Although predicting the future is a fraught pastime, being generally prepared for probable eventualities is merely sensible. A lot of hedging in that sentence, but that's life when dealing with uncertainty. Hedging may be necessary when dealing with the nebulous future, but a hedge, unlike a fence, is not something to sit on, it is for slowing down or mitigating the bad things which may arrive. A common example of this word usage is buying gold as a hedge against inflation.
In the realm of Defence, buying gold will do you no good; you need to be able to anticipate technology, at least as far as what will be available to you and potential adversaries. Technology being what it is it doesn't stand still, and like your electronic devices pretty much anything you buy will be at least obsolescent by the time you take delivery. Not so much of a problem with fairly mature weapon systems like tanks and planes, so I'll talk a bit about the latter and what Canada should be doing to replace our 30-year-old CF-18s.
The front runner is of course the F-35 Lightning II. F-22s were never for sale and are now out of production anyway, and if the F-35 ever works as advertised only the F-22 (of what is available and reasonably projected to become available) would be a more capable fighter.
A lack of definites and certainties there however. The F-35 has been in development for over 15 years and still has a lot of bugs with attendant indefinite completion dates and cost overruns. Since someone (me as a taxpayer, in point of fact) has to pay for whatever we buy, the sort of numbers and per unit costs that are being bandied about are giving me the willies. I'm not into conniption range yet, but I'm still waiting to get some solid numbers so the possibility is there.
The most important question is of course "What do we need?". This question should be arrived at after "What is our mission?", the answer to which should be "To defend our continental airspace and support ground and naval operations." This means anything from waving at Russian bomber pilots over the North Pole to CAS missions in support of JTF2 and CSOR teams in whatever shitholes we get sent to in the near future.
Nothing I can imagine would have our Air Force in a Gotterdammerung against Chinese J-20s over Korea or anything. We'll be asserting our airspace or dropping JDAMs on people we've decided need bombing. The latter mission incidentally is receding in likelihood as the major instigator of us tagging along for some fighting (the USA) is realizing that it is broke and overstretched, not coincidentally because of doing too much of it. A change of government in Washington may produce more resolution than Obama's crew, but the fundamental conditions will persist.
So, what does Canada need? I say we need something good enough that people will be forced to take us seriously, preferably in numbers where we could afford to lose a few over the years (as we inevitably will). I will state categorically here that we do not NEED the F-35 to have a creditable Air Force. Generation 4.5 fighters with drones for the really dangerous missions will give us all the capability a minor power like us can expect to wield, and some attack helicopters would help too.
For my money, I'd get F/A-18F Super Hornets as our multi-role fighter. Stealthy, capable and easy to train our Hornet drivers on, it's also HALF the price of an F-35 ($55M vs. $110M). By my old-style math, that gets us twice as many, and quantity has a quality all it's own. Looking for known quality at a known price (c.$100M) we have the F-15 Silent Eagle. These options keep the Americans from having a hissy fit and we'd get good planes. Having said that, a bit of research suggests that if politics were not an issue (ha!) we could buy Russian planes and helicopters.
Apparently the Sukhoi Su-30/35 Flanker almost completely outclasses the Super Hornet and gives other Gen 4.5 fighters a run for their money, for about the same unit cost as the new F-18s. I present this mostly in the role of Devil's Advocate, as Russian planes don't have a great reputation for build quality. As for helicopters, we need some to fill holes in our tactical capability, the Russians know how to make them and you'd get good bang for your buck. The Ka-50 "Black Shark" even has an ejector seat! Lots of options in the attack helicopter world, but we have no plans to get any so it's moot.
I bring this all up just to underline that deciding on the F-35 "cost be damned" is far from the only option. There are a number of Western designs (Eurofighter, Gripen, Rafale) to provide competition to a plane experiencing what look to be out-of-control cost and time overruns. If we could lock in a deal for say $100M/copy it would be competitive with off-the-shelf packages, otherwise perhaps a less stealthy fighter with some stealthed attack drones for Wild Weasel missions would be a better option. If you're really hung up about creating jobs though, the Russians will do complete technology transfers as part of a deal...
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