Foto: Per Gram
60-Year-Old Design Pitched As F-35 Replacement
The Canadian government has rejected a proposal to resurrect a 60-year-old
design for a fighter-interceptor instead of pursuing its controversial
procurement of 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Bourdeau Industries, which has
offices in the U.K. and Canada, first proposed building an updated version of
the Wikipedia link CF-105 Avro Arrow as a faster and all-around
better alternative to the F-35. The idea has gained the support of some
prominent Canadian military figures and is now being debated informally among
the political heirarchy. Officially, however, the Conservative government has
flatly rejected the idea, citing, among other things, the historic nature of the
design and monumental task of creating the industry to build it. That industry
was in place until Feb. 20, 1959, still referred to as "Black Friday" in the
Canadian aviation industry. Sixty years later, the Arrow is still considered a
pinnacle of aerospace achievement in Canada. It used a fly-by-wire system
decades before similar systems were used in fighters and offered a
computer-controlled navigation and flight management system that didn't become
common until the F-16 and F-15 era.
Faced with crushing development costs and the appealing alternative of
relatively inexpensive ramjet nuclear anti-aircraft missiles known as the Wikipedia link the
government of the time canceled the program and ordered five test aircraft cut
apart for scrap. More than 14,000 workers were terminated and many of the
leading engineers went to work for NASA. One intact cockpit survives at the
Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. Rumors persist that one of the test
aircraft escaped the cutting torches and is hidden somewhere, a theory that was
revived in 2011 with the discovery of an Arrow ejection seat in England.
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