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We shouldn’t be surprised that Canada is going to buy an interim fleet of 18 Boeing Super Hornets.

The Liberal government has been desperately looking for a way out of the mess Justin Trudeau created when he decided it would be a good idea to play politics by promising in the middle of the election campaign that a Liberal government would not purchase the Lockheed Martin F-35 to replace the CF-18 Hornets that Canada has been flying since the early 1980s.

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Trudeau promised that this decision would save billions of dollars that could be poured into naval procurement. This was always a rash promise, on so many levels.

If Canada doesn’t buy F-35s, then the Royal Canadian Air Force will not be as fully interoperable with the U.S. Air Force in the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command as it would be with them.

For the U.S. will be flying only one new fighter in NORAD in the 2020s and 2030s: the F-35, the result a congressional decision in 1994. (USAF F-22 Raptors also fly NORAD patrols, but the Americans won’t let even their closest allies buy these aircraft.) The RCAF’s Super Hornets can be networked with F-35s, but they are simply not as capable, and much more vulnerable.