The effort to develop a single 5th generation fighter plane has been a challenge for the US and its allies. The F-35 is very expensive and may underperform. The quality of debate about this plane has varied. So, we turn to the experts for a reasoned discussion of the F-35 and an alternative:
Does that help make up some minds? Ok, so a Boeing subcontractor made it, but I find it convincing… do you?
H/T to @drfarls for the suggestion
Steve Saideman is Professor and the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He has written The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); and NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald), and elsewhere on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, and civil-military relations.
Hey Stephen,
Loved the spot, those kids are adorable. Whenever I see something like this it makes me reflect over the limits of the scholarship on the F-35 procurement in Canada. So far all the lit. portrays a bureaucratic and institutionalized process – defense procurement – as politicized by the governing party leading to either a choice that was too costly and inappropriate for Canadian needs, or a much needed modernization of Canadian air power. Both these positions miss the more substantive politics of the issue by ignoring how the F-35 procurement has become a symbolic power struggle over Canada’s security needs. Commercials like these reinforce my belief that the F-35 is increasingly no longer axiomatically held as the pinnacle of modern air power, as it was by most Canadian policy makers when the procurement was first announced in 2010. This can’t be explained by some recourse to institutions, nor some supposedly ‘objective’ air power needs, but by the power of discourse expressed through performances like this very commercial.