I skimmed through it, the author is definitely on the Saab bandwagon and seems to feel it's ok to fight tomorrows battles with yesterdays equipment.I saw one thing related to a post I made yesterday about one of our arctic fol.He said the gripen can land at any of our fol and that the f35 can only land at one of them because it needs 8000 ft minimum runway so hopefully the announcement yesterday that fol Inuviks runway is being extended to 9000 ft is a sign that the f35 is being selected
Honestly given the factors involved in takeoff and especially landing an aircraft, I would take that information claim with a large grain of salt. Or perhaps several such grains.
Typically a hot and/or high takeoff will require a longer runway for a given aircraft and loadout due to air density. Given that the Arctic tends to not be particularly hot, or high... then the air density would likely be greater. What I would be concerned about would be the potential for ice on the runway and the impact that might have on takeoff and landing.
As a side note, the 8,000 ft length figure I have seen for the F-35A is sourced from an Australian Defence doc submitted to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works in June 2014. The doc also lists a runway length requirement at RAAF Base Williamtown of 10,000 feet to operate the F-35 for two reasons. The first being that trainee F-35 pilots need/should have an extra 2,000 feet of runway to provide a greater safety margin to abort a takeoff, and the second reasons is to meet the RAAF's strategy for noise mitigation.
In the quick skim through I have done so far, a few things stood out.
One is the author's usage of the term, "stealth" which is not a term the professionals use, with the pros instead using the term Low Observable or LO. His use of the term makes me question where and how he got his information, as well as whether he actually understood it. A "defence researcher" writing a policy submission using a term for laypeople/the public at large, as opposed to what what defence and defence industry people use is suspect IMO.
Another was his interest/focus on cost, and how Gripen is supposed to be much more affordable than the F-35. Aside from that being possibly very incorrect, depending on where any Canadian-ordered Gripens are built, it seems to ignore how much the production costs for the F-35 have come down, very much in line with cost predictions. The interest also does not IMO make much sense given how often Canadian gov'ts have made decisions on defence procurements based on politics and what would harm a political opponent's reputation, or prevent harm to a political ally's, to the point of spending significant funds to engage in such behavior. Yes, I am looking at the whole Canadian EH-101 order, cancellation of order, then new EH-101 and then S-92 orders debacle. McColl even noted that a new Canadian gov't had spent CAN$500 mil. cancelling an already signed contract for EH-101 helicopters which were needed to replace aging SAR and ASW helicopters, following a change in gov't. A follow-on helicopter replacement programme when it was decided that replacements really could not be put off any longer even had the PMO intervene to ensure that the EH-101 could not be selected for part of the replacement, because the original EH-101 order had been cancelled by the then sitting PM's predecessor from the same political party. Given that Canada as it is does not see too interested in dedicating funding to defence programmes, it would seem to me that any future programme would need to have industrial contract terms which include penalties high enough to trigger the fall of a gov't, so that a change in gov't would not introduce the risk of political retaliation.
The last thing which really seemed to stand out, though I really need to read the document in more detail, is how much the document seemed to focus on what could meet the current capabilities, and how little attention seemed to be getting paid to what the future operating environment conditions could possibly be or even what they were likely to be. I consider it odd that a policy submission for something which likely would still see service until ~2060 would seem to pay so little attention to what the situation would likely be between now and then. It seems awfully short-sighted, at least to me.
