The USAF, USMC and US Navy are all short of F-35 qualified maintenance personnels. Upgrades (retrofit) can only be fielded on that level of airframe number by the private sector. That would raise the hourly cost of F-35 qualified technicians, accelerate turnovers and compete with available assets, ultimately raising cost and delaying manufacturing for the military.
That back-and-forth is standard on major Canadian defense contracts. See how Sea King helicopters served 50 years before replacement S-92s arrived, S-92 design started with a suggestion by Canadian aircrew circa 1983. Even then, the S-92s lacked all the software needed to chase submarines.
Drag chutes are needed to stop on icy runways in Norway and the Canadian arctic.
Who could have guessed that
UK and Norway are both partners who had their weapon requests for FoM in during the SDD phase itself. Add to that customers who have bought the F-35 with JASSM and/or LRASM, and others who have committed to that combination. And a service that regards the block 4 F-35 with SiAW for its late 2020's early 2030s SEAD capability (and is committing to buying 3000 such missiles for the F-35). Not to mention the USAF and Navy's AMRAAM replacement which is probably rolled into block 4 since the claimed weapons being integrated in block 4 exceeds the list of weapons announced. Add Japan to this since it is buying JSM, and possibly developing/co-developing a Meteor variant. In short, this is an important aspect of this program hence why all the customers together have rolled in more than a dozen new weapons into the block 4 with the list gradually expanding over time including thanks to Congressional support.
To be fair, Canada has no possible enemies, only commitments. I don't begrudge them skimping on defense. Honestly I'm surprised they don't just go the way of Iceland and only have a coast guard. The US would be annoyed, but what are they going to do to, invade? Plus if they were just willing to divest their bases to the US, I doubt there would even be push back. The weird thing to me is that Canada even attempts to have first line equipment in the first place.
As a reminder:
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Canadian geography resembles Russian geography, Australian geography and Chinese geography in that all 4 nations contain large deserts. Most of their populations live in narrow, arable strips. The only difference is that Canadian and Russian deserts are frozen for most of the year. Chinese deserts vary between blistering hot and bone-chilling cold depending upon the time of day and the season.
Being the first line of defence on the NA continent against the Russian Air Force surely means something... Besides with global warming and melting arctic sea, new artic sea routes and maritime resources, etc means their own conflicting interests to the Russians, which I'm certain the US will provide a helping hand if things go dire, but it's still going to be their own problem nonetheless.
You left out covid and meteor collisions
Finnish F/A-18 does not have a chute. They do practice landings using the hook (not as drastic deceleration as with carrier landings). Is the F-35A hook up to occasional use?
Does the A version retain the hook?
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They lost of a lot, I mean a lot of good pilots and maintainers while playing politics and could not fully fulfill their defense obligations (still can’t)
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Like with this RAAF F-111 emergency arrested landing - the landing gear failed to deploy correctly, so they retracted it and went for an arrested belly landing to minimize the damage to the airframe by controlling and shortening the slide:
Errr..that's one way to describe it. In reality, the main left wheel fell off shortly after take-off.
What do you mean? Any of the modern fighters fitted with hooks (and there are quite a few incl the F-35 ) could use their hooks to engage Airfield Arrestor systems if so required. The F-35 is nothing special in this case.
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