{"id":26880,"date":"2014-07-18T07:48:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T12:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26880"},"modified":"2014-07-18T08:11:26","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T13:11:26","slug":"despite-reports-canada-is-not-donating-surplus-cf-18-fighters-to-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/18\/despite-reports-canada-is-not-donating-surplus-cf-18-fighters-to-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite reports, Canada is not &#8220;donating&#8221; surplus CF-18 fighters to Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <em>Ottawa Citizen<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ottawacitizen.com\/news\/national\/defence-watch\/canada-to-donate-surplus-cf-18s-to-ukraine-nyet\" target=\"_blank\">David Pugliese<\/a> says there&#8217;s little chance of any such transaction taking place:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Media in Russia are reporting that Canada will provide for free surplus CF-18 fighter jets to Ukraine\u2019s military. In addition, an offer has been made to provide RCAF personnel to train Ukraine pilots on the aircraft, according to the reports.<\/p>\n<p>Officials with the Department of National Defence officials as well as Defence Minister Rob Nicholson\u2019s spokesperson, however, tell Defence Watch that is not the case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis report is false,\u201d said Johanna Quinney, the minister\u2019s spokeswoman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Unlike the vast inventory of aircraft maintained by the US Air Force, the RCAF does not have thousands of acres of desert littered with functional-but-unused aircraft. Any surplus CF-18 airframes are candidates for cannibalization to keep the rest of the fleet airworthy. This almost certainly means that these aircraft in question are not in a flyable condition, so their immediate military value &mdash; to Ukraine or other nations &mdash; is close to zero. Add in the required time, labour, and parts to bring them to operational levels and it probably amounts to a negative value.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: On Facebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/nicholas.russon\/posts\/10152168416855906?comment_id=10152168432640906&#038;offset=0&#038;total_comments=3\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Taylor<\/a> points out that there&#8217;s a difference between what most militaries might consider surplus and what the Canadian Forces consider surplus:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Canada never retires weapon systems before they become antiques. By Ottawa reckoning, there&#8217;s at least 30 years left in the CF-18s. Pay no attention to airframe fatigue or metallurgical studies, these are airy-fairy abstractions that will bend to the will of the PMO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Ottawa Citizen, David Pugliese says there&#8217;s little chance of any such transaction taking place: Media in Russia are reporting that Canada will provide for free surplus CF-18 fighter jets to Ukraine\u2019s military. In addition, an offer has been made to provide RCAF personnel to train Ukraine pilots on the aircraft, according to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,62,5],"tags":[556,214,726],"class_list":["post-26880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-europe","category-military","tag-f-18","tag-rcaf","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Zy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26880"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26883,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26880\/revisions\/26883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}