Canada’s Air Force Doesn’t Have Enough People to Run Two Fighter Programs, Says Retired Lieutenant General

‘You Cannot Clone People’: A Former NORAD Deputy Commander Says Canada Does Not Have the Pilots or Technicians to Run F-35s and Gripens at the Same Time. Its Fighter Force Is at Two-Thirds Strength

Retired Lt. Gen. Alain Pelletier, NORAD’s deputy commander from 2020 to 2023, told the National Post that the Royal Canadian Air Force can’t stand up F-35s and Gripens at once: “You cannot duplicate people. You cannot clone people.” Steve Balestrieri runs the numbers behind him: a plan for 88 F-35As with only 16 firmly ordered, a fighter force at roughly two-thirds of required strength, 40 percent of the air force’s inventory serviceable, CF-18s…

Canada's air force doesn't have enough people to run two fighter programs, says retired lieutenant general

The Carney government is considering supplementing its planned purchase of U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets with Swedish-made Gripen fighters.

Canada’s air force doesn’t have enough people to run two fighter programs, says retired lieutenant general

Alain Pelletier can still remember that new plane smell when he first climbed into the cockpit of a CF-18 more than three decades ago. The retired Royal Canadian Air Force lieutenant general, who was deputy commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs from July 2020 until June 2023, knows what it […]