The F-35 are stealth fighters, designed to be capable of blowing up ground targets without showing up on enemy radar. Other fighters — the Super Hornets, the Eurofighters and the Gripens — look cheaper and might be just as good as defending our airspace, even if they’re not as good at blowing up bunkers in faraway deserts.The bias is just bleeding through those words. Stephen might as well just come out anti-F-35.
Putting on my "objective cap" for a moment (It's a well worn non-Liberal one of course), I can think of a good thought experiment to assess this requirement.
Let's say I was comic book hero. Let's say I was shopping for a car. Let's also say that there was an option to have an invisibility cloak installed in your car (eat your heart out Worf!). Deciding if it's a valid option to include in our selection criteria comes down to an assessment we all make when making a purchase: is it a "need to have" or a "want to have."
An invisibility cloak on your car would be freaking awesome and cool. If that were our only reason to include it in our criteria it would most certainly be a "want to have." In other words - it's a waste of money to make it a firm restriction on your car choice.
But let's say we know that our arch-enemies from the Lolly-Pop Guild are getting it on their new vehicle, or have already done so. Well if we want to continue fighting crime we better make an invisibility cloak a "need to have" or we're likely dead and those bastard little elves are one step closer to world domination.
Both Norway and Russia have already chosen stealth fighters (Denmark has made no firm decision yet). All of these twits are competitors in Canada's long standing Artic disputes.
It's like saying "the other guys have tanks, but all we really need is swords." If Canada wants to be taken seriously in the Artic I think it just might be a good idea to have Stealth Fighters.