Vanguard Magazine

Canada's leading national aerospace event WELCOMES WORLD THE November 7-8, 2017 Shaw Centre, Ottawa, Canada + 1200 participants / 100 exhibitors Conference / B2B / Trade Show REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN VISIT AEROSPACESUMMIT.CA FOR ALL INFORMATION www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 21 tech TALK t about massive melting of the Arctic, the resources that are revealed will create new points of contention (and in-fact already are) which means Canada needs a signifi- cant boost and fast. In the short-term, the F-35 provides Canadian pilots with peace of mind and drastically increased combat capability. In the long-run it puts us on equal footing with our southern neighbors and NATO allies, and puts us above emerging threats from Russia and China. No other aircraft offers Canada so much in terms of short- term and long-term capability, nor the kind of scalable architecture present in the design. chris Black has been an avid aviation enthusiast his entire life and is a former Air Cadet with 618 Queen City based at HMCS York. His love for all things aviation coupled with missing out on becoming a fighter pilot led him to begin writing as a way to share thoughts and ideas with fellow enthusiasts. His blog, On Final, and its accompanying Facebook and Twitter accounts can be found here: onfinalblog. com / facebook.com/onfinalblog / twitter. com/onfinalblog. The evidence of why the F-35 is such an amazing aircraft is all around us. The de-classified AI systems around us like Watson are incredible and they give an insight into what the F-35 has to offer in a package that is available now. When the F-35's vastly more sophisticated nature is taken into account as well as its planned upgrades it shouldn't be difficult to see why Canada should be acquiring them above anything else. True, the F-35 costs more than the F-15, F-16 or F-18 Super Hornet but it also represents the future. It's likely the final bridge to the quickly approach- ing autonomous battlefields to come. Where the aforementioned aircraft in- cluding the Typhoon will be relics in the boneyard by 2030, the F-35 will be years into its life-cycle and ready to operate to 2050. This also provides a safety gap to allow the bugs to be worked out of un- manned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) without degrading combat readiness be- yond 2030. The reduced maintenance costs over its service life are another added bonus and its networking capabilities would be a huge asset to Canada as they would allow more efficient use of Arctic monitoring stations by enabling the US, Canada, Nor- way and the UK to share data to create a much bigger picture of what's going on in the region. With climate change bringing Table1 Block Upgrade Cost ($USD) New-Build Cost ($USD) 4.1 $9 million $89 million 4.2 $31 million $106 million 4.3 $15 million (A model) $95 million 4.4 $20 million (FPL) $15 million (MLL) $135 million (FPL) $116 million (MLL)

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