Talk:Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Canadian procurement: Difference between revisions

Boeing-initiated trade action against Bombardier

Some of my additions were reverted as not relevant, which is not true.

One of the outcomes of the trade action was that the Canadian government would consider the impact of a vendor on Canada's economic interests.

As a result of the tariffs imposed against the CSeries, Bombardier had to sell over half of the program to Airbus for 1 CAD. The planes destined to the US market would then be built at Airbus' Mobile plant to bypass tariffs, resulting in the loss of Canadian jobs. Airbus would also provide important help with marketing and services. If the tariffs had not been in place, Airbus could still have become a partner without having to transfer part of the final assembly to Mobile. Bombardier would also have had a stronger bargaining position

Later, Bombardier simply exited the commercial aircraft business. It can be debated whether this would have happened should Canada have retained 100% (or majority) ownership and final assembly in the program. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trigenibinion (talk • contribs)

That is all covered in Airbus A220, which is where it belongs. I don't see any connection to this article, which is about the potential purchase by Canada of F-35s. Neither ref you cited https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bombardier-results-idUSKBN2071FJ or https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-bombardier-airbus-cseries-idUKKCN1J40QN even mention the F-35. - Ahunt (talk) 19:40, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The Super Hornet is a participant in this competition. Boeing's actions give more chances to the other planes, while the FTC's actions give more chances to the Gripen. Trigenibinion (talk) 19:46, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Neither your references cited, nor the text you added, join those dots and I think doing so would be WP:SYNTHESIS. If you want to make that point then you need text that does, based on refs that do. Otherwise it just looks like misplaced airline news. Bombardier is not a player in the fighter competition, so your addition of Bombardier finalized the sale of 50.01% of the CSeries program for the token sum of 1 Canadian dollar to Airbus which would use its Mobile, Alabama plant to assemble it for the US market and Bombardier exited the commercial aviation market don't make any sense in the context. - Ahunt (talk) 23:02, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Article still way too long

As of this writing, this article is the 2,565th-longest of the 6,428,376 articles on English Wikipedia. Put differently, it's longer than 99.96% of the articles on English Wikipedia. Let's be real -- while the selection of Canada's next fighter aircraft is important, it's not *that* important. For that reason, I flagged this article as being overly detailed, but just three hours later the edit was reverted by User:Ahunt.

The stated justification for removing the flag was that "when the current procurement process is concluded then it will be much easier to discern what is relevant and what can be cut out". That's true of this and all other developing situations, but the article currently contains content that's clearly minutiae, like lengthy decade-old quotes from random pundits.

Another stated justification was that "this has been already discussed on the talk page", but said discussion consisted of a single two-sentence reply eight and a half years ago, also by Ahunt.

I acknowledge and commend the extensive copy edits User:Kyteto made recently, but they did not substantially reduce the extraordinary length of this article.

I'm adding this comment to solicit feedback from others, but given that the article is rarely edited, and usually by Ahunt, I'm not sure anyone else will see or comment. Ahunt, your position is already clear, so if there isn't substantive discussion from parties other than you and me, I'll post this to Wikipedia:Third_opinion to see what others think.

Thanks -- Stephen Hui (talk) 02:57, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing the issue here for discussion. I don't think you will get any argument from any editor, including me, that this article needs to be made more concise. I am sure that any third opinion referral will gain a strong consensus on that, too ("yes, needs to be shorter"). However, since it was just extensively overhauled, I think it unlikely that any other editor will volunteer to tackle the job of making this article more concise, especially with the outstanding fighter competition still hanging in the balance and thus the punchline still unknown at this date, so thanks for stepping up. Please feel free to propose your text changes to get it to a more compact length. - Ahunt (talk) 03:14, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

As I suppose is obvious, I am a fan of cutting this over-the-top article down to size. I've managed to hack out roughly 12%, but this is without making drastic cuts or loss of narrative - I've been cautious so far in my deletions as I'm keen to avoid provoking any accusation of getting involved in the political arguments, one way or the other, on this item. Being hammered either by F-35 proponents or critics does not appeal to be, so I've been too scared to cut vigorously, which is honestly what is needed making those calls isn't easy, but there's a lot of bulk hanging around in 2012 - I would suggest that's a good area to start cutting. This isn't to my credit, but I don't know if I'm daring enough to step up and take the big swings on this one until after the outcome is concluded e.g. the selected plane (whatever it is) is flying in RCAF service. Unsettled political quarrels scary me, but the sheer volume of excessive detail compelled me to make the cautious, broken-down edits I've made so far to try and turn the tide a little. Kyteto (talk) 20:06, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

While I'm no fan of tagging articles, this is an obvious candidate for extensive consolidation, and I've tagged it to encourgae further revision. I ran across it by accident, and it reads as a blow-by-blow blog of everything everybody published on it, trailing off about five years ago. It would be long at half its present length. I will attempt to do some consolidation. This kind of episodic addition with no corresponding updating is a perennial problem with military technology articles, leading to a strange reading experience that has the content spans decades of one or two-sentence additions. Acroterion (talk) 21:07, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

The thing that stands out here is the extensive quotefarming - this is less about the procurement process than it is about political posturing - and it was a central issue in an election. Do we really need a quote from every politician who ever expressed an opinion while campaigning? If we cut out 80% of the quotes, it would reduce the article length by a good 10-15%. However, I hesitate to take an axe to it because I'm not sufficiently familiar with the Canadian politics of a decade ago to feel confident on who and what should be kept. Acroterion (talk) 21:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

You are not wrong there at all, it has been more of a national scandal than a procurement. To date no aircraft have been purchased, but the whole issue did contribute to bringing down a government - so it is almost 100% a national political story. - Ahunt (talk) 21:18, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Which is why I hesitate to cut too much - it's a sort of blow-by-blow account of political campaigning with the F-35 as a central theme. with the article being used as a real-time account of each event with no follow-up to edit it down to the significant events, just a sequence as things happened. I see this a lot with ongoing programs, but most aren't at the same time accounts of an election issue. Acroterion (talk) 21:25, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

...and as noted the reason it hasn't been reduced before is that without knowing how it ends (procurement of something) it is impossible to know which parts are important and which ones aren't. It can only be accurately fixed in retrospect. The competition should be over soon and then we can do some serious work here. Before that it is too easy to remove parts that may be important. - Ahunt (talk) 22:06, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

That's reasonable. Is there any way to trim the 2010-2012 timeline to something that doesn't just report everybody's stump speeches on the subject? Acroterion (talk) 22:21, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Possibly. - Ahunt (talk) 22:29, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, I'll be happy to help once the dust settles a little, and maybe I can educate myself about Canadian politics in the meantime. It might be a welcome distraction from U.S. politics - although my perception is that many of the same problems exist, just not with the volume turned up to 11. Acroterion (talk) 22:35, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Probably the biggest difference in Canadian procurement politics is that we are a non-military nation or even an anti-military nation. Most citizens here want us to do only peacekeeping, SAR and disaster relief and nothing more. That also makes defence procurement much more loaded here. In elections you get rewarded for not spending money on the military, well, at least until it is suddenly needed, that is. It's a very different culture and mindset. - Ahunt (talk) 22:42, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

That was roughly my perception, along with a much more attenuated or less aggressive military-industrial complex. Acroterion (talk) 22:58, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Pretty much - governments get no political points for military spending done right, but any done wrong is an instant scandal. It is a bit of a "no-win". Hence PM Harper's ignoring this procurement for the rest of his term after getting burnt on the attempted sole-sourcing of the fighter procurement. - Ahunt (talk) 23:04, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

September 2012

The statement below, within this section of the article, is not a proper sentence, is confusing, and does not clearly state the intention of the statement.

"Lieutenant-General Steve Lucas, commented that he had not been a competition as it conflicted with Canada's participation in the F-35 program" SquashEngineer (talk) 13:46, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

 Fixed - Ahunt (talk) 13:52, 2 November 2022 (UTC)