Avro Arrow Program Cancelled

Over the weekend, it emerged that a group of business leaders and retired military personnel had proposed to Ottawa that, instead of purchasing F-35 fighters, Canada launch a program to. The Arrow was a supersonic jet fighter and attack aircraft that was being designed by Canadian-based Avro Canada in the 1950s.

It would have been Canada’s first supersonic jet fighter — the CF-100 Canuck fighters, also built by Avro, were fine aircraft for their time, but could not break the speed of sound. The Arrow was cancelled abruptly by then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1959.

The controversial decision was driven by many factors, including Dief the Chief’s prickly nature. But the most important factor was cost.

Canada had originally envisioned a fleet of hundreds of aircraft. The development costs made sense when amortized out across that big a production run. But the strategic environment was rapidly changing. Manned Soviet bombers were supplanted as the primary threat to North America by ballistic missiles.

Foreign interest in purchasing Arrows or its components evaporated. Ultimately, it was decided that purchasing a combination of American-made jets and interceptor missiles (nuclear-tipped BOMARCs) made more sense. Only a few aircraft ever flew, performing well in test flights but never going into production. The story of the Arrow is a sad one. If it had gone into production, assuming the aircraft had performed as tests had suggested it would, Canada would have been among a small handful of nations that could claim to have built top-of-the-line supersonic jet fighters. Thousands of high-tech jobs were lost when the project was cancelled. Canada has used foreign combat aircraft ever since.

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The story of the Arrow has taken on almost mythical proportions in Canada, and has even spawned conspiracy theories that the plane was killed because the Americans feared losing prestige (and sales) to their northern neighbour. That helps explain the interest in the Arrow.

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But it’s still bizarre to see a plane that was cancelled in 1959 being suggested for use in 2020, when the current fleet of RCAF CF-18s is expected to need replacement. Yes, it is true that the Arrow was designed to high specifications. It could fly fast and high, at long ranges.

And it wouldn’t take much to tweak the Arrow’s design to permit it to fire modern missiles. The idea of sending a 60-year old design out to patrol Canadian skies or bomb the odd rogue nation isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds, so long as the aircraft themselves are new enough to avoid issues of metal fatigue and parts wear-down. It could work, at least for Canada’s relatively modest needs.

Download class 12th accounts project 12 pdf. Indeed, it is not the technical specifications of the Arrow — even assuming the plane was built exactly as originally designed, without the benefit of any modernization whatsoever — that would prove a problem. The problem is what it always was — money.

The F-35 jets the government had intended to buy to replace the CF-18s are themselves expensive, and have also experienced tremendous cost uncertainty as delays and technical challenges have added billions to the plane’s development. There is, however, no reason to expect that updating the Arrow design and building it in Canada and then integrating it into our Air Force fighter squadrons would go exactly as budgeted, either. Cost overruns are an irritating fact of military life. They apply, if not equally, then at least consistently across all similar programs. And as, it is still a plane intended to be used in large numbers, by many of our allies. This helps in keeping our aircraft comparable to what our allies are using — a blessing during joint operations — and also, we hope, will keep down operating costs. Many nations will be needing the same spare parts that we do.

Many companies will develop expertise and experience in maintaining the aircraft. Lessons learned by one country can be shared with the others.

Even if the F-35 is not ultimately chosen, whatever aircraft Canada does purchase will almost certainly be an American-made jet used among many allies. If Canada went with Arrows, we’d be taking on all the costs — design, start-up, production, testing and, eventually, maintenance — and as important, all the risks. Given our need for only several dozen planes, it is difficult to see how sufficient economies of scale could ever be achieved to make this a good idea. As romantic as the notion of bringing back the Arrow may seem, it’s no surprise that the government said no a second time. National Post mgurneynationalpost.com.