MechCanuck 🤖 🔧

"Another aspect to consider is that Canada can simply no longer afford to purchase the bulk of its equipment from other nations....[w]hen Canada’s defence budget was around 1% of GDP and only 13% of that miserly budget was devoted to major equipment purchases, it did not matter if nearly all of that money was spent in other countries. However, with Canada committed to spending 3.5% of its GDP on defence by 2035, with reasonable estimates putting major equipment expenditures as high as 30% of that total, the arithmetic changes. At those levels, major equipment purchases would account for 1.05% of GDP, roughly eight times the 2014 share of 0.13%. The economic headwinds created if most of that spending were to leave the country every year, with nothing of direct economic value returning, are simply unsustainable. Canada must largely rely on its own industries for major equipment purchases to achieve and sustain its military spending commitments."

This is a good article. But I think the more important question is not simply what aircraft should replace the Cyclone. It is which functions must remain aboard a crewed aircraft, which can be distributed across uncrewed systems, and which requirements disappear altogether when the force is designed differently? That is particularly consequential as Canada shifts from an expeditionary force optimized for coalition operations abroad toward one that must also provide persistent defence of its own vast territory.