Monday, November 01, 2010

Startling fighter jet interoperability

Two Canadian fighter jets intercepted an Emirates Air flight as part of an international response to a terrorist threat against the United States from cargo planes.
No, no, not that part. This part:
“Two CF-18s were in the air already, they were diverted and escorted a commercial civilian airliner through Canadian airspace,” said NORAD spokesman John Cornelio.
“Once they reached American airspace, the Canadians handed over to two U.S. F-15s and they escorted the airliner to JFK (International Airport in New York).”
But hang on a sec. CF-18s and F-15s? I'm pretty sure those are completely different aircraft.

Let's see. Here's an CF-18:

And here's an F-15:


Yep, look like different planes to me. But I'm confused. The Conservative government and their chorus of defence industry "experts" insist a key reason why we need to drop $16 billion on the F-35s without competition or tender is because it's the plane all our friends are buying, and if we don't have the same plane we won't be able to "inter-operate" or join in any reindeer games.

It's a wonder, then, that our CF-18s were able to inter-operate with USAF F-15s last week without flying into each other or anything, and were able to intercept and handle this middling threat to our national security despite not being the same kind of aircraft or having super-cool stealth capability.

It's miracuolus, even. But then again, I'm not a defence "expert."

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2 comments:

WhigWag said...

yeah, it's pretty disgusting &/or laughable the way so many Con-Bots -- incl. the Minister of Defense -- have accepted that hook, line & sinker. Whereas Alan Williams (the Former ADM & head of procurement) 's response to that was: justifiable SCORN. "All you need is a radio," is what I think he said to fan-boy Evan Solomon on P&P.

What it _really_ means is that the US wants to hook all its defense Allies into the "Company Store" model, where we'll have to buy all our parts & service through them for the next 40 years.

Gletscher Eis said...

It looks like the CF-18 is going to be around for a while yet. Maybe the F-35 has a wicked WiFi hotspot scanner and a cloud-seeding booster. LOL!