Everyone: canada buy hornets
Rambo:
Everyone: Yeah the Canadian buying hornets was a very good choice
TacLar: honestly Hornet was a good choice for Canada for the time, especially if only havign the budget to makethe compromise for having a single combat aircraft type. The contract for acquisition was signed in 1980). SO by 1983 Canada started receiving amodern, brand new plane that replaced multiple aircraft ( F104, F5, F101) to fulfill all their roles. Although F16 first, may have ushered in the era of fly by wire, the Hornet for its time was a state of the art strike fighter, that in turn brought upon an era of the digital interface " IE glass cockpits", all whilst being streamlined enough to be much easier on logistics and maintenance than the Cat as well as a lesser purchase cost per airframe. At the same time the Hornet for its time was arguably more capable in a2a in avionics and weapons the Viper which at the time had considerably inferior APG66 radar, and no bvr missile capability. So between the even more cheap F16 and single role Tomcat or F15. the Hornet was a happy middle ground. The Tomcat wasn't purchased because it was more expensive. It was also less flexible and with hindsight would have proven to be a hangar queen. I mean you think Cf18's are past their intended airframe hours and barely holding together now? Relative to legacy Hornets imagine trying to maintain F-14's into present day.
