It all comes down to money

Re: Needed: Many More Fighter Jets, editorial, Oct. 21. It’s not just that we need more fighter aircraft than we currently have in service. We need a better procurement process.

We shouldn’t wait until our troops are on the ground in Afghanistan before we buy them desert camouflage. We shouldn’t wait 30 years before procuring replacements for our fighter fleet or other military hardware. We should overlap our procurement such that our F-18 Hornets are in service alongside our Super Hornets and our Super Hornets are still in service when the F-18s are replaced by F-35s.

David Montgomery, Cambridge, Ont. So Canada is again sending fighter jets overseas to do bombing missions. Isn’t this like sending a boxer into a wrestling match? Aren’t bombs best delivered by “bombers”? The National Post’s call for “a much, much bigger air fleet” that includes the updated Cold War era weapons such as the F-35 sounds like knee-jerk support of the most expensive and ill-chosen part of our military. And yes, drones would seem to be the modern choice. Where are ours? I can only think that the Post editors have succumbed to the glamour and past glory of the fighter jet.

Nelson Lister, Oshawa, Ont. Money. It all comes down to money. The cost for each new F-35 (the CF-18’s potential replacement) will be in the millions, and the Harper government said that it intended to buy 65 of them. Fifteen fewer jets than the current CF-18 fleet. Great. Super.

How about this? The Harper government should enact a “security tax” of, say, one quarter per cent of a person’s yearly net income. Extrapolate this times the number of working Canadians and one could see how the money would add up. Seems a small amount to pay for living in and defending the greatest country in the world.

Paul Stevens, Milton, Ont.