Could Canada Build

(Charles Talleyrand) wrote in
om:

[snip]

So, can Canada build a modern jet?

A military jet?

Sweden can, no reason why Canada couldn't.

From the technical standpoint, that is.

The economics and politics of the matter are another
thing entirely.

The Canadian military establishment is so chronically
underfunded and overworked ( and likely to stay that
way ) that there is no conceivable circumstance where
a Canadian built fighter/bomber aircraft will ever enter
service.
Indeed given the pressures to fund the social programs
Canadians have gotten used to, I wouldn't be at all
surprised if one fine day the Gummint o'Canada up and
sold off most of their military aircraft.
They might keep a few F-18s to provide a photo-intercept
platform for some sort of fig-leaf national sovereignty
patrols but nothing like a real air force.

IBM

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In article , "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

"Ford Prefect" wrote in message
...
Charles Talleyrand wrote:
Radar is a problem. Web searches make me believe that Canada only
builds radars for atmospheric research and air traffic control and one
military radar, which is used by maritime aircraft for periscope
searching.

Given that our radar satellite systems make the US nervous (didn't we
have to agree to reduce resolution on RadarSat during US fly-overs?),
I think we can manage this without much trouble. McDonald-Detwiller
certainly has the talent to do this... and the folks at several other
firms which do international military contracts certainly have
additional talent that could be tapped. And the detection systems
used on the Cougar (correct designation?) certainly attest to the
ability to develop very sophisticated detection and tracking capabilities.


I think the antenna for the radar for RADARSAT-2 was built by a Canadian
company named EMS. I think they used their Atlanta office for this though.
Even so, they must have some clue in their two Canadian offices (they have
three main engineering offices total).

It's the right type of antenna (light weight planar array)
http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/csa_s...2/inf_over.asp
http://www.emsstg.com/

If you want to build a modern fighter radar, then AESA is the only way to go.

There's only 3 companies in the world with the expertise to do an AESA radar.
2 of them are in the USA, and only one of them has AESA in production.

For Canada to come up to speed with a purely domestic system
would take a minimum of 10 years.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur

tscottme wrote:
Robert Briggs wrote:
tscottme wrote:

Not while they keep electing Liberals.

I don't see why Canadian engineers would be *incapable* of it.

The political considerations to which you allude are, of course,
relevant to whether such a project would be authorised, but my
brother-in-law would be more than a bit miffed by the suggestion
that they affect his competence as an engineer.

Heaven help us from miffed Canadian engineers. I re-read my reply
and didn't find the words engineering, competence, or incapable.
Don't be so defensive.

You were clearly having a dig at the politicians.

That said, while you didn't explicitly malign the engineers, the nearest
you got to praising them was with that "Not while ..." bit.

Methinks we agree. :-)

In message KZ8Ec.21440$rh.7992@okepread02, t_mark
writes
We did it before - in fact it was way ahead of its time. But the
chicken-**** Conservative government that was in power at the time
caved to US pressures to scrap the Arrow.

Oh good christ, not the ****ing Arrow again. I swear, I don't think I know
of any country with as many angry, inferiority-complex afflicted people as
Canada seems to harbor.

Just be glad that the "CF-105 would have been great if the US hadn't
cheated!" crowd keep the "TSR.2 would have been great if the US hadn't
cheated!"crowd in the background. (Airframe was coming together, but the
nav/attack avionics were still vapourware - doesn't stop the tendency to
blame the US for everything)

It's a beautiful airframe, one still parked in a Duxford hangar between
a Vulcan and a Tornado GR.1 . Doesn't mean it would have worked in
service, however stupid the subsequent decisions were.

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

"Ian MacLure" wrote in message ...
(Charles Talleyrand) wrote in
om:

[snip]

So, can Canada build a modern jet?

A military jet?

Sweden can, no reason why Canada couldn't.

In some real sense, Sweden is only building parts of a military jet and
buying some of the hard bits from the US. It's not obvious that
Sweden could build a modern high performance hard-to-jam
radar for instance.

The parts that concern me most after extensive (almost an hour :-)
research is Canada's ability to build a suitable radar and missile system.
I believe they could build the airframe and the jet engine.

The economics and politics of the matter are another
thing entirely.

Yep. Of course.

"Harry Andreas" wrote in message ...
If you want to build a modern fighter radar, then AESA is the only way to go.

There's only 3 companies in the world with the expertise to do an AESA radar.
2 of them are in the USA, and only one of them has AESA in production.


I'm pretty sure the Russians and the French would disagree with you.

For Canada to come up to speed with a purely domestic system
would take a minimum of 10 years.

Could you offer some justification for this estimate? I'd be interested in any
reasoning you might offer.

Charles Talleyrand wrote:

In some real sense, Sweden is only building parts of a military jet and
buying some of the hard bits from the US. It's not obvious that
Sweden could build a modern high performance hard-to-jam
radar for instance.

"Ericsson AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) is a new airborne
radar project currently in development at Ericsson Microwave Systems.
The AESA technology will improve the radars overall performance
drastically, especially its target detection and tracking capability.
Beam direction can be changed instantaneously, detection range will be
considerably increased, and jamming suppression further improved. The
AESA radar will feature multibeam capability with all beams individually
and simultaneously controlled. It can also operate simultaneously as a
fire control and obstacle warning radar, and be used both in intercept
and ground attack missions. The multibeam concept also allows for radar
operation, data linking, radar warning and jamming simultaneously. As a
consequence of the very large number of transmitter and receiver
modules, the radar will have a high system availability through graceful
degradation."

http://www.ericsson.com/microwave/pr...000724_4.shtml

"noname" a écrit dans le message de
...
Charles Talleyrand wrote:

In some real sense, Sweden is only building parts of a military jet and
buying some of the hard bits from the US. It's not obvious that
Sweden could build a modern high performance hard-to-jam
radar for instance.

"Ericsson AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) is a new airborne
radar project currently in development at Ericsson Microwave Systems.
The AESA technology will improve the radars overall performance
drastically, especially its target detection and tracking capability.
Beam direction can be changed instantaneously, detection range will be
considerably increased, and jamming suppression further improved. The
AESA radar will feature multibeam capability with all beams individually
and simultaneously controlled. It can also operate simultaneously as a
fire control and obstacle warning radar, and be used both in intercept
and ground attack missions. The multibeam concept also allows for radar
operation, data linking, radar warning and jamming simultaneously. As a
consequence of the very large number of transmitter and receiver
modules, the radar will have a high system availability through graceful
degradation."

http://www.ericsson.com/microwave/pr...000724_4.shtml



Ericsson's radar has been developped with technologies and parts from
Raytheon.

Older, but still on the same site :
http://www.ericsson.com/microwave/press/case/aesa.shtml

ArVa

In article , "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

"Harry Andreas" wrote in message
...
If you want to build a modern fighter radar, then AESA is the only way
to go.

There's only 3 companies in the world with the expertise to do an AESA
radar.
2 of them are in the USA, and only one of them has AESA in production.


I'm pretty sure the Russians and the French would disagree with you.

I took the French into account.
The Russians...I'm not sure that what they're building is an AESA.
I could be wrong though.


For Canada to come up to speed with a purely domestic system
would take a minimum of 10 years.

Could you offer some justification for this estimate? I'd be interested
in any
reasoning you might offer.

I takes very specialized knowledge and facilities to build an AESA.
It's a fair bit different than a mechanically scanned array.
Someone with no base in building fighter radars would have to bring
a lot of engineers up to speed, while simultaneously building factories,
foundries,
and test facilities. That takes time.
Other than that I really can't comment on specifics.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur

in article , tscottme at
wrote on 6/28/04 4:23:


Not while they keep electing Liberals. Buying production helicopters, or
deciding to buy production helicopters, seems to be at the outer limit of
their ability under such leadership.

Let me remind you who killed the CF105 Arrow, that Conservative twit
John Dief-the-Chief! The Liberals don't have a track record to be proud of
since the demise of the Arrow either. Developing a modern effective fighter
is not practical for a single country these days. For example the latest
European Joint Strike Fighter is a multi-nation effort. On the other hand,
do we really need one! I am ex-air force and the days of a manned fighter
to the disgust of hot shot pilots is drawing to an end. The un-manned
fighter will before long take over these tasks according to some. The
Raptor will probably be the last U.S. manned fighter. Man can't handle the
stresses placed on him in modern airframes so un-manned versions will
probably dominate in the future.