The RCAF should fly only twin engine fighter-Interceptors

Canada is a large country and when you fly away from the urban centers you might be several hours away from an airfield. This is the main reason why the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) should fly only twin engine fighter interceptors.

Given our main North American adversary is Russia across the North Pole (a country which has a very similar geography to that of Canada), it is worth noting that nearly all its frontline, modern fighters like the Su-27, Su-30, Su-35, and the new Su-57 are twin-engine, a strong design feature driven by safety concerns and the need for redundancy over the vast and cold Russian territory.

Over four decades ago when the RCAF went through its procurement cycle for replacements for the 1960’s era twin engine CF-101 Voodoo, the primary design requirement for the selection of the F-18 A/B were that the aircraft be twin-engine.

Why should the RCAF contemporary fighter interceptor procurement cycle be any different? The geography of Canada has not changed in any way shape or form in four decades. Flying a single engine jet is a prescription for endless grief and needless disaster.

When you carefully study the last seventy years of RCAF fighter interceptor history starting with the CF-100 Canuck and the CF-86 Sabre, you quickly notice that single-engine interceptors had a crash and fatality rate considerably higher than twin-engine interceptors. With the CF-104, a single engine high performance jet, in 110 crashes there were 37 fatalities. With the twin engine CF-101 Voodoo there were 3 fatalities in 14 crashes. Both the CF-104 and the CF101 were operated at the same time by the RCAF. You can do the math.

By choosing the twin engine CF-18 the last time around it is worth noticing how few fatalities there have been since the aircraft first entered service in 1982. It is also worth noticing that on over three hundred occasions a CF-18 returned to base on a single engine. Bird strikes were a major cause of this misfortune.

When you realize that the total number of CF-18 that were set into service, a mere 138 aircraft, had the aircraft not been twin engine the fleet would have been depleted many decades ago. One of the wisest things that the RCAF did when they chose the CF-18 was to mandate a twin-engine fighter interceptor.

It makes no sense, given the geography of Canada and its defense needs to procure a single-engine fighter interceptors like the F-35. Another question is do we need all the bells and whistles of the F-35 to fulfill Canada’s domestic security needs. I will take a look at this in a separate article.

For those hot-shot RCAF pilots who prefer a single engine jet like the F-35 I would recommend to the Crown that you get them to sign a death benefit waver so that the Crown doesn’t have to pay their death benefits when the single engine in their F-35 flames out somewhere over Northern Canada, or over one of the three Oceans that border Canada.

If these those hot-shot RCAF pilots really want to be ‘thrill seekers’ may I suggest you take up drag racing on your spare time.

If there is no other twin-engine fighter interceptor available at the moment then perhaps the RCAF can procure a few dozen F-18 E/F Super Hornets at a reasonable cost like what was agreed upon with a procurement by the US Navy to tide Canada over until such time as a modern twin engine fighter interceptor is procure.

The US Navy acquired 17 F-18 E/F Super Hornets for $ 1.1 billion in the spring of 2024. You do the math of how much a few dozen F-18 E/F Super Hornets would cost Canada.

In comparison you might also note that the South Korean Airforce procured 21 KF-21 twin engine fighter interceptors for $ 1.76 Billion. This is an advanced 4.5 generation aircraft with all the bells and whistles Canada would need for its domestic security needs.