[onenukecourse]

The f-35 lacks the range and speed, coupled with the lack of airbases in Canada means that it is not very effective. Canada needs something like a Su-35, a big twin engine with a large range, but those aren't for sale, obviously.

It's not the F-35's fault it's not suitable for Canada. It was never intended for tundra. It's Canada's fault that for the last 20 years there's been no juicy tender for a long range fighter to entice the europeans or the yanks to come up with a suitable modification of one of their twin fighter jets.

[sickofparadox]

An F-35 doesn't need to be faster than an SU-35 when it has triple the radar lock on distance and missiles the SU can't outrun. The thing has a radar cross-section of a US 25¢ coin and can see beyond the horizon on radar, the Russian planes would be dead before they could react to it. It's such a comically overpowered plane that talking about it makes one sound like a kid at a playground making up rules for his action figure in a make believe fight.

[orwin]

I think you oversell the F35 stealth. It really depend on the angle and speed of the plane, and the age of the radar (fwih the radar signature of a us coin was true in 2014, but optics and radars have improved too, especially recently, and especially thank to the Ukraine drone war feedback). The future seems to be fighter + cheaper drones with similar radar signature rather than full stealth. Which might be easier to do with the small f35 signature for sure.

But every military is aware that the plan to go full fox-3 (+ stealth) might die in the next decade, and we might be back to FOX-2 / dogfighting. Is it likely? Not really, but drone and AI change the battlefield to much to be sure of anything.

[bigyabai]

I think you're giving the F-35 a lot of unjustified credit. For one, Russian air doctrine has long fielded interchangeable radar/IR homing seekers specifically to target American stealth platforms. If your F-35 is afterburning so it can match an Su-35's supercruise speed, they can get smacked by an R-77 from BVR by a Russian jet just as easily as an AIM-120 could crush the Sukhoi. Radar stealth is not a panacea in the EOTS era, and the F-35's side/rear aspect stealth is not enough to make it invisible at every angle.

Furthermore, as much as I love a slick single-engine fighter, the F-35 is still fundamentally designed to operate in contested airspace. Canada, if they operated the jet for the next 50 years, would likely never have to use it for it's intended joint strike purpose. Unless you habitually molest the borders of other nations, the F-35 is not a purchase that makes a whole lot of sense to taxpayers. If the F-35 was truly "comically overpowered" then Congress wouldn't be asking to restart the F-22 production line, now would they?

[adwn]

> For one, Russian air doctrine has long fielded interchangeable radar/IR homing seekers specifically to target American stealth platforms. […]

Is that a demonstrated capability, or a claimed one? Because if there's one thing the war in Ukraine has shown, it's that Russia seriously overpromised on the performance of its high-tech hardware.

[sickofparadox]

Congress wants to keep the A-10 Warthog flying even though the Air Force desperately wants to be rid of it because it's a good jobs program, there are considerations outside of battlefield prowess that go into their thinking. Not to completely dismiss their opinions because they probably have more information than we do, but their world is not warfare.

Even giving the Russians every capability that they claim to have, it is questionable if they can even keep producing much of the high end of their technology with the sanctions leveled against them. Without Western components they are unable to manufacture a decent range of their good stuff.

[nickff]

The Su-35 has a combat range of 1600 kilometers, and the two Canadian fighter bases are about 2750km apart, which means they can barely fight in the area directly between the bases! The Su-35 would not be an effective interceptor when so far from the threats either (as the response times would be terrible). If Canada wants to defend itself from aerial threats, it just needs more bases and more planes.

[dingaling]

If a notional Canuck Su-35 couldn't do it, probably nothing could.

The Su-35 has one of the highest fuel fractions of any military aircraft at about 38% of max take-off weight. That's 9% higher than an F-22 and equates to 11,500kg of fuel.

Just conceptualise 11.5 tonnes of fuel - basically an American yellow school bus being hauled into the air by a fighter than can do Mach 2 and pull 9g.

To be fair though the F-35A has a remarkably high fuel capacity too, about 8,000kg. All that chunkiness has an advantage.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Some quick math…

Jet fuel is about 7 pounds a gallon. So we’re talking about something like 4000 gallons. A bus is something 40 feet by 10 feet by 10 feet, which is like 20000 gallons. So it’s about a fifth of a school bus.

Still a lot, though!

[adwn]

I think dingaling meant "an American yellow school bus in mass", not in volume. 11,500 kg sounds about right for a bus that size.