The reality is that as great of an interceptor as it was (and possibly the best dedicated interceptor jet ever made), by the time it was ready it was already obsolete. With the introduction of ICBMs, there was simply no need to have jets purpose built for shooting down TU-95's over the Arctic when the new threat was impossible to shoot down.
And yet the reality is that within a very short time after cancelling the Arrow the need for an interceptor was not, as you say, obsolete. That requirement meant that the Canadian government bought ex-USAF CF101-B Voodoo jets to replace the truly obsolescent CF-100 that the Arrow was meant to do. The development of interceptor aircraft similar to the Arrow continued on in various countries for decades.
Canada bought over a hundred Voodoo interceptors from America and kept them in service until the 80s. Missiles making interceptors obsolete is very simplistic, not in line with reality. Even today, intercepting Tu-95s, now armed with long range cruise missiles, is relevant to NATOs defense. Canada's not least of all considering Russia's ambition to own the Artic Ocean.
Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) produced a 4 episode TV mini series dramatizing the birth and death of the Avro Arrow plane (can be found on YouTube)
For pure speed, they notched 1,852 mph. They could climb to 98,425 feet in four minutes and 3.86 seconds and ultimately reached an absolute altitude record of 123,520 feet.
Back to the OP topic, the Arrow's thrust to weight ratio meant that it was theoretically the first aircraft capable of accelerating directly upwards in an arc immediately after reaching the end of the runway. Hot stuff.
"To protect our turf, and the Americans to the south, Canada decided to build a high-flying supersonic interceptor to meet and knock down invading Soviet bombers."
Different times. Canadians are now possibly now more worried about the US than Russia.
Great read, fascinating piece of Canadian history.
For anyone on mobile (android/chrome at least) select "Desktop Site" under browser settings to see five historical images. They don't show up for me at all in the default mobile view.
No mention of the spies. No mention of how the overall design of the arrow is eerrily similar to the later mig-25, a unique design in soviet aviation. There is a reason the foxbat and foxhound dont look like any other soviet aircraft, but do look very similar to the arrow and f-15. Arrow was cancelled because america saw what was happening.
For those who dont see it: the arrow has a rectangular "box" body, so do the mig25/31 and f-15. Most multiengine fighters have cigar shapes (f18, voodo) or "tunnels" such as the su-27/35/34/57, f-14 and even the sr-71. The box shape was new in the arrow but can arguably be seen today in the US 22 and 35.
Eh....cancelling a not very good design in 1959, well before most countries realized ground controlled interceptors were kind of a bad idea might be the real story here. The US (and the Soviets to a hilarious degree) went down the other path for many more years, at high cost; the USAF (Fighter side) didn't truly recover from those choices until the late 70's - early 80's IMO. (Vietnam being the real tutor here)
If you're interested in the subject, look up the performance of the beam riding missiles in use, and the limitations for deployment of the AIM-9B - those do a good job highlighting the extremely limited envelope in which these weapons could be deployed, and the difficulty in getting the aircraft in that envelope.
Avro Canada pitched the Arrow to the British as either a frontline RAF interceptor or as a placeholder for the TSR-2 until it could be brought into service.
> Prime Minister John Diefenbaker [ordered] all the completed planes (five plus a nearly finished sixth) to be chopped up and destroyed, along with all plans and blueprints so that the plane could never fly again.
Stopping the program was understandable, but the destruction is mysterious and the article doesn't say a word about why. Strange.
Killing it was the right call for the wrong reasons. But because it was the wrong reasons, it meant that no attention was paid on investing the tech into a new plane or resources.
Diefenbaker being "suckered" by the Americans is not what really happened (the CBC mini-series on the Arrow has some really cringey scenes about that angle, as well as portraying conservative party ineptitude and American arrogance). The more you read into Diefenbaker, the more he comes across as vain and susceptible to overreacting to slights (perceived or real), in over his head on the international stage, and ignorant of cold war realities (despite it being his government that had Canada form NORAD with the US).
It did set the stage for Canada's mercurial relationship with the United States, as Canada tended to over-react and over-compensate our opinions in both directions since then. This still continues to this day.
Politics. Diefenbaker had a conservative majority. Destroying everything made it much more difficult for a future Liberal government to restart the program.
Why would a future Liberal goverment restart it if the past one wanted to shut it down but didn't have the guts (or at least that's my understanding of the article)?
Which security reasons does the article state for not keeping at least one prototype (in a museum, without security-ensitive parts) and the blueprints?
As far as I can tell they only kept part of the nose/cockpit.
The article doesn't get into how Soviet spies were uncovered in Canada in the 1950s and 60s. Governments were not being paranoid in the face of those revelations.
Right, the spy threat would be the "security reasons" I guessed at.
But still, wouldn't successful projects which were later decommissioned be more at risk of spies than an unsuccessful project? Yet successful projects do not have their blueprints and airframes routinely destroyed without a trace.
My dad was an avionics and air-to-air weaponry guy in the RCAF in the 1950s-60s (you might understand my HN nick) and was training up on the Arrow's suite, which was being designed from scratch by RCA Canada in Montreal as Project ASTRA. It was a direct competitor to U.S. systems made primarily by Hughes, and the missiles were a direct competitor to those from what is now Raytheon. One of Avro's desperate options prior to cancellation was the idea of scrapping ASTRA for a 100% U.S. avionics and missile suite.
Yes. It's a "scorched earth" approach to prevent the project being revived.
Something similar happened to the RAF Nimrod: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12294766 , although I think the safety case was much stronger there after one caught fire in the air.
It's very Trumpian. Perhaps the steelman argument might be "if we leave this thing in limbo, people will continue to advocate spending more money on it". Sometimes institutions or individuals in them will have a pet project that they keep pushing beyond economic sense, and the only way to get them to stop is to shoot their pet.
There was no need to run a scorched-earth policy to prevent the Nimrod project from being revived. The plane that caught fire, killing 14 people, in mid air was a flying deathtrap. It had leaky internal fuel pipes that ran past a different (extremely hot) pipe that allowed exhausts from one engine to be used in restarting the other engine after an intentional in-flight shutdown (they used to shut down one engine to loiter more fuel efficiently when they reached their mission's surveillance area). The leaky fuel pipes were the aftermath IIRC of an air-to-air refuelling system that was retrofitted to allow long range flights down to the Falklands islands. The devastating official post-crash report (the Haddon-Cave review) is at [0]. It was one of the classic 'normal accidents' situations - they got away with multiple routine internal fuel leaks up until the day when they didn't.
Separately, the planes were all very old, and had been constructed over several years so were all slightly different. Projects that tried to do fleet upgrades usually went massively over-budget because each airframe had to be treated as a special case, even for things that you would expect to be standardised like the basic fuselage and wing dimensions.
[Edit] The Haddon-Cave review was exceptional in that it actually named and shamed those in the MOD and industry who helped develop the bodged safety case. People in the MOD and industry lost their jobs after the crash.
I'm sure the answer is probably fairly mundane, but it's birthed a whole lineage of nationalist semi-conspirational explanations (US colonial masters chewed Diefenbaker out, demanded the total cessation and destruction of the project, etc.)
I suspect it makes absolutely zero sense for Canada of the 50s to be designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets, but the mythos is strong.
And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
The US: having it both ways ("be our subservient raw resource provider and nothing else" and "oh, but it costs so much to defend you") since forever.
> And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
Surprised this doesn't get mentioned more.
If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
It's easy for America to complain about other countries not spending as much when it's the one that owns the market we all shop at.
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
We're about to find out if we want to. This is a major point in Carney's defence plan.
As a Canadian, I have mixed feeling about this. You can develop and build domestic defence industries, but it only becomes economical if you can develop an export market. Even then, the inputs for parts/resources are still global.
Sweden has one heck of a domestic defence industry, but it's tailor made for its requirements and expensive. The SAAB Gripen is one of the best planes in the world for what it was designed to do: operate dispersed off of regional roads when your main infrastructure is destroyed or unavailable. But its flyway cost is the same as an F-35 because hundreds have been built instead of thousands. And the Gripen's engine is still from General Electric.
The NLAW anti-tank weapon is a good example of export success. It was developed jointly with the British and has had a lot of exports and proven success in Ukraine.
On top of that, Canada's defence civil service is terrible at procurement. Even when we buy foreign, we manage to drive up the costs to the point where its rediculously price just to shove in some domestic "advantage", rather than focusing that money on stuff we are really good at (we tend to kick ass at sonar and anti-sub tech, for example).
Domestic development is an investment in your own country, it develops and pays skilled labor and supporting industries. When you buy jets from America, virtually all of that money is gone from Canada forever, funneled into America with Canada getting nothing out of it besides a jet which will need spare parts also from America, technicians from America, and after some years will need to be replaced with another American jet because after you've stabbed your own domestic industry in the back now you have no other choice than to continue buying foreign.
"On top of that, Canada's defence civil service is terrible at procurement."
You could remove "defence" from that and describe almost every large company or gov't in this country, too.
We need a moral and civil reform in this country, to really build again like we used to. Civic spirit revival.
Look at the joke of the Eglinton LRT, or even more so the Hamilton LRT. Even when we commit to building things, it turns into a swamp of mismanagement and a game of political hot potato.
Most embarassing thing about the Eglinton LRT is it sounds like its our (software) profession that is to blame for the latest series of dysfunctions. I'm disgusted.
We shall see. Big words, but this country has a history of doubling down on mediocrity and parochial interests.
I personally would love to contribute in whatever way I could to homegrown manufacturing, tech, and maybe even defence sector, and am willing to put in the hours and even compensation cut to make things happen in this country.
I just hope there's investors out there willing to make things happen, and that the gov't doesn't just do its usual thing of protecting a few existing corporate buddies.
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
That doesn't mean no longer spending money at the altar of the military-industrial complex, it just means having your own altar. Which you're free to do, by the way. You don't have to buy our stuff.
Canadians seem to consistently ignore the effects that a strong military-industrial complex has had on the US (and UK, to a lesser extent), particularly on foreign policy. When major components of the TSX Composite need sales, they're going to start lobbying MPs to get them. It's not a coincidence that a lot of the defense industry is based in Northern Virginia.
As far as the sovereignty... I don't think you have to worry about that.
I seem to recall this being tied to our review the F-35 programme last time, but I can't find a reference to it. In any case, not buying F35s will have huge consequences with the US, if it doesn't happen.
Okay? So you might be selling fewer Bombardier aircraft in the US. There's still Europe, China, and the rest.
That's not a mortal threat to Canadian manufacturing and the country's defense sector. Unless, of course, Canada really is as reliant on American dollars as Trump makes the country out to be, which is why he feels he can be a pain in the ass and push tariffs higher.
It's not a mortal threat to Canada, but it is a mortal threat to the Liberal party's base of support in Quebec :-)
Seriously though, those are decent paying jobs that glue together a manufacturing economy that often times is barely holding on in the face of the same kinds of forces that have decimated American manufacturing, too.
It's the same with the autosector here in Ontario.
It's not that it's "American dollars" holding Canada together, per se, it's that this is a continental-wide trading system developed by ruling classes in both countries since the 80s and it barely serves the interest of working people here or in the United States because the bulk of work has been exported to China in the the last few decades... and so what is remaining is absolutely critical to hold onto.
These are the facts Trudeau was trying to explain to Trump, who is too stupid and arrogant to grasp.
In the end working people in both countries have more in common than not. And face threats from overseas as well as our own political classes. (And no, that's not a call for the dissolution of our sovereignty.) As much as I despise my premier Doug Ford (he's a corrupt buffoon) he was right to emphasize a "fortress North America" alternative approach to Trump -- continent wide security and prosperity insured by cooperation. That line worked with Obama and Biden, and IMHO strengthened both countries, but Trump is deadset on burning it all down.
> designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets
The Avro Arrow was only proposed as an interceptor but neither a fighter nor bomber. There were spitball ideas of future bomber adaptations but they were never part of the project.
It was a long range bomber interceptor and it made sense until ICBMs happened. Canadian territory is vast and mostly barren in a way that no other NATO country is, having specialized equipment to defend it can make a big difference.
I understand the cancelation, I'm actually asking about the memory-holing of the project (destroying blueprints, not even keeping an airframe for a museum, etc).
Diefenbaker canceled the arrow saying that interceptors were no longer needed (Canada subsequently bought interceptors from America, because they did in fact remain relevant.). At the same time he was digging out a massive bunker outside of Ottawa so that the Canadian government could survive the rest of Canada being vaporized. Some real Doctor Strangelove shit IMHO.
The so called "Deifenbunker" is now a museum open to the public. Pretty interesting, being in it feels like being in a ship.
The reality is that as great of an interceptor as it was (and possibly the best dedicated interceptor jet ever made), by the time it was ready it was already obsolete. With the introduction of ICBMs, there was simply no need to have jets purpose built for shooting down TU-95's over the Arctic when the new threat was impossible to shoot down.
And yet the reality is that within a very short time after cancelling the Arrow the need for an interceptor was not, as you say, obsolete. That requirement meant that the Canadian government bought ex-USAF CF101-B Voodoo jets to replace the truly obsolescent CF-100 that the Arrow was meant to do. The development of interceptor aircraft similar to the Arrow continued on in various countries for decades.
Canada bought over a hundred Voodoo interceptors from America and kept them in service until the 80s. Missiles making interceptors obsolete is very simplistic, not in line with reality. Even today, intercepting Tu-95s, now armed with long range cruise missiles, is relevant to NATOs defense. Canada's not least of all considering Russia's ambition to own the Artic Ocean.
Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) produced a 4 episode TV mini series dramatizing the birth and death of the Avro Arrow plane (can be found on YouTube)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arrow_(miniseries)
An equally sad, but much less mentioned story is the Avro Jetliner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_C102_Jetliner
The sole surviving XB70, another super cool plane that was obsolete by the time it was ready, is a valued museum piece. These planes should have been.
Foxbat/MiG 25 was another classic aircraft -
For pure speed, they notched 1,852 mph. They could climb to 98,425 feet in four minutes and 3.86 seconds and ultimately reached an absolute altitude record of 123,520 feet.
https://www.historynet.com/mig-25/
now that's a 0-60 time damn
edit: it's cheating but the Starfighter with a JATO had an insane climb rate too
If you really want to cheat with the starfighter, you need to be using the ZEL version of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-length_launch
If you could choose, pick a Lightning instead :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning#Cli...
Back to the OP topic, the Arrow's thrust to weight ratio meant that it was theoretically the first aircraft capable of accelerating directly upwards in an arc immediately after reaching the end of the runway. Hot stuff.
"To protect our turf, and the Americans to the south, Canada decided to build a high-flying supersonic interceptor to meet and knock down invading Soviet bombers."
Different times. Canadians are now possibly now more worried about the US than Russia.
[dead]
Great read, fascinating piece of Canadian history.
For anyone on mobile (android/chrome at least) select "Desktop Site" under browser settings to see five historical images. They don't show up for me at all in the default mobile view.
No mention of the spies. No mention of how the overall design of the arrow is eerrily similar to the later mig-25, a unique design in soviet aviation. There is a reason the foxbat and foxhound dont look like any other soviet aircraft, but do look very similar to the arrow and f-15. Arrow was cancelled because america saw what was happening.
For those who dont see it: the arrow has a rectangular "box" body, so do the mig25/31 and f-15. Most multiengine fighters have cigar shapes (f18, voodo) or "tunnels" such as the su-27/35/34/57, f-14 and even the sr-71. The box shape was new in the arrow but can arguably be seen today in the US 22 and 35.
Eh....cancelling a not very good design in 1959, well before most countries realized ground controlled interceptors were kind of a bad idea might be the real story here. The US (and the Soviets to a hilarious degree) went down the other path for many more years, at high cost; the USAF (Fighter side) didn't truly recover from those choices until the late 70's - early 80's IMO. (Vietnam being the real tutor here)
If you're interested in the subject, look up the performance of the beam riding missiles in use, and the limitations for deployment of the AIM-9B - those do a good job highlighting the extremely limited envelope in which these weapons could be deployed, and the difficulty in getting the aircraft in that envelope.
See also the TSR-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2
Avro Canada pitched the Arrow to the British as either a frontline RAF interceptor or as a placeholder for the TSR-2 until it could be brought into service.
Why were all prototypes and blueprints destroyed so thoroughly? Why not keep one for a museum? And why the blueprints?
I'm sure there are security reasons, but it still seems so wasteful.
Yes.
> Prime Minister John Diefenbaker [ordered] all the completed planes (five plus a nearly finished sixth) to be chopped up and destroyed, along with all plans and blueprints so that the plane could never fly again.
Stopping the program was understandable, but the destruction is mysterious and the article doesn't say a word about why. Strange.
Killing it was the right call for the wrong reasons. But because it was the wrong reasons, it meant that no attention was paid on investing the tech into a new plane or resources.
Diefenbaker being "suckered" by the Americans is not what really happened (the CBC mini-series on the Arrow has some really cringey scenes about that angle, as well as portraying conservative party ineptitude and American arrogance). The more you read into Diefenbaker, the more he comes across as vain and susceptible to overreacting to slights (perceived or real), in over his head on the international stage, and ignorant of cold war realities (despite it being his government that had Canada form NORAD with the US).
It did set the stage for Canada's mercurial relationship with the United States, as Canada tended to over-react and over-compensate our opinions in both directions since then. This still continues to this day.
Politics. Diefenbaker had a conservative majority. Destroying everything made it much more difficult for a future Liberal government to restart the program.
Why would a future Liberal goverment restart it if the past one wanted to shut it down but didn't have the guts (or at least that's my understanding of the article)?
Ban / "Burn the books" does seem to fall on the 'conservative' side of the spectrum every time I can recall.
That is why Trump supporters are buying Teslas.
They are electric and have no trans.
Besides security reasons?
Which security reasons does the article state for not keeping at least one prototype (in a museum, without security-ensitive parts) and the blueprints?
As far as I can tell they only kept part of the nose/cockpit.
Honestly asking, I might have missed it.
The article doesn't get into how Soviet spies were uncovered in Canada in the 1950s and 60s. Governments were not being paranoid in the face of those revelations.
Right, the spy threat would be the "security reasons" I guessed at.
But still, wouldn't successful projects which were later decommissioned be more at risk of spies than an unsuccessful project? Yet successful projects do not have their blueprints and airframes routinely destroyed without a trace.
Interestingly, the nose of the plane was only preserved because someone hid it. It was supposed to be destroyed too.
Humiliation ritual.
I would guess it was due to behind the scenes meddling from an 'ally', that was itself probably encouraged by its war industry.
My dad was an avionics and air-to-air weaponry guy in the RCAF in the 1950s-60s (you might understand my HN nick) and was training up on the Arrow's suite, which was being designed from scratch by RCA Canada in Montreal as Project ASTRA. It was a direct competitor to U.S. systems made primarily by Hughes, and the missiles were a direct competitor to those from what is now Raytheon. One of Avro's desperate options prior to cancellation was the idea of scrapping ASTRA for a 100% U.S. avionics and missile suite.
Yes. It's a "scorched earth" approach to prevent the project being revived.
Something similar happened to the RAF Nimrod: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12294766 , although I think the safety case was much stronger there after one caught fire in the air.
It's very Trumpian. Perhaps the steelman argument might be "if we leave this thing in limbo, people will continue to advocate spending more money on it". Sometimes institutions or individuals in them will have a pet project that they keep pushing beyond economic sense, and the only way to get them to stop is to shoot their pet.
There was no need to run a scorched-earth policy to prevent the Nimrod project from being revived. The plane that caught fire, killing 14 people, in mid air was a flying deathtrap. It had leaky internal fuel pipes that ran past a different (extremely hot) pipe that allowed exhausts from one engine to be used in restarting the other engine after an intentional in-flight shutdown (they used to shut down one engine to loiter more fuel efficiently when they reached their mission's surveillance area). The leaky fuel pipes were the aftermath IIRC of an air-to-air refuelling system that was retrofitted to allow long range flights down to the Falklands islands. The devastating official post-crash report (the Haddon-Cave review) is at [0]. It was one of the classic 'normal accidents' situations - they got away with multiple routine internal fuel leaks up until the day when they didn't.
Separately, the planes were all very old, and had been constructed over several years so were all slightly different. Projects that tried to do fleet upgrades usually went massively over-budget because each airframe had to be treated as a special case, even for things that you would expect to be standardised like the basic fuselage and wing dimensions.
[Edit] The Haddon-Cave review was exceptional in that it actually named and shamed those in the MOD and industry who helped develop the bodged safety case. People in the MOD and industry lost their jobs after the crash.
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
The British did the same a few years later with the even more capable TSR2.
Except Wikipedia has (21st century) photos of at least two tail numbers in museums.
Same reason that Cortez burned his boats, once you start down a path you don't want people second guessing you.
I'm sure the answer is probably fairly mundane, but it's birthed a whole lineage of nationalist semi-conspirational explanations (US colonial masters chewed Diefenbaker out, demanded the total cessation and destruction of the project, etc.)
I suspect it makes absolutely zero sense for Canada of the 50s to be designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets, but the mythos is strong.
And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
The US: having it both ways ("be our subservient raw resource provider and nothing else" and "oh, but it costs so much to defend you") since forever.
> And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
Surprised this doesn't get mentioned more.
If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
It's easy for America to complain about other countries not spending as much when it's the one that owns the market we all shop at.
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
We're about to find out if we want to. This is a major point in Carney's defence plan.
As a Canadian, I have mixed feeling about this. You can develop and build domestic defence industries, but it only becomes economical if you can develop an export market. Even then, the inputs for parts/resources are still global.
Sweden has one heck of a domestic defence industry, but it's tailor made for its requirements and expensive. The SAAB Gripen is one of the best planes in the world for what it was designed to do: operate dispersed off of regional roads when your main infrastructure is destroyed or unavailable. But its flyway cost is the same as an F-35 because hundreds have been built instead of thousands. And the Gripen's engine is still from General Electric.
The NLAW anti-tank weapon is a good example of export success. It was developed jointly with the British and has had a lot of exports and proven success in Ukraine.
On top of that, Canada's defence civil service is terrible at procurement. Even when we buy foreign, we manage to drive up the costs to the point where its rediculously price just to shove in some domestic "advantage", rather than focusing that money on stuff we are really good at (we tend to kick ass at sonar and anti-sub tech, for example).
The Gripen could have been designed around the EJ200 or Snecma M88 instead.
Domestic development is an investment in your own country, it develops and pays skilled labor and supporting industries. When you buy jets from America, virtually all of that money is gone from Canada forever, funneled into America with Canada getting nothing out of it besides a jet which will need spare parts also from America, technicians from America, and after some years will need to be replaced with another American jet because after you've stabbed your own domestic industry in the back now you have no other choice than to continue buying foreign.
"On top of that, Canada's defence civil service is terrible at procurement."
You could remove "defence" from that and describe almost every large company or gov't in this country, too.
We need a moral and civil reform in this country, to really build again like we used to. Civic spirit revival.
Look at the joke of the Eglinton LRT, or even more so the Hamilton LRT. Even when we commit to building things, it turns into a swamp of mismanagement and a game of political hot potato.
Most embarassing thing about the Eglinton LRT is it sounds like its our (software) profession that is to blame for the latest series of dysfunctions. I'm disgusted.
We shall see. Big words, but this country has a history of doubling down on mediocrity and parochial interests.
I personally would love to contribute in whatever way I could to homegrown manufacturing, tech, and maybe even defence sector, and am willing to put in the hours and even compensation cut to make things happen in this country.
I just hope there's investors out there willing to make things happen, and that the gov't doesn't just do its usual thing of protecting a few existing corporate buddies.
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
That doesn't mean no longer spending money at the altar of the military-industrial complex, it just means having your own altar. Which you're free to do, by the way. You don't have to buy our stuff.
Canadians seem to consistently ignore the effects that a strong military-industrial complex has had on the US (and UK, to a lesser extent), particularly on foreign policy. When major components of the TSX Composite need sales, they're going to start lobbying MPs to get them. It's not a coincidence that a lot of the defense industry is based in Northern Virginia.
As far as the sovereignty... I don't think you have to worry about that.
"You don't have to buy our stuff."
You should see what happens when we even make motions like we're not going to.
https://skiesmag.com/news/bombardier-concerned-about-u-s-ret...
a legit concern because:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/us-government-slaps-...
and then again
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-cseries-boeing-1...
I seem to recall this being tied to our review the F-35 programme last time, but I can't find a reference to it. In any case, not buying F35s will have huge consequences with the US, if it doesn't happen.
Okay? So you might be selling fewer Bombardier aircraft in the US. There's still Europe, China, and the rest.
That's not a mortal threat to Canadian manufacturing and the country's defense sector. Unless, of course, Canada really is as reliant on American dollars as Trump makes the country out to be, which is why he feels he can be a pain in the ass and push tariffs higher.
It's not a mortal threat to Canada, but it is a mortal threat to the Liberal party's base of support in Quebec :-)
Seriously though, those are decent paying jobs that glue together a manufacturing economy that often times is barely holding on in the face of the same kinds of forces that have decimated American manufacturing, too.
It's the same with the autosector here in Ontario.
It's not that it's "American dollars" holding Canada together, per se, it's that this is a continental-wide trading system developed by ruling classes in both countries since the 80s and it barely serves the interest of working people here or in the United States because the bulk of work has been exported to China in the the last few decades... and so what is remaining is absolutely critical to hold onto.
These are the facts Trudeau was trying to explain to Trump, who is too stupid and arrogant to grasp.
In the end working people in both countries have more in common than not. And face threats from overseas as well as our own political classes. (And no, that's not a call for the dissolution of our sovereignty.) As much as I despise my premier Doug Ford (he's a corrupt buffoon) he was right to emphasize a "fortress North America" alternative approach to Trump -- continent wide security and prosperity insured by cooperation. That line worked with Obama and Biden, and IMHO strengthened both countries, but Trump is deadset on burning it all down.
> designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets
The Avro Arrow was only proposed as an interceptor but neither a fighter nor bomber. There were spitball ideas of future bomber adaptations but they were never part of the project.
Keep in mind I'm not asking why the project was canceled, but why even the blueprints were destroyed! It seems overkill, or even spite.
It was a long range bomber interceptor and it made sense until ICBMs happened. Canadian territory is vast and mostly barren in a way that no other NATO country is, having specialized equipment to defend it can make a big difference.
It was an interceptor. Ideas for conversion to a bomber role were only ideas.
My bad, I meant it was an interceptor against bombers.
I understand the cancelation, I'm actually asking about the memory-holing of the project (destroying blueprints, not even keeping an airframe for a museum, etc).
OT: I hate that I cannot scroll the pictures on the left the way I want to.
Diefenbaker canceled the arrow saying that interceptors were no longer needed (Canada subsequently bought interceptors from America, because they did in fact remain relevant.). At the same time he was digging out a massive bunker outside of Ottawa so that the Canadian government could survive the rest of Canada being vaporized. Some real Doctor Strangelove shit IMHO.
The so called "Deifenbunker" is now a museum open to the public. Pretty interesting, being in it feels like being in a ship.
We bought fighter jets with secondary role of interceptor. The Arrow was a dedicated interceptor which was pointless.
The RCAF used its CF-101B Voodoo jets only in NORAD interceptor roles and never in fighter scenarios, at which they were unsuitable.
Pointless? It made perfect sense back when the main vector of nuclear delivery was heavy long range bombers.