r/canadia • u/noshparty • 5d ago

Lockheed-Martin reps pushing F-35 procurement for Canada

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Just in case anyone wanders into someone with a generic name who knows a little too much about the subject matter and shows a strange, aggressive interest in Canada procuring F-35s, just know people like this are lingering around.

He deleted his account minutes after posting this, but just know they're here pushing their agenda, as if you didn't already know.

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u/aradil 5d ago

A third thing can also be true: the “asshole” in this post and thousands of other Canadians jobs will be threatened if Canada decides to stop working as closely with Lockheed Martin. Of course they are pissed off.

They are also right in that there won’t be a war between Canada and the US; the propaganda the media and other trolls have run with about Carney saying they have prepared for everything is stupid. Of course they have, and they did it before Trump was ever in charge.

Should we be less reliant on the US? Yes. Do we need to replace CF-18s? Yes. There are better questions like should we be flying manned planes into combat at all anymore.

But Lockheed makes those too, and lots of good, well paying jobs in Canada are in supporting those projects. They could probably switch to Saab jobs too over geopolitical bullshit, and it’d be nice to have projects going with more companies, but more instead of less makes sense to me.

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u/Small-Contribution55 4d ago

War might look extremely unlikely. But 10 years ago, a trade war also looked extremely unlikely. Yet here we are. If the US falls further into authoritarianism, we are in danger.

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u/Revolutionary_Ad9093 4d ago

Exactly! The exact situation we're in would have been considered a paranoid fantasy in 2015. Can we really afford to scoff at anything now?

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u/Small-Contribution55 3d ago

Even more reason not to get the planes that the US can control.

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u/AssMuncher96 1d ago

They are openly talking about taking over our country. Acting like nothing can ever happen is mental retardation.

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u/nobugsleftalive 4d ago

Nailed it. Its really obvious when the first year college kids start making posts on reddit. 

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u/noshparty 4d ago

"We should greatly hinder ourselves by aligning with an enemy state because it could take a bit to start manufacturing parts for Saab." Genius level thinking.

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u/Sea-jay-2772 4d ago

Agreed, but they are potentially threatened in any case with the US clamping down on procurement policies.

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u/SenseiLavalin 4d ago

Agreed with most of your point, except the propaganda part. Of course there won't be a "war" between US and Canada. A war implies Canada could defend itself in the first place.

That is not to say that the US is not acting more and more like an enemy.

There is not nearly enough pro-Canada "propaganda". We're drowning in "news" content that is at best dumb, and at worst downright hostile.

The mere fact that we're allowing US-owned companies to own major outlets is deranged, not to mention constant divisive content on social media, agaisnt which we have apparently no defense.

Makes you wish there were actual bot farms rooting for Carney.

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u/CanadianBaconBurger9 4d ago

No issue that the US could invade and/or bomb anything flat with likely moderate casualties. The problem is they're as dependent on what they'd bomb flat as we are. They live off our powerplants and our oil+gas. Any one of several Ontario plants can hit the emergency grid disconnect and both our eastern chunks go dark. Or somebody resists and a couple of plants go dark without warning just like it has happened before. Taking the power plants offline safely requires planning and coordination that isn't going to happen in a chaotic situation.

Canada's simply to large and to rural to occupy. They couldn't hold AFGANISTAN they couldn't accomplish anything in Iraq and they're failing hard on Iran. We are their infrastructure.

It's an unmitigated disaster for both countries that would take decades to repair, assuming it is possible. The strategists down south know that too. Their idiot president and drunken defense secretary don't care and will declare war on a banana over twitter if they get their feelings hurt.

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u/Revolutionary_Ad9093 4d ago

"Canada could never defend itself against the USA" has the same energy, to me, as the people who predicted Russia would easily steamroll Ukraine. Canadians are pissed off, and way more of us have guns than the yankees are counting on.

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u/CanadianBaconBurger9 4d ago

Not really the same scenario though. We really couldn't stop an initial invasion at 20:1 numbers, we could slow it down to a degree and we absolutely could make them pay in blood, but if they were rational at all they wouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Too much of our infrastructure is with a day or two of the border. Ukraine had the buffer of a very significant amount of open farmland between the Russian border and their own capital that we simply don't.

From a simple military force perspective we can bleed them, but we cannot stop them. Then Canadians retreat into the rural areas and become impossible to occupy. The US can't realistically attack our infrastructure the way Russia has hit Ukraine's. They need it.

Power plants are the most immediate need because the eastern US goes dark in real-time. Then the oil, which they can take the upgraders and refineries, not likely without damage, but then how do they hold a large vulnerable static target full of highly explosive chemicals under pressure? A single mortar or well placed grenade turns it into an inferno, and that's assuming no partisan sabotage.

It's an absolutely untenable situation and both countries suffer irreparable harm immediately and simultaneously. It becomes a 2 nation suicide pact and if the one who could retreat was rational they never would have attacked.

This of course leaves out one enormous problem for the US. We look and sound like they do. We know the border is porous, many of us already live there. We cover basic US geography in school but to them Canada is a big white monolith. The amount of domestic sabotage the US would suffer would be horrific. Wartime Canadians are known for ferocity, not kindness.

TL;DR it ends extremely badly for everyone.

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u/Revolutionary_Ad9093 3d ago

I think that widespread sabotage is a lot more of a concern than Canadians holing up in the woods like Red Green joined the Viet Cong. As much as we like to brag about our winter toughness, fuck actually being outside in the winter. If the Americans control the ports, we'd be fucked, we'd very quickly run out of food.

However, I also think the Americans would be arrogant enough to not throw everything at us right from go, and make the same mistake Putin did in Ukraine: surrender the momentum because you don't want to damage the infrastructure and weaponry you expect to be swiftly in control of, while your enemy has time to dig in.

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u/rcvmini 2d ago

not just IN Canada the US couldn't stand insurgents in Vietnam and Afghanistan when it was easy to spot the enemy. Imagine the havoc of Canadian fighters filtering into the US to target them in their own back yard. Hitting anything that supported the war.

Insurgents that look and talk like Americans and know enough about their society to blend in.

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u/Legal-Location-4991 3d ago

I bet you said the same thing about Russia and Ukraine.

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u/nitePhyyre 4d ago

They are also right in that there won’t be a war between Canada and the US

Collapsing Empires aren't known for becoming less belligerent over time. Historically speaking, if there was not a war as they continue to crumble, that would be really odd.

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u/Legal-Location-4991 3d ago edited 3d ago

r/confidentlyincorrect

Or just name ONE thing that would stop Shitler from deciding to try to take what he's being denied.

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u/MyGruffaloCrumble 4d ago

We aren’t building parts for Lockheed because of the F35 though, Americans will still need their parts. Saab will be building here with Canadian workers as part of the deal. So it would be more manufacturing jobs regardless of which we choose, but at least Saab gives us some supplier diversity.

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u/aradil 4d ago

Yeah but we don’t have the money to keep spar parts and trained technicians for two platforms.

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u/nobugsleftalive 4d ago

We do. We just give it all to Ukraine.

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u/Inevitable-Kale6604 4d ago

So we don't have to send our kids to die in a ridiculous war with Russia.

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u/nobugsleftalive 4d ago

Sounds like we have enough money for a diverse air fleet if the risk is there. 

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u/Belz_Zebuth 4d ago

There probably won't be a war. But in this day and age, I wouldn't be so sure.

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u/LTZheavy 3d ago

There's no guarantee Lockheed Martin stays doing business in Canada even if they buy the F- 35. Automotive leaving town is just a precursor to everyone else including Lockheed Martin. All the Donald has to do is snap his fingers and that's it, it's a done deal.