hckrnws
Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) produced a 4 episode TV mini series dramatizing the birth and death of the Avro Arrow plane (can be found on YouTube)
The reality is that as great of an interceptor as it was (and possibly the best dedicated interceptor jet ever made), by the time it was ready it was already obsolete. With the introduction of ICBMs, there was simply no need to have jets purpose built for shooting down TU-95's over the Arctic when the new threat was impossible to shoot down.
And yet the reality is that within a very short time after cancelling the Arrow the need for an interceptor was not, as you say, obsolete. That requirement meant that the Canadian government bought ex-USAF CF101-B Voodoo jets to replace the truly obsolescent CF-100 that the Arrow was meant to do. The development of interceptor aircraft similar to the Arrow continued on in various countries for decades.
Same old story of US military-industrial complex flexing its muscles to crush competition.
Canada bought over a hundred Voodoo interceptors from America and kept them in service until the 80s. Missiles making interceptors obsolete is very simplistic, not in line with reality. Even today, intercepting Tu-95s, now armed with long range cruise missiles, is relevant to NATOs defense. Canada's not least of all considering Russia's ambition to own the Artic Ocean.
Comment was deleted :(
Foxbat/MiG 25 was another classic aircraft -
For pure speed, they notched 1,852 mph. They could climb to 98,425 feet in four minutes and 3.86 seconds and ultimately reached an absolute altitude record of 123,520 feet.
That top speed would need a complete overhaul, if not replacement of the turbines afterwards. The somehow derivative (only by the looks, innards not so much) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_MiG-31 can do that on a more regular basis. (Allegedly)
now that's a 0-60 time damn
edit: it's cheating but the Starfighter with a JATO had an insane climb rate too
If you really want to cheat with the starfighter, you need to be using the ZEL version of it.
If you could choose, pick a Lightning instead :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning#Cli...
Back to the OP topic, the Arrow's thrust to weight ratio meant that it was theoretically the first aircraft capable of accelerating directly upwards in an arc immediately after reaching the end of the runway. Hot stuff.
An equally sad, but much less mentioned story is the Avro Jetliner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_C102_Jetliner
The sole surviving XB70, another super cool plane that was obsolete by the time it was ready, is a valued museum piece. These planes should have been.
They also built a flying saucer:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar
I recall hearing how the US Air Force was investigating reports of UFO's, and was surprised to find a 'real' one closer to home.
Highly unstable more than a few feet off the ground, it never proved viable. Unfortunately nobody at the time realized they might have been onto something if they'd pivoted to inventing the hovercraft.
But that was an experimental toy, whereas the Jetliner was fully debugged and production ready and had an eager market.
"To protect our turf, and the Americans to the south, Canada decided to build a high-flying supersonic interceptor to meet and knock down invading Soviet bombers."
Different times. Canadians are now possibly now more worried about the US than Russia.
[dead]
Why were all prototypes and blueprints destroyed so thoroughly? Why not keep one for a museum? And why the blueprints?
I'm sure there are security reasons, but it still seems so wasteful.
Yes.
> Prime Minister John Diefenbaker [ordered] all the completed planes (five plus a nearly finished sixth) to be chopped up and destroyed, along with all plans and blueprints so that the plane could never fly again.
Stopping the program was understandable, but the destruction is mysterious and the article doesn't say a word about why. Strange.
Killing it was the right call for the wrong reasons. But because it was the wrong reasons, it meant that no attention was paid on investing the tech into a new plane or resources.
Diefenbaker being "suckered" by the Americans is not what really happened (the CBC mini-series on the Arrow has some really cringey scenes about that angle, as well as portraying conservative party ineptitude and American arrogance). The more you read into Diefenbaker, the more he comes across as vain and susceptible to overreacting to slights (perceived or real), in over his head on the international stage, and ignorant of cold war realities (despite it being his government that had Canada form NORAD with the US).
It did set the stage for Canada's mercurial relationship with the United States, as Canada tended to over-react and over-compensate our opinions in both directions since then. This still continues to this day.
Politics. Diefenbaker had a conservative majority. Destroying everything made it much more difficult for a future Liberal government to restart the program.
Why would a future Liberal goverment restart it if the past one wanted to shut it down but didn't have the guts (or at least that's my understanding of the article)?
Ban / "Burn the books" does seem to fall on the 'conservative' side of the spectrum every time I can recall.
That is why Trump supporters are buying Teslas.
They are electric and have no trans.
That's only a funny joke if you dare to tell it right. Transmissions are called trannies.
Besides security reasons?
Which security reasons does the article state for not keeping at least one prototype (in a museum, without security-ensitive parts) and the blueprints?
As far as I can tell they only kept part of the nose/cockpit.
Honestly asking, I might have missed it.
The article doesn't get into how Soviet spies were uncovered in Canada in the 1950s and 60s. Governments were not being paranoid in the face of those revelations.
Right, the spy threat would be the "security reasons" I guessed at.
But still, wouldn't successful projects which were later decommissioned be more at risk of spies than an unsuccessful project? Yet successful projects do not have their blueprints and airframes routinely destroyed without a trace.
Interestingly, the nose of the plane was only preserved because someone hid it. It was supposed to be destroyed too.
Humiliation ritual.
The engineers that worked on it thought so, too. So they saved them: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/saved-avro-arrow-bl...
After this news broke there was, briefly, a campaign to convince the government to consider revisiting the Arrow, but it was rebuffed on the grounds that it was rather unstealthy: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/one-decade-ago-canada-alm...
The most likely reason for scrapping the program so thoroughly was to benefit the US aerospace industry; they wanted to ensure there was no chance of competition, and encouraged the notion that ICBMs had made interceptors obsolete, as an excuse: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-avro-arrow-jet-...
I would guess it was due to behind the scenes meddling from an 'ally', that was itself probably encouraged by its war industry.
My dad was an avionics and air-to-air weaponry guy in the RCAF in the 1950s-60s (you might understand my HN nick) and was training up on the Arrow's suite, which was being designed from scratch by RCA Canada in Montreal as Project ASTRA. It was a direct competitor to U.S. systems made primarily by Hughes, and the missiles were a direct competitor to those from what is now Raytheon. One of Avro's desperate options prior to cancellation was the idea of scrapping ASTRA for a 100% U.S. avionics and missile suite.
Yes. It's a "scorched earth" approach to prevent the project being revived.
Something similar happened to the RAF Nimrod: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12294766 , although I think the safety case was much stronger there after one caught fire in the air.
It's very Trumpian. Perhaps the steelman argument might be "if we leave this thing in limbo, people will continue to advocate spending more money on it". Sometimes institutions or individuals in them will have a pet project that they keep pushing beyond economic sense, and the only way to get them to stop is to shoot their pet.
There was no need to run a scorched-earth policy to prevent the Nimrod project from being revived. The plane that caught fire, killing 14 people, in mid air was a flying deathtrap. It had leaky internal fuel pipes that ran past a different (extremely hot) pipe that allowed exhausts from one engine to be used in restarting the other engine after an intentional in-flight shutdown (they used to shut down one engine to loiter more fuel efficiently when they reached their mission's surveillance area). The leaky fuel pipes were the aftermath IIRC of an air-to-air refuelling system that was retrofitted to allow long range flights down to the Falklands islands. The devastating official post-crash report (the Haddon-Cave review) is at [0]. It was one of the classic 'normal accidents' situations - they got away with multiple routine internal fuel leaks up until the day when they didn't.
Separately, the planes were all very old, and had been constructed over several years so were all slightly different. Projects that tried to do fleet upgrades usually went massively over-budget because each airframe had to be treated as a special case, even for things that you would expect to be standardised like the basic fuselage and wing dimensions.
[Edit] The Haddon-Cave review was exceptional in that it actually named and shamed those in the MOD and industry who helped develop the bodged safety case. People in the MOD and industry lost their jobs after the crash.
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Same reason that Cortez burned his boats, once you start down a path you don't want people second guessing you.
The British did the same a few years later with the even more capable TSR2.
Except Wikipedia has (21st century) photos of at least two tail numbers in museums.
It seems it was similar, yes. But according to Wikipedia,
> Two airframes eventually survived: the complete XR220 at the Royal Air Force Museum Midlands [...]
So the destruction of the project's artifacts was less thorough.
I'm sure the answer is probably fairly mundane, but it's birthed a whole lineage of nationalist semi-conspirational explanations (US colonial masters chewed Diefenbaker out, demanded the total cessation and destruction of the project, etc.)
I suspect it makes absolutely zero sense for Canada of the 50s to be designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets, but the mythos is strong.
And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
The US: having it both ways ("be our subservient raw resource provider and nothing else" and "oh, but it costs so much to defend you") since forever.
> And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
Surprised this doesn't get mentioned more.
If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
It's easy for America to complain about other countries not spending as much when it's the one that owns the market we all shop at.
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
We're about to find out if we want to. This is a major point in Carney's defence plan.
As a Canadian, I have mixed feeling about this. You can develop and build domestic defence industries, but it only becomes economical if you can develop an export market. Even then, the inputs for parts/resources are still global.
Sweden has one heck of a domestic defence industry, but it's tailor made for its requirements and expensive. The SAAB Gripen is one of the best planes in the world for what it was designed to do: operate dispersed off of regional roads when your main infrastructure is destroyed or unavailable. But its flyway cost is the same as an F-35 because hundreds have been built instead of thousands. And the Gripen's engine is still from General Electric.
The NLAW anti-tank weapon is a good example of export success. It was developed jointly with the British and has had a lot of exports and proven success in Ukraine.
On top of that, Canada's defence civil service is terrible at procurement. Even when we buy foreign, we manage to drive up the costs to the point where its rediculously price just to shove in some domestic "advantage", rather than focusing that money on stuff we are really good at (we tend to kick ass at sonar and anti-sub tech, for example).
Domestic development is an investment in your own country, it develops and pays skilled labor and supporting industries. When you buy jets from America, virtually all of that money is gone from Canada forever, funneled into America with Canada getting nothing out of it besides a jet which will need spare parts also from America, technicians from America, and after some years will need to be replaced with another American jet because after you've stabbed your own domestic industry in the back now you have no other choice than to continue buying foreign.
By that argument we should do that with everything. Maybe...with tariffs? /s
Doing that is more expensive and means we get us less for more - and we'd almost still rely on other countries for components and resources. All being equal, it is better to buy foreign goods cheaper and then have money leftover to focus on investing what you're good at. Canada is too small to economically fully design and build a modern plane, engines, missiles, radar, etc to compete with the US, China, etc. We certainly can't afford to do that with everything else, as well.
There are absolutely overriding strategic and security reasons you may want to do some of this anyways, but as a general rule we'd be far better diversifying our defence alliances (eg buying a mix from France, Korea, Japan, US, UK, etc) plus having something really good to offer said allies so we can be interdependent. Countries (including the US as we're learning) are not more powerful when they go it alone.
Protected industries almost always get lazy and noncompetitive. Canada is building our own version of the Type 26 frigate for almost double the cost per boat of Australia and the UK (which already ate the design costs!) despite the fact that we're going to be building the most of them so we should in theory scale cheaper. There are some reasons for that (they will be the most capable type 26's afloat), but it's mostly just because the government wants to subsidize Irving and east coast shipbuilders and there's no real scale or expertise because they literally can't market their work outside of Canada.
The argument is that naively looking at the price tags of domestic and foreign weapon systems doesn't tell you the true costs to the country. A dollar given to a foreign country costs much more than a dollar spent inside your own economy.
This is hardly even a novel or controversial point. Any defense spending expert will tell you this. Even that trendy Perun guy that reddit loves has made this precise point.
If this were true, Argentina would be super rich and Singapore would be super poor.
But it is not because just “keeping a dollar in your country” chasing less productive work/goods causes productivity and competitive problems the more it happens and longer it goes on.
There are plenty of defense experts who’ll say the opposite of what you say they will (though they’re open to exceptions for security reasons).
It is better to buy cheaper/better stuff abroad and have others do the same for your competitive stuff.
You are being deliberately obtuse. Investing in domestic production isn't an infinite money hack, that isn't the argument. The argument is that you cannot make a apples-to-apples dollars-to-dollar price comparison to see how much it will cost your country to outsource production of hardware. With the benifit of hindsight, we know that Diefenbaker's decision spelled the death of Canada's aerospace industry. Their engineers moved to America or left their careers behind. The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets.
> You are being deliberately obtuse
You’re giving vague responses with no data to back it up, so that’s a rude statement.
> The argument is that you cannot make a apples-to-apples dollars-to-dollar price comparison to see how much it will cost your country to outsource production of hardware
Yes you can. The F-35 flyway costs ($82m) are similar to the Saab Gripen ($85m) despite the F-35 being superior in almost every way (the one notable exception being the Gripen is good at flying off of more rustic environments). The simple reason is scale. There are similar numbers for French planes and they’re finally giving up for their next-gen planes and working with the rest of Europe. Sweden is all but throwing in the towel going forwards, too.
You’re essentially saying Canada should pay more for less to support jobs and expertise that will produce less and cost more.
Canada has been a net contributor in the F-35 program (as have most of the other countries that have purchased it).
> With the benifit of hindsight, we know that Diefenbaker's decision spelled the death of Canada's aerospace industry
Canada has the third largest aerospace industry after the EU and USA (though we go toe to toe with Brazil). Your argument is invalid.
> The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets
This is not true, though the numbers are fuzzy depending on if one includes R&D and number of planes built - so we could spend all day arguing on this. But the engines were languishing in development hell, so we ultimately didn’t know what the final bill would have been (the TV series show them as “this close” to being done, but that wasn’t the case in real life).
The Avro arrow was a really good long range interceptor, but that was about it. The CBC miniseries made it out to be this amazing plane that was better at everything, which it was not. The Voodoo that was bought instead was arguably inferior in policing Canada’s north, but was much better suited for all the other roles the Air Force participated in, especially European NATO commitments. We would have had to buy another plane anyways, but the one plane already stretched Canada’s resources. We’re just not big enough to do that.
> Their engineers moved to America or left their careers behind. The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets
There absolutely was a brain drain to the US for many of the engineers. As I mentioned in another post, cancelling the Arrow was arguably the right decision for the wrong reasons, but because it was done for the wrong reasons there wasn’t any thought put through on focusing on another project. A huge chunk of the blame lies with the executives at avro canada, who over-extended trying to do everything (plane, engine, etc) and then got burned playing with politics.
Regarding your fly away (or systems) costs, there is another, related measure:
Cost per flight hour (CPFH), which according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Operational... (sourced from Janes)
is sligthly under 6.000US$ vs. anything between slightly over 25.000US$ to slightly under 40.000US$ depending on the type/model of F-35.
They also got rid of the 'clock shop', just look at that!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#/media/File...
(in addition to HUD/HMD)
The only serious reason to go with the Gripen or any other alternative to the F-35 is if we seriously believe that there's been an actual realignment in the outlook of the USA. Carney asserts this is fact, as does Trump, but US liberals obviously believe they'll take power and "normalize" things again in 2026 and 2028.
And if they do so, it will look very foolish to have have pursued an aerospace program which provides less value for money.
If US politics and economics remains in this crisis state for an extended period of time, then I would see sticking with F-35 as a missed opportunity to realign Canada's economic-political-military relationships for the second half of the century.
My personal opinion is that we should cautiously move forward with the F-35 and either way start moving to diversify future orders long-term.
The Gripen is wrong for Canada unless we actually do think we'll be invaded by the US and need to operate away from runways (and even then let's be honest, we will only repel an invasion from the United States if we go full-on gorilla warfare and insurgency). For the North we need planes with the range for expanses of the north and ideally two engines (though single engine planes are much more reliable enough now). We may want to consider acquiring AWACS capabilities, especially if China starts mucking around up there (they claim to be serious about doing that).
If money were no object and Trump wasn't ruining everything, ideally we'd have F-35s for force projection and a side order of new F-18 Super Hornets (and maybe a few F-18G Growlers - though the latest block of Gripens do have a respectable electronic warfare suite) to keep up patrols in the North.
The only practical alternatives are the Rafael and Eurofighter which are fine planes in their own right for their generations, but have supply lines across an ocean and have some compromises that are not ideal for Canada (the F-18 is larger and has a more powerful radar, which is better suited for long-range interception). Canada should seriously look at joining Europe's next-gen fighter project, though.
All of this is just for planes, too. We need to start taking the north seriously and that means more naval capability, which is a whole other story. At the time I thought Harper's announcements on it were a waste of time, but he was right - the tragedy is they were only paying it lip service failed to deliver.
the tragedy is they were only paying it lip service failed to deliver.
That about sums up the last 25 years of Canadian economic/political/military "planning" generally.
It's time to get serious. I don't so much care about the military per-se, but industrial capacity, manufacturing, etc. generally.
And of course the problem with "taking the North seriously" in the context of what Harper was suggesting is what this was almost entirely purely about from an exploitative POV (military and resources) rather than recognizing that people live there (and lived there first) and that qualify of life for the people that live there needs to be improved.
A few mines, some pipelines, and a military base doesn't make that happen. Taking the north seriously also means providing services.
I 100% agree. We can't do everything ourselves, but we need to be serious about things.
It's also going to mean several very hard decisions. There's going to need to be some choices between [tax cuts if you're from the right | social programs if you're from the left] and spending on these kinds of things. I also have some very nervous feelings about long-term planning with all the partisanship in the current environment.
Russia's weapons exports have cratered (because their products aren't living up to the hype) and US exports will be shakey since countries can't trust us anymore.
South Korea was already finding export success in Europe for general military equipment. Eastern Europe is paying big bucks to not be Ukraine 2. The market is ripe for new entrants.
Meanwhile NATO has been stuck with 80s equipment with a hundred upgrade packages for quite some time. It's a great time to offer brand new products. Specifically tanks and AFVs are an open market right now. Anti-Air is also an open market, since Russian units are all exploded in Ukraine so they don't exactly have any stock to export and the Patriot is good but expensive and from an untrustworthy partner.
I think the US defence industry really is going to be hurting for awhile for the trustworthiness reason alone. The Patriot was under-promised and over-delivered as shown in Ukraine (the Americans seemed happy to let people think that its teething problems in the first Gulf war were still a factor), but even if you buy it the supply is constrained to a country with what we can now describe at best a "mercurial" political system.
Russia's exports have more cratered because they're focusing on domestic demand, but they still have a market for developing countries fighting amungst themselves that the west won't supply. The one exception is India, which will likely pivot to more western kit as they have border issues with China.
Korea already had a domestic industry for various strategic reasons with North Korea being next door (if a global war became hot, they could be cut off from artillery ammunition sources, so it makes sense for them to make sure they can manufacture their own, even if its more expensive), so they're in a position to capitalize. Canada's reasons to do the same (massive arctic defence) doesn't have much of an export market, though we are teaming up with the Scandinavian countries for icebreakers.
The Gripen could have been designed around the EJ200 or Snecma M88 instead.
"On top of that, Canada's defence civil service is terrible at procurement."
You could remove "defence" from that and describe almost every large company or gov't in this country, too.
We need a moral and civil reform in this country, to really build again like we used to. Civic spirit revival.
Look at the joke of the Eglinton LRT, or even more so the Hamilton LRT. Even when we commit to building things, it turns into a swamp of mismanagement and a game of political hot potato.
Most embarassing thing about the Eglinton LRT is it sounds like its our (software) profession that is to blame for the latest series of dysfunctions. I'm disgusted.
Yeah, I was trying to remain in scope to defence-related issues, but I don't disagree with you. I'm holding out some small sliver of hope that all the recent geopolitical events will finally wake us up, but I'm not holding my breath.
We shall see. Big words, but this country has a history of doubling down on mediocrity and parochial interests.
I personally would love to contribute in whatever way I could to homegrown manufacturing, tech, and maybe even defence sector, and am willing to put in the hours and even compensation cut to make things happen in this country.
I just hope there's investors out there willing to make things happen, and that the gov't doesn't just do its usual thing of protecting a few existing corporate buddies.
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
That doesn't mean no longer spending money at the altar of the military-industrial complex, it just means having your own altar. Which you're free to do, by the way. You don't have to buy our stuff.
Canadians seem to consistently ignore the effects that a strong military-industrial complex has had on the US (and UK, to a lesser extent), particularly on foreign policy. When major components of the TSX Composite need sales, they're going to start lobbying MPs to get them. It's not a coincidence that a lot of the defense industry is based in Northern Virginia.
As far as the sovereignty... I don't think you have to worry about that.
"You don't have to buy our stuff."
You should see what happens when we even make motions like we're not going to.
https://skiesmag.com/news/bombardier-concerned-about-u-s-ret...
a legit concern because:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/us-government-slaps-...
and then again
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-cseries-boeing-1...
I seem to recall this being tied to our review the F-35 programme last time, but I can't find a reference to it. In any case, not buying F35s will have huge consequences with the US, if it doesn't happen.
Okay? So you might be selling fewer Bombardier aircraft in the US. There's still Europe, China, and the rest.
That's not a mortal threat to Canadian manufacturing and the country's defense sector. Unless, of course, Canada really is as reliant on American dollars as Trump makes the country out to be, which is why he feels he can be a pain in the ass and push tariffs higher.
It's not a mortal threat to Canada, but it is a mortal threat to the Liberal party's base of support in Quebec :-)
Seriously though, those are decent paying jobs that glue together a manufacturing economy that often times is barely holding on in the face of the same kinds of forces that have decimated American manufacturing, too.
It's the same with the autosector here in Ontario.
It's not that it's "American dollars" holding Canada together, per se, it's that this is a continental-wide trading system developed by ruling classes in both countries since the 80s and it barely serves the interest of working people here or in the United States because the bulk of work has been exported to China in the the last few decades... and so what is remaining is absolutely critical to hold onto.
These are the facts Trudeau was trying to explain to Trump, who is too stupid and arrogant to grasp.
In the end working people in both countries have more in common than not. And face threats from overseas as well as our own political classes. (And no, that's not a call for the dissolution of our sovereignty.) As much as I despise my premier Doug Ford (he's a corrupt buffoon) he was right to emphasize a "fortress North America" alternative approach to Trump -- continent wide security and prosperity insured by cooperation. That line worked with Obama and Biden, and IMHO strengthened both countries, but Trump is deadset on burning it all down.
I don't think he sees it as North America, just... the US and people it competes against.
Which is certainly a way to see things, though not a particularly good one.
Honestly I see the treatment of Canada to be in the top three things that I er... "dislike"... him for. The other two are putting RFK Jr. in charge of HHS and the disrespect for court orders.
It was a long range bomber interceptor and it made sense until ICBMs happened. Canadian territory is vast and mostly barren in a way that no other NATO country is, having specialized equipment to defend it can make a big difference.
I understand the cancelation, I'm actually asking about the memory-holing of the project (destroying blueprints, not even keeping an airframe for a museum, etc).
It was an interceptor. Ideas for conversion to a bomber role were only ideas.
My bad, I meant it was an interceptor against bombers.
Re-reading, I now see that you meant interceptor of bombers.
Keep in mind I'm not asking why the project was canceled, but why even the blueprints were destroyed! It seems overkill, or even spite.
> designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets
The Avro Arrow was only proposed as an interceptor but neither a fighter nor bomber. There were spitball ideas of future bomber adaptations but they were never part of the project.
Great read, fascinating piece of Canadian history.
For anyone on mobile (android/chrome at least) select "Desktop Site" under browser settings to see five historical images. They don't show up for me at all in the default mobile view.
No mention of the spies. No mention of how the overall design of the arrow is eerrily similar to the later mig-25, a unique design in soviet aviation. There is a reason the foxbat and foxhound dont look like any other soviet aircraft, but do look very similar to the arrow and f-15. Arrow was cancelled because america saw what was happening.
For those who dont see it: the arrow has a rectangular "box" body, so do the mig25/31 and f-15. Most multiengine fighters have cigar shapes (f18, f111) or "tunnels" such as the su-27/35/34/57, f-14 and even the sr-71. The box shape was new in the arrow but can arguably be seen today in the US 22 and 35.
Article with a good pic showing the design consideration is still a thing today: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/102446/why-does...
Diefenbaker canceled the arrow saying that interceptors were no longer needed (Canada subsequently bought interceptors from America, because they did in fact remain relevant.). At the same time he was digging out a massive bunker outside of Ottawa so that the Canadian government could survive the rest of Canada being vaporized. Some real Doctor Strangelove shit IMHO.
The so called "Deifenbunker" is now a museum open to the public. Pretty interesting, being in it feels like being in a ship.
We bought fighter jets with secondary role of interceptor. The Arrow was a dedicated interceptor which was pointless.
The RCAF used its CF-101B Voodoo jets only in NORAD interceptor roles and never in fighter scenarios, at which they were unsuitable.
Pointless? It made perfect sense back when the main vector of nuclear delivery was heavy long range bombers.
The R7 ICBM was operationally deployed to northern Russia on February 9th, 1959. The Arrow was canceled on February 20th, 1959.
The Arrow was pointless before it finished development. Canada correctly figured out that further investment into dedicated super-interceptors was a bad choice. They DID buy US interceptors to replace their old ones because 1) You usually hedge your bets when you can in defense spending and 2) Governments were not excited to say "We stopped building these planes because we literally cannot protect you from nuclear weapons now"
The US spent decades continuing down interceptor development and saw exactly zero payoff for it. We retired the Delta Dart in 1986 after never using the garbage machine, which likely wouldn't even have been good at it's job. Consider that the primary armament of the interceptor Canada bought to replace the Arrow was a fucking unguided nuclear rocket. Because that was literally the only interception weapon that provided even a snowballs chance in hell of being effective.
The Detla Dart was built to sit in a shed in the plains of Canada, waiting for a truly terrible day. When SAGE radars saw the wave of bombers, an alarm would sound and the pilot would jump in the plane and turn it on. The plane, automated entirely by SAGE, would rocket up to intercept altitude and be guided to the intercept. Closing rates were in excess of Mach 4. You only had a single pass at the target and if you didn't get them, you would not be able to catch up and eliminate the threat. Missing meant nukes dropping on US cities. Because of this terrible engagement profile, the entire weapons system was automated. You had a screen between your lap that you interacted with like a Vectrex video game to line up with a circle. The actual weapon firing was automated because that's how tight the tolerances were. Early models even had stupid dumbfire WW2 style rockets. One of the first times this interception process and fire control was tested, they blew up the plane towing the target drone. That's just how poor ground based interception was. We are talking like 50% interception rates on a good day.
The Arrow would have been similarly worthless. The only thing these programs succeeded at was stressing out pilots.
The R-7 was never a practical weapon and the Soviet Union would primarily rely on strategic bombers for their war plans for many years after that. Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets only had a few dozen ICBMs (which is why IRBMs being in Cuba, right next to America, was relevant and desirable for them), the bulk of the threat through the 1970s and into the 80s was bombers.
The R-7 was never a practical weapon but interceptors were never a practical counter to bombers, and that got even more true when nuclear weapons stopped being gravity bombs.
Notably, the US Navy ran into the exact same problem. The USSR invented a bomber launched cruise missile to take out carriers, and there was no interceptor capable of getting into the air and into engagement range after the bomber showed up on radar but before it was able to launch it's missiles.
They spent like 15-20 years going down different paths (starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer) that were sometimes silly and usually a bad project. The eventual and actual solution was: Better airborne early warning doctrine and systems, better picket and CAP doctrine, better ISR, and most importantly of all; enough advancement on missile systems that they actually COULD hit the bomber you selected reliably and reach out and touch them at fifty miles, and now basically any fast multirole fighter you have is a "bomber interceptor".
The dedicated interceptor plane was a interim role that was dying when the Arrow was cancelled. Average fighter plane speed was increasing enough to make dedicated hypersonic interceptors a poor plan, and missiles fly at Mach 4-8 anyway.
Bomber speeds also did not go as high as predicted. The bulk of the threat was bombers, but the investment into the kind of super duper fast bombers that the XB-70 represented ended for about the same reason: Missiles and radar got good. The US did build the B-1b, but that doesn't break Mach 2. The TU-160M does hit Mach 2.3, but that's as fast as we went.
Bombers moved on to low level flying to attempt to survive, which limited speeds anyway, so that's another strike against dedicated "Put a wing on a huge engine" interceptors.
Canada never needed a fighter-bomber, and it is a matter of historical record that they did continue to need aircraft for the interception of Soviet bombers, plainly evidenced by Canada purchasing aircraft specifically for that purpose. Those aircraft were not built to be dedicated interceptors but that role is all Canada ever needed and used them for. They would have been better served by aircraft built for it.
The Soviet ICBM threat was not relevant until many years after the Arrow was canceled; if you knew that before I told you, then I wonder why you even brought it up? Because Diefenbaker did? Diefenbaker was an idiot. Taking his excuses at face value is extremely dumb.
BTW if you actually wargame it out with realistic scenarios (accounting for the existence of AWACS and the probability of interceptors being in the air already), cold war US Navy interceptors easily get kills on Bears before they get their shots off, and can intercept the ASMs themselves as well. What makes or breaks it is the number of missiles brought to the engagement by both sides. It is by absolutely no means a sure thing for the Soviet bombers, I have no idea where you got such a stupid idea from.
That makes sense in systems thinking way. But aerodynamically it must have been good, because otherwise things like this would be unlikely:
Comment was deleted :(
See also the TSR-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2
The TSR-2 was doomed by progress, by the time it made it to prototype stage britains nuclear bombs had shrunk to the point that they didn't need, nor benefitted from, a giant interdictor.
In the end the tiny jaguar could carry 4 WE177s just fine.
Avro Canada pitched the Arrow to the British as either a frontline RAF interceptor or as a placeholder for the TSR-2 until it could be brought into service.
Arrow was a high altitude intercepter, TSR was a low level nuclear interdictor. I can't see any way that there was ANY mission cross over.
Avro was pitching the Arrow to the UK in a bit of desperation, I think, but the interest from the RAF was said to be quite high, especially given the familial linkage of Avro Canada to the original Avro. WWII was only still recent, and Avro Canada had joined in Lancaster bomber production back then, so there were optimistic visions of British sales.
You mentioned the TSR-2's role as a low-level nuclear interdictor - this same role was taken up by RCAF CF-104 Starfighters(!) stationed in Germany carrying U.S. made free fall nuclear bombs on planned routes into Poland and further.
Hrm. The german F-104G were planned for the same 'drop that thing high, and get the hell away from there!'
Meaning when reaching the target, leaving low-level flight, and letting the eggs fall while curving up, so the eggs 'fly' for a while in a parabolic arc, longer than actual free fall. So plane and pilot would have (more) time to escape the blast.
Was described in much detail in the 'Reibert' for the Luftwaffe from the 80ies.
OT: I hate that I cannot scroll the pictures on the left the way I want to.
Comment was deleted :(
Eh....cancelling a not very good design in 1959, well before most countries realized ground controlled interceptors were kind of a bad idea might be the real story here. The US (and the Soviets to a hilarious degree) went down the other path for many more years, at high cost; the USAF (Fighter side) didn't truly recover from those choices until the late 70's - early 80's IMO. (Vietnam being the real tutor here)
If you're interested in the subject, look up the performance of the beam riding missiles in use, and the limitations for deployment of the AIM-9B - those do a good job highlighting the extremely limited envelope in which these weapons could be deployed, and the difficulty in getting the aircraft in that envelope.
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code