communication on the F-35 by the time we reach our operating capabilities in 2020. The modifications for

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. To answer the question without speculating—and, of course, a lot of this has to do with speculation about what the future may hold—first of all, I'd just like to put into context the issue of cost. Of course, much ink has flowed over the cost of aircraft, b

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. It goes back to having the time to make the right decisions. The previous government also invested in the F-18 renewal, which started in 2002 and was completed in 2010, with a fairly significant investment in modernizing the F-18. We have an advantage

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. I think it's fair to say that it goes back to the premise of manned fighters versus other options. Most industrialized and modern nations have come to the conclusion that for their future national sovereignty and defence needs, a manned fighter remai

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. The stealth capability in and of itself is certainly an advantage, but it's also what it comes with, the overall package that the fifth-generation aircraft brings to any sort of conflict. Stealth allows you to have a low probability of detection. Ul

National Defence committee  As far as the option analysis phase, we've been looking at this for almost 10 years. The F-22 is not available for foreign sales, and so it wasn't part of the list of aircraft we looked at. Also, the F-22 is optimized for air combat only; it's not a multi-role platform. Canada

National Defence committee  Thank you. The brochures published by companies that sell aircraft all indicate maximum speeds, such as Mach 2 or Mach 1.8. With the F-35, we're talking about Mach 1.8. The immediate reaction is to say that it is slower than other combat aircraft, but there is a fairly important

National Defence committee  No. Normally we carry out simulations precisely to determine an aircraft's capabilities in all conditions. The simulations we have access to showed that the F-35 had an imposing advantage over the other aircraft currently on the market.

National Defence committee  For many years now, producing pilots has had its challenges. We were dealing with technical problems related to certain training fleets, which delayed our production. This year, we intend to just raise the curve. We hope to turn out a total of about 105 pilots a year. For years,

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. Mr. Chair, I think it's fair to say that much like other air forces around the world that have looked at their future requirements and how they can meet those requirements, we've come to the same conclusion, through a lot of analysis and discussion w

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. With respect to the number of aircraft, an analysis was done over the years. It was based on the prerequisites that were expected for the end of the decade, when the F-35s will be ready. The aircraft has various technologies that are curre

National Defence committee  The training capacity is subject to the definition of the project. It's clear that, initially, the first pilots will be trained in the United States, our partner. That's where the institutions with the required capacity are. We intend to repatriate our training to Canada in the f

National Defence committee  It would be at two bases, the ones in Bagotville and in Cold Lake.

National Defence committee  Normally, the distribution would be equal. We will need to see how many aircraft will be available for operations and how many will be used for basic training. Once we have defined the basic training invoice, we will redistribute the aircraft equally between the two squadrons, in

National Defence committee  As is currently the case, our aircraft can be deployed to our forward deployment positions. We have a number of bases in the Arctic, and we use them for operations in that region. Our operations are run from main bases in Cold Lake and Bagotville, and we deploy throughout Canada,