Hey CBC! On the F35...

You're being just a little disingenuous when you refer to Mercedes Stephenson as simply a "military analyst":

Military analyst Mercedes Stephenson told CBC News that the purchase is “absolutely necessary."We have to have fighter jets. Canada is a massive country and when you think purely about response times, there is nothing else that can get across the country as fast as a fighter jet," she said. "Also, when you are dealing with the Arctic, there is very little that has the kind of survivability of a fighter jet in the air under those kinds of harsh conditions." She added that the purchase is also important for Canada to meet obligations to its international allies. "Everybody else is updating their fighter jets and there simply hasn't been a technology developed that can replace it at this point."

This Ms. Stephenson. Who studied under this fellow. Call her a rightwing thinktank military propagandist. Analyst just doesn't quite seem suitable.

Now to analyse her statements.

"We have to have fighter jets. Canada is a massive country and when you think purely about response times, there is nothing else that can get across the country as fast as a fighter jet."

Yes, Mercedes, fighter aeroplanes are very fast, and Canada is very large. This is pretty common knowledge and it's not hard to figure out that fast air plus large country, equals crossing it quickly. However, an F35 carries no external fuel tanks or weapons (for stealth reasons: external stuff gives it a bigger radar signature) and must therefore rely on its internal fuel and air-to-air tanker support. According to Lockheed Martin, the F35A (B and C are similar) has a range on internal fuel of 1200 nautical miles. Its combat radius is 610.* This means a Cold Lake Alberta based F35 without CC150T (aka those two Trenton, Ontario, based Airbus refueling conversions) aerial tanker support could only fly to about the Alberta-NWT border turning for home. Or, it could just about reach Inuvik (Hint: Russians hang out a little further North of there) but not much further if used all the gas in its tanks. (I wonder what the burn rate is on supercruise in case you want to get there faster - does this actually shorten its range/endurance?) And given that the published combat radius is half the ferry range (which assumes a 'clean' aircraft), and the added weight of weapons although carried internally, still adds to fuel burn, there seems room to doubt the veracity of these numbers.

"Also, when you are dealing with the Arctic, there is very little that has the kind of survivability of a fighter jet in the air under those kinds of harsh conditions."

Yes, so we've established that its cross country abilities are limited. And the Arctic? One engine, risky that far North pending engine failure and all. Restricted range, even riskier. That's why Canada has preferred twin engines in its fighters for quite some time. Twin engine CF101s, CF100s, and CF18s spent much time intercepting Russian bombers over the Arctic. This happens even today, which is therefore presumably an envisioned role for the F35 given that it's replacing the aircraft that currently does this. Single engine CF104s found themselves as ersatz bombers in Europe (for a while in a nuclear strike role) where distances were fewer and population greater. Also, going back to my earlier point about range and tankers, a theoretical exercise defeated F35s by destroying their tanker support. So in these basic respects, the F35 appears to offer little advantage over the CF18: still needs tankers, and thus still needs to be positioned at an FOB, is single engined, and remains frightfully expensive.

So, CBC, whatever Stephenson means by "survivability" in "harsh conditions", I do not know, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with cogent analysis.

* By contrast the Dassault Rafale, which the French seem to think is just fine for the next few decades, has a combat radius of over 1000 NM.