madrat wrote:The Canadians balked at Boeing in general, not the price.
No they balked at the price, in fact the Canadian Government was so taken aback they had to scramble to call the US for clarification. Heres a brief explanation as to why:
For YEARS Boeing told every media outlet in Canada that asked them that the Super Hornet would cost
65 million (thats bolded because its important)
The media would then use qualifying language "Boeing says" or "boeing Claims" their super hornet will cost
65 million Boeing never deviated from that number.
Whenever asked the magical number 65 million came up. year after year regardless. Watch how this number again pops up in this report from late november 2016, about buying interim Super Hornets:
The Liberals pegged the cost of one F-35 at $175 million and one Super Hornet at $65 million, but those numbers have been repeatedly questioned.
Meanwhile, Kuwait recently announced plans to buy 40 Super Hornets for $13 billion. While the deal includes eight Super Hornets dedicated to electronic warfare, that still works out to $335 million per plane.
At the same time, Denmark is moving ahead with plans to buy 27 F-35s at a cost of $4 billion, which amounts to about $148 million per plane.
just to give you an idea of how "off" the Liberal estimate was the title of the above is "Ottawa might be buying 18 Super Hornets; price tag could exceed
$1.1B" ( How did they arrive at 1.1billion? well like good repeaters they multiplied 18 by
65...)
Here it that same line again repeated in a 2017 piece:
During the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals estimated the cost of an F-35 at $175 million per plane, with the Super Hornet coming in at $65 million.
With no one in the mainstream media ever actually looking into the cost, Boeing got away with this false claim to the point that the Liberal Government ACTUALLY BELIEVED it and adopted themselves as FACT.
And then this happened:
The “estimated total case value” in the notification to Congress was US$5.23 billion, or $6.6 billion Canadian, prompting criticism from the Conservative Party.
yes that 6 times the 1.1b the first article warned of-- for EIGHTEEN Super Hornets.
Now I'm gonna run outta fingers and toes, but turns out at 6.6 billion Canadian that was a BIT more than
65 million. 366 million actually or well over 5 times the cost the Liberals had been tricked into believing
So hats off to Boeing, they had the liberals believing in magic. You repeat a lie enough and all that. Now of course we here know that Boeing was using just fly away (and a generous one at that) compared to the F-35s full program cost.
But the liberals suffice it to say, were SHOCKED to the point they were scrambling on the phones. They've been using that number since 2015 themselves and then were telling people it would cost just over 1 billion, and instead it comes back 6 and a half billion. HAHAHAHA even funnier when one remember the reason the F-35 was so badly ungood was its out of nowhere cost escalation.
very few people in Canada (Richard Shimooka is one actual example that did) ever analyzed Boeings claims apples to apples. They instead used the qualifying language, and gave Boeing free viral marketing.
Shimooka never got the kind of widespread attention his cost analysis deserved that debunked Boeings claims, destroyed the passive media's useful idiots, and would lay waste to the Liberals favorite number. He should not have been the only one looking into that and trying to spread the truth. The Canadian Media failed, and it failed badly. Its a great example of how companies manipulate the media, who then in turn push the narrative that manipulates people, and even entire political parties. Again this cost Boeing nothing, but had a major impact.
It wasn't until Boeing revealed the actual contract price that the lie was finally discovered.
This is even more enraging when we think about how this number has been used to undermine the JSF in Canada from nearly day 1. I'm not saying that Canada would have F-35s and this whole thing could have been avoided. BUT what I am saying is if the F-35s closest competitor had had honest reporting about its cost, instead of undermining it with a company provided lie, Canada would probably have F-35s right now. 175 million vs 366 million? rather than 175 million vs 65 million, well that makes a helluva difference when reported honestly and would have put out most talk of the F-35 being too costly.
ricnunes wrote:hb_pencil wrote: Here's the scary thing, Bestfighter4Canada better reflects the thought of the Canadian electorate, and some politicians than F-16.net on this issue. Let that sink in for a minute when you think that the F-35 is the assured option.
I would say that Bestfighter4Canada has about the same power to be influential on the decision to purchase the future Canadian fighter aircraft as you and I and anyone here personally can!
It's not like a Blog with a "Bah looking" will change anything or be influential in any means on the Canadian future fighter decision.
Thats not the point though. hes not saying BF4C is influencing, hes saying its a reflection of the Canadian public. Having lurked there many times, Canadians have a completely different attitude thanks to the very limited and very specific kind of reports they hear on it thanks to Canadian Media.
Its like theyre in their own little world, and it shows. again this isn't BF4C's fault. the conditioning has paid off very nicely. like my 65 million example there. No one in the states was ever being told Super Hornets were 65 million, and certainly not year after year. Theyre good little students, they regurgitate what theyre told, and even better attack anyone else that tries to tell them otherwise. knowledge, sources, experience, reason, facts, history are meaningless to them.
16 Jul 2019, 12:29
