Canada bought used F-18s from Australia that need major upgrades, it’s just what we do. Plus the larger engines on the 737Max just looks bad-ass. Since optics are the #1 priority with anything we do, it’d be a great fit.
The sad part is, we don’t even shoot for good optics anymore.
Spending over $1 Billion to buy those Aussie Hornets, to supplement our own aging fleet... when they are just as old, and less upgrades that ours??
They don’t even try to spin good optics anymore. They just delay any sort of useful decision making, avoid leadership, then make the cheapest or dumbest decision presented to them.
All that money spent to acquire used airframes, less upgrades than ours.... only to have the upgrades and testing finish right around the same time we sign a contract for the replacement.
If nothing else, at least we’ll have some spare parts to keep the fleet going...
(Wouldn’t that money have been better spent towards the fighter replacement portfolio? Since that money didn’t come out of the fighter portfolio, couldn’t it have been used for the tanker replacement? Or set aside, invested at decent interest rate, then used towards sub replacement or just topping up any projects that need it? We could have used that money in a million better ways...



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