How the mainstream news fails us - they don't do their work. They stay on the surface. This is what makes the news part of the problem that we all face today - that we have no idea what is really going on!
The CBC report that a Canadian F18 fighter tracked a Russian fly by and escorted them out of Canadian airspace. Seems an innocuous story doesn't it?. But then the story moves onto the question of the F35 replacement - basically making the point that we need this new plane. The entire piece is lifted from a press release.
My problem is not that the story is lifted from the press release - laziness is only a small sin!
No it is that the CBC has missed all along the real story of the F35. The real story that has been building for years. That will blow up "suddenly" causing all to ask "What happened" That will mean that the public will have been hoodwinked into paying billions for something that does not work.
For the real story is that it is an utter failure as a fighter! The real story is that this is no secret - it has been central to the procurement debate for several years!
It performs much worse than all the planes that it is meant to replace.
Here is a snip from Winslow Wheeler - THE expert on procurement (More on who he is and his POV here)
Even sadder than Lockheed's desperate grasp for reasons to do nothing to fix the self-dismembering F-35 program is the fact that the future of Western combat aviation relies on it. The 2,456 models of it on order for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will ultimately replace almost all tactical aircraft now in our inventory, except for the F-22, for which production beyond 187 aircraft was cancelled this past summer. Major allies, including Britain and much of the rest of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Israel have all made commitments to buy the aircraft. Sales to many others (there's a long list) are postulated, and those who do not intend to buy the F-35 will probably copy it to the extent their treasuries, government bureaucracies, and technological development permit.
Unfortunately, the F-35 is unaffordable, and it is a technological kluge that will be less effective than airplanes it replaces. It will undo our air forces and our allies', not help them.
The problems with the F-35 are not limited to its cost.
As a fighter, the F-35 depends on a technological fantasy. Having failed to develop in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s an effective (and reliable) radar-based technology to shoot down enemy (not friendly) aircraft "beyond visual range," the Air Force is trying yet again with the F-35, like the F-22 before it. Both have the added development of "stealth" (less detectability against some radars at some angles), but that new "high tech" feature and the long range radar have imposed design penalties that compromised the aircraft with not just high cost but also weight, drag, complexity, and vulnerabilities. The few times this technology has been tried in real air combat in the past decade, it has been successful less than half the time, and that has been against incompetent and/or primitively equipped pilots from Iraq and Serbia.
If the latest iteration of "beyond visual range" turns out to be yet another chimera, the F-35 will have to operate as a close-in dogfighter, but in that regime it is a dog. If one accepts every aerodynamic promise DOD currently makes for it, the F-35 will be overweight and underpowered. At 49,500 pounds in air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 pounds of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight and acceleration for a new fighter. In fact, at that weight and with just 460 square feet of wing area for the Air Force and Marine Corps versions, the F-35's small wings will be loaded with 108 pounds for every square foot, one third worse than the F-16A. (Wings that are large relative to weight are crucial for maneuvering and surviving in combat.) The F-35 is, in fact, considerably less maneuverable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 "Lead Sled," a fighter that proved helpless in dogfights against MiGs over North Vietnam. (A chilling note: most of the Air Force's fleet of F-105s was lost in four years of bombing; one hundred pilots were lost in just six months.)
Nor is the F-35 a first class bomber for all that cost: in its stealthy mode it carries only a 4,000 pound payload, one third the 12,000 pounds carried by the "Lead Sled."
As a "close air support" ground-attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is too fast to identify the targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire, and too short-legged to loiter usefully over embattled US ground units for sustained periods. It is a giant step backward from the current A-10.
The real story is at the heart of the problem facing the US and its allies in equipment replacement. The new kit costs too much and does not work.
So here is Canada signing on to a vast expense for kit that will not do the job - better we have asked to reopen the F18 line - after all the Russians are not building anything new.
The CBC and all the Canadian media are more than lazy here. The Canadian public knows nothing about the failure of the F35 and the deal has been done. Billions of precious dollars have been committed to a dud. We know nothing!
Who at the CBC has any idea about defence and what is going on? It's not a small topic. Who talks also about what is really going on in Afghanistan? I don't mean the usual ramp ceremonies, killings and corruption stories - I mean is nation building a legitimate strategy?
Billions have been spent and more to come. 151 of our sons and daughter have been killed so far. But who at the CBC can go deep on this?
We need a news service that can go beneath the surface.
My bet is that the response will be costs. The CBC does not have the budget. That is rubbish.If I can read Winslow Wheeler then so can they. If I can read people like Steven Pressfield on Afghanistan - so can they. The expertise on any topic is out there. You just need the culture to go there.
The CBC is not alone here - where is the reporting in any other Canadian mainstream media organization?
Don't you find it annoying that they go on and on about the value of their organizations and almost never get beyond a press release or the obvious?
