ExMilitaryEng wrote:ThePointblank wrote:A bit of a monkey wrench in the works; American officials will need to sign off and certify the fighter jet Canada buys to ensure the fighter jet meets American intelligence sharing requirements: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/ ... ion-dnd-2/
Interesting aspect indeed.
While I'm strongly convinced with the US military professionalism in this eventual assessment, I'm not so sure with the political side... So let's say for some reasons non-US aircrafts get disqualified; it could just delay big time the acquisition process (assuming a non-US aircraft was the front runner).
In the mean time, the Canadian "Air" contribution to NORAD/NATO would just get weaker and weaker...
I’m not sure this really means much in the grand scheme of things. The difference between Five eyes info and Two eyes info is pretty vanilla and likely all of the manufacturers would be able to handle it, the issue is who pays for the customization and configuration required. From the requirements specified by Canada in the tender it is incumbent on the bidders to be compliant with the information sharing standards. If the Eurofighter or Gripen is selected and they are not certified then they will have go through the process of securing their systems or processes to allow that to happen, likely at manufacturer cost. Alternatively the contract will likely allow both parties to walk away if the aircraft cannot meet the requirement and receive American approval. This is one of the reasons that Dassault withdrew, because they couldn’t meet the information sharing standards likely at a cost they were willing to bear. Yes it may extend the competition but if the manufacturer makes a claim they are compliant and then is demonstrated not to be it is better to know earlier than later…
This slides both ways through, the US cannot use an aircraft not certified for Two eyes info in NORAD duties so at some point those US aircraft went through the same compliance process.
What we may see though is what I stated earlier in the thread, that Saab will withdraw the Gripen as Dassault already did with the Rafale, as they likely won’t be able to cost effectively meet the requirement.