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Canceling the Arrow was probably the best thing to happen to Canada. Why tie up huge resources and your top engineers building a fighter that was far too expens

Canceling the Arrow was probably the best thing to happen to Canada. Why tie up huge resources and your top engineers building a fighter that was far too expensive and poorly designed for battlefields of the future?

pjkundert 6y ago
Yes, much better that these engineers and technicians mostly departed to other nations, or went on to build canoes or pots and pans, as good Canadians should.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Or now work for Pratt and Whitney Canada, for a wage inferior to that of US engineers, making engines that we then buy while the profits go to the US.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    I don't see why they simply wouldn't go work in the US if that was the case. Unless they aren't qualified enough.
    - SECProto 6y ago
      I can think of a number of good reasons why someone would want to live in Canada and not the US
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      "just move", basically. This is an absurd argument at the scale of a country, and even more absurd at an international scale. If they weren't qualified the industry wouldn't have been poached. Rather, this suggests that at least at some point they were significantly more qualified than those in the US.
      - 908B64B197 6y ago
        They better get used to it: the current government had no problem pitching to Amazon that Canada was a cheap offshoring destination for engineers[1]. [1]https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/city-of-vancouver-criticized-for-boasting-about-low-pay-of-its-tech-workers-in-amazon-hq-bid https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/city-of-vancouver-criti...
- valuearb 6y ago
  If you want them to stay in Canada and use their skills to the utmost, lower your cost of capital. Do everything that you can to make it easier to save and invest in Canada, and look to Silicon Valley and emulate their good attributes, such as banning non competes. Fairchild Semiconductor fathered a thousand companies. How many did BlackBerry? Don’t rely on a committee of bureaucrats shuffling tax money to their idea of the best companies (The ones that their brother works at or the ones that best wine and fined them). Take the money from those government schmoes and use it to cut taxes on and barriers to investment. Make it easier for entrepreneurs to stay and build, and to raise money. Buy your weapons in the open market, and save.
  - jabl 6y ago
    Silicon Valley is an excellent example of decades long government funding and commitment spawning a world leading ecosystem. See e.g. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ for a nice overview.
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  Well, many went to work on Apollo.
sintaxi 6y ago
The regrettable purchase of 66 CF-101 VooDoo shortly after suggests otherwise. The CF-101 were pretty much DOA and replaced rather quickly. The Arrow would still be flown today by the Canadian Air Force had the program completed.
- nwallin 6y ago
  > The Arrow would still be flown today by the Canadian Air Force had the program completed. They absolutely would not still be flown today. The Arrow was a relic of the pre-ICBM cold war. When the USSR was expected to field fleets of nuclear bombers over the north pole. The Arrow was designed to go fast, launch an unguided nuclear air to air rocket, turn around and fly home. It was great at this, but in the ensuing years, the Soviet Union put a lot more effort into its ICBM capability than its intercontinental nuclear bomber capability. It would have had difficulty adapting to other roles. As a delta wing, its energy management was likely terrible. Its thin, delicate wings would be ill suited to hanging a heavy bomb load from. It is comparable (though slightly worse) in era, role, configuration, and performance to the F-106, which was retired in the '80s. The Arrow was designed to do something that was simply unnecessary. If the program had been completed, it still would have been replaced in the '70s or '80s. The only difference is that it would have likely been replaced by an Avro Canada designed aircraft rather than an American one.
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sgt101 6y ago
Robert Mcnamara made a similar point about Concorde - but that wasn't cancelled. A vast amount of talent and capital was effectively lost on it. The point that Mcnamara didn't ever make though was that a great deal of Concorde's troubles can be pinned on the oil crisis. There is a lot of randomness and counter factuals to be considered in these stories.
- fragmede 6y ago
  Given how much the knowledge from making the Concorde later made it into Airbus and their planes, I don't know that the talent and capital was "effectively lost".
  - sgt101 6y ago
    I was under the impression that the vast bulk of the engineering effort for Concorde was targetted on making it a viable supersonic aircraft. Airbus has never built a supersonic aircraft...
johnwalkr 6y ago
On the other hand, a lot of engineers left to work on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo in the US.

pjkundert 6y ago

Yes, much better that these engineers and technicians mostly departed to other nations, or went on to build canoes or pots and pans, as good Canadians should.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Or now work for Pratt and Whitney Canada, for a wage inferior to that of US engineers, making engines that we then buy while the profits go to the US.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  I don't see why they simply wouldn't go work in the US if that was the case. Unless they aren't qualified enough.
  - SECProto 6y ago
    I can think of a number of good reasons why someone would want to live in Canada and not the US
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    "just move", basically. This is an absurd argument at the scale of a country, and even more absurd at an international scale. If they weren't qualified the industry wouldn't have been poached. Rather, this suggests that at least at some point they were significantly more qualified than those in the US.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      They better get used to it: the current government had no problem pitching to Amazon that Canada was a cheap offshoring destination for engineers[1]. [1]https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/city-of-vancouver-criticized-for-boasting-about-low-pay-of-its-tech-workers-in-amazon-hq-bid https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/city-of-vancouver-criti...
valuearb 6y ago
If you want them to stay in Canada and use their skills to the utmost, lower your cost of capital. Do everything that you can to make it easier to save and invest in Canada, and look to Silicon Valley and emulate their good attributes, such as banning non competes. Fairchild Semiconductor fathered a thousand companies. How many did BlackBerry? Don’t rely on a committee of bureaucrats shuffling tax money to their idea of the best companies (The ones that their brother works at or the ones that best wine and fined them). Take the money from those government schmoes and use it to cut taxes on and barriers to investment. Make it easier for entrepreneurs to stay and build, and to raise money. Buy your weapons in the open market, and save.
- jabl 6y ago
  Silicon Valley is an excellent example of decades long government funding and commitment spawning a world leading ecosystem. See e.g. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ for a nice overview.
Gravityloss 6y ago
Well, many went to work on Apollo.

sintaxi 6y ago

The regrettable purchase of 66 CF-101 VooDoo shortly after suggests otherwise. The CF-101 were pretty much DOA and replaced rather quickly. The Arrow would still be flown today by the Canadian Air Force had the program completed.

nwallin 6y ago
> The Arrow would still be flown today by the Canadian Air Force had the program completed. They absolutely would not still be flown today. The Arrow was a relic of the pre-ICBM cold war. When the USSR was expected to field fleets of nuclear bombers over the north pole. The Arrow was designed to go fast, launch an unguided nuclear air to air rocket, turn around and fly home. It was great at this, but in the ensuing years, the Soviet Union put a lot more effort into its ICBM capability than its intercontinental nuclear bomber capability. It would have had difficulty adapting to other roles. As a delta wing, its energy management was likely terrible. Its thin, delicate wings would be ill suited to hanging a heavy bomb load from. It is comparable (though slightly worse) in era, role, configuration, and performance to the F-106, which was retired in the '80s. The Arrow was designed to do something that was simply unnecessary. If the program had been completed, it still would have been replaced in the '70s or '80s. The only difference is that it would have likely been replaced by an Avro Canada designed aircraft rather than an American one.

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sgt101 6y ago

Robert Mcnamara made a similar point about Concorde - but that wasn't cancelled. A vast amount of talent and capital was effectively lost on it. The point that Mcnamara didn't ever make though was that a great deal of Concorde's troubles can be pinned on the oil crisis. There is a lot of randomness and counter factuals to be considered in these stories.

fragmede 6y ago
Given how much the knowledge from making the Concorde later made it into Airbus and their planes, I don't know that the talent and capital was "effectively lost".
- sgt101 6y ago
  I was under the impression that the vast bulk of the engineering effort for Concorde was targetted on making it a viable supersonic aircraft. Airbus has never built a supersonic aircraft...

johnwalkr 6y ago

On the other hand, a lot of engineers left to work on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo in the US.