Recent content by FoverF

Follow-up questions: Are the weapons used by Canada greatly superior to those used by Germany, Italy, France, UK, etc?  What would the cost comparison be (very approximately) for retrofitting a 4 sub fleet versus replacing Canada's stock of munitions? Close? Vastly more expensive in one...

I think the Navy should build a modernised version of the HMS St Lawrence. After all, she was a historically significant ship, and never had a chance to prove herself in battle. Of course her 24 and 32 pounder cannons would have to be replaced with modern weapons, and maybe replace the...

Hmm, let's see... I'm not informed enough to be pedantic, but I'm pretty sure those are the guys Hamas was throwing out of windows, murdering in their homes, and gunning down in the streets. Having been violently ousted by Hamas from Gaza, the Palestinian Authority is only sovereign over...

Here is Europe's latest attempt to fail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Stability_Mechanism The short version:  There are a lot of countries in Europe that simply can't sell bonds. The market expects them to default, and so nobody will lend them money without demanding exorbitant...

Hogwash. Canada has a maritime amphibious warfare capability commensurate with its needs and role within the international community. It's just that major components of that capability involve repeated uses of the word 'zodiac' and 'frigate'.

I seem to recall thinking the same thing, but then I stumbled across this a while ago... Cool, huh?

I'd say I haven't seen it since about 2008 or 2009, so I couldn't tell you how much progress they've made since then.

A key difference, however, is that the 737's evolutionary changes came only with each new iteration of airframe. If you bought the -200 model, you were stuck with -200s. If you wanted to udgrade to -600s, you had to go out and buy some -600s. Which I've always found slightly curious, given...

It's not a fighter jet. It's a fibreglass airshow demonstrator. No radar, no weapons, no ejection seat, no significant avionics to speak of, and no means of actually fitting any of the above. Like a fibreglass shell of a Panzer V mounted on a quad for re-enactments. Except WAAAAY less safe...

One issue with having the RCAF in charge of a bunch of bush planes is that they would want RCAF pilots to fly them. You would spend a bajillion dollars teaching a bunch of zoomies to fly on Grobs or Katanas or what have you, then teaching them to fly Harvard IIs, then teaching them to fly...

None of this changes the facts that: 1) They do not want to repay their government debt 2) They want to continue running a deficit If they felt that there were opportune places to cut spending first, they ought to have voted for a party espousing that principle in one of the several elections...

Europe keeps failing because they honestly believe that spending more money than you have is a fundamental human right. Every new entitlement ever created becomes an inalienable obligation, and any cut in any spending is an injustice. Europe will eventually fail in a grander sense, because...

I had the impression that the Japanese wanted to do some sort partial knock-down production of the F-22, which was one of their major stumbing blocks.  I do think that we missed the boat by not getting in while the production line was still open. The technical problems of restarting production...

Yes, I'm aware that this is the status quo. However, nobody has actually tried to buy any yet either. And I think that regardless of that status quo, Canadian F-22's would be used by the closest US ally, actively defending US airspace, under direct US military operational command within...

Yeah, no. A modernized CF-105 would basically be... a MiG-31. Not bad, but not your first choice for a single-type multirole fighter force. Not to mention the pornographic amounts of money, and the decade plus of development time, that it would take to integrate a new avionics suite...